ooooo it's hot

I have some good news for those who are not enjoying these hot temperatures.
Every summer and winter seasons of the four we recognize in the western world has a turning point at which the present season starts to move the temperatures, nearly imperceptibly, in the new direction toward the next season.

Today is that day for us.
After today the temperatures will start to get ... basically, in a trend sense ... ever so slightly cooler. This is the last day of getting hotter, now we move toward "getting cooler."

As I said, it is nearly not noticeable but the movement has shifted. Now doesn't that make you feel, nearly imperceptibly, a little better?

Together we fly to a better place.

New England town it had been 51 degrees during the day and 48 at night. For the end of May that is cold for even us.
 Then one day later,  it turned into  summer. Day time temperatures soared up to  the 70 and 80's. That is just plain old baffling weather to a guy who likes to stroll around outside.  Mark Twain said, “If you don’t like New England weather, wait a minute.”   I keep my closet by the back door fully prepared with all kinds of jackets, coats, windbreakers, hats and even gloves.

    Last night, I had opened my bedroom window to get some fresh air.  When one opens a bedroom window at night one starts to hear the sounds of summer, a few certain birds, owls which you did not think were out there will be hooting away and, almost on cue, you start to hear people who cannot sleep wandering out there.  Last night I heard the pleas of someone who was struggling with a deep personal crisis, maybe an argument...... something.  And just like clockwork, my bedroom walls and ceilings were lit up by the blue and red flashing lights atop a police cruiser.  So, I got up, walked carefully, slowly to the window and watched  as the small tragedy played itself out at 1:32 AM.

    A man without a shirt  and woman with a shirt  were talking loudly but not arguing. The police were asking questions trying to discern what was going on with them.  The man was in some kind of deep emotional strife and the woman was trying to comfort him I surmise.  The police let them both walk away. The two cruisers drove away but he was still crying.  A grown man shirtless, crying in the dark, walking away from the front of my house. He must have been in some awfully sad dilemma to be crying aloud on the street.

    My feelings for him flew right out my window down the 40 feet to the sidewalk and stood by him, feeling all of his sadness and pain.  In the daylight of the very day  before this evening, I had shocking news that my  94 year old mom's heart was finally failing and she would be immediately put on hospice care.

    So, me and that shirtless man were both stricken by some uncontrollable sadness, him on the street and me behind my window, staring into the night time aching ...... and finding an unknowing, perhaps, unwilling compatriot.
    I wonder if he would have found my sadness comforting to him that  evening or would it have been simply just more sadness, too much sadness for one New England night.

Osama, cinerama, Alabama

This is how I see bin Laden.
    First of all, let me say some thing about the derivation of his surname.  Bin in Arabic is like O in Irish. It means "of".  John O'Sullivan- John from the Sullivan clan. Osama from the Laden clan.  Where do you think Johnson comes from?  The son of John.  

    He was a human being who used to love to ride horses around the dunes and read poetry. He wanted to help his people. He took the wrong path. His religion got him confused and all puffed up about what he was entitled to do. It is not the first time I have seen that.   Once he killed  in anger and revenge he was stuck on an evil path.

     My karate teacher once told me, "There is never enough revenge."  Meaning that you could kill and kill and kill and never be satisfied.   That same karate teacher also worked at a pr firm where he  created the US Army's saying, "Be All You Can Be."   

    Bin Laden cared about his people. Nothing wrong with that, but he did not know when to stop and once again his religion told him he was ok to kill because God said it was ok. In fact, he deduced that anyone who did not take his path was polluted and deserved to die. Today what would Mohammed think of that?  

    Now paint into this landscape our insatiable appetite for oil. The pot should be starting to boil.  Before the age of the internal combustion engine none of the  developed countries found any interest whatsoever in the sands of the desert.  Try to step back a few generations and remember that oil is a natural resource but before it, we did not care about that whole part of the world, not a hoot. Apart from ancient Egypt, in general we could have cared less.  You could not drag us onto a tour bus bound for Damascus with a gun at our backs.  But now we are involved in a resource struggle that has  spanned American generations.  Do not forget that this is all about oil.  In fact when you fill your tank and pay $4.25 for a gallon, imagine an amount, say 50 cents, going to pay for the funeral or the prosthetic for the kid from Davenport, Iowa.  

    Will we someday be killing for potable water?  

Ok, now let’s finish off the recipe with a wide angle shot of the pot on the stove: Mix one tablespoon of Osama  with a gallon of America's love for oil,  put a healthy dash of the spice passion for religion and oh yeah, don't forget a dollop of devastating poverty in the middle east, decades of oppression by dictators and voila, you have a nasty tasting stew that will surely kill.

    Roger and out.  Hope this helps.

I just saw a bumper sticker that read

I want Morgan Freeman to narrate my life.

Some ideas sound perfect.

