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Book 4. Paradise to Paradise Portals, A Music Business Q and A, Seagulls In The Snow…
Book 4. Paradise to Paradise Portals, A Music Business Q and A, Seagulls In The Snow…
We are here this fine evening, Tuts, Mary, myself and approximately three hundred others, for a concert.at Christ Church Methodist Church in Market Square. A genuinely beautiful two hundred plus year old, “old-time House Of God” polished Mahogany rafters and pews, hanging lamps, elevated preacher boxes and discreet iconic Methodist symbols methodically placed to maximize the opportunity for methodological salvation..
The last time I was in this Church, it was dark and very late at night. I was a fifteen year old teenage boy, on my knees, and begging God for a miracle intervention in the just reported pregnancy of my teenage girl friend. A Solomonic miracle was delivered, no pregnancy, but a (our) child would come anyway, only a few years later.
So, I feel an unusual reverence for and a strong personal connection to this church, and to the direct connect “paradise to paradise” portal that may still be floating from pious to pew in this magical place.
The concert presents a brass ensemble from UVI (The University Of The Virgin Islands) along with a few young (and quite good) singers (Junior High School) and various combinations of older singers (duets, trios) from various schools and Churches around the Island.
There is some mighty fine and sincere singing and the brass ensemble fills the Church with wonderful harmony. The Church in turn, creates and returns some extraordinary harmonics. We are awash, bathed in a sea of beautiful sound, coming and going and swirling all around us, up our noses in our ears, in side and out side, from head to toe. I leave vibrating like a polytonal pitchfork, porked and done, it was wonderful.
A desperate gent from New Zealand came by “Shaky Acres” recently, asking for help. His wife is relapsing on crack. She sent him out to sell her ring and he came here instead. We spoke with him, got him some NA Numbers and sent him back to see the MD that had been successful in leveraging his wife into treatment in the first place. I gave him my number. Later, I led a ninth tradition meeting, it’s unbelievable how flipsos and dipsos and dopes, actually developed and sustain a program as radically effective as 12 step process, one that actually saves lives all day and night all over the place, all over the world. A process that actually works if you work it.
A Music Business Q and A.
I recently went to the UVI library and the car broke down in one of the parking lots (this one is on the very top of the hill just behind the library), while waiting for repair, I sang “standards” into the wind, for three hours. “Answer Me My Love” “This Love Of Mine’ “Mona Lisa” “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” “You Belong To Me” “Smile” “The Way You Look Tonight” “Some One To Watch Over Me” and four or five others. It was great fun. I just love to sing and I just love these songs.
I need to find a way to record some of these tunes they are timeless and wonderful..
However, that is so much easier said (sung) than done. The whole freakin’ crazy business of making music for fun and profit, is like a toxic mudball of megalo-maxi-maniacs, divvied up into starry eyed Tinker Pans and hook fingered Captain Crooks.” Unfortunately, it seems like the solution to dealing with these folks is buried smack dab and dribble, in the middle of the always elusive swiss cheese riddled Executive Center of the even more elusive grilled ham and swiss cheese pickled and riddled brain.
In fairness tho, my problems with the music business is just part of my across the board problem with authority. Having said that, it doesn’t mean that I’m an anarchist, I truly do understand the value of organization and the need for empathy and practicality in governance, but I am a child of chaos (generations of active, often violent alcoholism) “blessed” with hyper-vigilance, meaning the ability to sense and see danger, duplicity and dishonesty.
Consequently while I acknowledge, appreciate and embrace the real need for an organized cooperative effort to plan for, develop and sustain any career in the arts, and fully realize (from long personal experience) that artists can’t do it all by them selves, I deplore the fact that so many of the people who have stepped in to manage and market musical artists, and the businesses around them, have been so God-awfully hypocritical, self-seeking and dishonest.
The answers to the multifaceted question of how and why the music business “collapsed” are long and multifaceted themselves. Within the larger question, are a number of less general, more specific questions, the answers to which, when added together (but not counting serendipity) provide some thing close to the sum total of what happened.
Among them this..
The question of how many singers (and other musical artists) with great and potentially wide appeal, became pigeonholed or typecast (meaning “locked” into one type of song, one type of music) is interesting, the answer to this “secondary” question, I think provides some insight into the larger one.
Here’s an attempt to illustrate how this sort of thing occurred..
Singers are one thing, audiences are another. If a singer sings a song that is particularly moving or satisfying or rewarding for an audience member, the audience member is likely to want the singer to “do that again”. What could be more natural?
If the audience member actually had some control over the singer they might be tempted to use that control to try to recreate the satisfying reward experience for themselves. That’s fairly natural also,
However, while a singer might do a few “requests” the singer wouldn’t turn the control over what he or she sings to an audience member for long, as that would be silly and potentially self destructive. Simply because the audience member will naturally try to create a series of reward experiences primarily for them selves.
If the musical judgement of the singer is permanently superceded by the subjective reward seeking judgment of an individual audience member, chances are good, the outcome will be bad.
If the audience member is in fact a record executive (generally, a group of people with no more musical talent or taste or knowledge than any other group of lawyers or accountants). and the reward that the executive gets from the singer singing a particular song or type of song is money and job security, then it’s easy to understand why they would want (and if they had the control, make) the singer do the same type of thing over and over until the reward response is exhausted. At that point an audience member (or executive) might say I don’t like him as much as I used to, he’s not as good, he’s just not that interesting anymore,…and move on to the next singer, to repeat the same cycle all over again.
Of course, It isn’t smart for any artist/singer to allow that to happen to him or her however, once you signed with a record company, the contract specified, (for most of us), that they had the control over every thing..including selection of material, producer, arranger, musicians, when, where and what you would record. And,..releases. Who, what when and which recordings to release and to promote and when and what to spend on the promotion of the recording, and finally, when and what to give the artist as payment,
And remember, for the most part (with the exception of the break out up and coming “new guy” who was quickly absorbed by the established biz) the music business executives were a small, relatively closed fraternity made up of men who knew, agreed with, were protective of and supported one another.
So while it wasn’t smart or creative or satisfying, you didn’t protest or resist it, or you might wind up as a sixty four year old “broke to the bone” singer, fighting mano a mano with sixty pounds of angry mosquitoes over a vienna sausage, down in the steaming hot bongo isles. Theirs was the only game in town, and the great majority of singers (and musical artists of every kind) have had their lives, their art, and their careers compromised and all too often, seriously damaged by it…not to mention how cheated the real audience was and is, of all that music, that they never and will never have the opportunity to enjoy.
I think any one can see, that it’s not good business for an executive to have that sort of control over a musical artist because..
1. That kind of constrictive thinking immediately narrows the potential and appeal of the artist, and then it’s only a matter of time before the audience gets tired of the same old thing over and over again.
2. The singer or musical artist is by nature (or performance experience), more musically in tune with the broad spectrum of audience likes and dislikes than any individual audience member would be. Therefore, the musical artist is the one most appropriate to make the musical choices. Their job is to “take their audiences with them” for as long and as far as they can go. If a artist were free to give their audiences diversified interesting offerings, it could mean life long interest and product sales. Ah..kinda like the Beatles.
3. The old paradigm approach was short-sighted, exploitive and destructive to the Art of music, the Artists that made it, and the audiances who loved the music. Destructive to the very things that the business of the music business depended on.
And now that the short-sighted have blown their paradigm, without laying the ground work for a new one, they have left themselves, their artists and their larger audiences up crits squeek with out a paddle.
Other “so called” smart people have literally stolen the music business away from the music business, and while the new “smart guys” haul in the digits hand over fist, Artists are in an even more vulnerable situation than before.
I hope that Artists will be able find a way to organize themselves (and their multigenerational audiences) to take control of the entire chain from creation to collection, because it is painfully clear that these new raptors, ah I mean business men, care even less (if possible) about the Art of Music, the Artists that make music, and the people that they make it for, than the previous raptors, ah..business men did. We shall see. I will try.
Seagulls In The Snow
I looked out my window in the states this morning, and by God there were seagulls in the snow. They were diving and dipping and flying in crazy circles, and who knows why. I am presently a hundred miles from the Sea, but one block from the Susquehanna. I’m not surprised that these guys go where they wanna go and do what they wanna do, they are fantastical.
I see them as romantic flying herds of diminutive, ravenous, omnivorous Dinobirds, singing a wacked out song-a-lingo that stirs the heart and has stood the test of (millions of universal “circle the sun” units of) time.
What a pleasure to see and hear them here, I hope our song lives as long, I like ‘em.
