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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 1. En Nueva York 57-58 Continued…And Book 4. In Anticipation Of Nicky’s Memorial, July 18th, Magen’s Bay.
Book 1. En Nueva York 57-58 Continued…
It was the time of “Little Bitty Pretty One, “Wake Up Lil’ Susie”, “You Send Me”, “Honey Comb”, “That’ll Be The Day”, “Rockin’ Robin”, Don Larsen’s perfect game, Sputnik, and The Asiatic Flu. All of which made a big and lasting impression on me.
Years later I would spend two weeks in a tour bus with the Great Bobby Day (“Little Bitty Pretty One” and “Rockin’ Robin”) crisscrossing the US from Burlington Iowa, to Daytona Beach Fla, on a tour called the “Thirtieth Anniversary Of Rock N Roll”. Bobby Day was style and grace, talent and kindness personified. He was every bit as smooth, graceful and exciting as his tunes.
The Everly Brothers big hit “Wake Up Little Susie” was one of, if not the first song in which I was consciously aware of “the writer” inserting a “twist” and intentionally shaping the story line. I had a sort of moment of objective “ah ha” clarity (and believe me it only lasted a moment) before I fell back into full on non-thinking subjective acceptance of the idea that “all the singers were for real, and all their songs were “true for true.”
Years later when my manager Doc Pomus, began teaching me how things really worked i.e. How a song was written, how a session was produced, how a record was made, what a Music Publisher did, how Elvis got co-writing credits on Otis Blackwell’s songs, etc I was quite disappointed and very much upset and disillusioned.
I much preferred the illusion that the process was somehow magically organic, as if the song “emerged” from the singer while the joy and groove of the moment dictated the arrangement and the music played.
I was really disappointed with the truth. I felt as if something wonderful and life sustaining had been taken away. Of course I can now look back and (in knowledgeable company,) snerk aloud at what a silly and foolish boy I was, but the truth is I am still more he that any completely grown up me.
The facts are… When I performed (and still when I perform now) the emotion inherent in the moment DID dictate the arrangement (the timing, the rhythm, the dynamics and sometimes even the key) and as far as possible, the song DID emerge Which is why I seem unable to, hardly ever or maybe never play a tune exactly the same way twice.
In my first gig in the states after “getting off the boat” I was singing at a great folk club/coffee house called “The House Of Pegasus” in Fort Lauderdale.
The manager turned to the owner and said”listen he even does his own fade outs”. I remember wondering “why would he mention that?” and then “aren’t we supposed to do that?” that’s how we all did it in the Islands. We didn’t or I didn’t know that fade outs were artificial artifacts of studio recording rather than an expressive and soulful vocally managed dimuendo. Ahh… my dear friends, you could have filled a google parallel universes with what I didn’t know then, and possibly even more with what I don’t know now.
In any case, and lucky for me, it was a great season for song, Sputnik was the beginning of a painfully long, continuing and essential lesson in humility for “The Otherin” (and me too) and the freakin’ Asiatic Flu did everything but recycle me.
Often the “weakest” or most vulnerable part of the body is the first to go and in my case the weakest link resides in my poor frizzgaggled noggin.
When the fever (any fever) hits or comes upon me, my tenuous grip (on what foolish folk think is the one reality and I recognize as at most a temporary and consensual compromise) slips and I am gone. Replaced by a double babbling babushka balloon head, or “El Exehente Generalissimo Delirioso” aka the rock that wept, or the stone that squeaked and cried. Yezzer, I am vulnerable to fever.
In those days Gale and I had no beds, we slept instead on folding aluminum lounge chairs, the kind with woven plastic straps across an aluminum frame. When the Asiatic landed in my noggin, I was allowed or encouraged (or a combo of both) to move my recliner out of a shared bedroom and into a far corner of the living room, a sort of poor man’s quarantine, I s’ppose.
I spent two weeks out there in the ultra nunca never none land of delerioso serioso, babbling soliloquies all day waiting for Mud to come home from work.
It’s interesting to note that you can pile all the blankets in the world on top of the poor soul trying to sleep on such a device and they don’t and won’t do a bit of good. Until and unless you realize that the cold air is coming up from under, through and between the plastic straps. It’s a pitiful, follyishous thing. I confess that it took me an embarrassingly long and uncomfortable time to figger’ it out.
God Bless Mother, the music in the background and Red Candy Apples (the only thing I would eat) for getting me through.
