Something of the medieval monk
Lies among these deep devout drifts
Snugged around the awakening city
Wholly dedicated to sacred silence
Illuminating his manuscript hour upon hour
Removed from the uproar of the world
Tongue tucked thoughtfully in his mouth
As he delicately depicts dragons
On the corners of the Earth
While far away rage armies and despots
Intent on their dull noisy business
Of death and desperate destruction
Of art, beauty, history, sanity, hope
The monk is heedless of it all
With his tucked tongue and exacting hand
Like McCartney’s Father McKenzie
Darning his socks in the night
When there’s nobody there
Pausing only to join his fellow solitaries
For the daily office rounds
Matins, lauds, prime, terce
Sext, none, vespers, compline
Only breaking the deep shroud of silence
To intone ancient melancholy Psalms
So does the snow lie all about me
Deep, silent, devout, shrouded
As yet unsullied by blackening exhaust
The exhausting noise of the world
On this silent sacred morning

from latimes.com

article titled “Beatlemania.” Her sentiment holds up nearly 50 years later as a succinct summary of the Beatles Effect. Considering it was published four days before John F. Kennedy was killed, it is all the more powerful now.
The dearie-me girl’s comment was one of few that accurately described the band in an otherwise astoundingly square story. It calls Beatles music “high-pitched, loud beyond reason, and stupefyingly repetitive. Like rock ‘n’ roll, to which it is closely allied, it is even more effective to watch than to hear.”
Being as it turns out the very pinnacle of rock ‘n’ roll, Beatles music remains “effective” in both the watching and hearing. This is due not only to the genius of the music, but the joy, excitement and hope exuded by the songs and the Beatles themselves – qualities we hunger for at least as much now as we did then.
Their continuing cross-generational appeal comes home to me in a short course I teach called “Love is All, Love is You: The Spirituality of the Beatles,” most recently at the Dominican Center at Marywood and beginning Feb. 28 at the Calvin College CALL program. The Marywood class includes two fathers and their teenage children, who seemed as keenly engaged in the subject matter as their parents.
One of the teens was struck by how high George carried his guitar in an August 1965 performance on The Ed Sullivan Show, the last time they would play that esteemed venue. It is a thing of beauty to watch, as they do indeed stamp and shake and sing most joyfully. John is in rare form with his goofy introduction to “Help!” This despite its desperate lyrics expressing the depression of what he later called his “fat Elvis period.” One class member called it the “most relatable Beatles song ever” with its “sad lyrics and happy music.”
Others marveled at Paul’s performance of “Yesterday,” the regretful ballad recorded two months after “Help!” — twin expressions of vulnerability by two maturing men. “I long for yesterday” takes on deeper resonance for those of use who have piled up many yesterdays since then.
But it’s the exuberance of the band that captivates with a freshness of spirit hard to imagine being possible now. The business-like Sullivan clearly has been charmed by the boys by this time, introducing them singly beforehand and afterward congratulating them on handling themselves “magnificently.” “Well come on, let’s hear it for ‘em!” he implores the screaming girls.
They scream for all of us who long for joy and hope delivered through thrashing guitars and gorgeous harmonies. The Beatles’ faces are streaming with sweat, their vocals dead-on and their instrumentals near-flawless in the face of this 747-level noise. Their cheerful energy defies the darkness of the times, then as now, even with all the darkness we know is to come in their own lives.
Their first Sullivan appearance was a supernova for 73 million viewers still in shock following JFK’s assassination, biting their nails over Russian missiles or getting pummeled by cops in civil rights marches. In his insightful book, “The Gospel According to the Beatles,” rock journalist Steve Turner writes the band “represented the best of what people longed for” in that dark, cold winter of 1964: “They represented laughter rather than tears, hope rather than despair, love rather than hatred, life rather than death.”
Beatles music still represents those longings. Despite the darker strains that would later imbue their songs, the body of their work speaks to the best in us. Theirs is a vision of joy linked to the power of the mind, inviting us to imagine a different kind of world. Have you heard? The word is love.
Oh dearie me.