BOOK 4. A Nip of Nepotism
BOOK 4. A Nip of Nepotism
I was talking with Tuts at Shaky Acres recently, when something in my pocket started to attack me. Rather than a noxious, notorious tropical pocket skink, it turned out to be my trusty telephone, vibrating like a lusty electric jumping bean.
“Allo? Allo?” sez me, and within two words of the response, I’d recognized a voice I hadn’t heard in fourteen years or more, as belonging to one of my favorite people in the world “Jon Mayer, The Jive talking, Piano Playing, Be Bop King of the 13th Galaxy and the world” (I call him that, he makes no such claim, except for the be bop piano player part.)
He is much more humble about himself than I am about himself, (which may play a part in why he enjoys talking with me) Jon and I have traveled through more than one world of woe together and shared the dramatics of traversing the seemingly endless grey quicksand between the dark and the light in the far in and far out Californias.
He is a very funny fellow and is kind enough to pretend to be amused by the products of my own pitiful wit and my efforts to keep up with him in conversation. After a number of laughs he got my email address and said he was sending me a link to his newest and first video. After viewing it (a beautiful rendition of the classic “On Green Dolphin Street”) I felt an obligation to be frank in my email response, which is copied here.
“Dear Sir,
I must say I became quite anxious for you while watching the video, I would have thought that in preparation for such an important engagement as one in an official concert hall in a far away and foreign country, you would have learned the whole song all the way through, and practiced it at least enough times to be able to play the blasted melody.
Why, at one point or another, you must have played every friggin’ note on the piano looking for the melody. And then just when it looked like you’d found it you forgot it all over again, and the guy playing that big “ukulele on a stick” had to take over for you while you tried to find your place.
I was so relieved when it ended and the people seemed not to notice what had happened and gave you a nice round of applause and (because I know that you take a certain pride in your looks) it was very nice that some of them even whistled at you.
I’ve been told that the longer one stays away from food additives and other naughty chemistry the better ones memory gets, however that hasn’t happened for me, because it seems the longer I stay away form the bad stuff, the older I get. And the older I get, the less I can remember. So my advice is that you’d better be real nice to the guy who plays that “ukulele on a stick thingy”, because you’re going to have to rely on him more and more and more.
Your friend and #1 or 2 (depending on how your current wifey feels about you) fan,
Scott
Jon is a real beauty; we were together in California when the “new John Mayer” started to become known. What an experience, it was for him; you work all of your life to get your name out there and bouf! It was really disorienting.
I must say, he responded like the Be Bop Maestro that he is.
I have a little “kinda likea” experience when I google myself or am confused with or accused of imitating some of the folks that imitate me, but dang!
In Mayer’s case because the other lad is fairly gifted too it ultimately reflected well on the name…but can you imagine?
Anyway, I love my friend, Jon Mayer, and if you like Be Bop you will too. I’m delighted to have heard from him. Here’s his link
Back on the “confused with trail,” some folks get me mixed up with my son “little Scott” who is a writer, a former producer for Dr. Wiel, A Chef and a Caterer in New York City. When that occurs I get demands for more information about “Butch Australia” or natural remedies for Hammer Toe or for my super secret recipe for soup for sixty (I always start by saying “Well…first you gotta scoop ten gallons of Hudson River water into a Zabar’s brown paper shopping bag and”..) (I tell ‘em the same thing for both Hammer Toe AND secret soup)
I get calls from “Mothers in Laws to be”, insisting that they should come right over to my pad to taste my recipe for “Caribbean Gefilte Fish” or “Langousta de La Sahara” or something else equally intriguing, like Belgian Guacamole over frozen Alaskan truffle fish, (My beautiful Bix makes the most extraordinary (and super delisioso) cultural culinary combos probably because of his family’s Virgin Islands background combined with my own), The boy is a major cris-cross of culture combos himself)
These “Mothers In Laws to be” ladies, do this in anticipation of hiring me (actually him but they’re confused, Capeche?) to cater their daughters and “sons in laws to be’s” “Weddings Of The Century”. When that happens I always say “Yes yes of course my dear flower plum, but first I’ll have to run over to my fish traps at Hells Gate to see if we’ve managed to catch any Caribbean Gefilte Fish amongst all the funny little Hudson River White Fish in there” That usually gets them off the line in a hurry!
The Bix’s mother, the beautiful “Annalee” ah.. I mean Patricia, (here she is telling her story “Betty Crocker and The Mango Tree”)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5pTKr321yk
calls from time to time complaining that the Bix’s business has fallen off, I listen and cluck along with her…”Yes yes, he’s such a smart boy, yes yes, he’s such a handsome fellow, yes yes, he’s such a wonderful Chef.. (I hope it never occurs to her that the problem may begin when people try to contact him and wind up talking recipes with me instead) After all it’s her fault, she’s the one that insisted on naming him Scott, I was going to name him “Little Maxie Whatchamacallya”)
Ah well…I promise you the Bix is a much much much better cook than I am, here’s his link http://www.tipofthetonguenyc.com/
(As a matter of fact almost anyone who doesn’t start with ten gallons of Hudson River water is a much better cook than I am)
And while we are, or rather while I am, practicing nepotism, here’s a link to my beautiful boy Archie’s (no, not Little Archie’s) online comic book. http://skullforcecomics.blogspot.com/
and a LINK to my long lost but recently found, beautiful son Stephin’s site http://www.houseoftomorrow.com/
My little girls have better sense than to let their Dada know any thing about how to find THEIR websites, let alone what the heck is on them. You’ll just hafta google ‘em to find out.
Incidentally, on that Hudson River soup, I just want you to know that you won’t need to salt or season it in any way. That soup base is so fraught with exotic seasonings of every kind that it bubbles before it boils…it’s really quite exciting.
I would say you ought to try it, but there’s no way that I’m going to be responsible for that. It’s kinda like that Japanese Blowfish thing, except I hear there’s an eight in ten chance you’ll survive the blowfish, but if you get a Hudson River White Fish stuck in your throat, brother you’re gonna have an irresistible urge to hang or shoot yourself within seconds.
Well, that’s just about all I know about soup, weddings, natural remedies and baked Alaskan ice cubes…
P.S.
Here is a link to MAAC the collective that I’m hooked up with in the states http://www.middletownarts.com
And the collective’s performance space, AKA Union Street Blues http://unionstreetblues.net
Book 4. and Book 1. The Boy Who Stowed-away, all the way to Baltimore.
Book 4. and Book 1. The Boy Who Stowed-away, all the way to Baltimore.
I’m heading back to the states today and I am somewhat anxious. I Know that I’m singing well, and I know that the individual songs and spoken word pieces included in the one man presentation of the “Virgin islands Songs” are good, and further that the presentation (or show) itself is good. However, I have never been able to successfully manage the management of the business of any or all of, this, that, them, or those things.
I have made a commitment to do better (to do what better? to do everything better) and I am committed to the bitter or, lets say, better end. Why? Because as my hero Popeye sez, “I yam whats I yam” And, if it’s yams we gots, then it’s yams we gets to bring to market. We shall see what we shall see.
My comrades from the MAAC collective ah..ah.. I mean friends from the MAAC (Middletown Area Arts Collective). Have said that they will be meeting me, I hope that there is no last minute email change of plans because there is no email in the present configuration of things, as all systems are go and our electricals have fallen away…the next number in the countdown is “giddyup!
And giddyup we did, over to the airport, where all Airlines computers were down…and every untrained trainee was called in to do things they knew not how. I will leave the clever caustics to the 1000 or so other folks who swore vengeance and worse and simply say “Oy vey Caraho!”
As the soup (or mess) tumbled, I surfaced for a moment and found myself in the airport terminal at Isla Verde, Puerto Rico for the first time in many years. I began to think back on how it used to be.
Me mind seized on one transiting in particular, one fine early evening where in I arrived at Isla Verde, as a 16 year old stowaway from St. Thomas.
Like everyone else I was required to change planes here if I wished to continue on beyond… There were a number of things about that trip that were out of the ordinary among them the fact, the happy fact that I was not weighed down by any luggage whatsoever, or required to stand in any lines and interact with overwhelmed airlines personnel. Instead, I spent my time in a warm and hilarious conversation (en espaniol) with a wonderful “Jibaro” gentleman with a bottle of Don Q in his hand.
He was on his way to “New York” for the very first time, and was happy to have someone to talk and share his rum with, and I was happy to listen and refuel.
