{"id":2542,"date":"2011-08-08T00:08:10","date_gmt":"2011-08-08T04:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=2542"},"modified":"2015-09-26T13:55:21","modified_gmt":"2015-09-26T17:55:21","slug":"music-in-the-dark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=2542","title":{"rendered":"Music in the Dark"},"content":{"rendered":"

Theme Songs Page<\/a> | Previous Theme Song<\/a> | Next Theme Song<\/a><\/p>\n

Music in the Dark<\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Capricorn: The Uncapricious Climber, by Zodiac (1967), encountered 1968<\/h3>\n

Buy it here<\/a> | See it here<\/a><\/p>\n

So Many Stars, by Alan and Marilyn Bergman and Sergio Mendes, performed by Sergio Mendes and Brasil \u201966, sung by Lani Hall (1968), encountered 1968<\/h3>\n

Buy it here<\/a> | See it here<\/a> | Lyrics here<\/a> | Sheet music here<\/a><\/p>\n

Sometimes darkness makes the music more intense, especially music about things you can only see in the dark.\u00a0 This one is about that experience.<\/p>\n

But first a necessary preliminary.\u00a0 I wrote once earlier on<\/a> that there were going to be places in these memoirs where I would elect to be silent about things I remember.\u00a0 Now we reach the principal one.\u00a0 It was at this point that I met the woman I would marry \u2013 and divorce.\u00a0 This is not her story, and I have too much esteem for her to invade her privacy even to tell my own tale.\u00a0 I cannot simply give her a pseudonym as I have done with some of the other people I\u2019ve been talking about in these pages; the world knows of our connection, and we have children and grandchildren in common.\u00a0 Hence I shall call her only S., and tell those parts of my story that involve her in such a way as to leave most aspects of her history and personality respectfully to one side.\u00a0 This constricts me a little, but there still remains plenty to tell within those boundaries. All you need to know to start with is that we met as fellow-students at the University of Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Graudensville<\/p><\/div>\n

A Not Terribly-Clean Rug<\/h3>\n

That said, I\u2019ll hustle you, gentle reader, past the preliminaries, and dump you on the not terribly clean rug in the front room of an apartment on Walnut Street, in a building that no longer exists.[1] There are four of us either lying on the rug or sitting on the grungy couches: me, S., and my roommates Jim and Elliot.\u00a0 It is my sophomore year.\u00a0 We call the apartment house Graudensville in honor of our heavily-accented landlord Mr. Graudens.\u00a0 Let me say this gently; Mr. Graudens does not run a first-class establishment; this is a student tenement.\u00a0 The furniture and the rugs come with the apartment, and they look as if they have come with the apartment for a good long time. There are three guys living here in an apartment designed for two.<\/p>\n

In my memory, it is daytime but the curtains are drawn (nothing to look at but an airspace between rowhouses anyhow).\u00a0 The lights are low or out.\u00a0 Music is playing.<\/p>\n

In years to come I shall look up my roomies\u2019 whereabouts on the Web, and find that Jim has become a lawyer in Youngstown, and Elliot a musician and political activist in suburban Philly.\u00a0 You might think that as a future lawyer with a giant music obsession, I\u2019d really hit it off with each of these guys.\u00a0 But not so.\u00a0 We haven\u2019t bunked down together out of any great interest in each other; we were simply cast out of the men\u2019s dorms by the University\u2019s lottery and had to find flatmates quickly.\u00a0 But being stuck together means it is to our mutual advantage to try to find things to do and enjoy together.\u00a0 Clearly music is our best bet.<\/p>\n

Elliot, the future musician, appropriately has the best equipment.\u00a0 I myself am the proud owner of an Ampex tape deck by this time (I think another present from my father, who (as recorded in an earlier entry) gave me my core hi-fi components a few years before).[2] Elliot has either a better Ampex or a TEAC, which is coming to be known as the gold standard of reel-to-reel decks at this point.\u00a0 We hook the two up in series and fell like the kings of audio.<\/p>\n

Later no one will be likely quite to grasp the importance of a tape deck.\u00a0 In this era before ripping of CDs and downloading of tracks from questionable sites, it is the only way to get music for free without actually shoplifting \u2013 which means it is the key technology in sharing music.[3] Elliot has a lot of cool stuff on reel-to-reel.\u00a0 Elliot also has some pretty cool records.<\/p>\n

