POST 41: "COULD IT BE MAGIC?"
"Before you speak, it is necessary for you to listen, for God speaks in the silence of the heart." Mother Teresa
To begin my reentry into the world of Manilow Music, I decided to take an organized approach. I reviewed Barry’s first 13 albums from 1973 to 1989 – an adequate sample that contained 150 songs (including a few extras like “I’m Ready To Take a Chance Again,” from the movie Foul Play.
I recognized this left 25 years of songs to look at. No small. matter, especially in a maturing career. However, I needed to start somewhere, and for me that meant at the beginning. While I have been enjoying many recent songs, I knew at some point I would continue the journey of engaging systematically Barry's music of the last quarter century.
So. Obliging my inner investigator, I organized these songs into different types, knowing very well I may be lobbing a stink bomb into Fanilowdom. Yes, yes, someone’s Mandy is another’s Lola. A song that speaks to someone’s sorrow is another’s exercise workout mantra. Music is extremely fluid that way. This is why I discovered jazz is so powerful: it can be inspirational and even uplifting as it addresses the universal pain of the human heart. No wonder Bonhoeffer derived so much courage from his stay in New York City that it enabled him to confront the evils festering in his homeland. So I listened intently to the music, read the lyrics, reflected how they intersect, and the following very fluid outline of different types of songs emerged for me. (The results of my study in the appendix in post 46):
· Type 1: Songs of struggle and searching: (20 songs)
· Type 2: Songs about relationships that suck and go south/loss/regret/PAIN (63 songs)
· Type 3: Songs about Happy and Healthy and Hopeful Relationships: LOVE (31 songs)
· Type 4: Songs that are Silly and Fun (14 songs)
· Type 5: Songs that Inspire (22 songs)
OK, so I noticed the obvious. The majority of the songs on Barry’s albums from 1973 – 1989 are beautiful, haunting songs about love relationships that are falling apart, in deep doo doo, or there is something missing. If you count them, there are twice as many songs in this category as there are in the songs about happy and healthy love relationships. Maybe you can fudge the numbers a bit. Claim an author’s bias towards the blues. I would still hold the numbers of songs of love in trouble is triumphant – or what Barry calls the “cry in your beer” songs. Everyone needs to have a few up their sleeve. Well Barry has quite a lot. When all is well with the world we’re not so quick to give notice. However when we are hurting, loss and broken, we actively seek solace and help. It was my brother’s death, not a forsaken boyfriend, that send me bawling over songs like Even Now, This One’s For You, and All the Time, not to mention Mandy.
At the other end of the spectrum are 22 special songs that convey deeper, transcendent themes of friendship, hope after darkness, or love that endures in struggle. Yes, in every good song is some transcendent kernel. A song that endures has that something that pulls us out of ourselves and connects us to someone else or to the world beyond. As I listened to these 22 songs over again, some for the first time, I felt very strongly that irresistible tug: among them are: "I Am Your Child," "You Begin Again," "Somewhere Down the Road," "Beautiful Music" and yes, "I Write the Songs." I found that these 22 songs hit it out of the ballpark from beginning to end.
This leads me to one of my perennial complaints. Why did people pick on Barry about “I Write the Songs” back when it surfaced as a hit in 1975? I wondered if I were hearing the same song as its critics. Words should have a way of falling in the hearts of a reasonable person, underneath the commercial or orchestrated mask the album makers put forth. So when I hear of “Music alive forever” or “singing the very first song,” I am reminded of what the 18th-century English writer Walter Savage Landor remarked, “Music is God's gift to man, the only art of Heaven given to earth, the only art of earth we take to Heaven.”
It just seems obvious to me that “I” is “Music” eternal speaking, not the individual musician in the moment talking. There were moments after I read the scathing reviews when I wanted to add a category, the “fundamentalows,” for those poor sops who have to take everything so literally, either by lack of imagination or because their paycheck depends on it. “Can’t Smile Without You?” You can’t laugh? You can’t sing? Oh dear, you better send Barry your picture fast fundamentalow, because as the song says, he’s finding it hard to do anything, without you.
Key to my rudimentary reflection is an acknowledgment that these themes interact with each other. These songs give voice to the pain but do not stay stuck in it. That is why jazz and spirituals work so well. Boundaries in the end are porous. Find the love of your life, but discover that true love requires that you work like hell. You have to give it your all. You find your dream and it’s what Einstein described: 99% hard work, 1% talent. I think he was actually talking about genius, but I think the equation applies anyway.
My initial reentry song study revealed to me what a little bit of fun can do. You don’t need a big dose; otherwise people think you are a slacker. Or, for people like me, born with a fun-deficit disorder, baby steps are important. Seeing the fabilows hamming it up, and most of all keeping busy and getting out of the house were critical in the immediate aftermath of my brothers’ deaths. The upbeat hook to “It’s a Miracle” first captured me and kept my heart from the dark side of the force. The VSM (“Very Strange Medley”) and “Bandstand Boogie” lightened the mood when I couldn’t cry anymore. When “Copacabana” and later “Hey Mambo” came along, it added just the right amount of play. With an irresistible dance beat, a tacky set, a tragic story of a love duel between Rico and Tony over Lola, a true love lost, a hot spot goes to seed as a disco while Lola desperately needs an AA intervention. A tragic story made fun. Who can beat that?