Interestingly, the Spanish flu epidemic (a related strain of two generations earlier) is what we think killed our people in Scotland, leaving our father Frankie’s Mother Sally, “an orphan girl alone in the world” and encouraging her migration to New York, her career as a tragic bar room singer, the arms of the naughty, cowardly married Irish rascal that knocked her up ah..Ah mean got her with child and then denied the little lad for fear of “The wrath of wife”. Our little orphan girl Grand Mother Sally Travis, Died in turn in the TB wards on Welfare Island at 26, leaving little Frankie all but orphaned himself. Crikey, Yikes! it feels like I’m having a flu-mo delerioso flashboink!
Yes, It was the winter of our discontent, my poor finger was bent forward and taped to the palm of my hand (if that whompin’ girl had seen me, she would have whupped me silly), Gale, in a flurry of belonging longing or longing to belong, joined a cigarette smoking, garrison belted, black leather jacketed gang, she was now known by two separate noms de guerre “Mike” and “The Cat” and in a flushed rush of tough teenage solidarity forever, she shaved her eyebrows absolutely and completely, clean off.
Mud was ready to get herself and her sprung off sprung back to the Antilles, The Archipelago, The West Indies, The Islands of The West, The Caribees, The Spanish Main, The Blessed Virgins…Continues…
Book 4. In Anticipation of Nicky’s Memorial, July 18th, Magen’s Bay.
I nave been invited to sing at Nicky’s (The Mighty Whitey) memorial scheduled for July the 18th at Magens Bay, in St. Thomas. I am arranging to be there and prepared to sing my heart out. I am so happy that Tuts and Tim and Nicky and I recently 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 sadly will never be.
Take a look at “A Little Trip To Jos Van Dyke” and “Continued..A Little Trip To Jos Van Dyke” (March 2010) In them, I‘ve tried to capture some of what was wonderful about the time together.
Book 4. Zoom! and Book 1. Isla Grande.6
Book 4. Zoom!!
Zoom..We finished the first run of the new CD just in time for me to get to the airport and back to St. Thomas for the French Man’s Reef Concert, The concert is a fundraiser for COAST, the local affiliate of The National Council On Alcoholism and Drug Dependency. The event honors The Reverend Ray Joseph and local businessman and COAST Board member Ronnie Lockhart.
Zoom Zip Zoom
The need for recovery services is very acute in The Virgin Islands and is dramatically illustrated by the following bit of information (reported to me by Nancy Waite O’Brian former director of COAST and Clinical Director at The Betty Ford Center) from the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependency: “The incidence of alcohol related deaths in Texas is twice tha of the other contiguous states, The incidence of alcohol related deaths in Alaska is twice that of Texas, and The incidence of alcohol related deaths in The U.S. Virgin Islands is twice that of Alaska.”
Zap…
In other words, The Virgin Islands have the highest incidence of alcohol related deaths under the American Flag, and possibly the least number of recovery support services under the American Flag as well. I am doing this fundraiser in an attempt to help COAST do something about that.
Zoom, When I get back to the states, we will do a CD release/Launch Party and focus on “The Virgin Islands Songs, The Musical, in Concert, and the single from the album, the new recording of “Surrender To The Sun” and.. Zoom, I am in St. Thomas. Tomorrow morning I start doing radio interviews to promote the Concert event.
Unfortunately, someone set the ticket price @ $75.00 per, which I’m afraid is way too high for most working people. In fact, I’m tempted to say “hey wait, if you are coming to see me, come and see me somewhere else at a price that you can afford”, but, as I am clearly the living embodiment of the “anti moolah” and obviously, not the best authority on manifesting the glittery green goulash, perhaps I ought to defer my own lah de dah and concentrate instead on the fact that we are doing a much-needed fundraiser for a good and necessary cause.. Zip
I will do my best, and hope that my people will understand. (Hey waitaminnit, “my people” are the very people most likely to benefit from the very services that we are raising funds for the agency to be able to provide to…hmmm, Oh yeeeahhh…) Ok.
Double Zoom… today is the 22nd of April,and it is Sula’s 108th birthday, She will have her Birthday party on Saturday, we will gather at her little very old “wood house”, on the hill above Neltejburg Bay and sing and laugh and celebrate the love of a young girl, who at one hundred and eight, has maintained her enthusiastic innocence in spite of having seen it all. What an extraordinary gift she is.
Zoom Zoom and Zoom I did three radio shows at three different radio stations for three completely different demographical groups today and another yesterday, each one an interesting host and personalities and conversations and settings
Zoom, yesterday at 8 AM was with a very interesting and energized activist member of our community Ms. Lesly Commisiong, host of her own show on talk radio 1000. We had a great time and may have enlisted her as a potential board member for COAST. She is a great resource for this community and we shall see if time will allow het to join the board.
