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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 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. 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…
Book 4. Sad Beyond Words.
Book 4. Sad Beyond v Words.
The phone rang a short while ago (7:30 AM July 3rd) and it was Tuts calling from St. Thomas to tell me that our friend Nicky (The Mighty Whitey) Russel was gone. Of course we (and he) and everyone else knew that his going was coming, or as we might say in the islands “He wa comin’ tu go”. Nevertheless, that he is now no more among us, that he has left this plane and phase shifted out of this dimension to who knows where, leaves many of us missing him and what might have been and sad beyond words. I am sad beyond words. I offer my most heartfelt condolences to his beautiful sisters, his beautiful sons, and his beautiful wife Janet.
LeBiega/Tuts, was Mighty Whitey’s un-official Theme song for over thirty years. Here is a recording of he and I doing LaBiega Carousel/Tutsie, in St. Thomas, not too long ago,
along with a recording of what he recently told me was his favorite of my songs, Captain Creole.
Listen and you will hear beautiful Nicky singing in all his glory on both of these recordings.
God and Good Blessed you Nicky, We Love you and we will miss you forever,
Book 1. Isla Grande #7, El Ultimo Trolley And Book 4. Juxtapositions…
Book 1. Isla Grande #7, El Ultimo Trolley
In the Dark Age just before Gale found our salvation in Rock and Roll, one day out of the blue our Pop or, the man we knew as “Frankie” showed up ah… came to visit. He peeked in on Howard, in bed with a bottle of Don Q, spoke “be-bop jargon” to Mother (Gale and I had some sort of linguistic flashback, we hadn’t heard “be bop” since we were babes in arms, all in all, considering the wild and varied verbilations that we sprang from and were steeped in, it’s wonderly that we speak any Angleish ‘tall. “Fee is uk and foo is ock mon! No?”
Frankie wasted no time in showing us how much fun that we’d been missing, Laughing, joking, singing, punch ball, stoop ball, stick ball. Hey ya want some ice cream? Sure, why not! He spent two days with us and when he left, we were so frigging turned inside out, bummed and depressed that it was beyond words. What the frig are adults thinking?
It wasn’t that Howard was a bad guy it’s just that he was chronically disabled by the rum, he was a drunk guy that stayed in bed drinking and throwing up, Mud scrambled all over the place juggling Howard, Little Larry (who was home from the hospital and sleeping in a drawer) Gale and me and whatever freelance typing jobs she could find in Puerto Rico for secretaries who don’t speak the language, and God help us, her own wants, needs and dreams.
I accept the possibility that I may have been somewhat pre-occupied with self at ten, nevertheless, I loved my Mudder and even I knew that this life was not what she had in mind when she and her beautiful twin sister Lea, skipped blithely away from the life they knew, to the Frangipangi scented trade winds, blue seas and blue skies of the Bonny Bongo Isles. Mud was a Jazz baby (in fact Baby was her nickname) and music was a central part of her heart and soul. Her most prized possession by far was a steamer trunk filled with her “Jazz baby” collection of 30’s, 40’s and early 50’s 78’s. This is Billie Holiday, Early Sarah Vaughan, Ella, Julie Christy, Dakota Staton, Billy Eckstein, Mr. Five by Five, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Charlie Parker, Charlie Christian, Lester Young, Gerry Mulligan, Gale’s own God Father Dizzy Gillespie, and many many others.
To any hip music lover, the trunk was worth ten times its weight in gold. A local department store agreed and allowed her to use her collection as collateral for a loan, a loan which she eventually could not repay and one day in the dark ages they came and took Mother’s mother lode of music and happiness away.
I will never be able to explain to you what that means if you don’t already know, and if you know, you know.
I was not able to understand how Howard would allow that to happen. Why he didn’t stick up a Muelberia, or a Lechonirea, or ultra leverage heaven and hell somehow, someway, anyway, to get it back. That is until years later, in St. Thomas, all grown up and talking with him about music, he proudly announced to me that his favorite musical artist/singer of all time, was Edie Gorme.
Anyway, shortly after Frankie’s visit and the loss of Mother’s most centrally important possession, we lost the pad on Ashford Avenue and moved to a part of Santurce called Ocean Park.
Ocean Park was a “working class” neighborhood very light on anglish and very heavy on macho. And, to tell you the truth, (even though it was always maximo stressful to maintain) macho worked for me. Although I was significantly undersized and underweight, I could run and leap and field and throw and bat and all around play ball with the best. We were going to “Santa Terisita” (I had just started the sixth grade) and los Guapos (the tough guys) in the neighborhood were amazed and proud that “Ocean Park” had a “little Gringito” who seemed fearless and could and would catch “all the fuego” that they or anybody else could throw. Ocean Park had a little Guapito Gringito to call it’s own.
