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Book 4. Granfaddah Buckra An De Bo’Hog
Back ground vocals on Tuesday morning for the new LIVE album, New York City on Wed and Thur, to do interviews for the Doc Pomus Documentaery, and the Jimi Hendrix/Steve Paul’s Scene Documentry.
So…Here’s a brand new “Buckra de Paehae”, I hope that you enjoy it!
GRAN FADDAH BUCKRA AN DE BO’ HOG
Scott Fagan 9/30-10/2 2010
Well… now it happen so dat Gran Faddah Buckra had de biggest, de schupides, de ugliest, de stinkis, de noisiest and de nastyiest Bo Hog anybody had evah seen..
de Buckra liked to call him King George, and he loved dat Bo Hog like a Bruddah
One day de neighbor dem come sae…,
“Buckra, you know Black people is good people, an de don mine if yu wan tu live wid dem an roun dem an side a dem oh undah neet a dem oh on top a dem or all in de middle an in between a dem excepin’ when dat big stinkin ugly’ bo’ hog of yours own “dat yu likes tu call King George”, du knock doun he pig pen “dat yu likes tu call he Castle of King George” an wha yu set up right in de middle a de yad, dat yu likes tu call “de Kingdom of King George” when dat Bo’ hog come rootin up in every body business all ovah de yad, an throwin’ doun de cloths line wid all de chirren dem clean clothes on it, an rootin’ up an rollin up in all de woman dem clean panty, rootin up and rollng ovah doung in de dutty mud an stinkin’ up de place an oinkin up de place an squealin up de place like de las pig outta hell an wakin’ up all de people dem in de yad which of late has happen almos every single night a de week an twice on Sunday,
An Buckra, like we say, yu n kno black people is good people an we don mine, but Buckra OH God Buckra,.we tink is time you should go live among yu own kine”..
Me own kine? sae de Buckra, me own kine? Wha kina kine yu tink is me own kine?
De boldest of de Neighbah dem sae “we have contemplated and conclude you should go live doun in Cha Cha tuun”,
“Cha Cha toun? Say de Buckra, Cha Cha Toun?”
Yes sah Buckra we have decided that you should go live wid de res a dem Cha Cha doun in Cha Cha toun”
“Yu tink oy is a Cha cha? Yu tink oy is a Cha Cha?
Yu loy,! Yu don kno I is a white man?
I ain no Cha Cha, yu Muddah is a Cha Cha!”
No no! de uddah Neighbah say, no no not a Cha Cha, St. Thomas ain ga no Cha Cha no more, We doesn use that expression no more, she mean tu sae you should go live wid de res a dem doun Carenage..ers doun in Carenage..
Carenage? Carenage? Who yu callin a Carenage? yu Muddah is aa Carenage!
No No Mistah Buckra, das de Frenchie dem way tu say French Toun,
French Toun? French Toun? Yu tink I should go live in French Toun?
Yes sah Mistah Buckra, Everybody in de yad say yu is a Balahoo..
Das why yu should go livewid de res a de balahoo dem doun in Cha Cha, ah mean French ah mean Carenage Toun!
Anuddah neibah pipe in
“Yes man yu keeian see how it is?
Guana should live wid Guana,
Mongoose should live wid Mongoose,
Guava don grow onna Cenepe Tree and yu shluld be wid de res a de Frenchie, Doun in Frenchie Toun”
De Buckra hot now, he say Guana? Guana? Who yu callin a Guana? Yu muddah is a Guana!
Not a Guana, de neighbah sae, not a Guana, yu is a Frenchie.
“Oy? Oy? You schupid oh sumting? Yu damn forward AN schupiddy Oy ain no Frenchie, Oy Is a white man yu talking to… Any body cou see I is a white man,.. wha wrang wid yu, anybody cou see Buckra De Paehae is a white man!”
Buckra, (say de very darkest a de neighbah dem) Buckra, If you is a white man I is a Frenchie, if yu is a white man, why we don hear yu Yankin, Buckra, why we don hear yu yankin?”
“Yankin? Yankin? Sae de Buckra, yu want tu hear me Yankin?”
“Ok den.
AYHMM COME FRUM ALABAMA
WID A BANJO ON MAH KNEE, BUT NOW AH MMM JES A SAILOR IN THE U.S NAYVEE”
“Yu see wha ah tell yu? Yu see wha ah tell yu? De neighbah sae, he ain no white man, he ain no white man. He keeian yank! Bou he is a white man, a white man wha keeian Yank? Yu evah see a white man wha keeian yank? De Buckra ain no white man, he is nuttin’ but a mushay! Ah say Sen im doun French Town!
Oh yeah say de Buckra, Oh Yeah? Ok, den.. “AH KIN SEE AHMM A GONNA HALF TA TALK REAL SERIOUS TU YAALLS SO YALL’S GONNA KNOW DAT YU IS TALKIN’ WID A BIG TIME AN IMPORTANT WHITE MAN WHEN YU IS DEALING WID DE BUCKRA.
NAH AHM A GONNA TELL YA SUNPIN, AH DON’T LIKE DE WAY SOMEFOLKS IS BEEN HARASSIN’ AN HOG TIEIN’ MY GOOD KING GEORGE THE PO’K SWINE WID YER CLOTHLINES EVERY NIGHT AN AHMM A GITTIN’ TIURD AH TELLIN YA SO,
BUT JUS SOS, DERES NO HARD FEELINS,AN DIS DON’T BECOME SOME KINA FUGE, AH RECKON AHMM A GONNA PACK UP MAH SADDLEBAGS AN TAKE MA HERD, AH MEAN MA BO’HOAWAWG, AN MOSEY ON DOUN WEST.
Yes Yes, Buckra de neighbah dem say, yes yes das de bes ting Buckra, mosey on doun west to Cha Cha toun…
An Me Boy, das when de REAL trouble start!