Now this morning at 9:00 AM the first show was with “Sisi” a real fast talking happy talk rockin’ chick on “HITS 100”, Sisi is a young local rocker of color woman, whose parade of addresses and places lived in the states, reminds me of no one more than my self, we had a great time together, and it was beautiful to watch her interact with the young local college student interning with her. Zam! Next was radio station “WGOD” (really) at the very tippy top of Crown Mountain. Not much to say other than it was the closest thing to Heaven since “Calwin’s Caribilly Bar” and we had great fun (really) with those good folks also. Third was “Zim Zam Zoom” WSTA and “Brownie” always fun, always wonderful. Brownie (and WSTA) have been a primary support for my music and me for over forty-five years. Their kindness is always very much appreciated, and Brownie is one very funny man.
Zoom to Saturday! What a good time we had at Sula’s 108th Brithday party today. Old Island recipe birthday cakes galore, warm wonderful family friendships, the Nisky Congregation out in force, and the power of love in evidence and evident everywhere. And…”Food ke-an done, me bouy wha!”
Zib, Zubb! Tomorrow is the big Concert and I will sing my heart out,. I have prep work to do in the morning so I am going to go to bed… Good night, it’s been a great day! God bless you each and every one!
incidently, I was talking with Tut’s wife Mary last evening while a stateside TV show was “noisifying” in the background. In the story, some awfully self-righteous prosecuting attorney with the most insultingly superior attitude, (supposedly representing “The people” ah…that would be us) was prosecuting a case by harassing and haranguing a Rock and Roll Band’s sound man on the stand, in a most diminishing, disrespectful and demeaning way.
It was crazy! The tv writers seem to think that the viewers will swing right along with them, and co-sign anything. Don’t they know that everybody knows, that any good sound man is worth double his weight in law degrees and ten times his weight in condescending, arrogant and square lawyers? What kind of crazy reverseled up value system are they promoting? How could the producers and networks broadcast such a cockeyed premise? How could the advertisers support it? Gol dang, Sometimes I wonder if the people in TV land think the rest of us out here in the free world, are still back in the 1950’s, or just plain stupid er whut.
On the other hand, it’s a fact that no one would believe the real adventures of “Life In The Bongo Isles” either..I guess you just have to suspend belief…
We did the concert, I’m happy to report that I was in fine voice and our sound preparations were sufficient (the sound man is Marcellus Edwards, Tut’s son who is also the owner operator of ZIP car rentals in St. Thomas) Marcellus is a fine lad, a dread-locked jewish gent of the “Lion Of Judeah” lost tribe school of Hebrish history, and so my friends we see again the grand combinations of flavors in the God Soup of life doen in the Bongo Isles
Marcellus’s Great Grand Mother (on his father’s side) was a full blooded Carib from the reserve in Dominica, but his Great- Great Grand Father (still on his Fater’s side) was a black, black smith from Ethiopia (that’s the lost tribe part, but lost tribe as filtered through and from The New York City penal system’s cauldron of salvatory spirituality. most specifically, the Rikers Island rabbinical school of this that and the next thing, as proselytized and evangelized to and through our very own “Terry The Pirate” AKA “Crossbones” AKA “The Rabbi” The long and short of it all is.. Marcellus is a grand and good fellow, and in large part because of his loving kindness,and skill, the Concert went well
Zoom, Carnival village for one night and then Zoom, back to the states. I’m so Zoomed out I’m downright dizzified.
Book 1. Isla Grande.6
That thing about Rock And Roll that I wrote about earlier, that thing made all the difference. The music moved me. Not just emotionally or in terms of excitement, but it moved me up from a sense of almost complete vulnerability (aka childhood), to a kind of independence.
That was the effect that it had on both of us, both Gale and I. Man, do I love my sister Gale. She was the leader, she led us carefully (or as carefully as an 11 1/2 half-year old girl could) ou of dependent childhood into an wonderneverland of “boppers” the land of “electric Rock And Roll Pan” a land which I inhabit to this day.
God bless that Gale, after our time on our own, (once Mud and Howard had come back into the scene), she decided that we (she and I) would start going to church on Sundays. We did that for a few Sundays..we woild get up early and put on our best clothes, and head out to one or another Catholic Church in Santurce, it was a bit odd I suppose for the regulars to thy and grok what the heck two little dressed up but raggedy white kids were doing coming to their Church all by them selves, but whatever their concerns, they were kind. However, what ever “scent in the air” Gale was following or looking for, it wasn’t there at Church.
