Archive
The Sand Box Kids…Trader Dan’s..Duffy’s…
Recently I was” invited/automatically included” in a new Facebook group called “Sandbox Kids” by a founding member “Bite Size”. I am grateful to be invited/included in anything started by the mighty Bite Size and thank her for her kindness.
The Sand Box was a fine bar in a good drinking local, specifically backstreet, Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. The Sand Box Kids group, is made up of the children who drank there during the sixties and seventies and have miraculously survived to this day.
I say children because there was no minimum drinking age in the Islands in those days, and many of us started very early, (13 in my case) we drank and danced and fought and f*cked like ..well,.. crazed drunken children in a perfect never land.
Anyone that knows me or my recordings, knows that in truth and above all, I am a Trader Dan’s Boy (Trader Dan’s was another fine bar in a good drinking local, specifically the waterfront in Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas) through and through.
My first recorded reference to T D’s (as we called it) was in my 1966 recording of “Tutsie” (BANG Records) (which I built my La Biega Carousel medley around), “Tutsie” was a 45 (bw “Give Love A Chance”) that quickly showed up on the jukebox at “Duffy’s”, (my second most favorite bar).
Duffy’s Bar is where “The Mamas and The Papas” got started, and my own first group “The Urchins” came together in early 1964. Duffy’s is also where I met “Lotus” a wild woman/child who would become the Mother of my Son, Stephin Merritt.
My song “South Atlantic Blues” (from My album South Atlantic Blues, ATCO 1968) references an alcoholic Priest, and a homeless woman/mother living “in the alley” that alley is of course the alley that led from Trader Dan’s to Duffy’s then across Main street to Back street and ‘Eddies Backstreet Bar” which in time became the afore mentioned “Sand Box”.
The last verse talks about a girl standing by the sea side waiting for her lover to rescue and take her away, she is of course standing on the waterfront directly across from T D’s. Almost exactly where I went overboard into the sea, drag racing in her step father’s red Volkswagen in 1962, but that is another story.
A photograph surfaced recently during the making of the Doc Pomus movie “AKA Doc Pomus”, of that Trader Dan’s boy at his first recording session at Columbia Records in late 1964.
I had sailed out of Charlotte Amalie at dawn on July 2nd, 1964 on a fifty foot Ketch rigged Sloop called “The Success” heading for Coconut Grove/Dinner Key, Miami, Florida.
A month at sea and a few weeks later, I found myself in N.Y. I was immediately signed by Doc Pomus and then Columbia Records. I was just turning 19.
Absolutely no one has ever missed his home town, his friends and our fantastically free life any more than I did in those first years away from home. The life that we shared and my longing for it, has informed every bit of my music since.
I am posting the photo of that displaced Trader Dan’s/Duffy’s/Sand Box boy’s first Columbia recording session.
Here it is
I am posting the song “South Atlantic Blues” which more than any other captured the depth of emotion that I was feeling in those days,
And I am posting the recent recording of my song “Sure Has Been Good Loving You Baby” which accurately reflects the way that I feel and have always felt about the beautiful girls/young women of that time and place.
Sure Has Been Good Scott Fagan And The MAAC Island Band
I will dedicate this to Patricia, Bonnie Barr, Jeanette, Barbara, Kathleen, Harriet, Delia, April, Lotus and Bite Size, and to all the girls and boys who lived and loved (and died) in our crazy never never I’land.
Thank you Bite Size, and God Bless us all.. now, then and forever.
Scott Fagan, On the road, in the states, still singing about it.. and you all. June, 2013.
“SCOTT FAGAN And The MAAC Island Band” In CONCERT One Night Only HERSHEY AREA PLAYHOUSE, Hershey PA. August 3rd 2013, 7:00 PM
“SCOTT FAGAN And The MAAC Island Band” IN CONCERT One Night Only..THE HERSHEY AREA PLAYHOUSE, 830 Cherry Dr., Hershey, PA. August 3rd , 7:00pm -CALL Box Office for Ticket Information: 717.533.8525
Scott Fagan (Singer/Songwriter) has been an international recording artist since he left high school in St. Thomas Virgin Islands to sign with Columbia Records in 1964. Some reviews..Cashbox Magazine: Spinal Tap melodies…His range is phenomenal. Billboard: “A Poet”. William Krasilovsky, Author, THIS BUSINESS OF MUSIC, l & ll: “Scott Fagan is a genius. I’ll certify that.” The MAAC ISLAND BAND is: Rafael “El Jefe” Martinez, (El Congero) From Hormigueros, Puerto Rico, he has been a “Congero” for over 25 years. Drew Washington, The BASS Man of Choice for the MAAC ISLAND BAND. Has played at the highest levels, for over 30 Years. Tim Griesemer, (El Maestro) Well known for his extraordinary gifts as a drummer. He is a master of percussion. Barbara Vajda, A Steelton guitar Goddess with a long history as a rocker. After a hiatus to raise little ones, the Goddess is back with Scott Fagan and The MAAC Island Band. Benny Danner, (El Estudeante) Percussion plus….Gary Smith, (El Nuevo) Back Ground Vocals and Percussion. Visit our website @ www.scottfaganandthemaacislandband.com Listen to our latest single “Sure has been Good Loving You Baby” @ http://www.youtube.com check out our latest album @ www.10greatsongsongsinsearchofanaudience.com CONTACT INFO: Tim Griesemer, 717.439.1919 or Scott Fagan, 717.592.0853
NO MORE GUNS and Then Some…
Dear Good People,
We recorded “No More Guns” at Associated Studios, in New York City, immediately after Guns and Insanity came together (as they always do) to end the life and work of John Lennon. Here it is.
The following short essays (2) were addressed to fellow Virgin Islanders and printed in the Virgin Islands Daily News (5/12/09 and 5/19/09 and The V.I. Source 5/10/09 and 5/16/09) as a response to the gun violence that has migrated to the U.S. Virgin Islands as a result of the crazy gun culture of our “Modernday Motherland” the USA.