Yours truly with his trusty Les Paul at Goon Lagoon studios

Today’s post comes via localspins.com, the excellent all-music-all-the-time blog by my friend and bandmate John Sinkevics. May we rock forever!

For the self-respecting band trying to turn heads and grow fans with originals, the cover song can either fly like an eagle or become the accursed bird you cannot change.

On one hand, a good cover provides built-in fan-band bonding: the sweet surprise of an instantly recognizable tune, preferably one that gets feet moving and fists pumping, plus a bit of hipster cred: “Wow, these dudes play this? Nice!”

If, on the other hand, the cover is too good, it will make your originals sound pale and sickly by comparison. Pretty soon the crowd wants more covers, and before you know it you’re playing a “Sweet Home Alabama/Freebird” medley while a guy in a Slash T-shirt stands right in front of your guitarist, hoisting a pint and screaming the wrong words.

The cover you really don’t want is the one you despise playing but feel you must to please the pint-hoisters. Back in my early band days, that was “Smoke on the Water,” a tune we dutifully performed with a secret mockery bordering on self-loathing.

The cover you want is the one that comes out of nowhere and, despite its well-known origins, bears the unmistakable imprint of your band. This still provides the sweet surprise but newly packaged. And it adds value to the great canon of rock, an ever-growing library kept ever-new by young bands’ fresh interpretations.

I’ve heard many West Michigan bands which focus mostly on their own material play uniquely original covers to wonderful effect.

The Crane Wives’ version of “Smooth Criminal” is marvelously counterintuitive, morphing Michael Jackson’s techno fever-beat into an acoustic roots rave-up. Ditto for The Northern Skies, who filter Al Green’s soulful “Take Me to the River” through the Skies’ distinctive bluegrass stomp.

I once had the pleasure of stomping to a heavily rockified version of “I Am the Walrus” by the erstwhile Jim Crawford Band (whose founding members Zach Guy and Tory Peterson now rock righteously as Simien the Whale). Imagine if you will the Beatles’ dreamily psychedelic original set to the loose-limbed funk of “Tricky Fingered Woman.” Like I say, tons of fun.

The Crawfords’ cover came during one of the annual Feedback benefits staged by John Sinkevics and our band The Honeytones. Feedback also saw Valentiger turn out a dandy version of the Kinks’ “Picture Book” in their own smart-pop style. Those who inhabit my Kinks-worshipping universe know that song not from the cute HP commercial but from their 1968 LP, “The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society,” a commercial flop and musical masterpiece.

Which brings us to The Honeytones’ own covers and the issue of how best to cover a cover. The Tones have always opted for non-slavish versions of well-known originals. What is the point of trying to play Steely Dan’s “My Old School” note for note when no one could possibly do it better than the Dan already did?

On the other hand, we put our distinctive Tones stamp on Toad the Wet Sprocket’s “Fall Down” with roughly the same ferocity as Metallica covering The Cowsills. No disrespect to the fine original, but frankly our version is more fun.

Hey, no one said we had to check our egos at the door.

It’s been a strange year, that’s for sure. Strange and rough. Continually trying to come to grips with the fact of death, hard and unyielding as an iron wall. Death doesn’t mess around. When it takes you it takes you, and anyone else it pleases. Jesus may have been able to raise people from it, but not me. Believe me, I would have if I could.

Well, maybe not. When I talk to Dad in the early morning, I often picture him with Mom, his beloved Betty. Having a drink with all the relatives, like in the dream I had last night. Sitting by their trailer in some autumn-bright state park. Dancing in heaven on New Year’s Eve. What a couple they were.

So I would not want to bring Dad back from dancing with Mom in the faraway places now. The past year, then, I have tried to bring him back in my mind, day to day. Sometimes he just shows up, in my dreams or on a long walk. He may be off in the cosmos somewhere with Mom, but he’s also right next door to my heart.