As a little white boy in the West Indies, my basic defense mechanism was an absolute commitment to death over dishonor, to dying rather than to be thought of and treated as less than. The boys from Ocean Park and I had good times playing ball in the school yard at Santa Teresita (where even though I was the smallest, I was one of very few who could hit the ball over the wall) and at a poetically named place that resides in my imagination still, like some perfect Spanish three word haiku “El Ultimo Trolley”.
This field of dreams was a sandlot large enough for a traditional baseball diamond, along the right field line was an actual old trolley car (the last trolley car in PR, or El Ultimo Trolley). Why a thing like that would stimulate such romantic feelings in me even as a boy, is a fine mystery. (My imaginings relating to it run more to Panama hats and Pan Am Clippers, than to baseball caps and the Yankee Clipper), in spite of the fact that it was the first place that I had ever actually played on a baseball diamond. I, up to that time had great and highly developed skills for alley ball or coconut trees in the middle ball or a sock with a rock in the middle ball, but…diamonds? Fortunately my skills as a stone throwing ragamuffin were transferable, and the baseball diamond was grooveland for me.
I had a great arm, (trained and fine tuned in St. Thomas “teefin” mangos by knocking them out of the tops of trees) so I was a Center fielder and a pitcher. (Frankie was a great pitcher too and tried out for the “New Yawk G’ints”, his dream of dreams was to be the boy in his poem “Now Pitching For New York!” (a poem unfortunately lost to the depredations and natural disassemblage of life and the things of life in beer can ridden rusty trailers on the skeeter riddled edge of the western Everglades). Were it not for Jazz, ball might have been Frankie’s thing, And were it not for “just around the corner Rock and Roll”, ball might have been my thing also.
Around that time Gale and I were put out of school for the family’s inability to pay the tuition. Mud tried kitchen table school but with the afore-mentioned set of responsibilities that she had, good old book larnin’ went the way of the wind.
Meanwhile, Shortly after Father’s visit, he sent us a smiling photograph of himself standing next to an almost new car with a beautiful Blonde woman and a brand new little baby in his arms. Gale and I felt pretty much completely abandoned.
A couple of things occurred to cheer things up, one was me smacking the neighborhood bully in the face so hard that he burst into tears, and the other was Howard finally landing the Civil Engineering job that had been the carrot that had brought us all to La Isla Grande two and a half years earlier, in the first place. Continued…..
Book 4. Juxtapositions…
Last night a young man brought a pristine copy of “SOUTH ATLANTIC BLUES” to the Saturday night gig at the Collective (The Middletown Area Arts Collective or MAAC), for me to sign. Digital Dave took an interesting photograph of the young gent and me holding the record between us and shaking hands.
What a frigging “Plur-iverse” of thought and emotion the occasion stimulates and unleashes in me.
The young man was interested in talking about what happened with “SOON” (My January 1971 Broadway produced Rock Opera and the backlash that it created in the music business towards my writing partner Joe and I) You can be sure that in time I will exhaust all there is to say about SOON, but in the meantime, “SOUTH ATLANTIC BLUES” in itself was a good illustration of how wide the chasm between “show” (meaning the art of show and the show of art) and “Business” was and is.
In 1967, Jerry Shoenbaum was the head of Verve-Forecast, the hottest “Folk-Rock” label in the world, My manager at the time, Herb Gart (who I had signed with in hopes of rubbing noses with his client Buffy Saint Marie,) shopped SOUTH ATLANTIC BLUES to Jerry, he loved it and was about to sign me and the album to Verve-Forecast, when ATCO (who wanted to get in on the Folk-Rock market), offered Jerry the presidency of ATCO and Bo-coup fazools if he would leave Verve and come there. Jerry said Ok, but I’m bringing Scott Fagan and “SOUTH ATLANTIC BLUES” along to be my first release on ATCO, so… while Jerry negotiated his deal, it was decided that I should go ahead and sign with ATCO, which I did. However, ATCO never came to terms with Jerry, Jerry Schoenbaum never signed with ATCO. And there I was. It happens that I loved ATCO because Ben E. King and The Drifters, who had been my favorites for years were there, but ATCO, basically Ahmed Ertigun, was not well inclined towards me, or my album (To Ahmed I was “the kid who sings with a lisp”), and on the other hand, I considered him a jiveass racist thief) and naturally, the new incoming head of ATCO Jerry Greenberg, (one of Ahmed’s protégés) was not at all inclined to elevate and promote Jerry Schoenbaum’s pet project. In short, “SOUTH ATLANTIC BLUES” got buried at ATCO.