Dear Fellow Virgin Islander,
It has been suggested that I bring the following essays to your attention.
I believe that the idea put forth in “Let’s Make The Virgin Islands a Gun Free Territory” and “Further to Let’s Make The Virgin Islands A Gun Free Territory” is do-able with your help, and would have an immensely positive and lasting effect on individuals, families and communities here at home, and in the perception of our Islands as a travel and business destination in the eyes of the world.
I believe that together we can find the courage, the will and the way, to change the paradigm for guns and gun violence once and for all, in our (once peaceful, now pitifully violent) Virgin Islands.
I know that many of the individuals that I admire most, will object to my suggestions, however, many of those very people are no longer living in the Virgin Islands precisely because the ever-growing levels of gun violence creates the perception if not the fact, that the Virgin Islands are no longer safe for their families and themselves.
If after looking at the abject failure of the individual states and the nation at large to successfully eliminate or even minimize gun violence via registration and waiting periods you have a better idea, the time to suggest it may be now.
I’d like to know what you think. Please email me at scott@lilfish.com
Thank you for your time and interest.
Sincerely, your friend, Scott Fagan
“Let’s Make the Virgin Islands a Gun Free Territory” Part 1.
The Virgin Islands is a territory of the United States of America; this unique relationship gives us the freedom to take a stand within the United States, and beyond if necessary, to demand that our home, these beautiful Virgin Islands, be designated, recognized and supported as a gun free territory.
Arguments that gun lobbyists use in the states have no validity here…Virgin Islanders don’t need guns to defend themselves against invaders.
Rest assured that if anyone tries to take away their hard-won freedom, Virgin Islanders will meet them and defeat them.
We don’t need to have our beautiful Islands, our families and our society racked, riddled and torn apart by gun violence, in anticipation of that “someday” when an invader may arrive on our shores. Virgin Islanders defended themselves and won their freedom without guns before, and if necessary, will do it again.
Gun lobbyists who would argue for a “so called” right to hunt in the Virgin Islands, are out of step, particularly when you consider the game. What shall we hunt? Sparrows? Trushie? Mongoose or Iguana? The sad little deer? Tragically, in the modern-day Virgin Islands, the primary prey is human beings, young men hunting young men, our young men, our children.
Virgin Islanders know that if you let children play with dangerous things (and guns are dangerous things and the people playing with them are our children) sooner or later, they will hurt themselves or others. We know that. We also know that ultimately, no one, not the United States or anyone else, should have the right to force us to have guns in our territory, if we the people have decided that we don’t want them.
It is time that Virgin Islanders (I, you, we) take action and make a stand…
What will it take for us to make our territory gun free? Our absolute commitment to stand together to make it so…that is all my friends, that is all.
Let’s get started and let our community leaders, our Senators, our Governor, The United States Congress, our President and the whole world know, that the people of the Virgin Islands have decided. From this point forward, we intend to be a gun free territory.
Let us reject any philosophy that would force or impose guns on our society and be united in our commitment that “no matter what it takes”, our Virgin Islands could be, should be and will be, free of guns and gun violence. Let’s make the Virgin Islands a gun free Territory, and let’s get started right now!
Further to.. “Let’s make The Virgin Islands A Gun Free Territory”
I’ve read with interest the recent dismissive responses to my suggestion that Virgin Islanders join together to “Make The Virgin Islands A Gun Free Territory” I would point out that the gun violence that we are experiencing has little to do with the registration of fire arms, and that we have no interest in denying anyone their constitutional rights.
The fact and reality is that young men in the Virgin Islands are involved in a classic turf war and arms race, and that unscrupulous people are willing and eager to sell these young men new and ever more murderous weapons, guaranteed to further escalate the conflict and the casualties. All concerned citizens of our community want and need to find a way to put an end to it.
The question is how? The interesting suggestion that I have offered, is that “we the people” make (by voting on it of course) our Virgin Islands, a nationally and internationally recognized “gun free territory”.
One reader responded by saying “Its not for him (Scott Fagan) or anyone else to deprive US citizens of this (or any other right) just because you don’t like it or because it is not part of your particular cultural orientation.” It is true that it is not my right (or intention) to deprive US citizens of their right to own a gun. However, US citizens willingly accept the suspension of that second amendment right, (in the interest of public safety) when they travel to most of the civilized countries of the world. Cultures that do not have a history of glorifying guns (which includes the Virgin Islands) are well within their rights to discourage the availability of guns exactly because they “don’t like them” and they are not part of their “cultural orientation”
I know that my suggestion sounds like blasphemy to some statesiders who are not accustomed to viewing the Virgin Islands as having quite a separate history and cultural orientation from the US, and may further, be unaware that The Virgin Islands did NOT participate in drafting or ratifying the US Constitution. Overall a fine document, but one that has repeatedly (27 times to date) demonstrated the need for corrections or amendments. Consequently, Virgin Islanders have no reason to feel inextricably bound to articles or amendments that (while exalted as a right by some people in the states) may be wrong for us.. Particularly considering how murderously destructive firearms have become to OUR culture and OUR community.
That is why my letter “Let’s Make the Virgin Islands a Gun Free Territory” begins with the reminder that we are a territory, in a somewhat unique position. We were bought and sold in a political transaction between two sovereign nations “lock, stock and population” against the protest of many Danes and without the benefit of a legally recognized majority vote, by the general population of the Virgin Islands. Consequently, we may have a certain moral leverage (even if only in pathetically obvious questions such as “must we allow the United States or anyone else to insist that our Islands be flooded with firearms, even if we don’t want them?”) a moral leverage that I believe our current President and the world at large is likely to recognize and support.
Yes I realize that reasonable people in dangerous times would like to have a defensive weapon available. Yes I understand that our peace officers and Judges will have to do a much better job of protecting us all. Yes I know it will be quite difficult to clear our Islands of the arsenals of weapons. And most importantly, Yes, we are all afraid.