Buckra and de Bo’ Hog went straight doun to French Town an walk right in to de famous Normandy Bah, it wa round 11 a clock in de mawnin so naturally de place wa almos full. Half a de man dem wa teachin’ high school and mos a de legislatue was doun dare tu get a good head start on de day. Plus a few Sailah Man…
Now de Bucvkra had done make up he mine dat he ain talking no mo Island talk, because he ain wan nobody to make no mo mistake bou de fac dat is a white man through an through, from den on he Yankin straight,
Well… maybe a white man wid a lil someting else throw in in dare but all de same de Buckra say he Yankin’ straight.
“WAL MA GOOD FRENCHIE FELLOW” he say to de lil bahman “ LEMME HAVE DE BES RED SODA DAT YOU GOT IN DE PLACE AN PLUS AH WANTS TU RENT A LIL HOUSE FROM Y’ALL DOUN IN DIS HEAH FRENCH TOWN”
Dat time a man name Magras, sae “
“Hey hey wait meson wait, Wha yu tink yu goin wid dat Bo hog?”Dis is de Narmandy Bah, only de bes a people cu come in in side a heah an we don deal wid no Bo Hag doun French Toun , We is fishah man doug here, RIDERS ON THE SEA! You in de wrang place me boy, yu bettah go Nart side whea yu cou join up wid de res a dem RIDERS ON A DONKEY, an fuddah mo you ain no Frenchie! You mubbee som kina doublebreed Daneman an Putto Rician from Sain Croix!
All dis time three or fo drunken Sailah done feed King George de Bo Hog mo dan a quart a rum and coke chase down wid bou five or six cold schafah beer me boy, and de Bo Hog feelin’ it now.
“OINK! OINK! SQUEEE! SQUEEE! OINK! OINK! SQUEEE! SQUEEE! Say de Bo Hag.
Den he take off trunning roung and roung in de Normandy Bah, tunnin up and knockin doun table a chair, lef and right, all ovah de place, dis time he change he tune he bawling out “ (SQUEEYAW SQUEEYAW OINK OINK! SQUEEYAW! SQUEEYAW! De nex ting yu know de Bo Hag stop an start tu swing and sawy. He open he eye dem wide wide and den… he vomit up a Green an Yellow tidal wave of de wus stinkin frat full a ole drawers and panty yu evah see.
De sailah dem killing dey self wid de laugh, but de Frenchie dem don tink it’s so funny ah tall.
Well me boy, Buckra an de Bo Hag had tu haul dey “humpf” outta French Town man dey two a dem run straight an all de way up Demarara Gut through mo jackspania and catchankee… dem boy ain stop til de reach de very top a Crown an some ways doun de uddah side.
An dats how Buckra and de Bo Hag fus arrive in Nelteburg.
But befo yu know it dat Bo Hog King George wa makin trouble an terrorizing de poor people dem out dare, rooting up in de peppah patch and knockin doun de cloths line.. well until he disappeared one day.
Some people say King George de Bo’ Hog decided tu go St. John an is de Faddah and de Gran Faddah of mos a de wus a de wile pig an even some a de wile donkey dem harassin de people dem up dare in St. John,
Som uddah people say dem Nart side French man finally get tu hol de Bo’ hog,, an had de biggis roas pig of all time, evah dat Bastille Day doun Hull bay,
But mos of all a taxi man say he know fo a fac dat dem boy from the de Agricultural Station out Dorithia catch King George an dress him up like a touris an put him onna touris boat, an nobody didn’t notice de difference between he an de res a dem til’ dey reach back Florida me boy.
I don kno about dat, but de pert I tell yu, is wha happen an das de trut de whole trut an nuttin but de trut… So help me Miss Gearty!
Book 1.MORE The Blessed Virgins. and Book 4. LIVE Continued
Book 1.MORE The Blessed Virgins. and Book 4. LIVE Continued
The time between 1958 (when we returned to the Islands) and 1964 when I sailed away to “fame and fortune” in the music business was very eventful or full of “stuff” some of which I have already touched on in earlier entrys,(see 11 through 16) but much of which remains to be seen or said, writ and read.
We were young teenagers straddling multiple (many multiple) worlds, and because pool is undeniably the perfect allegory for life (in some quarkatronic parallel dimension), you will comprende when I say, it seems like one day everything is racked up tight n’ right and the next your worlds are rocketing away in the slam crack! echo-math of a resoundingly good breaksplosion.
Further with the poolagory,after rocketing apart, by God they hit the bumpers and come ricocheting back towards one another (or not) often colliding to make even more mayhem, and so and so on until finally all is calm and quiet again except that everything is where it wasn’t before and what wasn’t before now is, and on top of that there is a fair possibility that one or more balls (worlds) are gone and of course, no sooner do you adjust to that, when slam bang crackola mam, everything changes again.On second thought, Maybe war is a better allegory, but what would we call it? Warality, or perhaps reality?
Anyway, I am very relieved to have finally discovered or received, resisted, and finally accepted that change is the only real constant (now don’t think that I think that I’m making a statement of ultimate wisdom,e fact or universal truth ‘cause I know as well as the next psychedelic casuality that things ain’t always what they seem, and even ultimate truths are subject to their context or the shifting physics of sub atomic worlds and quantum dimensionality,( man it’s like one has to be a Zen master Psycho Scientist to step out of the door and hold your ever-changing own with the question of “what the heck’s goin’ on?’) anyway, I didn’t know this stuff then and so I often hoped, hoped with all my heart that nothing would ever change, that every thing would stay just the way it is this minute this hour this day forever…
Those were the times of course in which the world was as sweet and slow as golden honey (ah yes…against the blue blue of the countless shades of blue sea)
Rather than the times of violent chaotic change, or the happy/tragic occasion of a friends family (like the family of the The Girl With the Golden Skin) moving away from our “low cost housing community” to their own beautiful new home on a hill with the Million dollar views and the cool Island breeze…)
There were many golden days of the greatest camaraderie Cont…
PS Here’s a whimsical little piece on perhaps a Quantumized here after..