Eventually the scent led us to English-speaking Radio Station WHOA and it’s Saturday afternoon “on the air” Elvis Presley Fan Club and “Rock And Roll” dance party. Only the Lord (and Gale) knows how she managed to find the bus fare and then the station, but she did and there we went, on the bus, on our own, away from the snooty rich kids, across Santurce to Rio Piedras and beyond. Our excitement building every parada of the way. Gale had found and followed the scent that led to the great fountain of life, the Fountain Of Youth, only instead of making us younger, it brought us to the immensely joyful spirit of youth eternal, of youth in rebellion, the bottomless pool of timeless energy that empowers and informs and reinforces the impregnable and impervious optimism that transforms a child into timeless youth. We were instantly older and instantly hipper, and ever so much forever more free. The vehicle was Rock And Roll and the casteless, classless collective consciousness that it invited and created everywhere it went. And boy I’ll tell ya, my sister Gale and I were ready. Continued…
Book 1. Isla Grande.3 Continued…and Book 1. Cortijo Y The Symphonic Friction of Silk, Skin and Satin
Book 1. Isla Grande.3 Continued…
It’s difficult for me to write about our time in Puerto Rico, in Condado and our next move, to Ocean Park, because revisiting how I felt in that time and place is completely depressing, and frankly, I have worked long and hard to not feel that way any more. Depressing for me, for Gale, for Mud, for our little brother Larry (who was born during that time and started life sleeping in a drawer) for Howard, and for all of those suffering in poverty and humiliation everywhere.
Puerto Rico wasn’t the problem, Puerto Rico was an entire universe and the universe after all was beautiful. The problem was that we were living in the predictable consequences and painfully pitiful side effects of acute alcoholism, and were ignorant of that fact and further, powerless to do anything about it.
I have been both actively and acutely strung out on alcohol myself and I have been a child in the middle of the chaos of familial alcoholism, and I will tell you that in my experience, being a powerless kid is by far the worse of the two, because there was next to nothing that we could actually do about it. And…Just as alcoholism is a progressive condition, so too is the ever-growing psychological AND physiological malaise you experience as you feel progressively worse and worse about yourself and your ever more pathetic situation.
There were other kids in the building, well, mostly in the big breezy one, more “Yankee/Ricanio” kids who unfortunately tended towards the uppity condescension’s of “Americano/ Castiliano kids” rather than the more proletarian “egual egual” of regular “Ricanio” kids. I could list blow-by-blow, enough humiliations, embarrassments and disappointments to sink a ship, but going through it all Uno by Uno is just too friggin’ depressing and who needs any more of that.
I remember having a fight over something that one of the rich kids in the building said about me or my mother or my sister, or Howard and being too friggin’ weak to win. The boy sat on my scrawny chest holding my wrists taunting me and I was not able to budge the bastard even the slightest bit, it was among the most frustrating and humiliating things that I’ve ever experienced. I wasn’t a namby pamby, and was well used to rough and tumble in St. Thomas, but I was unable to contain my self, and I burst into tears of rage, frustration and humiliation.
Even then tho, I didn’t have the good sense to.. ah..I mean actually giving up was out of the question even then, so when the poor rich kid finally got tired of winning the blasted fight he had to let go and run for his life back into the rich peoples building and safety. Yep.
It’s funny how perfectly well I remember the helplessness that Gale and I felt watching friends laughing with one another, leaving for the movies, the amusement park, or the ball park and not being able to go. In fact, not even invited because they knew, and looked upon us with (God help us) pity, because we wouldn’t have the money to go, because we never had the money to go.
The flippy flappy fluppy flupping of the soles of your shoes and then the worn through cardboard, Gale’s cracked lense, broken and scotch taped glasses.
I remember with great sadness one Sunday morning with nothing whatsoever to eat and mother taking me to a tidal pool on Condado Beach, armed with a safety-pin on a string looking, hoping, to find something, anything to eat for breakfast, and failing completely. The little man that wasn’t, the little hero that couldn’t.
I can only imagine how Mud must have felt.
Life that way, is like living in some debilitating floor to ceiling drone that sucks the spirit, the light, the hope and the joy out of you. Leaving you more and more physically weak, and more and more psychologically vulnerable to insult and humiliation and more and more subject to the seeds of a focus less self-pity, a faceless anger and resentment.
I will mention that among other things we (our little family) got “boils”. Big fire red volcanic God awful biblical curse killer boils, that left you dizzy with pain and shame for days and weeks and when they finally exploded, well, you can imagine that mixture of revulsion and relief.