But Virgin Islanders have sufficient courage to stand together in the face of adversity to bring the end to the gun violence that we so desperately want, need and deserve.
All Virgin Islanders want a Virgin Islands in which the current crazy universal access to guns and ever escalating gun violence is a thing of the past. We are not talking about disarming the police or the National Guard, we are talking about voting to outlaw the manufacture, Importation, sale, distribution and use of firearms among the general public.
What a positive and inspiring effect our declaring the beautiful Virgin Islands “A Gun Free Territory” would have on businesses and potential travelers all over the world, not to mention our own children and community. What a negative impression the current reports of our ever escalating gun violence make.
One extraordinary way for Virgin Islanders to shape our own destiny and accomplish our very own quite improbable dream this year, is to take a stand to “Make the Virgin Islands a Gun Free Territory” starting right now. We can do it..yes we can.
Scott Fagan, St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, May,2009. scott@lilfish.com
Further to Further..here in the states we have just experienced the insane and efficient murder of the beautiful innocents in Connecticut and are deep in the (almost monthly) orgy of 24 hour “hushed tone” news coverage, the hyped up “investigations of the crime scene” and the obligatory hand wringing and pointless choruses of “why” “why”” why”.
The why ought to be obvious to anyone, when murderously deranged people can get their hands on a gun or guns, someone is likely to get killed. When they can get their hands on automatic weapons more than one someone is likely to get killed. Forgive me, but in plain speak, nuts can get guns and that’s almost always the why.
It seems to me that the question that all our horror, anguish and concern ought better be focused on is how. How to keep guns out of the hands of deranged people. That is a question that all folks can unite around and find answers for. We can make great progress on the very specific question of how to get many more gatekeepers and safeguards between those with a murderous madness (yes we can identify disturbed people and intervene earlier and more constructively) and the efficient people killing machines (automatic weapons) that we make available to them.
Tragically, we have seen these traumas come and go..but after all and above all, let us never give up on the idea that we are responsible to and for one another and if we stick with it and don’t give up, sooner or later, one way or the next…a change is going to come..
c
BOOK 4. A Thanksgiving with “Tutsie, Foxy, Mighty Whitey, and Captain Timmy”
(On Thanksgiving Day 2009, Tuts and Tim and Nicky and I took a little trip together up to Jos Van Dyke to see the Fox. We were talking with him and Tessa about doing a three-man concert there featuring Ruben, Nicky and Myself, that now sadly will never be. In this Thanksgiving post, I‘ve tried to capture some of what was so wonderful about that time together.)
From “Book 4. A Little Trip To Jos Van Dyke”…
Today is Thanksgiving and we will pass it it in a small sail boat called “Stargazer” with Tuts, Captain Timmy Carstephen, Nicky “Mighty Whitey” Russel and The “First lady of ALL The Virgins” The Good Lady Delia, ( of St. Thomas, Harlem, Haight Ashbury, and Tortola) We will be on our way to spend the day with our old friend “Sir Foxy”, (recently Knighted by The Queen Of England, honest) in Jos Van Dyke, in the British Virgin Islands.
We have been planning a trip to see our friend Philiciano Callwood aka “The Fox” aka Foxy. He has a beach front bar in Jos Van Dyke, that has become quite popular over the years. We are going up to see him about scheduling a concert. Tuts and Timmy and Nicky and I have each and all known him for many years. Tuts and I have known him the longest, in fact since we were all boys living in Bournefield in the 1950’s.. Philiciano (or Phillie as he was known then} was brought down from Jos Van Dyke to St. Thomas by his mother, who worked as a house keeper for Mrs. Creque and the three naughty Creque daughters.
They all lived in the huge pink Creque Mansion on the “Hidaway Road”. A Mansion large enough (people said) to contain both Heaven and Hell in equal measure, and according to he girls.. it certainly did.
That any of them survived the Creque Mansion is the kindest kind of miracle, and Foxy’s subsequent success may be proof positive that the long sufferin’ can earn and redeem good karma points. Knowing (and loving) the Creque girls as we do, Tuts and I can “vouchify and attest” that he earned ‘em, every one.
These many years later, we (and they) are all very happy for his good fortune. That good fortune includes falling in with the Lady Tessa, late of wildest Australia, who turned out to be his Ms, his match and his mate.
As I mentioned, our little group of travelers includes a lady who is also a legend in her own time, “Miss Delia” of St. Thomas, Harlem, Haight Ashbury and Tortola. Our little crew are all miraculous survivors.
We have been “adults” since childhood, which means our childhood lives were shot thorough with adult concerns and behaviors like “where are my cigarettes and where is my rum” and our adult lives shot through with the behaviors and of concerns of childhood, like ”where are my cigarettes and where is my rum” (while Tuts and I got clean and sober long ago or we would be long gone, recovery doesn’t change the past or the depth and longevity of the connection between and among kindred spirits)
We are intending to sail up to “The Foxes Tamarind” on Timmy’s 28 foot sail boat “The Star Gazer” Timmy (I should call him “Captain Timmy,” he’s had his Captain’s papers since he was 18) has been sailing these waters since he was a child. First on his family’s beautiful 48 foot, black hulled Ketch “The Shellback” and then on the mighty “Maverick” certainly one of the most beautiful awe and dream inspiring sailing ships to ever grace the harbor at Charlotte Amalia.
One of my very earliest songs was about the Maverick.
“Maverick Sailing On the tide
Maverick where are you bound tonight
With new born child below, blow ye winds oh blow
Keep them safe from rock and wave and blow ye winds oh blow
Maverick, take me for a ride
Maverick, I need a place to hide
From things I should not know, Blow ye winds oh blow
Keep us safe from rock and wave, and take us where we want to go”
We are all children of “Trader Dan’s” a St. Thomas, waterfront bar that drew and welcomed one and all, (including school children in our two-tone uniforms and empty book straps).