I was 16, fully ignited, and had been burning incandescently forty-five minutes earlier, when I had walked off Lindbergh beach, jumped the airport fence in St. Thomas, and stepped on to Caribair flight number “who the heck knows”. I sat down next to a beautiful teenage tourista girl, let her know that I was stowing away and that she was now a co-conspirator to high adventure down in the Bongo Isles.
In her defense, I will say that I was quite a pretty fellow in those days, and the process of reconciling such a pretty young man-child with bizarre behavior in the extreme, generally takes more than the thirty minutes required to fly from St. Thomas to Puerto Rico.
It is likely, even probable, that at precisely thirty one minutes she would have leapt up from her seat screaming and imploring all the other passengers and crew to “For Gods sakes grab this kid and tie him up for his own safety, American Civilization and the future of Rock and Roll” but fortunately for me, American Civilization and Rock and Roll, we had a good tailwind.
Once in Puerto Rico (in spite of the strong and dangerous environmental toxins continually kabooming in my brain) I had the gentlemanly good sense to bow graciously and step aside allowing her to run to the waiting arms of her family, out of my teenage reality and back into her own.
I of course now had to improvise and implement my next action, but first I had to figger out what it would be.
When I realized that I had successfully stowed away to Puerto Rico (Something that every pair of eyes that ever watched a beautiful DC 3 sweeping up up up into the air banking over the sea bound for where ever they wished to be, had wished to do) I heard the stillest smallest voice say “Hey, What the heck is the que pasa that’s goin on?” I answered it saying “Don’t worry about a thing, I’m going to the states to see my father and make Rock And Roll records”
But, first how to do it and first, first, the Don Q.
In those days the terminal was a wonderfully open-air tropical affair that I was very familiar with. There was one long main “ticketing floor” running east to west, where all the airlines had their counters. I was partial to Pan American, having flown with “the world’s most experienced Airline” many times, but was no stranger to Eastern either, in any case, I sussed out the sitch, and discovered that there was a stairway out to the tarmac where the big transcontinental boys were being prepared for their next hop. When I got out there, one of them was all lit up and appeared to be more ready than the others, I walked up the loading stairs through the empty interior and to the lavatory (coming down the aisle) on the left. In ten minutes they began to load the plane and twenty minutes after that, we started rolling.
I was congratulating my self on arranging my own trip to Miami, when the overhead cheerfully welcomed everyone aboard Eastern Airlines flight number “who the heck knows” to Baltimore and Philadelphia,
After takeoff, I stepped out of my private compartment and took a seat next to a grown up gent that I knew (by sight only) from St. Thomas. I told him what I was up to, and he seemed somewhat shocked and frightened. I dismissed him as square and unadventurous even though he did buy me a drink.
I closed my eyes and before you know it we were landing in Baltimore. An interesting element that I hadn’t considered was that it was winter, and I was wearing white dungarees and a bright flowery Island shirt open to my belt buckle, the elementary element came to my consciousness when I got a blast of winter wind upon disembarking at Friendship Airport.
By now I had decided that, I would tell the good folks at travelers aid (in Spanglish) that I had gotten on the wrong plane in San Juan, and would they be kind enough to redirect me to Miami which was after all, as anyone could see by my clothing, my intended destination. I felt confident that my idea was working until I was nabbed by the Baltimore Police who happened to be at the airport looking high and low for a teenage boy, who had escaped from a local “Juvie” facility.
In any case, or rather to avoid serving out his sentence for Lord knows what and how long I was able to convince them that I actually wasn’t from these parts and didn’t know a thing about zip guns, rumbles and hotrods. Unfortunately, to prove it, the clever devils insisted I give them the name and phone number of my poor dear put upon, poor dear Mudder dear.
Ah my poor dear Mudder dear, good lord awmighty I burdened her aplenty…and though she would often look directly at me and say “Bonehead, I want you to know that I have ESP” for some reason she wasn’t quite able (from only two thousand five hundred miles away) to pick up on and grok my whole convoluted spanglish confabulations with out the benefit of having spoken to me, and consequently, inadvertently let slip that No, I wasn’t the son of a wealthy Castiliano, traveling unaccompanied for the first time to “La Florida” unaccustomed to attending to trifles beneath him, including such things as airline tickets, identification and the sundry mundane like.
Ah well, Travelers Aid was kind enough to put me up in the YMCA over night, where I was able to jive a gent into getting me a six pack of beer and a newspaper which was full of advertisements for Rock and Roll Shows all over the Baltimore, Washington D.C. Area. Loud Beautiful ads jam packed with excitement. Ads that I read and looked at over and over all night long.
In the Morning, before I could do even a single interview with LIFE or LOOK magazine about my adventure and to launch my career, the Baltimore Police and Travelers Aid put me on a plane back to the Islands.
Ah well I’d just have to settle for the attention and admiration generated by my peers for “The boy who stowed away. Not once but twice, all the way to Baltimore”
Ah my poor Mudder Dear…
Book 1 and 4. Captian Hookfoot
Book 1 And 4. Captain Hookfoot
(A Piece of Spoken Calypso Comedy from my new Musical “The Virgin Islands Songs”. I Hope that you are able to understand and enjoy it)
It came to pass that one day dem boy an me was warm up to go ana expedition way doung doung doung in de wes to Bordeaux Bay to fine de gol lef dare in de days of ol by de pirates of ol dat somebody say dey kno fo sure, was hide up in de top of a tamon tree.
We had quite a long ways to go an many a place to see before we would return home dat evening. Fus, on de way to Bordeaux we plan to stop by de ol Plantations at Filamingo Pon an de ol Plantation in Fortuna to pick up whatever treasure we could fine along de way den continue on to Botney Bay an clean out de treasure doung dere befo we dig up de big one at Bordeaux an bring it home.
My secret hope was dat we would only fine a likkle bit of treasure along de way, quick quick so dat we would’n fine ourself all de way doung Bordeaux after de night fall in de ol winswep an abandoned ruins doung dere in de in de pitch black dark night.
Now, I kno how tu preten tu be brave when people watchin jus like anybody else, but lemme tell yu sumting, I have seen almost grown man bawlout fo de muddah when dey tink a Jumbie hol dem or see a Jumbie commin. An boy don tink fo a minute dat doung dae ain de home a Jumbie, hundreds a dem an more. (Jumbie like sanfly) De minute de sun go down an shadows fall on dem, de Jumbie dem come pourin up out de groun an dropping doung ou de tree to see wha goin on… Laad meboy, yu don’t wan to be de ting dey fine. Jumbie frum all part a de worl me boy every one a dem wan to climb up in yu brains an take ovah de driving.
Jumbie fighting Jumbie all jumble up an top a one annudah, Carib Jumbie, trying to eat up de Arawak Jumbie wha fighting wid de Spaniard Jumbie who fighting wid de Cha Cha Jumbie who fightin wid de English Jumbie who clashin wid de Dane man and de wild eye African Jumbie an all a dem fighting wid Black tooth de Pirate Jumbie excepin if somebody who ain dead fall in wid dem, den every las one a dem Jumbie gon jump on he to see who could suck out he eye an climb in he coconut tu come back to life.
Das wha de Jumbie wan tu do yuh kno, take ovah yu coconut, an jump on yu donkey and go back town an preten like he is you, an take away yu wife an yu girlfrien, Yes man dat happens all de time.
Well like ah sae, we was ready fo de high adventure, Bucky an Brudsie an Boomie an Tutie and Tutsie an Papoon an de res a dem boy, de only problem was who gon be who, everybody wan to be Roy Rogers an ride in de front ah de donkey. Not me dough, I is Gene Autry de singing cowboy an nobody cain argu wid dat, I could be who I wan to be because is my donkey an I gon ride in de front. All de same, de Laad ha sen a bunch a donkey, man we had bou tree o fo a dem. Among dem is de one wha ah have to keep me eye on de mos because he is nuttin but a schupid jackass wha broke me bowstick when ah was protekkin me lil jenny gurl Madras, I wouldda stay behine ahe exceppin Gene Autry got to lead de geang, so ah wa goin tu have tu go doung de road kina sideways.
All de same alla dem Roy Rogers an Lash Larue an de Long Rangeah an Jungle Jim (wid de inscruchable Fu Man Chu thro in in dey) every one a dem tink dey should be leadin de ban, an das ok wid me becausin de only time I acktually really got tu be in front is when de Jumbie dem cumin frum behine.