I got a hernia that went untreated for lack of moolah. Food poisoned by another Castilian Abuelita when her friendly grandson brought me to their house to play, she fed us lunch, and then told me to leave and to go directly home. Within the hour, alone in our apt, I was experiencing the worse sweats, trembling and abdominal pain of my life. I realized that if I knew what was good for me, I wouldn’t be going back to play with her grandson anymore. Gale was sick in bed for many, many, many weeks with TB that went undiagnosed and untreated (years later it was diagnosed by the scarring on her lungs). Both Mud and Howard wound up in the hospital at the same time for a month (she having complications and then a baby, he having Delirium Tremens). Followed by a long stay in the VA, leaving Gale and I to have a grand adventure taking care of ourselves on our own in Puerto Rico at 9 1/2 and 11.
Of course the first thing to go by the wayside was school, (we were going to “La Escuela de Santa Teresita” on Loiza Street at the time and we could never afford the tuition anyway).
My job was to go out every day looking for, rather “hunting and gathering”, Coca-Cola bottles to turn in for deposit and for the pennies thrown away (two at a time) in the cellophane wrapping of cigarette packages. Cigarettes sold for twenty-eight cents a pack in cigarette machines and the two cents change was stuck in the wrapper. With my earnings Gale and I would go to the store and buy sugar and flour. All the ingredients we needed to make our favorite dishes, fried sugar and fried flour cakes.
We would set the table like civilized children and gobble up our dinner as if we were on top of the world.
However, we lived in acute fear that someone would tell the authorities that we were living all by ourselves and we would be caught and sent to…God knows where.
Fortunately, the only adult interventions came in the form of the bright red apples or neatly wrapped sandwiches or containers of Spanish rice that we would occasionally find leaning against the door when we would come back to the apartment from our flour and sugar runs. Continued…
Book 1. Cortijo Y The Symphonic Friction of Silk, Skin and Satin
I recently attended an interesting event in observance of “Virgin Islands/Puerto Rico Friendship Day” a discussion of the impact of Puerto Rican music on the music and culture of the Virgin Islands. For those of you who don’t know much about the music of Puerto Rico, it is as varied as “Trio Los Panchos” is from “Cortojo Y su Combo con Ishmael Rivera” with every kind of Jibaro (Puerto Rican “hillbilly”) thrown in for double good measure.
Afro-Cuban is more well-known in the states, and I have nothing negative to say about “La Muisca de Cuba” but being “all but Borincan” my self I must confess a personal affinity for “La Musica De Puerto Rico”.
I am not on the panel this year, but the influence of La Musica De Puerto Rico on my music and on my excitement with the idea of making music, is very powerful. I am very happy to offer my recording of “El Gringito” as a demonstration of that, it is a classic Jibaro style song and arrangement, and our Guitar based recording (as opposed to the piano based one) of “Surrender To The Sun” as partial confirmation of the fact that we’ve got a serious case of Borenquen in the soul of the Virgin Islands. (That is the great Jeff Medina playing those beautiful guitar lines).
The great Emile Francis of “Milo And The Kings” ( by far the most popular virgin Islands band of the last fifty years, was all but a Ricanio himself, and the band (with many players with familial ties to Puerto Rico) was second only to Cortijo when it came to full blast sizzling hot Mambo and Meringue.
In 1959 and 60 Tuts and Anibal and I were working at a dance hall that doubled as a skating rink or vice versa. “The Carousel”.
Skating was/is great fun, and being a skate boy/bartender at fourteen and fifteen, was certainly the best of both worlds. Leaping and spinning and flying around the rink at speeds exceeding eighty or a hundred miles per hour (I don’t care what the physicists say about the limitations of ball bearings in circa 1960 skates, or resistance of masonite floors, skinny kid legs and the self-limiting properties of all the atoms involved, as conclusive proof that actual speeds were probably no more than one-third of those claimed) we were flying and when you dipped too low and slid too far on a turn, smashing your shinbone into the sharp edge of a door jamb or support pillar, you knew, and everyone else that heard the crash-bang and the screamin’ and cussin’, would agree, that you had to have been doing at least a hundred.
Sweet “styling” for the teenaged girls, and being ever-present and accounted for on the Saturday Night Rock and Roll radio show that originated at the center of the universe, the skating rink, was great great fun.
But when “Cortijo Y Su Combo Con Ishmael Rivera”, was there, and the scratchy forty fives were replaced by the live blasting trumpets and blaring saxophonicas and banging timbales Congas and Bongos, guiro, maracas, clavos, Guitarra, bass and crazy piano along with simply the best of the best singers in Ishmael Rivera, all together “tedando” the hottest mambo in sixty galaxies, and the giant mirror ball (on top of the rum) had the room and everyone in it spinning in eight directions at once, and the mounting scent of the sweat of pure passion and the perfumey fumes rose up to your brain and voodooed into it as tight as a Turkish towel and the sandpaper sound of oh so tightly wrapped and bursting at the seams, silk and satin bottoms frictioning and bumping, rubbing, and sliding one against the next ‘til the place was about to spontaneously combust like a flambo..