There was no minimum drinking age in the Islands in those days (I had been buying rum on credit at the local shops for my mother and stepfathers, since I was six) and those of us with a predilection, or as the recovery materials put it “a predisposition to alcoholism” were blindly (no pun, I mean it) demonstrating what early onset familial (genetic) alcoholism looks and sounds (and feels) like. We were having the time of our lives.
As I’ve said, that any one of us survived (many, maybe most, didn’t) is really quite unexpected, but here we are sailing out of the lagoon, and east to Jos Van Dyke. We have all made this trip in many a vessel over the years.
One trip found Tim and Tuts and I in an ocean racing Donzi with my little twins Lelia and Archie, and their beautiful Mother Annie. We stopped at Sandy Cay” on the way up that day, and had to swim ashore with the little ones. Archie rode on Tut’s back like the Ginge bread man, and Twinkle rode on mine (yes, yes, they were wearing their little life vests) still it was so exciting for them that they have never forgotten, (their Mother has likely never forgotten either), What a beautiful and exciting windblown day that was, and what a beautiful and calming day this is, as we sail on Timmy’s little “Star Gazer”.
The sea breeze is extraordinary; it’s coming down through (Sir Francis) Drake’s Passage and across Pillsbury sound bringing the coolest freshest air imaginable. Its way too easy to forget how good it feels head to toe, body and soul, to sail these waters and to sip this sweet sweet breeze…
Tuts is talking like he’s having a flashback to the swim in which he became the first native Virgin Islander in known history to swim from St. Thomas to St John.
“Look, look” he says, there’s the two poles on St. Thomas that I saw from the tip top of the giant wave, and there is the undersea cables that I told you about! And look, look how the current is trying to sweep everything southwest; out of the sound and into the sea, “De nex stop out dey is New Orleans m’boy, Wha? Not me again meson, not me again!” “But Tuts,” somebody says, “dem boy sae you ‘fraid!, an das why yu ain’ gon do it again, dem boy sae yu ‘fraid man, yu ‘fraid!
“Oy fraid? Oy fraid? Yu damn right ah ‘fraid”, he says indignantly, “Who ain’ fraid a out dey, schipid in dey ass! Meson, yu don know dey got Shak out here big like de Bismark? Me bouy, de shak dem so big yu cou drive a safari truck on dem, in fact if yu wan tu know de whole trut, das de onliest way I mek it to Sain John.
Off to the left are the beautiful gold and green islands of Thatch Key, then Congo and Luango. We see the remains of the old great house of the plantation on Luango, where the white overseer was dispatched by freedom seeking slaves in the first moments of the St. John uprising of 1733.
Beyond the keys, to the North and East is Jos’ Van Dyke. An Island named after a Dutch Pirate Captain but settled by the Quakers and part of the British Virgins. When the English renounced slavery in 1833, the Quakers on Jos’ gave the land to the people that they had held in bondage there.
The Danes abolished slavery in 1849 consequently slaves in St. John were always trying to find their way to Jos Van Dyke and Tortola and freedom. In fact there is a huge iron sugar cane boiling kettle on the sand in Jos’ that a St. John slave was able put his wife and children into, and sail (or row) them safely all the way to Jos Van Dyke and freedom. When I first came up to see the fox in the sixties, the iron kettle was still on the beach.
We slide up to a new concrete wharf and head for the old wooden customs office only, now it’s a new concrete customs office, where we discover that the gentle portly gentleman who had manned the post since salt met water, had been called away to work the customs house at the Pearly Gates.
As Delia and the current customs gent negotiated, I spotted our friend Ruben Chinnery sitting at a table under the trees in front of a little beach side café, We have all known Ruben for at least forty five years, and Tuts and I for closer to fifty, back then, Tuts and Ruben and I had a little “Band” that knocked the living hell out of “Perfidia” I was the singing Sax man, Tuts played the Trumpet and Ruben strangled the guitar til’ it squeaked for mercy. Good lord we loved to play that song. it was also the only one we could play. Perfidia and nothing but Perfidia.
We have jammed together at Foxy’s many times since then, and we are here today to see about setting up a gig in which Ruben, Nicky, (Mighty Whitey) and I would be playing together all day long (maybe three sets each and one or two super long jams)
After speaking with Tessa and The Fox, it’s on. We will decide on the date at a future time. That done, we socialize… hug and smooch and then…we head back down Pillsbury Sound.
Between little St. James and the entrance to the Lagoon, Timmy (the Captain of the little ship) cuts the engine and announces that we aren’t going any further until he hears a few specific tunes. The mighty fine fellow hands me my guitar and says “The first one is “Mademoiselle”.
The boat is rocking like crazy and I am sitting on the roof of the cabin, so I jam a foot against a stanchion and the other against the life lines and, once properly “jammed”, I sing my friggin’ heart out. It isn’t everyday that tough, and weathered, beaten but not bowed, hombres honor me in this way. I am really touched that my lifelong tough guy compadres feel this way about my music, and I will fall overboard and drown, guitar and all before I will disappoint them.
Here’s a recent “LIVE” recording of Mademoiselle..
Scott Fagan and The MAAC Island Band Release New Album “10 Great Songs In Search Of An Audience”
Book 4. Scott Fagan and The MAAC Island Band, Release New Album “10 Great Songs In Search Of An Audience” www.10greatsongsinsearchofanaudience.com
That’s the headline, here’s the story…These songs (and many other songs of mine) have not found their audiences because, after all is said and done, I have not been successful at promoting myself to the point where audiences have heard these songs and accepted or rejected them. Complexly, It’s simply that simple.