“Dead As Dust”. .
(Dust To Dust I’ve heard them say but..)
I’ve been told someday wemust
all wake up dead as dust
dead as dust.. what could that mean?
organic stuff with rocks between?
Have you ever looked at dust?
It’s alive!!! (except for rust)
A universe of universes there,
(between the bread crumbs and the doggie-hair)
and the mites (lil bugs big as elephants
with faces like mosquitos eating peppermints)
but if the dusts a little wet,
that doubles the universes that you’ll get
Great googamooga could it be
that that is what becomes of me?
We (I’ll) turn into the space between
the color blue and the color green
and fly in thirty different directions
all at once in thirty sections?
Oh I hope and pray there’ll be
some of me left of me
so I can dig this dance electric
from my dusty new prospectric
I wouldn’t miss the streets of gold
patrolled by strict prophets of old
declaiming ‘bout the days of Heaven
like nutty buckets outside a seven eleven.
I’d rather be singing with my dead dust band,
with my new name “dead as dust dude man”
everything that is, I’ll be..
part of it… all part of me
Great googa mooga I mean, really?
part of it… all part of me?
going up while going down
left and right and round and round
out in the country, while in town?
In silence AND rip-roaring sound?
Dead as dust might be exciting
(though the dyings not so inviting)
Although some folks go from here to there
rocking in their rocking chair,
Other people wake up dead
Intheir jammies in theirbed
I guess dead as dusts a kind of blender
that takes our mollycules and sends..er
friends them every wich-a-way
from Sapphire beach to Botney bay.
Me in the sea me in the air
me in all things everywhere
instead of like a dull vacation,
life’s (er..deaths) an exclamation!
Wow! wow! did you see that?
I’m a doggie AND a cat
I’m seeing through my ears AND eyes,
Hey!, Wot th heck? time really flies!
Dead as dust don’t sound so bad,
not the worst trip I’ve ever had
but for now if you don’t mind,
I think I’d rather stay behind…….
I think I’d rather live some more
and dance around the ballroom floor
but with every little mote alive
I give my word that I will strive
to live much more considerately
of every little dust ball that I see
Book 4. “LIVE” Continues
I have decided that I would like to have some Background singers on the “Shake A Bum” album, so I have found two good candidates ladyfairs, and we will do our first recording session this Thursday at 10 AM.
It happens that female background singers are just about my favorite musical instrument of all time, I simply love them, and everything about them..and perhaps most of all, their attitude. Yes yes I know, sounds mighty fishy but, they are an instrument with attitude, attitude that can, that must be able to shift and change at the drop of a hat or chord and change with absolute confidence. They are an instrument that is aware of it’s own iridescent beauty. A thing transformed, from the very first breath, the reality in and all around them changes to something extraordinary and grand.
Something extraordinary grande and wonderful like a full concert grand.
They are sublime..so, I may have let slip that I am fond of back ground chicks, having said all that I do hope the chicks can sing.
I’ve listened carefully, I think they can, but we shall see. You just never know until we are all singing together. Then it becomes like a game of give and take of musical tag a vocal dance of mutual inspiration and communication. I wish everyone could know the joy of creating a joyful groove and singing your heart out. When you are through you are often depleted in quite a physically and psychologically healthy way. If they can sing we will finish this album as quickly as possible and get out on the road to promote the heck out of it. It’s goint to be a great release literally and figuratively and I will be hoping to see folks I’ve been missing all over the world. For example, did you know that I have a serious coterie of fans in Prague Czechoslovakia? From as far back as South Atlantic Blues,along with a following in Asia? And Scandinavia? I can’t wait and the band is raring to go.. we shall see.
BOOK 1 The Blessed Virgins, and “LIVE” Continued…
BOOK 1 The Blessed Virgins, and “LIVE” Continued…
So it is a gray and raining morning in 1958 and I (known for convenience and contrivance in this piece as I, Me, He, The Boy, The White Boy, the Artist and other convenient phrases (mebbe even) Scott Fagan) am standing on the edge of a road with no name other than “De Road… Doun De Road” (which was and is) he main road from town (Charlotte Amalia or Charlotte Amalie, for odd linguistic reason (mostly charitable I suspect) both are (like CariBEEan and CaRIBBYan) considered to be correct) to all points west. Brewers Bay, Bordeaux, Flamingo Pond, Fortuna, Botney Bay, Santa Maria Bay, Pull Or Be Damned, and other romantic piratical places. I am wearing my New York City black leather Jacket while breathing deeply of and thus absorbing at a molecular level the reality of rainy season in the beautiful, but don’t doubt it, strange, Mambo Bongo Isles.
The observant observer might notice and remark that “this white boy wearing a leather jacket by the side of the road”appears to be neither here nor there” in truth of fact or fact of matter, the observant observer need not have been any more perceptive and insightful than a lizard, even the most casual, disinterested passerby, in fact, any living thing (including mule, cow, goat and braying jackass) seeing him would likely register immediately that “this boy is somewhere and something else” thereby triggering an automatic and immediate “note to self” the universal trans-species translation of which would be something like “I’d better keep an eye on this guy”
What they were less likely to notice was that the odd duck out in the rain was awash with intense impressions, which were self organizing into the foundation of an interesting combination or integration of cultural (and musical) rhythms and realities.
For example, the sights and smells of that grey and rainy morning in 1958 would be lifted whole cloth to become the song “Hidaway” in 1967, which he would be screeching and yowling (singing) in a big time music publishers office in Rockefeller Center one morning in 1968 and seized on immediately by his writing partner Joe (AKA Jose Silvio Martinez) Kookoolis to convince the professional staff that the song was an integral and representative part of an “Opera” ah..a “Rock Opera” that he and the neither here nor there boy, were just about finished writing and that “of course” this entire brand new and mighty fine score would be thrown in as part of our song catalog, for the publishing agreement that we were at that very moment, there to discuss and negotiate.