Folks can argue the reletive merits and quality of the lisping, the songs and the recording back and forth all they want (and they do) but Jasper Johns discovered “SOUTH ATLANTIC BLUES” in a cutout bin, listened and fell in love with it. Jasper did a lithograph of the A Side of the album and immortalized it as “SCOTT FAGAN RECORD” a lithograph that wound up in the permanent collection of the National Gallery, MOMA, The Philadelphia Museum of Modern Art, The Israeli Museum in Tel Aviv, and many others, among them perhaps most ironically, the personal collection of Ahmed Ertigun himself.
In my view, “SOUTH ATLANTIC BLUES” is a good and interesting, first album or “record” by and of a sincere and fairly unusual artist at a particular time and place. The follow-up album was to have been the Rock Opera “SOON” (which we will finally be able to release this year, better a little late than never)
I am in it for the music, the impact that it may have for the good, and the hope for positive change in the lives of my little ones and the worlds that they live in. That’s how it was, that’s how it is and that’s how it will be…
Book 4. Continued…Tales of The Second Coming.5 And Book 1. Isla Grande .4
Book 4. Continued…Tales of The Second Coming .5
I am in the muddle of, ah…middle of, preparing for three very important occasions, and the April 15 tax deadline.
First, Sula’s One Hundred and Eighth Birthday, (the 22nd of April).
Second, The release of my new CD “The Virgin Islands Songs, The Musical. In Concert” Containing my new single “Surrender To The Sun” and
Third, A benefit Concert for COAST (The Council On Alcoholism and Drug Dependency, St. Thomas, St John) on April 25th at French Man’s Reef in St. Thomas, and…
yes, I filed online, just in the nickel of dime.
We have completed the production elements of “The Virgin islands Songs, The Musical, In Concert” and are now snaggled up in the manufacturing process.
Shari Brandt, Digitaldave (both from MAAC, the collective that I am involved with here in the states) and I spent much time on the cover last evening and that element looks great. Shari had a photo of a “Golden Sky” that she took in the Virgin Islands.
The photograph is wonderfully representative of lines from “The Virgin Islands Song”
The Virgin.Islands Song
Have you ever been, to a Virgin Island?
If you answer no, come let’s go come let’s go
Have you ever seen what Virgin Islands mean?
If you answer no come let’s go, come let’s go
In this world of gray on gray
I know where the rainbow day
Is born upon the golden sunrise
That scatters the stars turning diamonds to sky
Over Amalie… an emerald in the sea
Her perfumed mystery, bold as love longs to be.
Have you ever seen what Virgin Islands mean?
If you answer no come let’s go, come let’s go
In this world of grey on grey
I know where the rainbow day
Is born upon the golden sunrise
That scatters the stars turning diamonds to sky
Over sisters three… like emeralds in the sea
Their people’s history, bold as love, wild and free.
Have you ever been, to a Virgin Island?
If you answer no, come let’s go come let’s go
Have you ever seen what Virgin Islands mean?
If you answer no come let’s go, come let’s go
If you answer no, come let’s go, come let’s go…
And our upcoming single “Surrender To The Sun”.
Surrender To The Sun
Go down by the sea, surrender to the sun
Find the one you used to be, forget what time has done
Go down by the sea and heal your heart,
Too many memories are tearing you apart
Your eyes show you’re tired so
Of love of lose or win
Old friends know you’ve got to go
And let your heart begin again.
Instrumental
Your eyes show you’re tired so
Of love of lose or win
Old friends know you’ve got to go
And let your heart begin again.
Go down by the sea and heal your heart,
Too many memories are tearing you apart
Go down by the sea, surrender to the sun
Find the one you used to be, forget what time has done
Go down by the sea and heal your heart,
Too many memories are tearing you apart,
They’re tearing you apart…
We need to work quickly as I am scheduled to travel back to St. Thomas on Tuesday the 20th of April, for Sula’s Birthday Party on the 24th and the Benefit Concert at French Mans Reef on the 25th. I would like to have at least fifty copies of the new CD to take along. The CD is a double album so we are actually burning and printing 100 discs to make 50 copies.