Still, it’s disorienting, this being an orphan thing. How many times I’ve wanted to pick up the phone and hear Mom’s voice, full of love and bugging me about her latest project for my life. How often I’ve wanted to call Dad to yak about the Tigers’ latest game, or to get his advice on my latest issue without specifically asking for it. He was good at that.

Knowing you can get that call or make that call to your Mom or Dad makes all the difference. Even if you don’t make it, you know you could if you needed to. Just the knowledge keeps you grounded. Start floating away from the earth in a mess of trouble, all you have to do is pick up the phone. Mom or Dad will always reel you in.

It was hard enough not being able to do that with Mom. Yet we knew for a long time that Mom’s days were numbered. She was a frail autumn leaf ready to blow away at any time. Dad was the tree itself, a mighty maple rooted deeply in the ground. And then one Sunday morning, in a shocking instant, he was felled.

The swiftness with which he fell made it all the harder to accept and comprehend. He should still be standing there, soaking up the sun. He should still be walking beside me on our way uptown to Baldino’s party store in Williamston. He should still be sitting on the floor across from me playing hockey, madly pulling at the handles trying to keep up with the lightning reflexes of an 8-year-old boy.

How could he have been so present for so long, and then, suddenly, just not there anymore?

I was never not proud of my Dad. Not for a day. I admired his strength, his grace, his good humor, caring nature and sound advice. He looked cool with a pipe in his mouth. He was a handome bugger, in a rugged Hugh O’Brian way. He knew how to make people feel at ease. He walked in beauty, as the Indians say.

Hollywood commonly portrays the distant dad who never praises his son or actively belittles him. I can’t relate. Dad nurtured me from day one – spoiled me rotten, was Mom’s way of putting it. He let me drool on him when he held me high in his arms. Cradled me while watching TV or reading to me at bedtime. It was warm in his arms. He made me feel deeply loved and safe in the world.

He spanked me only once. Mom says it was because I crossed Philadelphia Avenue and almost got hit. Well, I did get hit by Dad – one astonishingly strong whack on the butt. He probably thought it hurt him more than it did me. I’m not so sure.

The only prolonged tension was in my teen years. I wanted to grow my hair long like my beloved Beatles, and Dad had always cut my hair, in the kitchen. Invariably he would cut it shorter than I wanted. He didn’t know how to do it any other way, and didn’t want it long besides. Finally he gave up trying.

I was into the Doors and Stones and other strange bands that Dad didn’t understand. Our worlds went their separate ways for awhile. In my college years he once told me to go off in a cabin and write if I wanted to; just commit to something. I didn’t appreciate his advice then.

My maturing as an adult brought us back together – that and baseball. Give major credit here to Carlton Fisk. His dramatic 12th-inning home run in the 1975 World Series renewed my love of the game, which Dad had taught me to begin with.

Last fall, I watched every last inning of that miserable Tigers-Giants World Series. I had to. What if the Tigers staged a miraculous comeback? Dad would be very disappointed if I missed it.

He still guides me in little ways – how to deal with a bad morning, how to take long walks at night, how to read a good book to settle my nerves. Basically, Dad taught me how to be a man.

I once told him, in the midst of a marital crisis, that I didn’t feel I’d ever grown into a man the way he did. There was no World War II to make me grow up. Dad told me that once I got through the crisis, I’d know what it felt like to be a man.

He was right, of course. I am more of a man now, but still learning how to be one from him. That goes on every day, even with him gone from the world.