The smell of my leather jacket was always a thing of wonder to me and no less so that morning. It filled my head with a secret satisfaction, a confident security likely well-known to the well armored since time began.
In my head is music, specifically or essentially the liberation theology of rock and roll but shot through, tinted and tinged with related genre upon genre and sub genre upon sub genre and reshaped by the crisscrossing cultural realities that it would be tasked to represent.
In my eyes, the most fantastic green and blues filtered through and bordered or framed by low hanging silver clouds that make the sky no more than 300 feet high.
In my sniffer, a soggy sweet perfumed mix of rain, cow dung, salty sea and the fruit salad scent of wild tropical flora, and ah…in my heart the first deep stirrings of love for “The Girl with The Golden Skin” It’s a fine case of time and place all over the place. And a good example of how it is/was to be me then and now, or perhaps more accurately now and then, meaning sometimes…
In that moment however, the white boy is acutely aware that he is the “poorest” white boy that he has ever known or even ever seen, his sense of self is unfortunately now somewhat negatively impacted by shame related to this, and the knowledge that his pitifully alcoholic step father (yes the Mother dear has for reasons best know to God and those few of his angels who fully comprehend the effects of paternal suicide on a nine-year old daughter, rape at 16 as a first sexual experience, in an alley in Washington DC, the befogglement of early mid-stage alcoholism and the mind-boggling conflicting mis-information (coming from in side and outside the mind) related to so-called co-dependency, hooked up with Howard again) who as mentioned before, is an extremely public and universally disrespected drunkard and laughing-stock of the community.
What’s the community? Well as we all know (both here and there) they are many and varied.
he community of most immediate concern to the boy at that time, would have been the 8 to 10 older “native” boys (known as “Dem Boy) in his immediate section of the Island” The Dem Boy community in number and position is mirrored and repeated all across the land (the I land) “Dem Boy” are the seemingly magically omnipresent absolutely judgemental shapers of values, morality and behaviors for any younger boy subject to their pressures. “Dem Boy” are the gatekeepers of conditional acceptance (it would be interesting to know which society where in the world this “Dem Boy” social structure developed) or eternal dis-approval and damnation in young man land. Rather, “local young tough guy man landl” meaning the young man land of the economically disadvantaged, as opposed to young men of privilege land (color or cash) who are contemptuously dismissed by “Dem Boy” (in the short form) as “Auntie-men” or in the long form as “schupid auntie-man muddah skunts”
All of that to suggest and illustrate that the young “neither here nor there white boy” felt very strongly that he had much to prove and consequently was (by circumstance, environment and temperament) on his way to becoming “something else” or more specifically, an “other than ordinary recording artist”, whose interesting integration of cultures and music, would someday prove uniquely unusual and confusing to major labels, record bin organizers, and music writers, (most recently one self-aggrandizing and insulting “know it all know nothing” from Toronto, Canada).
So, the boy by the side of the road with no name, turned out to be a white artist from the predominately black West Indies whose integration of his own cultural and musical influences, continues to present it’s self in most interesting and amusing ways. entertaining even as in the “LIVE “currently in production” “Shake A Bum” album by Scott Fagan and The MAAC Island Band,
Yes indeed, It is interesting, to say the least, to see and understand so clearly how things express and work themselves out.
As further illustration of the potential for joy inherent in the great cultural combo platter of life described, here is a rough mix (pre back ground vocals) of the “neither here nor there boy by the side of the road’s” composition and current recording of his somewhat tantric and liberating mantra “Shake A Bum”
BOOK 4. LIVE Continued…
BOOK 4. LIVE Continued…
We have scheduled two nights for the recordings Wed Sept. 1 st and Sat. Sept. the 4th Wed is done and we are heading for Saturday.
Ok now, Sat is done, and we are heading for a second Wed. ((Sept the 8th) ok, that Wed is done and we are heading for a second Saturday (Sept 11th) and a six hour performance gig on Sunday and so forth and so on and so on…
When one is recording on one track (actually, one would be fine, but when one is more than one, the possibility for error is magnified greatly) as I was saying when one is more than one and they are all recording on one track, actually, five people playing quick-o ka- split-o at full speed ahead on one track, you probably all together generate a “note bloom” cascade or “up fall” of an easy hundred thousand clangs and bangs (or musical notes if you prefer)
If the Bass or Conga or Drum hit a “wrong clang bang or note” it may not be a problem, however if the lead guitar, or primo screechist hits a clango bango anywhere in the performance, you have to redo the whole blasted cacophonic all over again.
Not that I mind, I love to sing and as I never sing a thing the same way twice, it’s always new and fun for me. However, the boys in the band jave expressed a strong desire for me to do things the way we had rehersed them but …wella wella wella…you might as well try to squeeze a saltfish sandwich out of a turnip.
Not that I don’t want to make things easier for the MAAC men, it’s just that… wella wella wella, you might as well try to squeeze a chinchilla out of a mango seed
We have certainly gotten spoiled by “individual tracking”(in which each instrument is channeled and recorded separately on it’s own individual track, to be tweaked, vitamin fortified, polished and recombined with the others later, sorta like Grand Ma’s powdered taters or the KLIM milk that we endured as little ones in public school down in the Mambo Isles…
Friends, I could do a forty year rant on KLIM milk and the odd combination, the mis-measure of powder and water, Lord help us “Boiling hot water” that de chirums dem were led to believe was milk, and were forced to press our lips against every single time the blasted bell rang-a-lang LUNCHTIME!
The truth is, some of us, many of us, were every bit as big headed and bony as the kids used in fund raising appeals for the starving of the world, in fact more than a few of us were candidates for Feed The Children or UNICEF our selves and should have been first in line for a can of spam and some powdered eggs, but there are some things you would rather die than do, and high on that list would be taking a second slurp or sip of that toxic torture serum KLIM.