After many discussions

 internal and otherwise, I decided to do two shows in Indiana last weekend. One was in Bloomington, the main campus town of Indiana University, where 36,000 students learn stuff and the other was the quintessential Midwestern city, Indianapolis.
Did you know that Cole Porter, Leroy Carr, Yank Rachel, James Dean, The Ink Spots,Wes Montgomery and Hoagy Carmichael among others are from Indiana?

Other than one desolate time of 15 minutes outside the venue in Indianapolis waiting to go on stage, it was perfectly perfect, though a tad terrifying for me.

Professionally  I am still, really, mostly but not completely unknown.

   

One of the remarkable things was getting to see my old utopian-type hippie friends from the late 60's who came to the Bloomington concert.  What an overwhelming experience for me to be able to play my songs for  old friends the way I did 40 years ago!  There they were, sitting, looking and listening to me.   Try this....  Imagine you are a stand-up comedian and you go back to your college and tell jokes to your old friends and they laugh like crazy?  It was a precious rare gift for me to see their faces. I just cannot explain the feeling. ... a garden of living joys for me.  To me they were as young as when  I probably was to them.

One of the best parts  of the two days was staying at the home of my  generous host, Stan.  What a great character he turned out to be!   Stan has 250,000 songs in his computer.   He got me to laugh when he told me the titles to two  country  songs:  "Hold My Beer While I Kiss your Girl" and, "You Ain't Much Fun Since I Quit Drinking."  Those two songs alone were enough to once again  vindicate my position of not taking mainstream country music too seriously.  I am, however, strangely comforted that that kind of music is out there.

Watching Stan watch and react to his family and the world around him was  as fortifying an experience for me as the concerts themselves.

The Indianapolis concert was attended by mostly legal eagles: lawyers, judges and Democratic party faithful. I have to tell you that the decentness of Midwesterners is alive and well.  There is goodness between the fields and lanes of millions of ears of corn.

 I was solo  in a concert atmosphere.  I usually play with the band. Public perception and mind set is powerful.  Did you see the video of  the world class violinist who performed in the subway for an afternoon and no one listened?  It is on the Net.

Anyway, this morning I feel lucky once again to have been with those Indiana folks.  I am  grateful. I must certainly be appreciative for Carl and Polly who drove a third of the way across the US to hear me sing, from Connecticut to Indiana for an hour and 40 minutes of  songs! It astounds me and I still barely believe they did it, but they proclaimed their mission after several repeated stubborn inquiries from me. Yes, they did do that.  I am honored.  They must sure love music, tales, stories and  performance.

I have devoted a chunk of my life for it, I suppose they could too, why not.
Thanks for listening. They got a lot of corn in the midwest, well, they got more than a lot of corn in the midwest.

Rogersalloom.com

Breaking up with my girlfriend was terrible

Memphis Minnie

I would expect most of you to have never heard the voice or guitar of the great Memphis Minnie. Listen on that You Tube link.

Her music  gets to me crazy with the joy and love of life.  Thank you for letting me show it to you for the first time if I am so fortunate.

(If you cut and paste the address of the two photos I have here you can see some still shots of her.)

These two photos say very different things to me and I am sure that both of the messages I get from them are yet 100% accurate.  She was both of these images.

Also, listen to this for a charge....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FH8_WH5aRqo

And if you want more listen to this.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiRoNuw5x4M

Here are a few nice paragraphs of biography on her:

http://bit.ly/fM9l7a

I found this good bit on her on the internet...

She spent her twilight years in a nursing home, where she died of a stroke in 1973 in Memphis, Tennessee.[6] She is buried at the New Hope Baptist Church Cemetery in Walls, DeSoto County, Mississippi. A headstone paid for by Bonnie Raitt was erected by the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund on 13 October 1996 with 35 family members in attendance including her sister, numerous nieces and nephews. The ceremony was taped for broadcast by the BBC. Laverne Baker was one of those nieces. Her headstone is marked:

Lizzie "Kid" Douglas Lawlers
aka Memphis Minnie
The inscription on the back of her gravestone reads:
"The hundreds of sides Minnie recorded are the perfect material to teach us about the blues. For the blues are at once general, and particular, speaking for millions, but in a highly singular, individual voice. Listening to Minnie's songs we hear her fantasies, her dreams, her desires, but we will hear them as if they were our own."[7]
http://www.hobemianrecords.com/dgraphics/minnie.jpg

http://www.nps.gov/history/delta/blues/images/people/memphis_minnie.jpg 

I have been thinking of my friend, Johnny C.

  He is totally broke. I have not seen him for about 7 years because, well....., because I have not seen him.  John is a nice guy. His mother was a drunk. His father did the best he could but has passed away.  John is an orphan, sort of.  Now he. is an adult but he confessed to me today  that he is right on the verge of being homeless.  The recession has beat up those folks who are on the edge in good times.

    A couple of weeks ago he called me out of the blue after those 7 years. He was looking for work.   I had some handyman type work for him the last couple of days.  So, we have been chatting as we used to do so much in the old days. He said the black fly season is coming to New England.