Psychedelia for Straight Kids<\/h3>\n

We\u2019re listening to someone else\u2019s record at this moment, one that I\u2019m almost certain belongs to Elliot: Cosmic Sounds<\/em> by Zodiac.\u00a0 It is a reflection of the time that the cover sleeve could also be read to enclose an album called Zodiac<\/em> by Cosmic Sounds.\u00a0 And there\u2019s no reality-based context to settle the matter.\u00a0 This is an album all about the Zodiac, and there is no real-life group or act called Cosmic Sounds.\u00a0 So it\u2019s just as plausible either way.<\/p>\n

On the front of the cover is a trippy distorted zodiac, so we know this is true psychedelia.\u00a0 On the back is written in hot pink \u201cMust be played in the dark.\u201d\u00a0 And so, following the instructions and the ethos of the era, we close the curtains and douse the lights.\u00a0 This is the time of psychedelia, and we obey.\u00a0 Perhaps there will be revelations in the dark that light would interfere with.<\/p>\n

How to describe the psychedelic years to an audience that was not there?\u00a0 \u201cPsychedelic,\u201d initially a technical term for a class of recreational drugs, has come to mean as many things as \u201chip-hop\u201d will later do.\u00a0 It is a drug style, but also an art style, a music style, a set of social and political views, and two or three fashions in clothing.\u00a0 It says something about the breadth of the label that of the four of us sprawling attentively in the dark, none of us is on drugs.\u00a0 No, not even pot.\u00a0 Yet this is a psychedelic moment for us anyhow.<\/p>\n

The record is unique, and perfect of its sort.\u00a0 I quote the Richie Unterberger reissue liner notes, reproduced in the informative Wikipedia article on the album<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Divided into 12 separate tracks, one for each astrological sign, it appeared just as both psychedelic rock and astrology itself were coming into vogue in the youthful counterculture. In some respects it was similar to other instrumental psychsploitation albums of the time, with a spacy yet tight groove that could have fit into the soundtrack of 1966 Sunset Strip documentaries, played in large measure by seasoned Los Angeles session musicians. In other respects, it was futuristic, embellished by some of the first Moog synthesizer ever heard on a commercial recording, an assortment of exotic percussive instruments, and sitar. The arrangements were further decorated by haunting harpsichord and organ, along with standard mid-1960s Los Angeles rock guitar licks. For those who took the astrology as seriously as the music, there was the dramatic reading of narrator Cyrus Faryar, musing upon aspects of each astrological sign in a rich, deep voice without a hint of irony.<\/address>\n

Here, by way of example, is a part of the lowdown on Capricorn: The Uncapricious Climber:<\/p>\n

Eight notes scale an octave.\u00a0 Master the scale and you master the score.\u00a0 Uncapricious Capricorn captures each note, holding it tight until it surrenders.\u00a0 The mystery of music can meld into black and white, then dissolve into grey.\u00a0 Capricorn, convinced, can make grey glisten like white onyx.<\/address>\n

I don\u2019t think any of us, in the language of those album cover notes, \u201ctook astrology as seriously as the music.\u201d\u00a0 But the tour of the varied personalities associated with the astrological signs was entertaining, the music was definitely trippy, and there was something cool about lying around as if we were drugged, even if we weren\u2019t.\u00a0 I think that little snapshot is quite indicative of the way that good middle-class kids of that era made their peace with the ethos of free love and drugs which fueled what was coming to be called the Counterculture.[4] We were all Ivy Leaguers<\/em>, for heaven\u2019s sake!\u00a0 Three future lawyers and a musician\/politician!\u00a0 And yet we were all as sober as judges[5] (give or take a few swigs of Mateus),[6] giving a respectful listen to what was meant to be a drug experience-like trip based on a mythos none of us had the least belief in!<\/p>\n

It was the fashion of the times.<\/p>\n

Straightness for Psychedelic Kids<\/h3>\n

How firmly we had one foot planted in the world of Woodstock (set to happen in about ten months) and the other in that of our parents can be gleaned from another star-focused song on a different record I also recall us listening to in the dark.\u00a0 This LP was a contribution from me: Look Around<\/em>, by Sergio Mendes and Brasil \u201966.\u00a0 Now, despite the candy-colored scheme of the album cover, by the standards of the time, this was square<\/em> music.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve already written about my infatuation with Brazilian-inflected music, Jobim<\/a> and the Tamba 4<\/a>.\u00a0 That stuff was pure and exotic enough to be cool.\u00a0 Mendes was a different story, unique in the Brazilian Invasion, having immigrated to New York in 1964, and having started a quartet (a quintet on records) called Brasil \u201965, which was really a jazz outfit with a strong Brazilian accent, then replaced it with a pop sextet he called Brasil \u201966, in which half the personnel were U.S.-born.\u00a0 By compromising his Brazilian-ness this way, he could never be exactly cool, but he certainly was popular.[7] Partly it was the great A&M Records covers, which looked almost good enough to eat, partly it was the equally glossy production inside.<\/p>\n