I think I can state as a most likely fact that not a single adult of free-will ever willingly drank a whole glass, cup or calabash of that stuff to “test the mix” before giving it to the “sweet little innocent, once open, once bright eyed, once trusting, children that we “once upon a time” were, down at Nisky School.
I know for a fact that some of the boys vowed to make it their life’s work to track down and wreak revenge on whoever was responsible for not only making this stuff, but further, convincing flubble headed grown-ups to make children (did I mention theretofore bright eyed, innocent and trusting?) drink it.
It’s a fact that the same flubble headed grown ups could have used just the threat of having to drink it, to uncover all the secrets of the children under their command, (which were secrets a plenty) and as an entirely effective non violent tool for behavior modification, rather than the in-effective combo of KLIM torture, head banging, and “stand ‘im out to out swelter sweat in the hot sun” technique invented by anonymous torture misters of the Battan death march, and perfected by first second and third grade teachers at Nisky.
Any way, as I may have noted earlier a certain Maryann was the sweet cool breeze in the popping swelter sweat of KLIM provoked childhood angst, and after four (or is it forty?) swacks (*attempts) at it, her remembrance song is EQ’d and done.
This means there are now only thirteen others to go. (lemme see forty times thirteen times a hundred thousand notes…)
You have probably thought all these years thought that the life of a singer like me was one unending sequence of passionate and perfumed smooches and the like, but now you see that in addition, we are obliged to be fluent in higher mathematics as well and well, Yo no habla mathematics high or low, perhaps because like most of the children at the old Nisky alma mater, I spent arithmetic time hiding in the bushes hoping to avoid KLIM time. Do I regret it? Not a chance in eleventeen!
More to the present, the record is going to be great fun for folks, full of upbeat live performances AND some pretty good crooney tunes as well.
Recording is supposed to be fun, not the grim, clock watching, knuckle gnawing exercise in anxiety that it too often is, or the stultifying mind warping technical spaghetti morass that “jargon junkies gone wild” would have us poor non-verbal (but occasionally verbose) bongo bangers believe it has to be.
There is great fun in playing music; there is great fun in listening to music, in other words, in sending, in receiving, music. That’s the joy, that’s the deal.
It seems like most if not all of the business around it, is one or another kind of strange parasitic attachment that diminishes the joy at either and both ends.
Which idea presents an Interesting opportunity for a biometric model to measure the potency of the juices siphoned away and to explore the alternatives available or inviting invention) That’s the kind of thinking that one notices reverberating in the noggin, when one has spent one’s school years hiding in the bushes among the land crabs, wild tamarind, acacia and catch and keep at KLIM time.
In any case, the new record is continuing apace, we have tweakage too do (additional percussion and EQ) and then mastering before sending it off for “pressing”.
This means that we have two new albums to release and promote, “The Virgin Islands Songs” along with it’s single “Surrender To The Sun” and Scott Fagan And The MAAC Island Band and it’s single “Shake A Bum” We are as busy as can be and with the new MAAC Variety Show now scheduled for every Friday evening, we will soon be even more so. I have to find a way to make more time for working on the Memwa? As I think it is important and perhaps more importantly, I thoroughly enjoy the writing of it.
Here are two recent poeticals:
“The Limpin Proletariat”
Scott Fagan
Ah the Limpin Proletariat, All lumped up and limping along
from mash up to knock down
to and fro
from pillaged to whippin’(whupped) post
from pooped to popped
and back again.
Pity the poor lucked out lumped up and limpin’ pope frazzled’ roll your own Mama’s a maniac cross eyed confused battered and bruised proletariat with no protecting angel. nor avenging, nope..not allowed., wild eyed cactus relish pie perhaps or rattle snake salad in good gritty sand… sans suds.
Nothing real and good for the likes of youse or ye, ya dadgum grumpy weepin, wailing, cussed and concussed, (at and out) poor confounded contused and abused, lied to bribed and poisoned double disadvantaged, toothache struck depressed, and diarriac limpin’ proletariat, yearning to be freed.
“I Dance Therefore I Am” (Vicstory) Scott Fagan
I Dance Therefore I Am, (Hey, whad I ever do to you?)
I suffer and sleep I dream and I remember, I hope and I awake, I Dance, Therefore I Am
I sweep my arms up to Heaven and sing Glory Halleluiah Jubilation without end!
I dance to be, to express me in unity with the oh so how many Millions or more that have danced before, that have wiggled and waltzed, romped and wagged their tails at one another making eyes making love, making… what you see.
This solitary is.
these sunken eyes
these shrunken hollows
this wayfared stranger
that has become of me.
like all things that die and have died,
all things that live and have lived
that love and have loved
that have breathed and wept that have called out in the cold uncaring night, crying SEE ME! SEE ME! SEE ME!
I dance therefore I am, I dance therefore I am,
I dance therefore I am!
Book 4. “LIVE”
Book 4. “LIVE”
This week the MAAC Island Band and I will be recording a” LIVE” album at Union Street Blues, in the MAAC Gallery in, Middletown Pennsylvania. We will be doing a number of interesting songs in a variety of interesting ways. Among them will be “Shake A Bum” a tune that a number of people are quite excited about.
I have plexed on this and concluded that folks are excited because the song is…well I guess there’s no other way to ‘splain it other than the song is plain out fun, It gets people up and shaking their bums. There is some talk about creating an iconic type visual of a hiney in motion, to go on T shirts and bum…per stickers, and perhaps even a poster or painting or two hilkighting and celkebrating the action described in the song. Sounds like fun on well… fun. We shall see.
One of the oddest things that I’ve learned in forty seven years as a recording artist, is that sometimes regardless of the enthusiasm for a song and they careful preparation in arranging and recording the song, sometimes, inexplicably it just doesn’t come off as intended. This has happened to every artist, every lyricist, every producer, every arranger and composer at one time or another.