    “You can take two pieces of bread with mayonnaise on them, wave them through the air on the edge of field and you will have yourself an instant sandwich.”
   

     When I first met him 20 years ago, he was a motor head type  living in the back  of a Chevy where the seat used to be.  He had it parked in the middle of the 20 acres his father had left him.  It was all his father left him.

    One time I introduced him to a lawyer friend of mine at a party. I wanted to say some things interesting about each one of them to the other to kick start their conversation.  So, I innocently said something to the effect of:

    John, this is my friend, George, he is an attorney in Northampton and he likes to watch baseball.
   George, this my friend John, he lives in the back of a Ford that is parked on his own 20 acres. John quickly and abruptly corrected me, "It is not a Ford, it is a Chevy! I wouldn't live in a Ford."

    John felt no shame about living in the back of a car, but he did not like Fords. John is not an idiot. He is just himself.

    Look, some people are not good with money or even planning their lives. They go from week to week. Are they bad people?  No. Jesus said the meek shall inherit the earth. John inherited a Chevy.

    Some people are just not good with money and that is all there is to it.  Money and the pursuit of it consumes all of us more or less most of our lives, but  I now believe that money is not the real deal.  It is only about 15% of the real deal. The real deal is physical and emotional health.  
     A few years  ago, I knew a couple of twenty-somethings who received annual bonuses of 3-4 million dollars and I would not call them up to talk about hamburgers.
    All I am saying is, to keep your head.
     Did you know that there are some olive trees that are authenticated to be 5,000 years old?  This tree below is not one of them, but it is most beautiful.  The photo of a beautiful windswept ancient tree with its twisted old trunk and it stalwart greenery is not here because I am still trying to learn the technical procedure to get photos to you. Thanks for your patience and please use your imagination until further notice.  OOps, I did it I think, Oh my, wonderful.  this is not the windswept one but it is an olive tree. So, I guess the lesson is that one can teach an old dog new tricks!  Did you know that the olive garden Jesus wept in is still there, Gethsemane, I believe was its name.

Ooops, keep forgetting to tell you about this

I would surely be foolish, unwise, not thoughtful, and unkind to myself not to tell you that the new air dates for screening of the documentary film, So Glad I Made It, The Saga of Roger Salloom, America's Best Unknown Songwriter are now:

Thu, Apr 7, 2011 14:30:00
Thu, May 26, 2011 17:00:00
Sun, May 29, 2011 02:00:00
Thu, Jun 30, 2011 17:00:00

Sun, Mar 20, 2011 02:00:12 just aired and I want to thank all the good people who contacted me by various means to express their good feelings.

One can always go to the Documentary Channel or my personal website for news or sign up for our friend & fan email to find out about shows, concerts and such.

www.rogersalloom.com

Thanks for paying attention.

Roger

Just in case, you really did not know...

I do want to share some disappointing news for you if you happen to be a white racist prejudiced against African-Americans. You really should know that if it weren't for those African Americans whom you don't like, there certainly would be no rock and roll you love ... NOPE, nada.

Furthermore, there absolutely would be no blues neither which is the father of rock and roll (along with country music) and guess what, no jazz of any kind neither without those folks.

Isn't that something! How did that happen? Well, I do not have time to illuminate the lineage of it all here, but you could start by reading a few basic books about American music.

In my personal sense, I see the blues as a musical response to 100 million countless humiliating experiences interwoven from a bunch ... big bunch of folks.

I see jazz, somewhat, as the black man's way of "sassing" back, of saying, "this is how I feel."

"Sometimes it is pretty complex and I hope you like it but this is really how I feel. And you cannot keep me down."

The blues is the same irreverent way except it is more confined musically. It is more predictable, as in a haiku or a sonnet. Fixed format but rich within that framework. My friend, Louis, says that if you have a closet full of pants but no jeans then something is missing. If you have a collection of music and there is no blues then something is missing. Blues is the sad, struggling but yet proud part of you that screams, "I am here."

I must add just as assuredly that discounting "whitey" is not any good neither. Not at all.

-------

I also deeply love that cute little import from Europe, classical music.

The photo here is of blues great Jimmy Reed. He is ours now, thank the Lord.

Everything new comes from something else before it in culture and even science. Isaac Newton responded to the Queen of England after an effusive compliment about him discovering gravity, saying to her, some thing to the effect of "Madam, I stand on the shoulders of giants."

Art is the exact same way but usually the artist is not as aware of his predecessors as Isaac was. Too self-involved and a little mixed up. If he might be aware of from where his roots came, his ego won't let him tell you lest you think he is old-fashioned or not shockingly brilliant.

The artist has internalized all the influences he/she hears from a spot that is so deep the artist cannot actually resurrect them even for a little self-peak.

Anyway, you can do your own research or wait for another post from me.

I think the more one knows the more one realizes that we are all connected, and I find that beautifully shocking, over and over.