If yu wan tu kno de trut, when Jumbie cum, I gon jump off de donkey an run fo me life on me own two foot. I done keaar wha yu say.. de ain a donkey in de worl gon run faser dan me when a Jumbie cumin behine.
Jeesumbred what a ting dat would be..news flash tonight meboy, man dead doung Bordeaux, donkey bawlin blood, Jumbie biteup man head befo dey could climb in in de driver seat, but not me me boy, I gane like a “flash of white in de night”. Dem boy could stan de wid dey schupidness how yu gon fight a Jumbie? Wha yu gon hol an tu when yu tryin tu thro im doung? How yu gon thro him doung when yu fraid tu touch him? Who gon touch a Jumbie? Not me meboy. I jamming de ol gol in me pocket, an I gan. Who wan tu be in front a me den bettah cum good because when dem Jumbie cum pourin up ou de groun, I jumpin off de donkey an I gan.
Wall we moseyed on down de trail headin out wes singin de “yippi kai yi yoo get along little dougie sang” an up an ovah de officers quarters hill and doung in de valley where de green grass grows an up again to de top a de hill by Jahnbruisebay where upon we stopped to survey all dat lay before us.
As we moseyed on doung to de bay, dem boy tinkin bou all de goobers an rasinetts dey gon buy wid de pirate treashah. I tinkin Jumbie,. when jus den, de closes ting to a Jumbie jump ou de bush an grabbon to me donkey head. It was de notorious “hookfoot” one a dem very ol an very crazy “ol crazy man” wha live doung Jahnbruise, bunnin coal an drinking rum. Hookfoot was raving an wavin a cutlash.
In an instant I fell back on me yankin “Isn’t she.. Isn’t she a pretty donkey? I said in a quakey timid voice, “Oh Yeah? yo lil red arm muddah skunk yu”, he thunderd, “I’ll kill yu muddah skunk hare today, a pretty donkey? A pretty donkey? Yu donkey teeffin Muddah $%^%$ yu! I katch yu, yu f*&^ah yu, Dis donkey is MINE. Get aff me donkey oh ah sweaa I’ll kill yu muddah sk#$% rite here today”! All dis time he slashin de cutlash back an fort gains de street an de sparks dem flyin up like de fort of July.
Well ah had tu catch me self quick when ah realize all a dem boy watchin an ah cain let meself be embarrass like dat in front a dem, at de same time ah kina glad tu realize what evah gon happen here, I ain goin have tu deal wid de Jumbie dem doung Bordeaux tonight.
“Well Mr. Hook Sah” I said, as I jumped doung off de donkey, “I am glad to be de one who was able to fine an secure an return dis fine animal to you, my name is Gene Autry de singing Cowboy, an my game is mekin everyting have a happy endin. An wid dat I’ll bid yu a good day sah, I have tu be getting back to de movies”. An wid dat I turn aroung ana came rite home savin’ de treasah fo annudah day, sometime early in de mawnin. Yep, das de whole trut..
Book 1. The Catch.
Book 1. The Catch.
I was talking with Tuts the other night about times and friends and places that are no more, we were talking specifically about our “Doun De Road” Alma Mater, the notorious Nisky elementary school. Nisky was located in an (even then) old one story military barracks, in the world war one submarine base on St. Thomas, and was known far and wide for having what were thought to be some of the hardest headed children in captivity, ah…ah… I mean the public school system, in it’s oh so unruly student body.
The sub base was located on land originally owned by the Nisky Moravian Church, bordering on Gregorie Channel and including Little Crumb Bay, the site of the earliest (five thousand years ago) Cibonay settlement in the lesser Antilles.
Under Danish Rule, the Moravians had been put in charge of educating the people of the Danish West Indies, and after the transfer, although there was an effort (mostly unsuccessful) made to bring some of the more salutary elements of American education into the picture, at Nisky, Dick and Jane and Sally and Spot mostly elicited laughter. In any case, that’s a little of how a double gaggle of dusty knobby noggined, wildly willful, rough and unruly children came to be occupying a “one room school” in a dilapidated military barracks (complete with jail cells) named after a Moravian Church, in a submarine base, down in the bongo isles.
So, on my way back from doing a radio interview with “Brownie” on WSTA (which is now also located in the old sub base) I stopped at the old school grounds to soak up some of the “vibes” and to relive and remember how it was.
The first thing that one notices is that the school and building are no more, they have been replaced by a frigging concrete parking lot, the lot is full of cars and trucks and there is not a trace of the place, (unless you know how and where to look.) If you do know how and where to look, then you will find everything exactly, (in fact even more exactly) as it was, than it was.
That place is of course the so called “wind..rather sugar cane mills of your mind, mentis and memory”.”The place of course where the reds are so much redder, and the blues are downright azure.
One of the most striking similarities bridging now and then is the fact that this little unshaded frying pan of a half-acre was and is among the hottest habitable places on the planet earth.
We, the knobby noggined, would stand right where I stood, in our raggedy lines and bake-fry three times a day, waiting for the odd collection of teacher ladies (young and old) to get us lined up properly and to the satisfaction of our strict disciplinarian principal, Mrs. Ulla Muller.
Once we were lined up, we prayed the “Our Father” and (in the after noon) sang “Now The Day Is Over) to the tune of “Onward Christian Soldiers” Sula says that when she was a teacher, they did the very same thing up in the country. (Interesting to note that my friend Sula taught our principal Ulla Muller, how to read in the little one room school-house called “Bonne Resolution” up in the cool mountain air just down the road from Nelteburg.
I’ve since learned that the content and process was the same at all the public schools, but it must have been very much more pleasant under the tall shade trees and in the cool mountain breeze at Bonne Resolution, No wonder she was grumpy down in the hot frying pan flat land, who wouldn’t be.
Additionally interesting, is the fact that Mrs. Ulla Muller is now a very sweet, pretty and gentle, ninety year old lady and friend of ours,) but that is also another story.
This one has to do with what I consider to be the best decision that I ever made. It happened at Nisky School early one morning just before the school bell rang.
At that time (September, 1951) Gale and I were the only white children in the public school system, certainly the only white children at Nisky School. The “big boys” fifth and sixth graders (some of whom were teenagers already) were not inclined to the gentle and kind, and especially not to a little white boy. On the morning in question a ball game was in process in the narrow area behind the old Navy heavy equipment shop and the School. The playing field was a long rectangular area between the shop, the school and the chain link fence protecting the Moravian Ministers “yard” (an area planted with Mango and Coconut trees) from the depredations of unruly and hungry children.
The “big boys” were playing and all the rest of the children (including my sister Gale and I) were standing on the sidelines watching. One of the sides needed someone to play the deepest part of the outfield and somehow I was push pulled forward to be the one. I was in the very beginning of the first grade and was certainly one of the smallest children there, however, I suspect this was about discovering what kind of man the little white boy was, so it would be clear to all where in the hierarchy he belonged”
The first test was; would I play at all, or would I back out of playing when we had to take the field, did I, would I have the moxie to try. (I of course didn’t know all about all this stuff; I just knew that if I didn’t step up, the teasing would be merciless)
When the sides changed, someone on the incoming team threw me a glove, actually some kind of a “mitt” (which means to me a glove with fingers splayed in every direction and no rawhide string connecting any of them) The mitt flew through the air and fell in the dust at my feet, eliciting the first of what many anticipated would be a whole string of laughs (at my expense) that morning. The truth is I didn’t know how to not participate in what was developing and so I automatically but reluctantly, moved into the game.
I put the enormous mitt-glove on my little hand and went out, out, out, until they signaled me to stop. When I turned around and looked back at the paint can that was home plate it looked like a miniature thimble. The first batter swacked something on the ground to third and I felt pretty good about that. I knew that I had scored some points just by accepting the challenge of playing, and I hoped that this would be “one two-three” and game over. The second batter also swacked it on the ground, and my team was getting very excited now, because we had the lead with one out to go and the school bell about to end the game at any moment.
The next thing I know, up steps a really big tough guy, and the second base guy and every body else are signaling me to go even further and further out…then blam-o the the really big fellow hits the friggin ball up up up and out out out, a monstrous “bataso largo” a moon shot and my good god awmighty the blasted thing has passed up and over everyone else and is heading straight for me.
That was the moment of the best decision I think I ever made. I was just a little kid, in fact I’d never even been in a real ball game before, and I had certainly never caught a ball that someone had hit, let alone launched into outer space. We were playing with what is (for reasons unknown to me) called a “soft ball” which means that the friggin thing coming down at me was every bit as big and hard as the moon.