That’s why in the daze of yore, the rule for a singles session was “always go in with three tunes”, because any one of them may not come out the way every one had hoped.
We are going into recording an album with fifteen, hoping to come away with ten if not twelve good recordings. There will be no multi-tracking; instead, we are doing it the old fashioned way. Play like heck hoping that no one instrument is too loud or trips over a cord or chord and upstruckalates the take.
And even though the band looks like a bunch of Frenchies and Tortola men (with un Ricanio stuck in the middle) the truth is they (excepting the Ricanio) are statesideers. Therefore the possibility of a “Contemporary Caribbean” tune losing its way through excessive engagement and entanglement and finally bogging down enmeshed with a sideways polka riff and the maracas from hell, is always a possibility.
But no, we won’t think about that, instead, we will be heck bent on creating the proper musical bed for a Carabilly Caruso, to screech and yowl against, with all the passion (purple and otherwise) he/me can struffel up.
There are a number of songs, each with their own story. However, I am aware that, more often than not it’s best to let the listener bring their own story to the song. The more that they can do that, the more personal their experience with the song is likely to be. Having said and knowing that, my little sweetie in the first grade down in the bongo Isles was named Maryann and she has been on my mind from then to now. Maryann left with her family to go to the states (in those days that meant New York) and I have never seen or heard hide nor word about her.
What an innocence we were. And will always be, to me.
How often I have wished her well. I have been singing about her from then to now. God Bless Maryanne.
Continues…
BOOK 4. One year into the Memwa?
BOOK 4. One year into the Memwa?
I started writing the Memwa? Ten days before my sixty-fourth Birthday (Aug 16th and Aug 26) now it’s Aug 24th, two days before my sixty-fifth. I began in St. Thomas where I was recording (or attempting to record), my new Musical “The Virgin Islands Songs”. I’m now in the states performing my concert version of “The Virgin Islands Songs” and working with a collection of musicians from the MAAC collective as “Scott Fagan and The MAAC Island Band”.
I started out by committing to 1000 words a day for ninety days and was able to maintain that schedule through the commitment. Since then, (or more accurately, most recently) it’s become catch as catch can. In part because of the requirements of gigging, earning my little fazools, and my commitment to the collective… I have had great fun and lots of laughs writing the Memwa? Still though, it is far from finished, and it is clear that I will need to create and sustain a more productive Memwa? schedule.
My eyesight has gone from great to glasses to fuzzy grey all over the place; I have to do something about that also. I have much , much more work (writing and singing and other things) to do, but I am feeling oddly spooky about turning sixty-five. I am generally completely unconcerned about the chronological tick-tock but at the moment, I am becoming afraid that I won’t be able to get it done.
Part of it, a large part of it is of course, is finding my success (or my audience as we like to put it these days) and having my work recognized as having had some value and creative quality.
This particular life area is a mishmash of emotions which I usually deal with my unusually well-developed skill at denial, however, even I am becoming concerned that, not only will I be going too quietly into that dark night, but I will be gone without raising enough ruckus or, God help us “blowing my own horn loud enough”, to leave any thing of tangible value for my beautiful and long, long-suffering little ones.
If I only knew which massive boulder to roll up Everest, or which 12 foot grizzly I had to wrassel mano a mano, or what heretofore impossible cosmo-mathological equation I needed to smite and solve… but I’ve been made dumb by that question since I’m six years old. And now I’m feeling that my time is running out. And let me tell you something, call me confused or a liar, or in pre-limino flagrento dementia, but I am certain that time goes faster and faster the older you get.
I could easily pretend that that’s all I know about getting older, but the fact is, this Peter Pan has accidentally accumulated a small treasure box of shocking and completely unexpected information (and experiential knowing) about this grey ah…I mean great and mysterious stage of life.
Possibly first and foremost in importance, is the fact that chicks don’t look at you the same. And if you’re a chick, Cats (no not kitty cats, Hip Cats) don’t look at you the same either.
(Kitty cats however, do have a whole new appreciation of older chicks and ex Hep, now no pep, Cats. I‘ve been told that felines consider old dears in their dotage to be a special gift just for them from “Super Cat” creator of the catmos.
Why one wonders? Have you ever heard of young people braving the elements at all hours of the day or night to set out cat food in the darkest alleys and vacant lots of this or that Urban hell? Or living in pads (house or apt) over run by kitty critters?
Well…now that I mention it, I have. My wild Annie the Artist Girl and I once lived in a basement apartment on west 84th street, with something like eight dogs and thirty two cats, all at once. Each and every one named something or other bean. Like You Bean and New Bean and Two Bean and Who Bean and Who-You Bean and You-Hoo Bean, all the way up past thirty two Bean to forty.
However, while we were quite young in those days, we were also smote by chemistry that looked and felt like dotage, so possibly we cornfuseled (one of Annie’s favorite words in those days) ourselves and each other and cornfuseled the critters by extension.
Another thing about getting older, is you don’t look at the chicks the same either; there seems to be a much greater awareness that they are human beans, with feelings and hearts, disappointments and dreams and deserving of consideration and human kindness. One of the realities of lusty young men is that well…while we may have heard tell that chicks had feelings…other “mating” imperatives forced their way to the fore, not blacking, but “redding” out more subtle and sensitive considerations.
Ah my Lord, it was all I… ah… I mean a lusty young man could do to keep his eyeballs from exploding out of his pounding head, and his arms from s’muffling and crushing her, and his lips from slobber-jabbering love lies and perfidiac promises ( every utterance as deeply felt as Gospel truth, in the heat of the moment).
It was all a lusty lad could ever do and all the time too. But now? God has dashed, decreed and made it so, that the heat madness be splashed by the ice water realization that “My God, she could be my Grand Daughter” or “My God, she is my Grand Daughter!” Ah yes…
From time to time (when I sit with old birds on a park bench like lizards in the sun), one or another will suggest that the “golden elder belles” see young men somewhat differently as well (Unless the old chick is stuck in panting mode). I’m told that they see ‘im remarkably similarly to the young lusty “lunk noggin” that I described earlier.