For one reason and another I have always been inhibited about promoting myself. At this point that is unlikely to change. I am really relieved for my son Stephin (Merritt) that he has Claudia (Gonson) to help him with that, because if left entirely to the elements for self promotion that he inherited from his dear mudder dear and his fine pater fer’tater, the boy might be raising Chihuahuas. Not unlike his Grand Father the Great Frankie “Tic Tac Toe Trio” Galvin, who couldn’t promote himself either, and wound up in a skeeter riddled rust bucket trailer in “El Swampo De Los Everglades” with little Beau “The Father Abraham of Chihuahuas”, and Beau’s multiple wifeys and Babble barking nations of offspring.
So the point is.. this release, this album, is about the songs and not the dude that yodels ’em. That is why it is titled as it is and why it is a mix of sessions here, there and everywhere. The trick is to get the songs to the people that will love them or leave them alone. Songs are born to have a life (and relationships) of their own, but they have to get out there in order for that to occur. My job (after wrassling the thing out of the ether) is to get the song heard by whatever means possible. I love these songs and have spent many years trying to get them to you. I’m going to try my very best to promote them. I sincerely hope they find you this time. That’s the story Morning Glory.
P.S. Oh yes! Please go and give them a listen, and if you like one or more, then please pass them on www.10greatsongsinsearchofanaudience.com Thank you, Scott Fagan 2012
Book 2 SOON .3, and Book 4. Soon 3
Book 2. SOON .3,
As I said, I’m trying to stay focused on “SOON”. And as I further said, the first time I saw the RITZ Theater (where SOON would open in January of 1971) was from my room at the Forrest Hotel.
At that time I had a south-facing room on the ninth floor; I was gazing out and noticed this odd, curiously configured roof top down below. Over time I realized that it was what a theater roof looks like from above. Years later, I would gaze at the same roof from below. Reaching across time to reconnect with the me that was, once upon a then.
I certainly felt much more at ease and at home looking out the window in (or from) what the Daily News, (in recounting the details of the murder most foul of a Barnum and Bailey circus clown), described as a “cheap west side hotel”.
In reality the Forrest Hotel was straight out of Damon Runyun, because Damon Runyun lived there and wrote there for many years. This or that reality is of course the past perfect invitation to investigate (if only for a moment) the question of relative reality, or the relative question of what (rather, which) reality is the real real deal. Dig? Capeche? Were we living in a world of Rock and Roll, or Guys and Dolls the reality show?
The truth is both and.. thirty or countless more other parallel realities all scrunched into one.
To be continued …
Book 4. Soon 3
I am riding on a train up over and through the Allegany Mountains on my way back to the Middletown collective (MAAC) from Johnstown, PA. Where I met the young impresario who intends to stage a concert production of SOON this coming 17th, 18th, and 19th of November. I’ve spent the last two days and nights thoroughly enjoying my self with he and his family. An all American mix of Mexican/Hungarian salt of the earth folks of the first order. I like him and them (Johnstown) very much and so we will proceed with the show.
As I referenced earlier in the Memwa? The possibility, likelihood and indeed chronic evidentiary factorama of yours truly having FAE (Fetal Alcohol Effects) is quite good, almost guaranteed.
The dear Mudder dear is no longer here to ask about her consumption of Ethel in the nine long months starting with December 1944 and ending with me birthday on the 26th of August 1945, but based on what I know as a “once upon a moment” UCLA trained “little time big time” drug and Alcoholism wazam, the referenced likelihood is almost inescapable, and more to the point the symptoms (and their side-effects across the life areas) appear to be ever-present.
If I ever get around to publishing my book “The New Paradigm for Alcoholism Addiction and Recovery” you will see what I’m talking about.
However, if you are too wise to wait, and know it may be best look FAE up now, then you will know that I don’t do too well with working on more than one thing at a time, and right now I’m working on many more than one thing at a time and it appears that I will be for the foreseeable future. The question for anyone would be “how to do it”; the question for me is HUH?
Apparently folks with FAE are blessed (well perhaps blessed isn’t exactly the right word, but you know what I mean) with the ability to go really really deep on a subject, but have extreme difficulty “changing sets” or, trying to move, pull ourselves out of, or shift our attention, from one subject to another.
For example, that is why, when I am concentrating on anything (like writing a song.. words OR music), I long ago learned that it is better, far better, if I do not try to cross the street, or be married etc.
I do love going deep beyond deep, but good Godawmighty it would be nice to be able to move comfortably and effectively from one thing to the next. Or just effectively.
That is why my Memwa? posts have begun to slow down as our gigging has picked up.
Interesting gigs every one, for example, Yesterday, July 30th was National Dance Day. A concept promoted by the great tv dance show “So You Think You Can Dance” along with producer Nigel Lithgow, and the great Congress Woman Eleanor Norton Holmes. We did an event, a National Dance Day Dance Party at a sky scraper housing development for seniors and the disabled (HOY Towers) in “Steelton” an honest to God, Steel Mill town (fallen on hard times like many another) in rusty post industrial Central Pennsylvania. We and they had the greatest time.
Here’s our recording of the theme of the day “Shake A Bum” and a photo of the good folks dancing.
National Dance Day! 2011 Steelton PA. Scott Fagan and The MAAC Island Band
However in addition to steady gigging, The SOON production and the Memwa? We have a Television show in development, two upcoming albums and “The Virgin Islands Songs” making its way towards a stage production inSt. Thomas.
This is not me complaining, it’s just that I am like a cross-eyed juggler.
We are busy and I am grateful. I just wish that I were capable of being more effective, as many too many things not mentioned, like the record company and music publishing, distribution and promotion and editing video and so on and on are not getting done in a timely manner.
I’m grateful a thousand times over for the grace and the real blessings that I have been given, the gift and the gifts.
I just wish that I could manage it, and them all, better.
Book 4. Up Coming Gigs And Book 2. SOON .2
Book 4. Up Coming Gigs And Book 2. SOON .2
We are busy and traveling a fair amount, and of course, it’s all interesting. This Saturday (June 18th) we are in Harrisburg, PA doing MODE Magazine’s Big LUAU on City Island, from 6 – 10 PM then We Travel up to New York City for Tuesday June 21st to participate in the big City Wide “Make Music New York” Festival.