All a lusty young lad boy had to do, was solo dance himself out to the middle of the floor where he would find himself transported to heaven. Crushed breathless amongst and betwixt the mambo frenzied bums of five hundred panting, heaving mamacitas. Each cheek and Chica fully charged, and determined to out shake her neighbor… demonstrating for their dance partners and every one else in the world (or rather, anyone that dared to look) exactly who had the hottest haunches and the sweetest salsa pot, and further, exactly how these endowments could be expected to perform as soon as time and place conspired to align and allow them to do what they could do. (what we used to call “de ting”)
And, perhaps most importantly, and paradoxically beyond the immediate promise of things to come, was the clear once and for always illus/demon/stration of what “the poor pendejo who wouldn’t proclaim his love and fling down his life for her, this very night and forever more”, would and could surely count on missing every day and night of the rest of his miserable God forsaken time on Earth.
Many more than one of Uncle Sam’s poor intoxicated swabs found themselves swept up in this divine, elemental maelstrom, missed his boat and was sunk. Other wise good men who have had to answer questions like these ever since, “Son, how could you disgrace the family by getting a dishonorable discharge?” and “Dad, how long did you have to stay in the brig when they said you deserted from the Navy?” and “Dad do you think they’ll ever forget what you did and let you get a good job and move us out of this trailer park?”
I suspect that the concerned family members are quite puzzled when an odd sweet smile followed by a faraway glazed look is the only answer they get.
We of course had our own band that (as soon as we figured out how to play anything beyond “Perfidia” and “Ruby Dooby Doo”) would be just like Cortijo.
Tuts played the trumpet, I was the singing sax man, Anibal, played “an instrument to be named later” and our friend Guillermo who played the conga, was so taken by the excitement that we think he ran off to Old San Juan, where he may have tried a “stick up a mulberia” to get a set of timbales, and is probably still in La Princessa Prison, just outside of Rio Piedras.
Anyway, I don’t think I will raise my hand and try to offer that kind of testimony from the floor this time, but by God when it’s my turn to be invited onto the dias, I will have this and much more to say. Yes indeed,
Book 1. Saturday Market and Book 4. Concert Review
Book 1. Saturday Market and Book 4. Concert Review, From The Artists Point Of View
Book 1. Saturday Market
While living “UPSTREET”my big sister Gale (all of eight and a half) decided that she and I would get up very early (around five thirty) on Saturday mornings so that we could participate in the local Saturday morning custom of going to “de market”.
De Market was an Old Danish West Indian design cast iron structure that once had housed the slave market; it occupied an elongated rectangle in a central, if not center part of town. Charlotte Amalie (or Amalia, both are correct) is built along a shore line running (depending on where you’re standing) east to west, or west to east.
There was a main street that approximately paralleled the shore line. On the south side of the street was a long row of rubble masonry warehouses and red and yellow brick alleys (The red brick arrived as ballast from England and the British Isles, the Yellow brick as ballast from the Mother Country, Denmark) The warehouses ran from Main Street town to the water’s edge. The North Side of the street were mercantile establishments, with second story balconies above and beyond them, fine and even grand homes began to climb the hill sides, their large windows and verandas catching the trade winds while looking down upon ships of every nation rocking gently in perhaps the most beautiful harbor in the world.
This magical place was made even more magical by the refreshing dewy cool of morning and the golden early morning light. The market square was magical in its own right; ancient mahogany’s lining its cobblestone perimeters. On the west side, the venerable stone and wrought iron of the centuries old “National Bank” and “Christ Church” a Grand old world Methodist Church right out of a dansk dream of Devonshire, and on the north the original Jewish ghetto, now “long row wood houses” and coal pot, communal “yad” heaven for struggling laborers and their families, the rough and tough streets of “Savan”.
To the East, dirt floor and plank barrel bar rooms for the likes of Ben and Raffie dem, who were always drinking rum again, Scruffy customers who would look at home on any skid row in the world, but were certainly too wild, unconstrained and uncontainable for most.