The question in question, was never consciously put, I just ran forward to meet the falling sky. Not eagerly and confidently, rather scared to death, but determined to try. I stuck my two hands out palms up before me as I ran and the enormous orb hit the mitt-glove with what seemed like the force and weight of a cannon ball. There it was wobbling back and forth in the center of the wobbling mitt thing (which was too cockamamie to close) with my left hand trembling under the weight of it.
I could not believe that, 1, I had caught it, and 2, I was now about to drop the blasted thing. My right hand flew over to help steady the ball and by God, seconds later, the catch was caught. And caught too, forever in the hearts and minds of every single kid in Nisky School. My credibility and basic worth in terms of character, and cohones was established forever. The celebration began immediately the shouting and cheering was almost universal, and felt so good..and welcoming to me. It was beautiful, de lil’ Nisky School white boy had proved himself to be someone they could be proud of, had established his credibility, and though it would be tested many times again, the foundation for friendships based on admiration and respect, relationships that have lasted a life time, was created that fine morning by the best decision I ever made, which was simply, “Don’t run away Scott, run forward… and try”
Book 4. Who Sez Huh? Who Sez? Book 3. Popeye and The Crystal Cathedral
Book 4. Who Sez Huh? Who Sez?
While I haven’t gotten “The Virgin Islands Songs” completed as a full cast recording, I have written it and can perform a one man version of it… so it does exist, and it does contain the silliness and emotion, the feelings and the fun that I wanted an audience to experience as “The Virgin Islands Songs”
It looks as though the full cast recording may have to be done in another place, in another time. Too many things are getting backed up. Having finally attained “the age of reason” I am able to “reasonize” that I don’t have any time to waste.
One way or the other, I have to keep moving.
There is a certain freedom around this question of creating so-called product now that one has next to no expectation of being paid for it. I confess that I (having been in the music business for forty-five years now) have developed a sort of built-in automatic “Biz Monitor” an “adult music business voice” that pops (uninvited) into many if not all internal creative dialogs, to say almost always “Scott, you can’t do that, nobody wants that, it’ll never sell” (I further confess that while there are a few things to which I’ve said “Yeah, you’re probably right” there are many more to which my response is “Oh yeah! Who sez, huh? Who sez?” and “so what” This is one of those occasions.
I think that “my audience” will understand, if I can ever find them, they are the most elusive non group I’ve ever never known, I do have a few or perhaps multiples of a few solid “committables” although I’ve noticed a curious phenomenon of late. In those instances where I’ve come down from Olympus to answer “fan email” personally, I’ve some how managed to turn enthusiastic fans (some committible since South Atlantic Blues) into people I’ve never heard from again.
Perhaps I’ve been too effusive, and their responses something like “Nah, a big time handsome mysterioso (did I say handsome?) recording artist dude like Scott Fagan wouldn’t, couldn’t, really write all that nice stuff to me all by himself could he?, it must be some kind of crazy psychedelico algorithmico generated form letter” Heck no, I’m not gonna put up with this on top of his obscurity, it too much hard work to be a big fan of somebody you’ve never even seen or never even heard (and if you did probably confused him with Lou Rawls or Lou Christy or Monty Rock the Third, heck no, it’s too much work. So I’m not gonna like him any more, cause after all I put up with for him.. HE SENT ME A FORM LETTER!.
Anyway, as I said, there are (or were) perhaps fourteen or fifteen of them (my audience) scattered across the globe (in the most AMAZING places) there were an important few (including the head of the world-wide Scott Fagan Forever Fan club) in the Woman’s Detention Center in Greenwich Village, but unfortunately I don’t know where that “all important list of addresses” has gone, so now I’m going to have to wait for “The Fabulous Fourteen or Fifteen” to re-discover me all over again.
The fact is I’m a sixty-four year old singer whose train has left the station. Fortunately, I’ve got some fans, followers and friends who are still true believers, still willing to run alongside the tracks with me, in an attempt to flag the blood dragon down when “she’s comin’ round the mountain when she comes”, or shooting and raining sparks on the huffy puffel trail up the Big Rock Candy Mountain or somethin’
So, with their help we will begin. (what the heck is it that’s beginning?) It is the next phase of “The Virgin Islands Songs” more specifically, the beginning of promoting and performing the one man version, which began very appropriately at the Cultural Institute, in the J. Antonio Jarvis Museum, on Polyberg Hill..just across from the Alton Adams Home. In St. Thomas, Virgin Islands.
Chico (Gus Edwards, Tutsie’s brother, the pre-eminent Afro-decended Playwright in America) said some important things..he said that trying to do it all (Write it, Fund it, Rewrite it, Cast it, Arrange it, Sing it, Rehearse it, Record it, Direct it, Produce it, and Promote it,) is too much for anyone to have on their plate. He suggested that it made sense to simplify the process by lessening the requirements for a production by doing it as a one man show.
This makes a lot of sense where moving it forward as a performance and production is concerned, however it confuses me at depth because I am inclined to think in musical terms. Towards enhancing the musicality of a thing as an automatic response. and always always, towards creating musical recordings.
Additionally, there is the fact that I’m going to have to do different content for most stateside audiences because they probably are not going to get the spoken calypso humor of the Buckra De Paehae pieces. But we shall do and we shall see and it will be a fun and exciting element of the “Second Coming”.
Once upon a time in the music business, if you were an artist armies of smarmies would swarm ya trying to steal you away from the oh so honest upstanding trustworthy and upright personal manager or agent you were already signed and committed to. It was awful. They would try to get at you through your wife or girl friend, promising them this that and the next thing. It was really anxiety producing, unpleasant and depressing.The truth is I would rather be rejected than smarmed because ultimately, it’s up to me to find my way. I just hope me poor bent cogi-tater organ doesn’t snap crackle and pop under the strain! This is probably what that danged missing “executive center” in the brain is supposed to solve and resolve clickty clackity, lickty splito. We shall see…yes we shall.
Book 3. Popeye and The Crystal Cathedral
In the context of all the above, the various difficulties of my life, are the consequences of my failure, this is a line of information that keeps coming to mind and with it, the opportunity to get more clear about the causes of my failure, and what to do about them.
I am getting mighty clear about the consequences of my failure, they are all around me all day and all night, they are everything I have and don’t have, everything I do and don’t do and they are debilitating and contributory to more and more and more failure.
Well I ain’t a gonna take it!.. now effen ah kin jus figger out which button to punch which rock to roll up what hill, which road to take home.
I know that it’s drastically more subtle than that, rolling boulders up Everest is easy compared to getting a grip on these slippery invisibilities, many of which I’m confident, are comfortably anchored high above and behind me in the far confluence where cobweb, corner and ceiling gently conspire and quietly collude to collide.
Yep, an effen ah keep talking lak thet..it’s gonna be a cold day on rocky top before my blue moon turns to gold again. Yep, and If I keep talking like that, good ol’ Rocky top will be sweetly tinkling sand on the bottom of the sea, by the time I make any sense to me.
A while back I thought to my self “You’ve got to do better!” and I wondered “yeah but do what better?” and my answer was “everything.” And THAT made sense to me. Everything that I’m timid about, everything that I’m afraid of and try to avoid, everything that I dismiss as unimportant or beneath me, or square or… everything.
This idea of accepting the term “failure” as useful and accurate is fairly new for me. I have absolutely failed at accomplishing what I set out to accomplish, and though I have accomplished other important things (which may after all be all that I get to accomplish) I have failed at what I set out to do.
My father used to say “Fidel, I want you to watch Robert Schuller from the Crystal Cathedral, in fact we have a pane of glass there in our name, he’s positive and great, I watch him every Sunday” And I would feel a wave of pity and compassion for my father dear, living down in the friggin’ okeefeenokeeglades in an all but collapsed trailer. Breeding mosquitoes the size of humming birds and singing to his thirty or sixty or so leaping, barking, nonstop copulating Chihuahuas, having himself failed at what he set out to do. I would say not on your friggin’ life, thinking that the Robert Shuller Okeedooky was what allowed him to tolerate living the way he did, not realizing that it was the alcohol and likely his own dose of fetal alcohol effects that had melted his lofty dreams and burning ambitions into a warmish pool of Schlitzy piss.
Ah dear my fadder dear, your boy Fidel had a lot to learn… and is trying like hell to learn it.
Anyway, so last, (not this but last) January up in the states, I was watching Robert Shuller..when he mentioned one of my very favorite characters of all “New World” mythology “Popeye The Sailor Man”
The Reverend Robert Shuller came on and introduced his guest speaker Bill Hybels, and Mr. Hybels introduced his Popeye inspired approach to changing one’s life.