The package looks great (Thanks to Shari Brandt of MAAC) the production quality is great (thanks to Digital Dave of MAAC) and the content is interesting and unusual.
(The printing and burning is being done as I write, by John E. a once well-known New York City recording engineer who is also a part of the exciting MAAC collective)
In terms of content, the CD contains what I believe to be a selection of good and appropriate “Virgin Island Songs” (of which there could have been three times as many) poetry, and lots of what we call (down in the Islands) “schupidness” aka (in the USA), as “humor”. I think that folks will find it interesting, amusing, and worth their while.
This is our first co-production with MAAC (The Middletown Area Arts Collective) and this afternoon the media committee is meeting to discuss and create an action plan for getting the product (most especially the single “Surrender To The Sun” to the public. We do believe that there is an audience for this song and this recording of it, and the trick is how to get the recording to its audience. Specifically,
1. How to get exposure for the recording.
2. How to make the recording available to those people who would like to have it
3. How to collect sufficient pennies, nickels, dimes and dollars from sales of the recording to be able to create more recordings…
We think that this recording is close to the perfect one to help us develop and establish a promotion and distribution (and collection?) process that we will be able to utilize for future products.
Of course we have no freakin’ “mowker balowker” (moolah boolah) (At last report it took an investment of $250,000 to get a hit) to pursue the traditional or established promotion and distribution processes. Which includes printing thousands of promotional copies and shipping them to radio stations, hiring an “independent record promotions person” who would “get our release to the top of the pile” hiring a publicist to get us as much “press” as needed, shipping copies to and getting the interest and attention of ”reviewers” inclined to “rave or even rant” about our humble offering, and mounting a “Promotional Tour” to get exposure and support for the release” so, we have to uncover and discover new ways to achieve our goal. Which is in a word,.. ah six words, “To make this record a hit”.
We are certainly interested to hear your ideas and to engage your help in this. Please write to me at scott@lilfishrecords.com with your thoughts, and suggestions. I (and we) thank you very much.
P.S someone is saying “Scott you’ve got to bribe folks! Urging me to offer “half a bag of Hershey’s Kisses as a grand prize” Continued…
Book 1. Isla Grande .4
I walk right up to it and stop and stare almost every day. The house on South Catherine, it was my sister Gale’s home. We were here together loving each other as much as a brother and sister can. What fun we had rambling through the house shouting or mumbling silliness in English, Spanish and Calypso, in and out of yesterday, today and tomorrow. (incidentally, that’s the fun of being a “grown up” you get to shout and laugh and yell as loud and as often as you want to, and turn the music way up high).
Who in the world could have imagined that Gale would have to split? Not to California, not to Florida, but completely. Clean gone outta here, off the Earth…Not here there or anywhere, and not back tomorrow either. Gone gone gone. It’s unbelievable.
So, I walk right up to the house and stop. Almost every day. I just can’t believe she’s gone.
She would have loved “The Virgin Islands Songs, The Musical”, The MAAC Collective (right here in her little town, Middletown,) and her brudder bonehead’s new recording of “Surrender To The Sun”. After all, she was the one. She was the one that first heard the whispers in the wind, that realized a new kind of music was being birthed, one that she and her little brother Bonehead, belonged to, and were born to be part of.
It was the beginning of Rock ‘n’ Roll. Bill Haley and The Comets, Fats Domino, Little Richard, Elvis Presley, The Platters, The Moon glows, The Flamingos, Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers, their music, the idea that their music was OUR music, that spoke, that sang our freedom became our strength, the sweet salve, solace and succor for the soul, that we, that Gale and I, in that time and in our place, so desperately needed. Continued…
BOOK 1. The House at #1 Hole…
BOOK 1. The House at #1 Hole…
I went to a small public information event being produced by COAST, the local affiliate of the “National Council On Alcoholism and Drug Addiction”. The event was being held on the old “Judge Herman E. Moore” golf course. I am very familiar with this particular golf course and just about every foot of fairway in it, as I started working here, caddying, when I was eight years old.
At the time we were living in the old pre WW ll, Pan American passenger terminal. (Mud ALWAYS found interesting, atmospheric and unusual places for us to live) This one was a quaint wooden building with an open air waiting room, where gents in Panama suits once waited to swing aboard shiny new silver clippers heading to Rio and Buenos Aries and Ladies wrapped in foxes and Chanel #5 stepped off and into the torrid tropics for torrid romantic liaisons.