These desperately dinged and damaged men wore a steady path to and from the dungeon cells of Fort Christian. Cursing, shaking their fists (and other parts) and yelling in tongues not known to devil or man. (One hundred and fifty-one proof cane rum, mixed with and chased by the hot hot blazing hot sun will do that to a fellow, no matter what his original religion or disposition)
On the South side of the market square, towards the sea and the breeze, was the emporium most favored by children, a dark cave like interior appropriately called “The Igloo”. While not a one of us had any idea of the kind of cold that would necessitate crawling inside a house of ice cubes to get warm, we did appreciate the miraculously cool blessing of vanilla and chocolate honest to goodness ice cream.
However long before we would get to the Igloo, Gale and I first had to make our way past those things that make these kinds of memory so heady and transporting. We would walk down “Pave Street” past the First Moravian Church, the Park Shoppe, and then the park that the Shoppe was named after Roosevelt Park which in turn was named after Franklin.
It was a kind gesture of remembrance but this little park, originally “Coconut Square” had as much to do with Franklin Roosevelt and his world as it did the King of Siam.
It was a very old fashioned little city block park surrounded by old black iron gating and planted with Coconut, Baobab, Tamarind, Mahogany and the tallest slenderest (like something out of Dr. Suess) Palms, there was a big elevated lily pond in the middle and winding walkways with actual old round armed park benches scattered here and there. I loved it; it was like Mary Poppins London via Dr. Suess meets the Belgian Congo. (‘course we had no Dr. Suess back then but I guess that’s why I felt as if I’d been waiting for him for a long long time when he finally did came along)
Just past Coconut Square the road rose up to the old British Cable Office and divided, the left going directly to the foot of the hill topped by Fort Christian (1691), while straight ahead took us past the Grand Hotel and the very first Church on the Island, The Frederick Lutheran Church
The British Cable Office was quite an important place in those days run, by a very stiff and important fellow with a pencil thin moustache and a most clipped British air and attitude… He was Mr. Alfred Evelyn, the Grand father to be of my first wife Patricia, and Great Grand father to my Bix “little Scott”
If Mr. Evelyn could have seen this in his future as he spied Gale and I pogoing alone down the street at six o’clock in the morning, I don’t doubt for a moment that he would have wrapped us both up in a proper brown paper package, tied it up with string, and sent us off to far freakin’ Calcutta.
Just along past the Grand Hotel we came to Post Office Square, another absolute treat for the eyes and imagination, up on the right on Government Hill sat the Beautiful Pink, Hotel 1829, birth place of the Arts Colony that had intrigued and brought Mud and Lea and Mud’s boyfriend Justin, to Charlotte Amalia, in the first place.
By now shafts of sunlight would be lighting the odd elevated corners, creating splashes of intense color like an impressionist painter might do. And after all, this is where the father of impressionism Camille Pissarro was born and his sensibilities came of age. If you came upon the beautiful pink hued Hotel 1829 first thing in the morning, just as the rising sun is coming over the mountains that ring the town and the golden light has just come splashing into the square, I don’t doubt that you would be an impressionist too, it is simply too real to be real. Ecstatic overload spills back and loops around and around until you, head spinning, stagger on towards “de market”.
Exiting post office square you enter the narrow “commercial district” of main street crowded with shops on both sides, There on the left is Lockhart’s General store, Riieses Liquor Store, and Greaux’s hardware, on the right is 7 Queens Quarter, and The Center Theater where the marquee advertises a double feature featuring Gene Autry, and Jungle Jim, with episodes seven and eight of the serial “The Insidious Fu Man Chu” stuck in between,
There is the wonderful Apothecary Hall with its enormous bottles of blue, red, green, and gold elixir of the Gods or something, displayed invitingly in the windows. The most indefinable but soul satisfying and reassuring smells waft through it’s open doors reminding us all that no matter what, the Apothecary Hall has the cure.
On the side streets towards the Harbor, the butcher stalls belonging to butcher “White Pierre” and butcher “Black Pierre” are open, goat and pig, mutton and pork is the song being sung back and forth between the Pierres and their customers,
Ladies are setting out large baskets of fruit on the sidewalks crossing the gut, Soursap, Sugar Apple, Mango, and we aren’t even at the market yet. It didn’t take me long to realize that Gale had had another heck of a good idea, wonderful and exciting.
In that part of the early morning set aside for those people who conspire to be happy, cheery early risers are greeting one another, there is unspoken but palatable pity for those foolish or unfortunate enough to lie unconscious through this the most beautiful part of the day, these folks and Gale and I are in a magic time and we all know it.