Stellar cradle of young stars, NASA image

They call it the God-sized hole.
That ever-gnawing hunger inside
Always waiting to be fed
With meaning, purpose, assurance
Faith
Soul food.
I have heard many people talk about it.
I believe in this idea, because I can feel it
Deep in my gut.
I know about how big it is.
It’s the size of my record collection, all 400-plus albums.
Throw in my 300-plus CDs.
Make it bigger with my shelves and shelves of books
Thousands upon thousands of pages, ideas crammed front to back
Collecting dust on basement shelves
Or spilling over in neglected piles.
The hole would swallow all of them
And you wouldn’t even see them
At the bottom.
I could pour in all my old writings
Saved for some reason in boxes
All my yellowed thoughts: letters, college papers, newspaper clips
They would cascade down in a musty avalanche
And the hole would be far from filled.
I could flood them with drink:
Great growlers of beer
Bottles of splendid wine
Coffee by the gallon
And still not see the mushy pile
So far down the hole it was.
Down there with a thousand conversations
Beautiful evenings with friends
Wonderful captivating movies
Plays that drew my gasps and tears
Baseball games that made me shout with joy
Meals, such fabulous meals …
So many fine lovely things, but not nearly enough
To fill up the God-sized hole.
I always feel it down there, dark and full of echoes
Waiting for more
Waiting for meaning
Waiting for me
To finally submit, and admit
How badly I hunger
How much I want
To fill it with prayer
And devotion
And intention.
But I don’t, I won’t.
I’m afraid of what I’d find
Of what it would ask of me, or do to me
And what I would have to do
If I went down all the way.
I’d rather drop things in:
Little daily pleasures
And reassuring gestures
And fine thoughts
Putting in just enough
To keep from starving.

Postcard of English cricket match

In his tenderly reverent ballad “Remembrance Day,” Mark Knopfler honors the fallen soldiers of World War I by calling to mind the players on a village cricket team:
Standing at the crease, the batsman takes a look around/ The boys are fielding on home ground, the steeple sharp against the blue/ When I think of you
Sam and Andy, Jack and John, Charlie, Martin, Jamie, Ron … on and on/ We will remember them, remember them, remember them
Together with a haunting melody, Knopfler’s lyrical guitar lines and a children’s choir, the song evokes an image of one of those pretty English villages in the Cotswolds, its male population devastated by a brutal war, the reason for which most people still don’t know.
The national holiday of which Knopfler sings is this Sunday, Nov. 11, the same date as Veterans Day in the U.S. In the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth countries, Remembrance Day honors those who have died in war. It’s marked by a moment of silence at 11 a.m., the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month on which the Armistice ending World War I took effect.
It’s also marked by red poppies, a reference to the famous poem “In Flanders Fields” by Lt. Col. John McRae, a Canadian physican who fought in the ghastly second battle of Ypres in the Flanders region of Belgium. Somehow McRae managed to write these immortal lines while presiding over the funeral of one of many friends whose graves were overgrown with poppies:
In Flanders fields the poppies blow/ Between the crosses, row on row/ That mark our place …
Like Knopfler’s song, McRae’s poem gives life to the fallen by recalling them in their full flower of life:
We are the Dead. Short days ago/ We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,/ Loved and were loved, and now we lie/ In Flanders fields.
The power of such words of remembrance lies in their ability to conjure the fragile glory of life and the faces of loved ones who have passed on, whether in battlefields or the battle of life.
The song of Knopfler, a gifted guitarist and songwriter who played at Van Andel Arena on Monday, Nov. 12, adds the power of memorable melody.
Listening to Knopfler’s heart-piercing solo, I think of my friend Andy Angelo. Andy was a gentle man who was my editor at The Grand Rapids Press for many years. He died July 3 at age 55, felled not by a bullet but by respiratory problems. I need not add the overused “much too soon,” but that was certainly the feeling among his stunned coworkers and many community friends.
My mind recalls Andy not in his Blodgett Hospital room, but sitting at his copy desk, leaning back with a big grin and saying to me, “Whatcha got?” Usually I had a gripe about some lame copy editor meddling with my perfect prose. Andy never snapped, Jason Robards-style, but quietly went about seeing if he could fix it.
Others remember Andy very much alive as well. The Cook Arts Center, of which he was a longtime supporter, built an altar in his honor at the Grand Rapids Public Library for the Mexican Day of the Dead early in November.
Knopfler’s song also brings to mind other fallen loved ones, including my mother and father. They sometimes dance through my dreams, alive and vibrant as the sun. Although painful scenes of their deaths sometimes appear, I choose to remember them in life, at play and in love — sitting around the kitchen table, playing cards, dancing on New Year’s Eve, dad firing a baseball in the side yard.
I have many physical remnants of their lives: photos, letters, a few tape recordings. But they mostly reside in my memory. It’s there they live most vibrantly and vividly and intimately. My memory of Mom and Dad, and of Andy and other loved ones, is a sacred hall, a sanctuary lighted by sunlight slanting through the stained-glass scenes of their lives.
My remembering them is something holy, a gift from God that enables life to go on for them in me. It is a gift I share with my brother and sister and friends and my beloved Andrea, and pass on to my children, Emily and Max.
“God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December,” said James M. Barrie, the author of “Peter Pan.”
And so we might have poppies in November, and our loved ones always, as long as we live.