Look Around<\/em>, his third Brasil \u201966 album and by far his most pop one to that time, excelled in both departments, and went to Number 5 on the charts.\u00a0 But the songs were the main thing, including the two big hits from the album, the remake of Bacharach and David\u2019s The Look of Love<\/em> from the Casino Royale<\/em> sendup movie[8] and the title song, Look Around<\/em>.\u00a0 These are finely-crafted pop-delivery devices, and we all appreciated them.<\/p>\n

Steady Forecloses Possibilities<\/h3>\n

But the song that really got to me was So Many Stars<\/em>, a lovely collaboration of Mendes with lyricists Marilyn and Alan Bergman,[9] who were probably twenty years older than the people who had put together The Zodiac<\/em>, and had first broken big writing for Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra about a decade before.\u00a0 And however swinging Sinatra appears to members of my generation now in posthumous refurbishment, he was suspiciously, well, old <\/em>to those of us who were teenagers in 1968.\u00a0 So this piece was right on the edge of what we would all have been comfortable listening to \u2013 together, anyway.<\/p>\n

So Many Stars<\/em> spoke to me.\u00a0 Reflect: I had my first real girlfriend, after having dated a lot \u2013 admittedly, I had wanted a real girlfriend for the longest time \u2013 but I was comfortable dating, while I had no experience with being anyone\u2019s steady.\u00a0 So you can imagine the effect of lyrics like these (especially as served up on a lush bed of strings orchestrated by Dave Grusin):<\/p>\n

The dawn is filled with dreams[10]<\/address>\n
So many dreams which one is mine<\/address>\n
One must be right for me<\/address>\n
Which dream of all the dreams<\/address>\n
When there’s a dream for every star<\/address>\n
And there are oh so many stars<\/address>\n
So many stars<\/address>\n
The wind is filled with songs<\/address>\n
So many songs which one is mine<\/address>\n
One must be right for me<\/address>\n
Which song of all the songs<\/address>\n
When there’s a song for every star<\/address>\n
And there are oh so many stars, so many stars<\/address>\n

I was experiencing elation at having found someone so interesting who did me the great compliment of reacting to me the same way.\u00a0 But at the same time, I was aware that I was foreclosing other possibilities in a world full of them.\u00a0 And of course I had the recent history with Carolyn, described in the preceding piece<\/a>, to just exemplify what I was surrendering.\u00a0 This song spoke wistfully to those very misgivings.<\/p>\n

What To Do About Misgivings<\/h3>\n

In retrospect, where everything is crystal clear, I can say that I should have paid more attention to those misgivings, that a person feeling that way was not ready to settle down, even to the extent that going steady was settling down, especially at such a young age, and even more especially if the person was afflicted with a Catholic moral seriousness that fails to recognize how often sex should not<\/em> be cause for commitment.\u00a0 But what I was telling myself at that stage was that life was full of tradeoffs, and that I\u2019d be experiencing some kind of emotional confusion no matter what \u201cstar\u201d I happened to be choosing.\u00a0 In other words, I was feeding myself the wrong kind of adult wisdom.<\/p>\n

I should have listened closer to the music in the dark.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n

[1]\u00a0 3923 Walnut Street, an address which no longer exists; I believe the site has been incorporated into larger buildings not once but twice in the intervening years.\u00a0 If memory serves correctly, the mesne structure sited a movie theater exactly where our house had been.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Ampex!<\/p><\/div>\n