I’m not surprised to hear it; I always suspected that the Grand Mamere’s had my number.
There are a number of age-o-alities that it seems no one bothered to mention, (or if they did, it was in geriatric jargon perhaps in a treatment setting, about old, or rather, aging 60’s psychedelic casualties and how to break the news that they were what they were, to them.)
I will write what I can about all of that at another time, perhaps even exhaustively until it (and we) are exhausted. But, for the moment, the real shocker is that chicks look at you differently. (They most certainly are not seeing and responding to your beautiful, color phasing iridescent inside)
How interesting to wonder if and when there ever was a time or even a moment, in life when one’s outside was an accurate representation of who and how one really was inside.
All of that being whatever it may be, here’s what the wind whispers to me.
“Sing for your life” and leave the rest to the Great Artist who first imagined us all.
And…Boy, stay ready for the ever-so-much more important second set, which will be called for when you are tired to the center of your soul, and least expecting it…
Book 4. Scott Fagan and The MAAC Island Band…
We are doing a Big “Island Blowout Luau” Benefit on City Island on Sunday Aug 22nd to save the “Pride Of The Susquehanna” a wonderful little river boat here in Pennsylvania.
I thought you might enjoy seeing our band “one sheet”, new band photo and our National Dance Day “Shake a Bum” Video.Here ’tis!
SCOTT FAGAN and The MAAC ISLAND BAND have been tearing it up at the Middletown Area Arts Collective since Scott returned from St. Thomas at the beginning of May.
Scott Fagan (Singer) has been an international recording artist since he left high school in St. Thomas Virgin Islands to sign with Columbia Records in 1964. He presently divides his time between The MAAC collective in Middletown and his home in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands.
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) Rafael was born in Armaguerros, Puerto Rico, he has been a “Congero” for over twenty Five years and a “Pennsylvaniero”since 1973.
Drew Washington, (Bass) Originally from New Mexico, Drew appeared at the MAAC Gallery in Middletown one winter night for an open jam and immediately became the BASS Man of Choice for the MAAC ISLAND BAND. Drew has played at the highest levels, for over thirty Years.
Tim Griesemer (Drums) is well known through out Pennsylvania (and beyond) for his extraordinary gifts as a drummer. He is master of a wide variety of percussion instruments and has made it his business to “pass it on”
Walter Mills Born in Boston MASS, Walter has been playing the guitar for over thirty years, He has a wonderfully diverse set of musical influences from Hendrix to Pavarotti and everything in between. That makes him a perfect fit for SCOTT FAGAN and The MAAC ISLAND BAND.
Sound Engineering for SCOTT FAGAN the MAAC ISLAND BAND is by digitaldave, 30 Years on the knobs.
CONTACT Tim Griesemer Home 717-944-3023 Cell 717-439-1919 or Scott Fagan 717-592-0853
scott@lilfishrecords.com www.scottfagan.com www.lilfishrecords.com www.thecollectedworksofscottfagan.com
Scott Fagan and The MAAC Island Band
“Here is Shake A Bum” our National Dance Day Video! What fun!
Book 1. The Blessed Virgins and Book 4. Concert in New York Continued…
Book 1. The Blessed Virgins
And so somewhere in the winter of 1958 Mud led her little band (Little Larry Gale and I) away from the land of the ice burger, to the lands of eternal spring and summer, the Blessed Virgins. Of course I wore my recently purchased black leather jacket (just as I would wear it both day and night until I completely and incontestibly physically out grew it over a year and a half later)
When we had left St. Thomas, fleeing {“The Bills” (who ever those guys were) four years earlier Gale and I were very different children. We now carried the depravation and esteem issues of absolute down and out poverty, disrupted education, and serious questions about (the theretofore unquestionable such as) Mud’s competence as leader of the pack, and all that that meant.
Just about the only thing that we never questioned about Mud was her taste in music, it was with out exxception, always great. Mud was never negative about music, any music. She just plain out andf out loved music. And while we never heard her say a negetive or angry word about it, a few years later our father Frankie, would surprise and hurt use by “hating” Rock And Roll and any and everything else that had replaced Big Band and Be Bop.
It was very disturbing to hear that kind of angry agrandiament of one kind of music over all others. It seemed so obvously stupid that, while trying to defend my self and the music, I was embarrased for him. How can anyone expect kids to primarily identify with and love the music which expresses the time and concerns of their parents, rather than the music that expresses the times and concerns of their own generations?
Still, I see that same crazy conceit all around, all the time .It is so disappointing and transparently stupid…still.
That said, Me fadder dear was a hell of a singer and those tunes he sang were certainly very very good ones. Further, his emphasis and constant refrain on singing was “it’s all in the phrasing Fidel, (he lovingly called me “Fidel, The F*ckin bombthrower from the islands,) It’s all in the phraseing” has served me well. Continues…
Book 4. Concert in New York Continued
What a blast we had… the whole raggy band, a confoundation of experiences and ideologies a flim flam flashin dash-agoria of frantic -zigzagomania, a schreehin’ scramble of the lost push pulling the lost in concentric kaleidoscopic circles. And that was before we even got out the door and into our veehickles.
A Carnation, carvention, carfused, caravan of veehickles screwed tightly onto out of state licence plates, plates that I D’d us as hick-prey, thus fair game for the pent of frustrations and ever so inventive vulgarities of anxiety sizzled big city pedestrians. Even so.. we were so excited to see them that we reveled in their exotic and colorful stereotypically accented verbuse, and have recounted every single delicious expression and “cuss” phrase back and forth amongst us over and again. What fun we had. I really do wish you were there. The folks at BWAC (The Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition) put the absolute once and for all kibosh on the fiction that New Yorkers are cold and distant.