He graced right field like Fred Astaire

Oct. 28, 2012, pre-game:
Tonight, for Game Four, I am holding the Kaline Ball.
Saturday night I held the Ernie Harwell/Alan Trammell ball for Game Three. Didn’t work. Despite keeping it right in front of me the whole way, and with a roomfull of friends all decked out in Tiger regalia, my team went down 2-0 to the suddenly stupendous San Francisco Giants. Just as suddenly, the World Series shrank down to one game, a loss in which would relegate this one to Tigers infamy.
A sweep? Inconceivable! Not my Tigers. Clearly, stronger stuff is needed to bring the mojo back to Detroit and the hits back to Tiger bats.
It’s time for the Kaline Ball.
The Hall of Famer signed the ball in a reunion day for the 1968 World Champion Tigers that was held some years back at Tiger Stadium. My Dad and I lined up for the autographs of Al and other Tigers from that team, including John Hiller, Jon Warden and Daryl Patterson.
When I told Patterson his team had created great memories for me that summer, he cracked, “You probably remember more of it than I do.” The ’68 Tigers were well-known for partying.
Patterson’s signature shares the slightly scruffed Little League ball with several other scrawly autographs. But Al Kaline’s name clearly owns the ball, elegantly occupying its own space between the seams, just as he occupied right field like no other player of his time, fielding flies and firing bullets with the grace of Fred Astaire.
The ’68 Tigers were my team, the guys I’d grown up with, scored games for, imagined myself as in backyard games of whiffle ball. I collected their cards for 5 cents a pack. Willie Horton, Norm Cash, Mickey Stanley, Mickey Lolich, Denny McLain: I can still recite their season stats with greater accuracy than I can recall what I ate yesterday.
Those Tigers occupy the same place in my heart as the Tigers of 1935 did for my Dad. The players of that incredible team loom in my mind like legendary ghosts: Charlie Gehringer, Hank Greenberg, Mickey Cochrane, Schoolboy Rowe, Tommy Bridges. Dad saw them win Detroit’s first World Series, and talked of them often as we watched the ’68 team beat the Cardinals.
Here we are 77 years later, in a world unimaginable to a 14-year-old boy winging the Detroit Free Press onto porches from his bike. I don’t really understand the changes any better than Dad did. But I am grateful that the old English D on the Tiger uniforms remains, occupying its own space on the pristine white jersey.
Do I believe holding the Kaline Ball will make a difference tonight? It’s not a question of belief. It’s just what baseball fans do. When Armando Galarraga was on his way to his shoulda-been perfect game in June 2010, I did not move from my position in the recliner for the final two innings. Didn’t even take my chin off my hand. How could I take the chance?
So here we go: the National Anthem is being sung with soulful wails. The players hold their hats over their hearts. The game is about to begin, in ridiculously cold weather in Comerica Park.
No team has ever come back to win a World Series from a 3-0 deficit. But certainly no World Series game has ever been watched by this fan holding a ball signed by Al Kaline.
Anything can happen. It’s baseball, after all.
Postscript, Monday, Oct. 29 (the bleak morning after): Kaline Ball not enough. But I held it anyway, finding comfort in its perfect, familiar solidity. It felt like history, a great game, memories of my Dad. That was enough, until next year.