[2] Here\u2019s a photo of me with the deck a year or two later.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[3] In retrospect, it was a very unsatisfactory one.\u00a0 You either had to use fairly short tapes, on which one or two stereo albums might fit, or monstrous ones, that would accommodate typically five and a fraction LPs, leaving you with tough calls between economy (tape only part of the sixth album?) or completeness which created its own form of incompleteness (leave part of side two of the tape unoccupied).\u00a0 The reels were all too bulky, so you were tempted to go with the larger ones, but then you had serious retrieval problems, figuring out where your music was on the reel.\u00a0 You did have access to a sort of capstan odometer, and you could and if you were serious pretty much had to note down readings for starting and ending albums carefully, or you would condemn yourself to hunting around, starting and stopping over and over again, when you wanted to find anything but the first album on the tape.\u00a0 Moreover, tape deteriorated with time.\u00a0 It could stretch, warp, break, or flake.\u00a0 But in those days, it was the best you had.\u00a0 And if, as Elliot and I did when we set up our machines next to each other, you had two of them, you could make tapes of tapes, rearrange the sequence of tracks, and do interesting things with the echo effect.\u00a0 You definitely had something.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[4] Per Wikipedia, the term Counterculture was coined by Theodore Roszak, given currency by his book The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and Its Youthful Opposition<\/a>, which was published right about the time I\u2019m speaking of.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[5] As a lawyer, I\u2019ve often wondered where that expression came from.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[6] Mateus Rose<\/a> was a staple of college life in that era, at least in the circles in which I ran.\u00a0 I find it almost undrinkable now.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[7] He\u2019s not necessarily so popular in the second decade of the Twenty-First Century, but he has certainly regained his authenticity, at least periodically, and his cool.\u00a0 There\u2019s nothing you can say about his album of collaborations with younger musicians from his homeland, Brasileiro<\/em><\/a> (1992), except \u201cWow!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[8] James Bond fans know the story.\u00a0 Casino Royale<\/em><\/a>, the book (1954), didn\u2019t end up in the hands of the Saltzman-Broccoli team which had bought up all the other James Bond movie rights (except for Thunderball<\/em><\/a>, an even more complicated tale).\u00a0 Casino Royale<\/em> fell into the hands of Charles K. Feldman<\/a>, who turned it over to much of the same creative team that had given the world the wonderful and more-than-slightly mad What\u2019s New, Pussycat<\/em>? (1965)<\/a>.\u00a0 Casino Royale<\/em>, the 1967 movie<\/a>, was not so wonderful, but, like Pussycat<\/em>, boasted music by Burt Bacharach, including the indelible Dusty Springfield performance of The Look of Love<\/em><\/a>, which has subsequently been recorded by every musician under the sun.\u00a0 Sergio Mendes and Brasil \u201966 performed their cover of that song at the 1968 Oscars.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[9] The Wikipedia pieces on Marilyn<\/a> and Alan<\/a> Bergman are helpful in getting a sense of their world, but a better evocation of their definitely pre-60s ethos (notwithstanding their continued, if not greater commercial success after the 60s) can be gleaned from this 2007 Terri Gross interview<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[10] Yes I know many of the published versions of the lyrics show the line as \u201cThe dark<\/em> is filled with dreams\u201d (which would actually fit better with the theme of this piece).\u00a0 But my ears are not crazy; Lani Hall sang \u201cdawn\u201d on this album, as did Natalie Cole<\/a> or Sara Vaughn<\/a> in their respective versions of the song.\u00a0 And the sheet music referenced above confirms what I hear.<\/p>\n

Copyright (c) Jack L. B. Gohn<\/p>\n

Theme Songs Page<\/a> | Previous Theme Song<\/a> | Next Theme Song<\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes darkness makes the music more intense, especially music about things you can only see in the dark. This one is about that experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,968],"tags":[2689,2931,2912,2917,2068,2930,2910,2936,2925,2932,2937,2908,2928,2927,2924,2045,2922,2940,1736,2916,2944,2911,2913,2935,2906,2942,2921,2920,2923,2943,2909,2919,2914,2915,2741,2918,2941,1956,2934,2907,2933,2938,2926,2939,2929],"class_list":["post-2542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-closeup","category-theme-songs","tag-2689","tag-am-records","tag-alan-bergman","tag-ampex-tape-decks","tag-antonio-carlos-jobim","tag-brasil-65","tag-brasil-66","tag-brasileiro","tag-capricorn","tag-casino-royale","tag-charles-k-feldman","tag-cosmic-sounds","tag-counter-culture","tag-counterculture","tag-cyrus-faryar","tag-dean-martin","tag-drugs","tag-dusty-springfield","tag-frank-sinatra","tag-graudens","tag-lani-hall","tag-look-around","tag-marilyn-bergman","tag-mateus-rose","tag-music-in-the-dark","tag-natalie-cole","tag-psychedelia","tag-psychedelic","tag-richie-unterberger","tag-sara-vaughn","tag-sergio-mendes","tag-sharing-music","tag-so-many-stars","tag-student-tenement-housing","tag-tamba-4","tag-teac-tape-decks","tag-terri-gross","tag-the-look-of-love","tag-the-making-of-a-counter-culture","tag-the-zodia","tag-theodore-roszak","tag-thunderball","tag-uncapricious-climber","tag-whats-new-pussycat","tag-woodstock-music-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2542"}],"version-history":[{"count":40,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5513,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2542\/revisions\/5513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}