Mr. Hybels launched right into his premise, which is that we all have an “I jus can’t stands it no more” and if we can identify it then we can change our lives. He asked the viewers to think about that and he asked.” What is your “I Just Can’t Stands It No More”?
I leapt to my feet and confessed aloud that my “I Just Can’t Stands it No More” is my failure.
Now I know that some of you folks think that one of the more endearing things about me is my utter absence from the check out stand publications, and my quaint habit of laying so low that nobody knows a thing about me or my scandalous behaviors. Some of you have even gone so far as to track me down to ask for my obscurity formulae so that you can model your own business and life plans upon it, and while I don’t mind being able to come and go as I please with out the complications that so many others complain about, The fact and the truth, is I failed at what I set out to do. Which was/is to make a difference in the world and to provide financial freedom and security for my family and myself while doing it
I thought that I could and would do it through my ability to sing and write and make records… I have been at it since July 2nd 1964 and although I am not a failure at singing and writing,or a number of other things, I have failed miserably at managing and promoting my abilities and the products of my abilities to produce financial freedom and security for my family and myself.
Consequently, I have been materially “poor” and my Children have been materially “poor” all of our lives. Both parents, my sister and two of my three brothers have died materially “poor”. I was not successful at providing a breakthrough for any of them. Or any of the four mothers of my five children.
My Daughters Lelia and Holiday are still most vulnerable and the reality that I am not able to help them in spite of the fact that I am bright, inventive and more talented than many AND have given the past forty-five years to trying and trying and failing and failing,, brings me to where.. “I JUS CAN’T STANDS IT NO MORE!”
So, with the help of the Higher Power I am going to change it. Here are elements of my Action Plan. I will assess my assets and my deficits and identify what I have to learn and do to reverse my failure and at long last… well, ahh …reverse my failure.
- I will keep a diary of the process. The diary will be helpful to folks and a valuable creative product in its own right…
- I will make an entry each morning (2 minutes) and each evening (4 minutes), the first stating what I intend to achieve that day, and the second, what I got done and did not get done and what I learned as a result and the remedy.
January 25, 2009 AM
I intend to hold on to Popeye’s saying, “I Jus Can’t Stands It No More” write it down and see what if anything I can learn and do from that process. I intend to find a way or at least the beginning of a way to turn my failure into success, and to follow consistently the process that I outline or discover.
January 25, 2009 PM
I have started the process of turning my failure into success. I have written my intentions down and have begun. I spent an hour and a half rehearsing songs from “South Atlantic Blues”. I will out line the many ideas for potentially revenue producing projects, I will do the outlines in the morning.
January 31, 2009
Listing the many projects that I started this week
JULY 12, 2009 AM
Gosh, I had completely forgotten all about the daily diary entry aspect of this daily diary entry exercise, and have just rediscovered what I had written back in January! I am in St. Thomas recording “The Virgin Island Songs”. It has been interesting. but..good Lord.
February 12, 2010
Gosh, I’d forgotten what I rediscovered I’d forgotten and rediscovered, in July! Good Good God Amighty…
Book 4. Concert Review From the Artists Point of View, Continued…
Book 4. Concert Review From the Artists Point of View, Continued…
Did I say no hanky panky at all? Well perhaps I’d better re-examine that policy. Because early “come le we goers” are arriving like crazy and they each seem to have the same idea as the first early bird. Apparently numbers of ladies have heard one or another of my recordings on the radio during the promotional blitz of this past week, and have confused me with Engelbert Humperdinck or something. Ladies are batting their eyes and asking if I have any CD’s for sale and before you know it, the sound check is no more, and I am signing CD’s instead. Now, in my view, all things considered, this is not a bad start.
The trick will be to keep the whole thing from going down hill from this point on…
Here come a number of ladies from the class of “64” who (although I did not graduate from high school) have claimed me as a member because we were classmates up to the point that I left High School, went to New York, and signed with Doc Pomus and Columbia Records.
I was just telling the great Marcellus (Tutsie’s son and volunteer sound man for the evening) that I have to get a new pair of glasses because recently everyone beyond the second row has fuzz where their faces used to be. When folks that I know or knew, show up. some, (as people often do, ) start with “whats my name? do you remember me?” If you remember me, then whats my name?” The last thing I want to say is “no, I’m sorry I don’t because in reality, I half remember everyone. But the deeper truth is, a number of these ladies look exactly like the irate parents that used to show up at school, raising triple heck about the science teacher who was regularly found passed out at the Normandy Bar at 2:30 in the afternoon when in fact he was supposed to be in the classroom tryin’ to larn us sumpin’.
It’s extraordinary to see the close camaraderie that still exists between these school girl lady girls, that they want me to be a part of what they share is exciting and really touching for me. However, I do wish that they had squeezed me as closely and for as long, when we were sixteen. But that’s another story.
The place is filling up and it’s just past five thirty, the show is scheduled to start at six. The Director of the Museum says to me, “Let’s get started” I say wait! Wait! Lee Carl is coming to film us, starting at six, and he isn’t here yet. We are spared an adrenalin fueled discussion because just then Lee pulls into the loading zone with his equipment.
We are now moments away from face the freakin’ music and dance time (which, on the chance that it hasn’t occurred to you, is certainly among the most stressful series of moments imaginable, moments in which the question “what in the flaming hell am I doing here” presents repeatedly, demanding an answer. Fortunately, “What am I doing here? What am I doing here? Leads nicely into “I’ll show you what I’m doing here! Oh Yeah? I’ll show you what I’m doing here! Which is a grand attitude to have when you suddenly find yourself propelled towards and then all alone at Center Stage.
In this case they gave me a fine hand just for showing up, which is again, a pretty good start. A start which in the past might have led to “well I guess I showed them” I’m outta here, (in spite of the fact that leaving at that point might have been just a little bit premature.)
Traditionally, there has (from time to time) been a little difficulty in getting me (or me getting my self) actually onto the stage. A fine example might be the night in 1966, that Mort Shuman brought George Martin (arranger/producer of the Beatles) to see, hear and hopefully sign me, at “The Scene” in New York. Just before “Show Time” I broke a string and spent the next hour and a half chasing all over the City looking for a replacement string, rather than just doing the performance without the missing string. One can only imagine what the good man thought as he left after sitting there waiting for me for an hour and a half, and then again, what he might have said during the period in which the Beatles were considering my album “South Atlantic Blues” to be their first release on Apple Records. “Oy Say, (he might have said) this bloke’s a flukin’ flufferin” Idiot! Ay Wot!” (Just joking, I know that George Martin doesn’t really talk like that, however having only shaken his hand once just before I was to play for him, but ran away to play “find the string” instead, I don’t really know which words he would choose to use in describing yours truly, but I think we can agree that, in general, the sentiment would be about the same.
And Ah yes, there were those occasions when in anticipation, too large a spill down the gullet, too many times in a row, may have led to yours truly making a staggering entrance from stage left and actually stumbling all the way across the stage and out the other side.
But not tonight….’cause I mean business…and here we go!
The Director has given me a nice intro, Tuts has asked me to do “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother” before I start the program, and dedicate it to “Our Brothers and Sisters and all the lost souls in Haiti” it’s a beautiful song by a great writer and singer, Bobby Scott. I do a good and sincere rendition, hitting some nice notes and ending big. It warms the heart, and breaks the ice, and gets an appreciative response.
We move into my script and first up is “Annalee”
I will (for the first time) be utilizing my own pre-recorded music tracks for four of the tunes, because I think they will be more effective that way. I have had all kinds of philosophical problems with the idea, but the overriding fact is, I want the audience to experience the songs as closely as possible to the way that I so carefully recorded them, and holding out for absolute purity has shown it’s self to be counter productive and in my case, absolutely silly.
If you are offended by my use of my music tracks, I apologize, I am sincerely sorry. (please consider that this is a free concert, and I have no budget or bonaroos to rehearse and pay a band AND no band to play it for free AND that I have held out on this question for forty five years) That said, what a pleasure it is for me to sing against the music from “Annalee” and what an enthusiastic response it receives from the audience …
Next is two little pieces of poetry “A Kindness Here And A Kindness There” and “Do You Like My Color, Like I like Yours” they are well received.