He knew he was a man, but had the wrong brand

It’s time I rebranded myself. I’ve been the same brand for 35 years, and it’s not a very interesting one: Plain White Reporter Guy. There’s nothing wrong with that brand, but it doesn’t sell me at all. Many thousands of plain white reporter guys already are on the market. What do I have to offer that they don’t?
The truth is, all these years I didn’t even know I had a brand. I thought I was just living, working, raising a family, that sort of thing. It never occurred to me that I was a commodity, and a valuable one at that. I could do many things well. I had skills, experience and learned quickly. There was a lot to recommend me. But I just trudged along, living day by day, as if that were all there was to life.
Luckily, I finally woke up, shortly after my job went away. What is your brand? my friends started asking. What is your skill set? What do you have to offer the increasingly global marketplace? Just who are you, anyway?
It took me awhile to accept the idea that I needed to be branded. I associated the very concept of branding with the old TV show, which was actually called “Branded.” It starred Chuck Connors, who had been unjustly branded a coward by the Army and spent two seasons wandering around trying to prove his critics wrong. “What do you do when you’re branded, and you know you’re a man?” the theme song asked. Today, you would rebrand yourself.
One of “Branded”’s guest stars was Delores del Rio, a silent movie siren, Latin lover and Mexican vixen. She had a very strong brand.
So anyhow, once I realized I had a brand, I knew I needed a new one. Although at first I thought I might just repurpose myself: take my skill set and apply it to something else. Being a reporter entails many useful skills, such as quick thinking, sloppy handwriting and the ability to ask a lot of questions. I can see these being valuable for some other line of work – say, being a family doctor, a psychologist, or a Department of Social Services intake worker. Give the right set of circumstances, I could even be a magician.
But no, rebranding is the way to go. It’s a necessary transformation for re-entering the job market at midlife, especially when you didn’t foresee leaving the job market to begin with. Repurposing is just like putting on different clothes, whereas rebranding is putting on completely new underwear, changing aftershave and altering your personality.
The question is: What should my new brand be? What should it look, taste, feel and sound like? Should it be a sexy brand or a distinguished brand? An aggressive brand or a mellow brand? A brand that says, “This guy will go to the mat for you 24/7”? Or a brand that says, “This guy doesn’t need you, but maybe you need him”?
How does one build a new brand, anyway? Does one look at many other brands, identify their defining qualities and then incorporate many of those fine qualities into a distinctively personal whole new brand?
If so, I would start with the brand of Founders beer. Founders beer offers the best of both worlds: microbrewed in Grand Rapids, Michigan, yet available across much of America. Reliably delicious yet unmistakably distinctive. Diverse varieties such as “Red’s Rye,” “Dirty Bastard” and “Devil Dancer,” yet all sharing that familiar Founders after-taste. Actually, that’s the best of about six worlds. I would like all those qualities in my brand: diverse, distinctive, good aftertaste.
I would also like to import some of the Tim Hortons brand. Tim Hortons offers delicious coffee without the snooty attitude of Starbucks, as if coffee were some sort of social good. It’s just coffee, for cripe’s sake. Plus, Tim Hortons has really good pastries but doesn’t hit you over the head with them like Dunkin’ Donuts. And, Tim Hortons is Canadian, giving it an automatically nice quality, it’s named after a heroic hockey star, and you don’t run into one every time you turn around. You’ll be driving down the turnpike and suddenly exclaim, “Hey look, they’ve got a Tim Hortons!” I would like my brand to generate that same kind of delighted excitement.
Finally, I want to build my brand largely around the brand of my cat, Abbey. Abbey embodies many qualities worth emulating. These include serenity of outlook, consistency of schedule and a subtle sense of superiority that, when pushed, can result in hissing. Also, the ability to look out the window for long periods of time. I am barely worthy to tie the shoes of Abbey’s brand, but I would like to repurpose part of her brand to help build my brand.
Beyond that, I’m open to suggestion. Rebranding oneself is no small matter, and I intend to take my time with it. To be perfectly frank, I’m not all that anxious to get started. Because what if I choose the wrong brand? I’ll have to spend years trying to prove my critics wrong.