We (Scott Fagan And The MAAC Island Band) will be playing at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza on 1st Ave between 46th and 47th Streets (right across from the UN) from4 to 5 PM.
Folks are saying that we were assigned to the UN because I “sing in tongues” but it’s not “tongues” it’s just how we sing (and speak) down in the Virgin Isles. We are looking forward to both gigs; the band and I are rarin’ to go. We will be back in Harrisburg for “Music Fest” on Sunday, July 3rd and in Lebanon, PA. on August 6th for the “Pablo Emilio Memorial Music Festival”.
The band is excited to play in the Islands, and the European Festivals, it’s all in the works…we will do our absolute best, and we shall see.
Book 2. SOON .2 continued…
This whole mem.wa? thing started out in large part as a response to a gent who had contacted me because of his interest in writing a book about the “SOON” Story.
He asked me about it and in the process of emailing back and forth he concluded that perhaps I ought to be the one writing about it. Mostly because (I suspect) he realized what kind of nut he was dealing with (the kind of nut that doesn’t want anybody changing his words) and because not only do I insist on holding on to all of my “old” words but I can (and do) make up perfectly good new ones at the drop of a hat, or skip of a synapse.
In any case he (not unreasonably) hoped that I would get right to it (the SOON part) but instead, I have spent the better part of the last two years writing 240 pages about half of everything under the sun with very little mention of “SOON” There are reasons for that.
First of all. while some folks see SOON as the end all be all of my work and life, I don’t. (However, I see it as an important piece of music. I love Music and I love people who love music and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let it go until I know the people who would dig hearing it have heard it).
Interestingly, there are a number of self-important people who have consulted themselves and then had the gall to publicly proclaim that “Scott Fagan peaked early with “South Atlantic Blues” and never did anything meaningful after that.” I certainly don’t think that’s true either.
In an attempt at orderliness I conceptualized the mem.wa? as four sections each encapsulating one chronological segment of the life (if you knew how many different things occur to me almost all at once, almost all the time, you might appreciate the attempt to bring order, however, for lack of better experience or “other” experience, this “blizzardito” of ideas and images, is one of the things that makes it ever interesting to me, to be me.) It may be symptomatic of FAE, but “dems the symptoms I got” and thank God I find them interesting and amusing.
Anyway, or rather, further, I imagined the mem.wa? as (thanks to modern technology) a hybrid of words and music (yes I know that’s what a song is) meaning a book with music (yes I know that’s what a Musical is) a combo platter of lit and music, a book that you could listen to (yes I know..) but or rather, a book that allowed you to hear the music in the muse. A mix of book and blog able to organically include music in the experience, a,a,a, Blook!
Anyway when chronologically It was time to write about the teenage years, I felt as if I would need to tread very lightly to avoid hurting other people, not a one of which needs any more pain in their life and I simply don’t have the time to spend zig zagging between truth and consequences, or turning ragweed to roses and so I slowed down a bit to plex on it.
After plenty of good plexateing (and because of the recent SOON activity), I’ve decided to revisit that stuff later, a quick synopsis will suffice and help to put things in context. Here it is.
“Lots of singing, lots of juicing, lots of trouble with the law, lots of love, lots of jealousy, lots of trouble with the law, homeless, violence, lots of trouble with the law, singing in the dungeon, juicing in the dungeon, lots of ah..difficulty in dealing with authority.
All in all, interesting and unusual (by virtue of the people and the settings, down in the Bongo Isles, the deep South in the early 1960’s) worth revisiting, and without question, a set up scenario for lots of trouble with the music business.
So, as noted elsewhere, as a homeless teenager living on a piece of cardboard, on a hillside (Sara Hill) at the end of the airport runway in St. Thomas, I signed on as crew on a fifty foot ketch called “The Success” she was on the last leg of a round the world cruise and bound for Miami. We sailed out of the harbor at Charlotte Amalie at dawn on July 2nd 1964.
My mission was simple and clear, save my beautiful alcoholic mother from herself and get my younger brothers back from social services’s foster care system, set my sister up, get my Pop an Irish Bar in a good drinking locale, eradicate racial prejudice and social injustice by singing my heart out and making a million dollars. Ah… right away.
And..if at all possible, somehow rescue my own 15-year-old sweetie from the guy she had gotten pregnant for and married and gone away to the states with so she could get out of the house ‘cause (the rumor was) she was being molested.
The content and emotion of those days may have been captured somewhat in my song “South Atlantic Blues” written in 1965.
Here are two recordings of it. The first recorded in 1967, is on the ATCO Album “South Atlantic Blues” and the secondrecording that I’ve posted here, is from the LIVE album ” Shake A Bum” recorded in 2010
” South Atlantic Blues” Scott Fagan
You know the Islands are the perfect place for going away
Life’s so easy there you live from day to day to day to day
The father of missions, he once walked proud and tall
He must had seen too many Christians, cause now he’s very small
The poor man’s got no Gods at all
Not counting alcohol, not counting alcohol
You say that’s dues, I’ve got news for you
It’s South Atlantic Blues, South Atlantic Blues
She lives in the alley, the hope gone from her eyes
Her dress is torn and dirty, loving lips are cracked and dried
She sits and cries, my life’s a lie
Her children think she’s died, her children think she’s died
You say that’s dues, I’ve got news for you
It’s South Atlantic Blues, South Atlantic Blues
She stands by the seaside, my love, she waits for me
And I can’t help her as she wonders, how long will it be
I told her once, we would be free, from Charlotte Amalie
Charlotte Amalie, Charlotte Amalie
You say that’s dues, I’ve got news for you
It’s South Atlantic Blues, South Atlantic Blues
You know the Islands are the perfect place for going away
Life’s so easy there you live from day to day to day to day
day to day to day to day…
After many adventures and poetical ruminations, a month later we arrived in the states, and I got a singing gig at a folk Club on US 1 in Ft.Lauderdale called “The House Of Pegasus”. A month after that I arrived in New York City with 11 cents to my name. I called the only phone number I had which had been given to my Mother by a friend of a friend of a songwriter.