The waiting room was our (Gale and my) bedroom, the benches that the mythicals once sat upon in clouds of perfume, romance, espionage and dust devils, were part of the bedroom furnishings for Gale and I. It was bright and breezy, and even though it felt like we were living outside in a movie, we liked it just fine.
200 feet to the west was a Second World War military hanger, painted a fading brown and green camophlage, and filled with genuine honest to God machine gun chattering, dive bombing, loopdelooping “outta the sun” dog fighting glass canopied fighter planes, left over from “anti sub” patrol squadrons, parked here like some secret mission or lost patrol.
I see myself standing before and beneath them in the dusty old hanger, the rays of the sun slanting in through wire glass windows high above, lighting the scene. I’m straddling my broomstick pony, looking up at them, completely swept away in double dreamland, part cowboy, part pilot, part pirate (add singer, donwha? and Dada, and that’s the story of my life)
The hanger and these war planes were part of the US Navy presence that reshaped the Island and most particularly, this part of the Island, during the first and second World Wars. The reshaping (in general) included paving all of the main roads, providing plumbing and running water to all the public schools, upgrading the Hospital and public health infrastructure along with huge water catchments on hillsides all over the Island, and (what looked like) thousand foot radio towers judiciously placed (in duos and trios) here and there, (one of which, I would climb as a teenager, along with two certifiable lunatics. (no not Tuts, he had too much good sense for that)
On this part of the Island, the Navy built a genuine submarine base with six major piers or docks, gun emplacements, administrative buildings, a power plant, ten huge Barracks for enlisted men, two military hospitals, numerous administrative and support facilities, (including a little “look out house” on the very top of Hay Piece Hill- (where we also lived, but that’s another story) ammo dumps and emergency food caches, dug into the hill sides, (rations which we the “downtheroadboys” would discover and consume ravenously around 1959. (mostly long green cans of spam, and Lucky Strikes by the carton) along with a solid concrete bomb proof PX, cavalry stables, a recreational center called “The Arena” complete with ceilings over a hundred feet high and a stage where the Calypso King competitions were held during the fifties, a seaplane ramp, an entire airport (runway and hanger) known during the war as “Bournefield” (named for a Maj. Bourne who completed the first solo flight from Washington D.C. to Nicaragua, who knows when. or why)
In addition, they built Officers Quarters, consisting of large individual two story homes on the beautiful breezy hill now occupied by The University of The Virgin Islands, and forty smaller one and two family homes for enlisted men their wives and children down on the flats (known after the war as “low cost housing” or Bournefield”, as in “Scott considers himself a Bournefield Boy”) And last but not least, a wonderful Beach Club facility (changing rooms with a large snack and libation bar) and a stationary “raft” complete with diving boards, at Lindbergh Bay. (Named for Charles Lindbergh who landed right about where my little house was around 1927, after a nonstop hop from Venezuela, on his way back to the states after scoping out prospective routes for Pan American throughout Central and South America) Lindbergh Bay and its facilities were a wonderful beach destination for local folks for many years after the military had moved on.
Beginning with the purchase and transfer (1917) of the Virgin Islands from Denmark to the United States, the Islands were under US Navy administration, and an entire insulated, semi-socially segregated world existed in this “dounderoad” part of the Island. A world that left many wonderful physical things. Buildings and beach clubs, airports and such, but no record or history of the people, their lives, the stories of the individuals and families that worked and lived here.
I often wondered about those folks, how it was for them, I see them in a sort of semi sepia photo, framed by hand colored palm trees and a bright blue sea, with Frangipani, Flamboyant or Hibiscus, stuck behind the ear or in the hair of young Navy wives and waves from Kansas or Nebraska and handsome and strong young military men. A Caribbeanized, West Indianized, South Pacific with far more intense racial storylines. Storylines that reflect the crazy explosions that occur when hicks and slicksters of every race, class and culture under the sun are mortar and pestled together, with a liberal dollop of raw rum, a double dash of cayenne, a dose of voodoo (or Obeah) the intoxicating effects of tropics and trade winds and full moon nights… how I wished that Mitchner (or someone) had written their stories…I’ve always known exactly what those songs and that score or soundtrack would sound like. We shall see.
The little house was here through all of that and was sitting here when they built what would become the Judge Herman E. Moore golf course, the little house found it’s self occupying a little corner of the fairway, severity five feet to the north of the #1 green (which was, like all the othergreens, heavily oiled sand) and fifty feet to the west of the # 2 Tee. Consequently every golfer that wanted to play more than one hole was obligated to all but come in for coffee or rum and Coca-Cola. It was interesting.