Then I throw on the battle-axe and slide into “SOON” the theme of my Rock Opera (which happens to be the first Musical ever written by a Virgin Islander to be produced on Broadway) “SOON” is a powerful and passionate song speaking a commitment to justice, brotherhood and equality, that is the direct product of my own Virgin Islands childhood. I still feel it, and sing it that way. The folks are excited and stimulated and let loose with enthusiastic applause.
Off comes the guitar and I begin to read “The Girl With The Golden Skin”. The audience has never heard anything quite like it and they sit in anticipation waiting to see what will happen…zamo they erupt in laughter and seem to quickly realize that this piece will be going back and forth between humor, poetic language and strong sentiment. It ends with a truth about color ,often unspoken but true nevertheless. It gets a big hand… The people seem eager, for more, they like the songs and they like the poetry, so far so good!
I signal Marcel and he starts the track for the La Beiga Carosuel/Tutsie medley, a song that always gets ‘im regardless of who what when where and why. Tonight, its eliciting encouragement and whoops galore from the very start. When we get to the instrumental section, and I start to “wuk up” and shake my bum, they go a little wild, it’s wonderful.
We come back with a tender last verse and take it out in the joyous defiance that the song exemplifies. We get a rousing round of really enthusiastic applause. Next, is another spoken piece, “I Dreamed I Made A Record Called South Atlantic Blues” and then, on with the guitar and into the song “South Atlantic Blues”. This song has always been a unique and powerful experience for me as a writer and singer, it is now forty-five years old but (based on the content) it could have been written yesterday. It’s a pleasure to sing and play it, and hitting the high drama notes and the sweet dynamics passages is very satisfying for me, the audience seems to feel the same way and shows it.
That was the end of ACT l,
I went straight into the spoken introduction to ACT ll it’s called:
“SOOKIES WESTERN JAMBOREE”
“Some of you good people will remember that once upon a time we had one radio station in The Virgin Islands, WSTA. A wonderful station that did it’s best to play something for everyone. This meant that we were all exposed to every kind of music.
Believing in music as I do, I believe that this wide exposure had a very positive effect On us all. Among the varieties that we enjoyed was good old Southern Gospel and what they called back then, Country and Western.
At 3 O’clock in the afternoon the islands looked forward to a show hosted by a young Buckaroo from Frenchtown called “Sookiess Western Jamboree”. The show featured artists like the great Hank Williams, Gentleman Jim Reeves, Faron Young, Skeeter Davis and Patsy Cline and songs like “You’re Cheatin Heart” “Cold Cold Heart “Send Me The Pillow That You Dream On” “He’ll Have To Go” and many many others.
In those days as you know we here in The Virgin Islands had a number of our own “Home grown cowboys” young (and old) rough and ready hombres who worked and lived out in the wild wild East, West, North and South sides, and rode their horses all over the place, and once a year, in the big Carnival Parades.
In addition to the working cowboys, there were a number of fellows in town who had perhaps been too strongly influenced by the Western Movies that played at The Apollo, The Alexander, and The Center Theater what seemed like every day and night of every week of every month of every year for many years running. These home-grown desperadoes, certainly considered themselves to be the real deal also, and as romantic a figure as any other cowpoke anywhere and they were.
Anyway, as noted elsewhere, I intended to grow up to be Gene Autry the singing Cowboy. So naturally I was very interested in learning how to “make up” songs like those that we heard, on Sookies Western Jamboree, in the movies and in the Saturday morning Children’s stories so kindly broadcast for us by WSTA.
The next Virgin Islands song grew directly out of these parts of WSTA’s influence on our lives, an influence for which I will be eternally grateful.
So here we go. In remembrance of Sookie’s Western Jamboree and our very own Caribilly Cowboys. A little Caribilly Christmas Song for all the children in all of the warm weather places in the world, our very own “Sandy The Bluenosed Reindeer”
(The audience remembered Sookies show and that wonderful time in our collective musical history right away and although they had never heard this spoken intro before, they actually began to echo my words as we went through it, and then gave a wonderfully warm reception to Sandy The Bluenosed Reindeer both before and after I sang it.
Can’t beat that.
This sweet momentum led us into “Captain Hookfoot” an eight minute piece of spoken Calypso humor about a character I created called “Buckra De Paehae” and Pirate Treasure and Jumbies. (Buckra means poor white. Paehae means white man, in French Creole) It is written and delivered in Calypso (the language of my childhood, an idiom which lends its self wonderfully well to broad, exaggerated and colorful Island humor) Hookfoot was the biggest hit of the night so far. I said to my self “Wow, So far so good, now for Gods sake, don’t choke on a mosquito or something.” I knew the next tune “Where My Lover has Gone” was pretty good, it’s been a hit for me for years. It’s a great tune to sing. On went the guitar and from the first C MAJ 7th we were in the groove.
Next up was another humorous spoken Calypso piece called “The Barracks Yad Bay And beach Club” about a (now gone) UPSTREET neighborhood fondly remembered by all, and the building of the waterfront drive. The folks loved it and… we were on to “Surrender To The Sun” this song is a definite hit for me and this time I sang it against a most beautiful new track produced for me by Warren Schatz. It was absolutely beautiful. The audience could not have been more receptive and I did what I could to sing the heck out of it. Very beautiful, very romantic very much a success.
Next was another spoken Calypso piece called “The Inheritance Box” about the History of the Illustrious often blusterous “House of Buckra De Paehae” it’s also quite funny. The people laughed it up and loved it too.
Which brought us to a poetic little piece called “The Reason We Sing” which doubled as an introduction to “The Virgin Islands Song” which is the theme and the finale.
We utilized the musical track featuring Jeff Medina’s beautiful guitar work., I sang the heck out of it and it was a smash. The applause was so effusive that I was frankly, a little embarrassed…I bid the good folks good night and told them truthfully that they had been my favorite audience of all time ever anywhere.
We got back to signing CDs, and getting to the Kalaloo.
All in all it was simply wonderful; I really do wish you were here.
Book 1. Saturday Market and Book 4. Concert Review
Book 1. Saturday Market and Book 4. Concert Review, From The Artists Point Of View
Book 1. Saturday Market
While living “UPSTREET”my big sister Gale (all of eight and a half) decided that she and I would get up very early (around five thirty) on Saturday mornings so that we could participate in the local Saturday morning custom of going to “de market”.
De Market was an Old Danish West Indian design cast iron structure that once had housed the slave market; it occupied an elongated rectangle in a central, if not center part of town. Charlotte Amalie (or Amalia, both are correct) is built along a shore line running (depending on where you’re standing) east to west, or west to east.
There was a main street that approximately paralleled the shore line. On the south side of the street was a long row of rubble masonry warehouses and red and yellow brick alleys (The red brick arrived as ballast from England and the British Isles, the Yellow brick as ballast from the Mother Country, Denmark) The warehouses ran from Main Street town to the water’s edge. The North Side of the street were mercantile establishments, with second story balconies above and beyond them, fine and even grand homes began to climb the hill sides, their large windows and verandas catching the trade winds while looking down upon ships of every nation rocking gently in perhaps the most beautiful harbor in the world.
This magical place was made even more magical by the refreshing dewy cool of morning and the golden early morning light. The market square was magical in its own right; ancient mahogany’s lining its cobblestone perimeters. On the west side, the venerable stone and wrought iron of the centuries old “National Bank” and “Christ Church” a Grand old world Methodist Church right out of a dansk dream of Devonshire, and on the north the original Jewish ghetto, now “long row wood houses” and coal pot, communal “yad” heaven for struggling laborers and their families, the rough and tough streets of “Savan”.
To the East, dirt floor and plank barrel bar rooms for the likes of Ben and Raffie dem, who were always drinking rum again, Scruffy customers who would look at home on any skid row in the world, but were certainly too wild, unconstrained and uncontainable for most.
These desperately dinged and damaged men wore a steady path to and from the dungeon cells of Fort Christian. Cursing, shaking their fists (and other parts) and yelling in tongues not known to devil or man. (One hundred and fifty-one proof cane rum, mixed with and chased by the hot hot blazing hot sun will do that to a fellow, no matter what his original religion or disposition)
On the South side of the market square, towards the sea and the breeze, was the emporium most favored by children, a dark cave like interior appropriately called “The Igloo”. While not a one of us had any idea of the kind of cold that would necessitate crawling inside a house of ice cubes to get warm, we did appreciate the miraculously cool blessing of vanilla and chocolate honest to goodness ice cream.
However long before we would get to the Igloo, Gale and I first had to make our way past those things that make these kinds of memory so heady and transporting. We would walk down “Pave Street” past the First Moravian Church, the Park Shoppe, and then the park that the Shoppe was named after Roosevelt Park which in turn was named after Franklin.