The name with the number was Doc Pomus.
I called him and he set a time for me to come sing for him the next day. I did and Doc was kind enough to sign me on the spot.
What’s this have to do with SOON? It’s what they call “backstory” or setting the context, it was also the beginning of my exposure to the for real and serious music business.
Doc was a very successful song writer, with hits galore. Among them; Lonely Avenue, Young Boy Blues, Teenager In Love, Hushabye, This Magic Moment, His Latest Flame, Little Sister, Return To Sender, Go Jimmy Go, Save The Last Dance For Me, and Viva Las Vegas, we lived at the Forrest Hotel on 49th between Broadway and 8th, the Brill Building was right across the street where Doc’s Music publisher Hill And Range Music had their offices.
I of course thought (and my recent three song audition and instant signing reinforced the idea) that music (and by extension the business around it), was magical and made up of people appropriate to populating the magical musical land. I thought that Doc and his partner Mort Shuman, (and the other professional songwriters in and around the Brill Building) had it made in the shade.
I was very surprised (and unhappy) to hear Doc’s descriptions and characterizations of music publishers and record companies as exploitive and dishonest (my fluffity and flautin’ words not his, Doc was more colorfully direct and to the point).
My initial reactive defense was something like “well that’s too bad for the people who get hurt, they probably did something wrong, and anyway, I’m here to make a million and rescue my family.
I don’t want to or have time to, get caught up in stuff like that”
However, Doc was trying to educate me to the reality of the people and the business that we as artists (writers, singers, musicians) were in and had to deal with.
I really didn’t want to hear that stuff or believe it, I much preferred my own magical thinking. Only weeks before I was “sad glad good bad happy mad dreamy lad” swimming in rum and coke delusions down in the beautiful Virgin Islands and suddenly I was a signed and (at least expected to be) grownup professional recording artist (although I wasn’t old enough to sign my own contracts, my Mudder dear had to come to New York to sign them for me) in what was turning out to be a cut throat snake, scorpion and piranha infested reality.
I had seen all kinds of blood spilled in crazy drunken violence, had come face to face with the deepest kinds of hatred, knew all about suffering, deprivation and sadness, but really nothing at all about manicured men in tailored suits whose ambitions for money (yours, mine and everybody else’s) appeared to supersede every other human value and concern.
Though I knew scads about ‘life’s other side” I knew very little about this one and I honestly had never imagined that such people actually existed. And, I really didn’t want to know.
I was at thrilled and excited to see all of Doc and Morty’s BMIwriter awards along the hall ways at Hill and Range, and the awards to song writers Otis Blackwell and Elvis Presley for “Don’t Be Cruel” and “All Shook Up” songs that represented the “liberation theology of Rock And Roll” songs or rather “energy and intention” that inspired and sustained me through a fairly challenging childhood.
Back at the Forrest I said “Doc, I saw all the BMI awards at Hill and Range, I didn’t know that Elvis was a song writer, that he wrote “Don’t Be Cruel” and “All Shook Up” Doc said “Scotty, Elvis didn’t write those songs, Col. Tom Parker said Elvis had to have half of the song or he wouldn’t record them.” I was dumbstruck..I couldn’t believe that Elvis would do something like that, I couldn’t believe that someone would make Otis give away half of what was his.
Doc explained that Elvis had nothing to do with it, it was all Tom Parker, and Tom Parker was all about the money.
Morty took me to a song writers bar on 50th Street just off Broadway and introduced me to a parade of writers (primarily African American) responsible for many of the great Doo Wop hits who had either been cheated out of their royalties or manipulated into actually selling the rights to their songs lock stock and barrel. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
I can’t tell you how much of a true believer I was, music meant the world to me, gave me (and millions of others), hope. Had unified my generation, pulled my sister and me through hell and high water, To discover that slick “business men” had been hurting and cheating and stealing from the people who actually made the music, and that the people, the public didn’t know a thing about it, and therefore no one would do anything to stop it, was soul searing and outrageous to me. And frankly, that was only the beginning.
So there we see part of the genesis of SOON.
This belief/ idea that if “people only knew they would do some thing” was an old one for me.
In 1954 my step father Howard and my Mother, fleeing bills in St. Thomas, moved us into an apartment at Parada 25 and Aveneda Fernandez Juncos, in Santurce, Puerto Rico, next to what was at that time considered the largest and worst shanty slum in all of Latin America, “El Fangito”. When I first saw naked little children, feeding themselves out of garbage cans, I said to my self “If the people in America knew about this they would do something about it” and I decided that “I’m going to learn to write songs and tell im’ cause if they knew about it, they would surely do something about it”
This was an earlier element in the Genesis of “SOON”
I still believe. The only difference now is the realization that writing the song and even singing it at the top of your lungs is no guarantee that anyone will hear it, or that the information will get to the people, or if in fact the song is heard, that the people who hear it will care enough or can afford to care enough to do something. Things simply aren’t as simple as they once seemed. However if one cares, then you’ve got to keep trying.
Continues…
Book 4. What a Wonderful Gig!
What a wonderful gig we had in Brooklyn yesterday (Saturday 5/7/11) at the big Convergence in Red Hook Event. What fun!
The MAAC Island Band fluted and banged their socks and maracas off and I (while breaking three strings myself) sang like a banshee in flames. The dancers twirled the colors swirled and the music that makes happy, ruled the land.
Many a girl from yesterday was there, piffeled up with perfume and looking all shiny and new. Each as enticing as ever.
There is a communal space (parallel to the muggled mundane) in which “them that makes the music and them that receives it” are intimately bound in transcendental joy, breath to breath, beat to beat, spirit to spirit. I thee, you, me… a “we”. A “we” that is at once plural, that is at once singular. A “plural singularity”, a delight to sing in, a delight to sing from, a delight to sing to. All in all, past wonderful.