These good people could not have been any warmer and more welcoming. And dear goodness, I had kinda sorta somehow forgotten how beautiful and intoxicating New York City Lady Girls have always been to me. Man o man, young and old silver and gold, each more beautiful than the last. What a joy it is to see a city full of ‘im!
We are booked to come back for an opening on Saturday, May the 7th 2011.
We will be there bells a ringing!
Here is a band photo that we took at BWAC just after our performance.
New Scott Fagan and The MAAC Island Band
This week we play for the third anniversary of the MAAC (Middletown Area Arts Collective) and next week we will play the benefit to save Harrisburg’s own Riverboat “The Pride Of The Susquehanna”. We are working on doing “The Virgin Islands Songs live in Concert” at the Richold Center For The Arts in St. Thomas, and filming it as a potential music special for PBS. We shall see…
Book 4 Concert In NYC
Book 4 Aug 8th, Concert In NYC
Just back from The islands, I am getting ready for my next gig. We (me and the MAAC ISLAND BAND) are doing a concert version of my new musical ‘THE VIRGIN ISLANDS SONGS” on Aug 8th at 3:00 pm at The Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition (www,bwac.org) 49 Vanbrunt Street, Red Hook, Brooklyn.
It’s odd to think that II haven’t done a gig in New York for over 28 years. I love New York City. Most recently, my little one Holiday and I took a bus from up from our pad in Pennsylvania and spent the day there.
We walked around the theater district looking at the markees and visited The Ritz Theater (Now the Walter Kerr) on 48th street, where my Rock Opera SOON played. We also took a ride on the Staten Island ferry, and ended our day by visiting Ground Zero.
I have much history in New York and am excited to do this gig.
A gaggle of characters from the collective will be coming along and I promise you that they (we) are as odd an assortment of people as has ever met the eye, ear, nose, or imagination. It will be fun…and friends, it’s looking like after all is said and done love and fun may be close to what it’s all, after all, all about.
Come see us in New York if you can, I’ll be looking for you!
Book 4. On Nicky Russell, Sad Beyond Words…Continued
Book 4. On Nicky Russell, Sad Beyond Words…Continued
The fact of Nicky’s demise has been too sad for words for me, for many days now, and has precluded my posting to the Memwa?
I have to move beyond that sad preclusion, I will save my wild ranting for another time., and I will instead, keep it simple..
It rained like hell at Nicky’s memorial and the grand assemblage under the striped circus tent at Magen’s Bay got soaked from above, aside (actually both sides) and flooded up from below.
Sensible people, which included the bands and sound system folks (I know that it sounds like an oxymoron) concluded that playing with electricity while standing in water up to your ankles was not wise. Many if not most packed up and split. I did not, (but only because I have never and never do, known or know when to go) consequently when Mssr. Pat Bailey and “Bongo Man Bar none”, Richard Spencly suggested that we “just play” regardless of the juicy water and lack of amplification, it felt like a mighty fine flashback to days of old. Days (and nights) of old wherein young men (flung about the waterfront across from Trader Dan’s) literally sang the sun up out of the sea.
We sang the sunrise welcoming many a mad morning. Mad mornings of the very best/worst kind. The kind that our friend Nicky elevated in memory and celebrated fight down to the end. So we did…
We played a rousing set of calypso caraho that included Nicky’s (and his straggler fans) favorites, “La Biega Carousel”,
“Cherrigo”,
and “Captain Creole”
As sweet sad a raucous rhapsody, as can be imagined.
As we moved from song to song we were joined by others who refused to let the music and the moment go. Morgan Rael on the mighty jaw bone, an unknown (to me) bell swacker and a mighty fine mystery conga man.
Someone was kind/foolish enough to plug in a microphone and guitar amp, the volume jumped and the joint got jumping.
Our little oddchestra was fronted by the ever enthusiastic prantastic dancing of the afore-mentioned Pat Bailey, who revved to wild, right off the bat.
You (in the audience) may not always be aware that we (on the band stand) see you and feel you and receive intense infusions of emotion and energy from you.
This “speed of light” zappage is a primary driving factor in the degree of intensity that charges the back and forth energy/passion/love/exchange between us.
The double polarity ultra zapbomb was in full force on this occasion.
The sad eyed ladies down front, were well past early spring but their energy and emotion for the moment and what the moment meant, was as strong as any ever.
We were all once young together and these songs were the sound track of that time, and all the time between, and of course our friend, who represented well, was gone and each and all of us knew that we are soon to follow. Ah Yes. Stuff like that will strum up a feeling or two.
To watch the girls of yesterday, dancing yesterday away, is enough to bring a fellow like me to his weeping knees.
Instead we jumped back into a reprise of Nicky’s “Theme Song” “La Biega Carousel /Tutsie” to close out these magic moments of this magical memorial.
When I originally wrote it back in 1964 the third chorus ines were, “And I wish I were like Tutsie and could do as I please, then I’d be barefoot at the Foxes Tamerindo”(Foxie’s bar in Jost Van Dyke) but through the years Nicky began to insert his own updated line “Then I’d be dancing naked at the Fox’s Tamerindo.” I thought it appropriate to sing Nicky’s line for this occasion (and will in remembrance from this point forward) as the line rang out good brother Pat, tore all his clothes off and really started prancing the light fandango. The dance fantastic.
We are trying to find the fellow who filmed the whole thing so that we can share this extraordinary fare-the-well to show the world how it was once upon a time down in the bongo Isles.
There could not have been a more fitting finale for our brother Nicky Russell. Thank you to all who made it so.
Nicky was a great eager and optimistic kid and stayed that way ‘til the day he died. We should all be so beautifully blessed. Three beautiful sisters, two beautiful sons, and one no matter what, steadfast wife. He was loved and accepted and loved (did I mention loved?) all the way through life, right down to the very end. God Blessed and Bless you Little Brother Nicky, we love you long time…
Scott Fagan's Mem.wa? 