Mud had married Howard Lindqvist, a young man from what had (just one generation ago), been the most powerful and well respected local family in St. John, (a family, that after arriving in St. Thomas would, within two generations, drink and squander it all away) Howard was a well educated Howard University graduate with a degree in civil engineering, but an increasingly drunken and foolish wastrel, married to a white woman, who (inexplicably in the eyes of those that knew Howard) was foolish enough to marry him.
Many of the folks that played golf were pretentious and judgmental types (including Howard’s own father Mahlon) and would have preferred not to become so intimately involved in “The little House of Dynamics” every time they got to the first hole, but…that was life in de Islands mon…
Pretty soon the ones that would let me caddy for them began insisting that I actually meet them at the club house rather than waiting ‘til they swung by on the way to the second tee, to pick up the golf bag, and I was officially introduced to the blasted inarguable inconvenience of work.
I was eight, and it was great. Inconvenient, but great. Not the the walking for what seemed like ten to twenty (or however long nine or eighteen holes used to be) blasted miles in the burning hot sun, dragging a bag that weighed every bit as much and was every bit as tall as “The little caddy that could” wasn’t the great part, that’s the part that made you starvin’ hungry and gave you the money to fill your pockets, mouth and belly with Tootsie Rolls. That was the part that was great. Tootsie Roll heaven in the afternoon.
Also, there was the further confirmation of a kind of belonging from the older caddies, the “big” boys, all older “rough and tough” young gents of color, that “Skah-ty, de likkle white boy from Nisky School, de likkle white boy, from doun de road, is one a we” That acceptance, and Tootsie Roll heaven in the afternoon, that was the part that was great. That and being surrounded by the artifacts of war, the vanished lives, the romance, the joys and tragedies, me and my broomstick pony, cantered up, around, under, over, and through, a whole conjured up swirling universe of sight, sound, smell and emotion. That was the part that was great…the whole frigging thing.
Later that year (Easter, 1954) Mud and Howard and Gale and I (along with a few suitcases) piled onto a one engine piper, and, fled to Puerto Rico, to escape “bills”,
PS It would be many years (well a few) before we would see the little house again, we got back (after time in Puerto Rico and New York) to St. Thomas in 1958 and spent another six months in “The House at #1 Hole” in 1959, but those are all other stories.
PPS Yes, I do know Kelsey Grammar. In those days, his father Alan (in addition to being a great musician and a friend of my mother and her twin sister), ran a lunch counter in the airport hanger, which was just a hop skip and a jump across the runway (which was how we got to the airport and Lindbergh beach, just hop skip and jump across the runway) from the little house referenced above. Alan and his wife appeared one day with a little arm waving, foot kicking, red faced thing with a remarkable noggin, and proudly introduced it as “our little Kelsey”. I remember being afraid for the pitiful looking little thing and silently wishing it”good luck” yep!
Book 4. Continued…A Little Trip To Jos Van Dyke.
Book 4. …Continued, A Little Trip To Jos Van Dyke
The sea breeze is extraordinary; it’s coming down through (Sir Francis) Drake’s Passage and across Pillsbury sound bringing the coolest freshest air imaginable. Its way too easy to forget how good it feels head to toe, body and soul, to sail these waters and to sip this sweet sweet breeze…
Tuts is talking like he’s having a flashback to the swim in which he became the first native Virgin Islander in known history to swim from St. Thomas to St John.
“Look, look” he says, there’s the two poles on St. Thomas that I saw from the tip top of the giant wave, and there is the undersea cables that I told you about! And Look, look how the current is trying to sweep everything southwest; out of the sound and into the sea, “Next stop out dey is New Orleans m’boy, Wha? Not me again meson, not me again!” “But Tuts,” somebody says, “I heah you “fraid!, an das why yu ain’ gon do it a gain, Yu ‘fraid man, yu ‘fraid!
“Oy Fraid?” he says indignantly, “Fraid? Who ain’ fraid a out dey, schipid in dey ass! Das right, ah ‘fraid. Me-son, yu don know dey have Shak out here big as de Bismark? Meson, dem shak so big yu cou walk on dey head, yu don know das how I mek it to Sain John?
Off to the left are the beautiful gold and green islands of Thatch Key, then Congo Key and Louango. We see the remains of the old great house of the plantation on Louango, where the white overseer was killed by the slaves he bossed in the first moments of the St. John uprising of 1733.
Beyond the keys, to the North East is Jos Van Dyke An Island named after a Dutch Pirate Captain but settled by the Quakers and part of the British Virgins. When the English renounced slavery in 1833, the land on Jos’ was given to the very people that had been enslaved there.