We will be back in New York for the big “Make Music New York Festival” on June 21 st. Musical artists of every kind will be playing simultaneously all over the city. We “Scott Fagan And The MAAC Island Band” are scheduled to play at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza (46th and First, across from the UN) from 4:00 to 5:00 PM. We can hardly wait! Perhaps we will see you there!
Here are two more tunes from the LIVE Album “Shake A Bum” I hope you enjoy them.
Here is “Mademoiselle”
and Here is “Where My Lover Has Gone”
Book 4. Virgin Islands Singer Scott Fagan to perform at The Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition’s big “CONVERGENCE IN RED HOOK” on May 7th 2011
Here is The Press release for the upcoming NYC gig.. followed by the “Backstory attachment” to that press release, that folks got. It’s here because this sort of stuff is interesting, and necessary in this business.
I have added the Theme form “SOON” and The Theme From “The Virgin Islands Songs” You will find them at the very bottom of the page.
BWAC.org is a great venue and we very much enjoy our time there, come on down (or up as the case may be) if you are free.
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For immediate Release:
Virgin Islands Singer Scott Fagan (Subject of Jasper Johns Lithograph “Scott Fagan Record”, Author and Lyricist of “SOON” the very first Rock Opera produced on Broadway, and Father of 2009 OBIE Winner and Magnetic Fields front man Stephin Merritt), is coming to New York to perform at The Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition’s big Spring opening “CONVERGENCE IN RED HOOK” on May 7th 2011.
Scott Fagan and The MAAC Island Band, are currently promoting their LIVE Album “SHAKE A BUM” which includes selections from Scott’s new Musical “The Virgin Islands Songs”. Scott Fagan and The MAAC Island Band will perform three sets between 1 and 5:30 PM.
The Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Cooperative is located at 499 Vanbrunt Street, Brooklyn, NY. For Directions please visit bwac.org
Please contact Shari Brandt 717-944-1187 at the Middletown Area Arts Collective. www.middletownarts.com or scottfagan@lilfishrecords.com
Thank you!
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SCOTT FAGAN “De Real Ting Mon”
Scott who? Scott Fagan. Here’s the 411…
Scott Fagan is a brilliant musician born in New York City and raised in the Virgin Islands. This talented artist has a one of a kind sound with a Caribbeankick. Scott has been an international recording artist since leaving Charlotte Amalie High School in 1964 to sign with Columbia Records. During that time he has released nine albums and multiple singles, in addition to writing and appearing in “SOON” the very first Rock Opera produced on Broadway!
His Caribbean consciousness is manifested throughout his work. Scott’s musical innovations underlie the “Contemporary Caribbean” or “Caribilly” genre widely popularized by Jimmy Buffet, Kenny Chesney, and others. His very first album, “South Atlantic Blues”, released in the summer of 1968, now recognized as a classic, inspired Jasper John’s lithographic series “Scott Fagan Record” part of the permanent collections of museums all over the world, including MOMA, The National Gallery, and The Tel Aviv.
Scott’s albums: “South Atlantic Blues”1968, “Many Sunny Places”1976, “Sandy the Bluenosed Reindeer”2000, “Buried Treasures, (The V.I Songs Vol. l)”2004, “Dreams Should Never Die” The V.I. Songs Vol. ll) 2005, ”SOON”2009, “The Virgin Islands Songs, The MUSICAL”2010, ”Buckra De Paehae” ( a spoken word Calypso Comedy album)2010, and most recently his LIVE album with The MAAC Island Band “Shake A Bum”2011, Can all be found at www.thecollectedworksofscottfagan.com
Scott Fagan has spent 40 of the past 47 years, trying to revive his career after being “blacklisted” by the “old school” Music Business for his Rock Opera “SOON”. Scott wrote “SOON” to bring attention to the “absurdity and cruelty of the music business, and its destructive effects on artists and society”.
Here’s what Martin Brookspan had to say:
“The tide of Rock musicals reaches its high water mark in SOON… an inventive, imaginative, brilliantly realized creation.”
Emory Lewis said:
“SOON is a hallelujah blessing, glorious music easily the best score of the season… I loved every rocking minute.”
And John Schubeck:
“Staggering shots of meaning. Dynamite in so many ways.”
In spite of reviews like these, and a cast which included Peter Allen, Richard Gere, Vickie Sue Robinson, Nell Carter, Marian Ramsey, and Leata Galloway, SOON was pulled the day after it opened. Ironically, Scott’s son, Stephin Merritt of Magnetic Fields, Gothic Archie’s, The 666’s, and Future Bible Heroes fame, recently won the Obie award for his first musical “Coraline”. Quite a chip off the old block…
So, where’s Scott Fagan now? He’s busy busy, gigging with the MAAC Island Band, promoting the LIVE album “Shake a Bum” and Scott’s own Calypso Comedy album “Buckra de Paehae”, keeping an eye on two of his musicals in pre-production. First is “The Virgin Island Songs”, scheduled to debut inSt. Thomas,Virgin Islands, and the other?? “SOON” scheduled for November, in Johnstown,Pennsylvania. That’s right, “SOON” is back in production!
But wait, there’s more! You can catch Scott Fagan and the MAAC Island Band live in New York on May 7th, 2011 (from 1-5:30 PM) at The Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition’s big spring show “Convergence in Red Hook” www.bwac.org
At The United Nations Dag Hammarskjold Plaza in New York’s Citywide Music Festival (Make Music New York) on June 21 st at 4:00PM,
Or at Scott and the band’s stateside home base the Middletown Area Arts Collective (MAAC) (www.middletownarts.com) at 3 South Union Street in Middletown, PA. (Contact Shari Brandt at 717-944-1187).Thank You!
The Theme from “SOON”
The Theme from “The Virgin Islands Songs”
Scott Fagan's Mem.wa? 