It was a kind gesture of remembrance but this little park, originally “Coconut Square” had as much to do with Franklin Roosevelt and his world as it did the King of Siam.
It was a very old fashioned little city block park surrounded by old black iron gating and planted with Coconut, Baobab, Tamarind, Mahogany and the tallest slenderest (like something out of Dr. Suess) Palms, there was a big elevated lily pond in the middle and winding walkways with actual old round armed park benches scattered here and there. I loved it; it was like Mary Poppins London via Dr. Suess meets the Belgian Congo. (‘course we had no Dr. Suess back then but I guess that’s why I felt as if I’d been waiting for him for a long long time when he finally did came along)
Just past Coconut Square the road rose up to the old British Cable Office and divided, the left going directly to the foot of the hill topped by Fort Christian (1691), while straight ahead took us past the Grand Hotel and the very first Church on the Island, The Frederick Lutheran Church
The British Cable Office was quite an important place in those days run, by a very stiff and important fellow with a pencil thin moustache and a most clipped British air and attitude… He was Mr. Alfred Evelyn, the Grand father to be of my first wife Patricia, and Great Grand father to my Bix “little Scott”
If Mr. Evelyn could have seen this in his future as he spied Gale and I pogoing alone down the street at six o’clock in the morning, I don’t doubt for a moment that he would have wrapped us both up in a proper brown paper package, tied it up with string, and sent us off to far freakin’ Calcutta.
Just along past the Grand Hotel we came to Post Office Square, another absolute treat for the eyes and imagination, up on the right on Government Hill sat the Beautiful Pink, Hotel 1829, birth place of the Arts Colony that had intrigued and brought Mud and Lea and Mud’s boyfriend Justin, to Charlotte Amalia, in the first place.
By now shafts of sunlight would be lighting the odd elevated corners, creating splashes of intense color like an impressionist painter might do. And after all, this is where the father of impressionism Camille Pissarro was born and his sensibilities came of age. If you came upon the beautiful pink hued Hotel 1829 first thing in the morning, just as the rising sun is coming over the mountains that ring the town and the golden light has just come splashing into the square, I don’t doubt that you would be an impressionist too, it is simply too real to be real. Ecstatic overload spills back and loops around and around until you, head spinning, stagger on towards “de market”.
Exiting post office square you enter the narrow “commercial district” of main street crowded with shops on both sides, There on the left is Lockhart’s General store, Riieses Liquor Store, and Greaux’s hardware, on the right is 7 Queens Quarter, and The Center Theater where the marquee advertises a double feature featuring Gene Autry, and Jungle Jim, with episodes seven and eight of the serial “The Insidious Fu Man Chu” stuck in between,
There is the wonderful Apothecary Hall with its enormous bottles of blue, red, green, and gold elixir of the Gods or something, displayed invitingly in the windows. The most indefinable but soul satisfying and reassuring smells waft through it’s open doors reminding us all that no matter what, the Apothecary Hall has the cure.
On the side streets towards the Harbor, the butcher stalls belonging to butcher “White Pierre” and butcher “Black Pierre” are open, goat and pig, mutton and pork is the song being sung back and forth between the Pierres and their customers,
Ladies are setting out large baskets of fruit on the sidewalks crossing the gut, Soursap, Sugar Apple, Mango, and we aren’t even at the market yet. It didn’t take me long to realize that Gale had had another heck of a good idea, wonderful and exciting.
In that part of the early morning set aside for those people who conspire to be happy, cheery early risers are greeting one another, there is unspoken but palatable pity for those foolish or unfortunate enough to lie unconscious through this the most beautiful part of the day, these folks and Gale and I are in a magic time and we all know it.
As we walk in the shade of the old Mahogany and Tamarind trees, beyond “de gut” there by the Library, The Market is beginning to bustle, vendors have come from every part of the Island, many by donkey cart, or donkey, all have enormous baskets filled with fruits and vegetables or prepared goodies and delicacies, Mabi frothing up and out of it’s rum bottle containers, fresh fish of every color and description, Tanya, okra, hot pepper sauce that could ignite it’s self for spite, sugar cakes (that’s what Gale and I want more than anything) coconut and ginger sugar cakes, a penny apiece.. thyme, chibble, lemon grass, the herbs of Eden (or so they say) my sister Gale loved herbs so much that she developed the most famous herb garden in Pennsylvania when she grew up, benye, pate, papaya, cherries, conch, whelks, a crazy cacophonous cornucopia of calypso accents from up, down and all around the islands Tortola, Saint Kitts, Anagada, Antigua, Barbados, Culebra, Puerto Rico, smoke rising from the coal pots little samples of the ripest mango, sugar cane, and guava, “come Scottie, come Gale, wha yu doin up an out so early?’ Yu had yu breakfus? Me dear chile, come lemme gi yu sum ah dis”
I don’t recall ever having anything more than a very few pennies to spend, but it seems like we always came away with much treasure from the market. Some of the eating kind, some of the cooking herbs kind for Mother, but mostly the kindness kind which after all, was the kind that really mattered the most. Yep, my big sister Gale had some really good ideas.
Book 4. The Concert Review, From The Artists Point Of View
As promised, (but only because, even after forty seven years before the mast, I have been able to maintain the semi pristine purity of obscurity of one “unknown” to the music press), I will review the concert myself. However because I am the artist, and not eyes and ears in the audience, but eyes and ears backstage, and onstage, I will naturally review it from the artists point of view…
First, the synopsis, which is: “Simply wonderful, wish you were here!”
Then to the facts of the matter:
Our sound check was scheduled for 3:30 PM, however at 3:30 PM, I was bouncing along in the back of Tut’s truck, spiffed up to the max and trying to hold, balance and keep a seventy pound pot of steaming hot Kalaloo from spilling. (This because Tuts is, in addition to many other things, “The King Of Kalaloo” and he promised the Director of the Jarvis Museum that he would make and bring enough to feed everyone..so now he has been awake for fifty hours straight, cooking it, and is close to Kalaloo collapse as one can get)
We were rushing to pick up Tut’s Cousin Delia, who was coming in to Tortola wharf from Roadtown, also scheduled to arrive at 3:30 PM…Whoops, No Delia. The customs man said “you mean de schuppidy crazy woman wid de big black hat ana head wha cussin’ like a drunken sailah?, No man she done gan up de road” Up de road we zoom, Now Tuts is cussin’ Delia with his head turned to the back seat looking at the kalaloo, in fact and effect driving forwards backwards. It was not a good 10 minutes of driving or, rather let me say, it was the best 10 minutes of driving ever considering, that the only one looking at the road was me, and all I could do was steer with the hot pot, of steaming Kalaloo,whilst trying not to spill it.
By the grace of what must be a Kalaloo (or perhaps innocent tourist) loving God, we arrive at the concert site with minimal spillage of soup or blood…Thank goodness we are finally able to get it inside and out of our hands.
At a quarter to four, I am able to start setting up for our sound check… at four fifteen the first lady (no not Mrs. Obama) the first concert goer/comer arrives, takes a seat right down in front and immediately begins to gaze adoringly up at yours truly. God bless her, she has come early because “she doesn’t want to miss a ting’”
She is a mighty Purdy lady, the color of spun honey, in a wonderfully low-cut yellow sun dress, with a bright and sunny face. (Did I mention that she is sitting right down front?) Fortunately, I am more than warmed up and ready to sing, so the sound check is not an embarrassment, in fact it turns into sort of a mini concert just for her, complete with little squeals of appreciation and charming effusive complements. In years past we might have called the concert “jazz” right then and there, and gone off together to make a life in Brazil or St. Croix, but I’m almost grown up now and I am here on serious business.
After all,this show and concert is part of “The Second Coming” and this time there will be no…well…a lot less…well.. a little less… hanky panky. But no hanky panky today.
This means a lot to me. I will be singing a one hour concert presentation of my new Musical, “The Virgin Islands Songs”, to and for an audience of local, honest to goodness Virgin Islanders, not a bar full of drunken visitors who think they’re in the Bahamas and want to hear “Who Let The Dogs Out” Or “Chiquita Cheeseburger”, nor a room full of wealthy white folks wintering in the Islands and wanting me to play those “steel pots ‘n pans or whatever you call them” but de real ting’ mon…and if I don’t do it right, right here, right now, t’will be best to leave the equipment behind and beat feet, straight for the airport… Continued…
Scott Fagan's Mem.wa? 