The Danes abolished slavery in 1849 consequently slaves in St. John were always trying to find their way to Jos Van Dyke and Tortola and freedom. In fact there is a huge iron sugar cane boiling kettle on the sand in Jos’ that a St. John slave was able put his wife and children into, and sail (or row) them all to Jos Van Dyke and freedom. The iron kettle was still on the beach, when I first saw it in the sixties.
We slide up to a new concrete wharf and head for the old wooden customs office only, now it’s a new concrete customs office, where we discover that the gentle portly gentleman who had manned the post since salt met water, had been called away to sing with the angel chorus.
As Delia and the current customs gent negotiated our entrée, I spotted our friend Ruben Chinnery sitting at a table under the trees in front of a little beach side café, We have all known Ruben for at least forty five years, and Tuts and I for closer to fifty, back then, Tuts and Ruben and I had a little “Band” together, that knocked the living hell out of “Perfidia” I was the Sax man, Tuts played the Trumpet and Ruben strangled the guitar til’ it squeaked for mercy. Good lord we loved to play that song. And nothing but that song.
We have jammed together at Foxy’s many times since then, and we are here today to see about setting up a gig in which Ruben, Nicky, (Mighty Whitey) and I would be playing together all day long (maybe three sets each and one or two super long jams)
After speaking with Tessa and The Fox, it’s on. We will decide on the date at a future time. That done, we socialize… hug and smooch and then…we head back down the sound (Pillsbury Sound).
Between little St. James and the entrance to the Lagoon, Timmy (the Captain of the little ship) cuts the engine and announces that we aren’t going any further until he hears a few specific tunes. The mighty fine fellow hands me my guitar and says “The first one is “Mademoiselle”.
The boat is rocking like crazy and I am sitting on the roof of the cabin, so I jam a foot against a stanchion and the other against the life lines and, once properly “jammed”, I sing my friggin’ heart out. It isn’t everyday that tough, and weathered, beaten but not bowed, hombres honor me in this way. I am really touched that my lifelong tough guy compadres feel this way about my music, and I will fall overboard and drown, guitar and all before I will disappoint them.
Mademoiselle
When will I see your garden mademoiselle?
The garden we spoke of that I love so well
Orchids and roses, my favorite smell
Take me you told me you promised,
and I’ll never tell
Take me and show me your garden, Mademoiselle
I know there are kings and princes, they line at your gate
But I love you more than they, let them wait
Orchids and roses, would ease all my hate
Take me you told me you promised,
Before it’s too late
Take me and show me your garden, Mademoiselle
And now we must stop pretending, Mademoiselle
Your garden is choking, your blossoms all fell
Orchids and roses are a funeral smell
Your rouge and your perfumes too heavy,
like the stories I tell
They’re ringing the bells and I’m sorry, Mademoiselle
We’ve got nothing to sell and I’m sorry Mademoiselle…
“Ok, Now, South Atlantic Blues” says the Captain
South Atlantic Blues
You know the Islands are the perfect place for going away
Life’s so easy there you live from day to day to day to day
The father of missions, he once walked proud and tall
He must had seen too many Christians, cause now he’s very small
The poor man’s got no Gods at all
Not counting alcohol, not counting alcohol
You say that’s dues, I’ve got news for you
It’s South Atlantic Blues, South Atlantic Blues
She lives in the alley, the hope gone from her eyes
Her dress is torn and dirty, loving lips are cracked and dried
She sits and cries, my life’s a lie
Her children think she’s died, her children think she’s died
You say that’s dues, I’ve got news for you
It’s South Atlantic Blues, South Atlantic Blues
She stands by the seaside, my love, she waits for me
And I can’t help her as she wonders, how long will it be
I told her once, we would be free, from Charlotte Amalie
Charlotte Amalie, Charlotte Amalie Charlotte Amalie
You say that’s dues, I’ve got news for you
It’s South Atlantic Blues, South Atlantic Blues
You know the Islands are the perfect place for going away
Life’s so easy there you live from day to day to day to day
day to day to day to day…
Then Mighty Whitey asks me to play “Where My Lover Has Gone” his dear departed Mudder dear’s favorite song,
Where My Lover Has Gone
Morning comes down very heavy on me
Nothing at all like a new day should be
This morning saves its glory, for someone in another story
Somewhere a song, where my lover has gone
There’s no glad surprise for these sad eyes to see
No trace of the grace that her face had for me
These grey skies have no rainbow, cause rainbows are where ever she goes
Somewhere a song where my lover has gone
Somewhere the sun is shining, good old time silver lining
Somewhere a song, where my lover has gone
Morning comes down very heavy on me
Nothing at all like a new day should be
This morning saves its glory, for someone in another story
Somewhere a song, where my lover has gone
Where my lover has gone, where my lover has gone…
Now, says the Captain, Now lets have Captain Creole!