As we walk in the shade of the old Mahogany and Tamarind trees, beyond “de gut” there by the Library, The Market is beginning to bustle, vendors have come from every part of the Island, many by donkey cart, or donkey, all have enormous baskets filled with fruits and vegetables or prepared goodies and delicacies, Mabi frothing up and out of it’s rum bottle containers, fresh fish of every color and description, Tanya, okra, hot pepper sauce that could ignite it’s self for spite, sugar cakes (that’s what Gale and I want more than anything) coconut and ginger sugar cakes, a penny apiece.. thyme, chibble, lemon grass, the herbs of Eden (or so they say) my sister Gale loved herbs so much that she developed the most famous herb garden in Pennsylvania when she grew up, benye, pate, papaya, cherries, conch, whelks, a crazy cacophonous cornucopia of calypso accents from up, down and all around the islands Tortola, Saint Kitts, Anagada, Antigua, Barbados, Culebra, Puerto Rico, smoke rising from the coal pots little samples of the ripest mango, sugar cane, and guava, “come Scottie, come Gale, wha yu doin up an out so early?’ Yu had yu breakfus? Me dear chile, come lemme gi yu sum ah dis”
I don’t recall ever having anything more than a very few pennies to spend, but it seems like we always came away with much treasure from the market. Some of the eating kind, some of the cooking herbs kind for Mother, but mostly the kindness kind which after all, was the kind that really mattered the most. Yep, my big sister Gale had some really good ideas.
Book 4. The Concert Review, From The Artists Point Of View
As promised, (but only because, even after forty seven years before the mast, I have been able to maintain the semi pristine purity of obscurity of one “unknown” to the music press), I will review the concert myself. However because I am the artist, and not eyes and ears in the audience, but eyes and ears backstage, and onstage, I will naturally review it from the artists point of view…
First, the synopsis, which is: “Simply wonderful, wish you were here!”
Then to the facts of the matter:
Our sound check was scheduled for 3:30 PM, however at 3:30 PM, I was bouncing along in the back of Tut’s truck, spiffed up to the max and trying to hold, balance and keep a seventy pound pot of steaming hot Kalaloo from spilling. (This because Tuts is, in addition to many other things, “The King Of Kalaloo” and he promised the Director of the Jarvis Museum that he would make and bring enough to feed everyone..so now he has been awake for fifty hours straight, cooking it, and is close to Kalaloo collapse as one can get)
We were rushing to pick up Tut’s Cousin Delia, who was coming in to Tortola wharf from Roadtown, also scheduled to arrive at 3:30 PM…Whoops, No Delia. The customs man said “you mean de schuppidy crazy woman wid de big black hat ana head wha cussin’ like a drunken sailah?, No man she done gan up de road” Up de road we zoom, Now Tuts is cussin’ Delia with his head turned to the back seat looking at the kalaloo, in fact and effect driving forwards backwards. It was not a good 10 minutes of driving or, rather let me say, it was the best 10 minutes of driving ever considering, that the only one looking at the road was me, and all I could do was steer with the hot pot, of steaming Kalaloo,whilst trying not to spill it.
By the grace of what must be a Kalaloo (or perhaps innocent tourist) loving God, we arrive at the concert site with minimal spillage of soup or blood…Thank goodness we are finally able to get it inside and out of our hands.
At a quarter to four, I am able to start setting up for our sound check… at four fifteen the first lady (no not Mrs. Obama) the first concert goer/comer arrives, takes a seat right down in front and immediately begins to gaze adoringly up at yours truly. God bless her, she has come early because “she doesn’t want to miss a ting’”
She is a mighty Purdy lady, the color of spun honey, in a wonderfully low-cut yellow sun dress, with a bright and sunny face. (Did I mention that she is sitting right down front?) Fortunately, I am more than warmed up and ready to sing, so the sound check is not an embarrassment, in fact it turns into sort of a mini concert just for her, complete with little squeals of appreciation and charming effusive complements. In years past we might have called the concert “jazz” right then and there, and gone off together to make a life in Brazil or St. Croix, but I’m almost grown up now and I am here on serious business.
After all,this show and concert is part of “The Second Coming” and this time there will be no…well…a lot less…well.. a little less… hanky panky. But no hanky panky today.
This means a lot to me. I will be singing a one hour concert presentation of my new Musical, “The Virgin Islands Songs”, to and for an audience of local, honest to goodness Virgin Islanders, not a bar full of drunken visitors who think they’re in the Bahamas and want to hear “Who Let The Dogs Out” Or “Chiquita Cheeseburger”, nor a room full of wealthy white folks wintering in the Islands and wanting me to play those “steel pots ‘n pans or whatever you call them” but de real ting’ mon…and if I don’t do it right, right here, right now, t’will be best to leave the equipment behind and beat feet, straight for the airport… Continued…
Scott Fagan's Mem.wa? 