CAPTAIN CREOLE
The word spread through The Virgins, the Old Creole was dead
He died in the night of the full moon light, in a swordfight, in his bed
Some say he was crazy, he had a rum dream in his head
But I will tell you, in his words, what Captain Creole said…
He said “Old Pirates never die dry your eyes we don’t ever die
Old Pirates never die, they just sail away”
The Dancing Senioritas, the Ghosts of Buried Gold
The German and The African, that battled in his soul
The Jolly Jolly Rodger, The Treasure Ships of Spain
Called out to him and bid him come… back to The Spanish Main
Because “Old Pirates never die, dry your eyes they don’t ever die
Old Pirates never die, they just sail away”
The word spread through The Virgins, Like the ringing of an old ships bell
The Preacher turned to Heaven, most folks bet on Hell
The Old Creole was sinking, the Old Creole was gone
And we cried in the light of the full moon night, Whispering his song
He said “Old Pirates never die, dry your eyes we don’t ever die
Old Pirates never die, they just sail away”
Old Pirates never die; dry your eyes we don’t ever die
Old Pirates never die, they just sail away”
“Ok Thank” you says Captain Timmy as he starts the engine, “now take us home with La Beiga/Tuts
La Beiga Carousel/ Tutsie
Man I would walk and drink rum de whole night,
before me go ride on La Beiga Carousel?
Man I would walk and drink rum de whole night,
before me go ride on La Beiga Carousel
Come go home come go home Cecebelle,
tonight we’ain gon ride on La Beiga Carousel
Come go home come go home Cecebelle,
tonight we’ain gon ride on La Beiga Carousel
And a skinny little fellow looks a little bit like me,
Lives on an Island in the Caribbean sea
And he drinks straight cane rum from an old calabash
And with those Island girls, lord he really is a smash
And he lives off the tourists with the greatest of ease,
Why I’ve even seen him selling bags of cool Island breeze
He lives high on a mountain in an old sugar mill
He wants to be a Pirate, I know someday he will.
An’ I’ll walk and drink rum whole night,
before me go ride on Labeiga Carousel
Man I’ll walk and drink rum whole night,
before me go ride on Labeiga Carousel
And he spends all his days cooling out in Trader Dan’s,
There’s no time for working in my friend Tutsie’s plans
He wears a pretty flower tucked up in an old straw hat
But if you should try to fight him, he’d show you where it’s at.
And he lives off the tourists with the greatest of ease,
Why I’ve even seen him selling bags of cool Island breeze
He lives high on a mountain in an old sugar mill
He wants to be a Pirate, I know someday he will.
An’ I’ll walk and drink rum whole night,
before me go ride on Labeiga Carousel
Man I’ll walk and drink rum whole night,
before me go ride on Labeiga Carousel
And I wish I were like Tutsie and could do as I please,
then I’d be barefoot at the Foxes’ Tamarindo
And I’d drink straight cane rum from an old calabash
And with those Island girls, lord, I’d really be a smash
And I’d live off the tourists with the greatest of ease,
And have fun selling bags of cool Island breeze
I’d live high on a mountain in an old sugar mill
And someday I’d be a Pirate, you know someday I will.
Man I would walk and drink rum de whole night,
before me go ride on La Beiga Carousel
Man I would walk and drink rum de whole night,
before me go ride on La Beiga Carousel
Come go home come go home Cecebelle,
tonight we’ain gon ride on La Beiga Carousel
Come go home come go home Cecebelle,
tonight we’ain gon ride on La Beiga Carousel
We all knew the song (in fact Nicky (Mighty Whitey) is in the chorus of the recording posted here) and we all sang one rousing chorus after another of it, until we reached the dock.
What a time we had. Not riotous or raucus or excessivly rambunctious (as was out wont in the past), but one filled with laughter and honest strong emotion, in the most beautiful settings in the world, Drakes Passage, Pillsbury Sound and the warm embrace of a small circle of friends.
All Words and Music Scott Fagan, Copyright, Scott Fagan Music ASCAP
Scott Fagan's Mem.wa? 