Look at how much fun “Copa” caused. It was used in the movie Foul Play. Barry earned a Grammy Award for Pop Male Vocalist in February 1979 for “Copacabana.” In 1985, “Copacabana” was made into a full-length, made-for-television musical, then into a two-act stage musical for two years in London. Other productions of the show have been done in the United States and around the world. What about that “Copa” getup? How much fun is that? What do you even call it? I googled and ogled and asked around, especially to my “Copa’patico” crowd. You know the jacket, the one with the sleeves with the endless swirls that look like they were sewn on with a Cuisinart during a tornado. The closest I came to an answer was the “kitschy, puffy-sleeved jacket.” I am such an ignorant when it comes to such matters. Someone, someday, will enlighten us I’m sure. Just imagine the field day the Chorus of Critics had with that outfit alone. What cajones it took to play it out as far as you can take it. It was goofy but it is also joyful. That’s infectious.
By the end of my study I was reved up. There was so much more to learn. Now what?
Notes:
http://www.wright-house.com/religions/christianity/mother-teresa.html
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/w/walter_savage_landor.html
Give the gift of music to the next generation through donations to:
The Manilow Music Project
8295 South La Cienega Boulevard
Inglewood, CA 90301
info@manilowmusicproject.org
Click here to go to the next post or click here to return to the previous post.
To begin my reentry into the world of Manilow Music, I decided to take an organized approach. I reviewed Barry’s first 13 albums from 1973 to 1989 – an adequate sample that contained 150 songs (including a few extras like “I’m Ready To Take a Chance Again,” from the movie Foul Play.
I recognized this left 25 years of songs to look at. No small. matter, especially in a maturing career. However, I needed to start somewhere, and for me that meant at the beginning. While I have been enjoying many recent songs, I knew at some point I would continue the journey of engaging systematically Barry's music of the last quarter century.
So. Obliging my inner investigator, I organized these songs into different types, knowing very well I may be lobbing a stink bomb into Fanilowdom. Yes, yes, someone’s Mandy is another’s Lola. A song that speaks to someone’s sorrow is another’s exercise workout mantra. Music is extremely fluid that way. This is why I discovered jazz is so powerful: it can be inspirational and even uplifting as it addresses the universal pain of the human heart. No wonder Bonhoeffer derived so much courage from his stay in New York City that it enabled him to confront the evils festering in his homeland. So I listened intently to the music, read the lyrics, reflected how they intersect, and the following very fluid outline of different types of songs emerged for me. (The results of my study in the appendix in post 46):
· Type 1: Songs of struggle and searching: (20 songs)
· Type 2: Songs about relationships that suck and go south/loss/regret/PAIN (63 songs)
· Type 3: Songs about Happy and Healthy and Hopeful Relationships: LOVE (31 songs)
· Type 4: Songs that are Silly and Fun (14 songs)
· Type 5: Songs that Inspire (22 songs)
OK, so I noticed the obvious. The majority of the songs on Barry’s albums from 1973 – 1989 are beautiful, haunting songs about love relationships that are falling apart, in deep doo doo, or there is something missing. If you count them, there are twice as many songs in this category as there are in the songs about happy and healthy love relationships. Maybe you can fudge the numbers a bit. Claim an author’s bias towards the blues. I would still hold the numbers of songs of love in trouble is triumphant – or what Barry calls the “cry in your beer” songs. Everyone needs to have a few up their sleeve. Well Barry has quite a lot. When all is well with the world we’re not so quick to give notice. However when we are hurting, loss and broken, we actively seek solace and help. It was my brother’s death, not a forsaken boyfriend, that send me bawling over songs like Even Now, This One’s For You, and All the Time, not to mention Mandy.
At the other end of the spectrum are 22 special songs that convey deeper, transcendent themes of friendship, hope after darkness, or love that endures in struggle. Yes, in every good song is some transcendent kernel. A song that endures has that something that pulls us out of ourselves and connects us to someone else or to the world beyond. As I listened to these 22 songs over again, some for the first time, I felt very strongly that irresistible tug: among them are: "I Am Your Child," "You Begin Again," "Somewhere Down the Road," "Beautiful Music" and yes, "I Write the Songs." I found that these 22 songs hit it out of the ballpark from beginning to end.
This leads me to one of my perennial complaints. Why did people pick on Barry about “I Write the Songs” back when it surfaced as a hit in 1975? I wondered if I were hearing the same song as its critics. Words should have a way of falling in the hearts of a reasonable person, underneath the commercial or orchestrated mask the album makers put forth. So when I hear of “Music alive forever” or “singing the very first song,” I am reminded of what the 18th-century English writer Walter Savage Landor remarked, “Music is God's gift to man, the only art of Heaven given to earth, the only art of earth we take to Heaven.”
It just seems obvious to me that “I” is “Music” eternal speaking, not the individual musician in the moment talking. There were moments after I read the scathing reviews when I wanted to add a category, the “fundamentalows,” for those poor sops who have to take everything so literally, either by lack of imagination or because their paycheck depends on it. “Can’t Smile Without You?” You can’t laugh? You can’t sing? Oh dear, you better send Barry your picture fast fundamentalow, because as the song says, he’s finding it hard to do anything, without you.
Key to my rudimentary reflection is an acknowledgment that these themes interact with each other. These songs give voice to the pain but do not stay stuck in it. That is why jazz and spirituals work so well. Boundaries in the end are porous. Find the love of your life, but discover that true love requires that you work like hell. You have to give it your all. You find your dream and it’s what Einstein described: 99% hard work, 1% talent. I think he was actually talking about genius, but I think the equation applies anyway.
My initial reentry song study revealed to me what a little bit of fun can do. You don’t need a big dose; otherwise people think you are a slacker. Or, for people like me, born with a fun-deficit disorder, baby steps are important. Seeing the fabilows hamming it up, and most of all keeping busy and getting out of the house were critical in the immediate aftermath of my brothers’ deaths. The upbeat hook to “It’s a Miracle” first captured me and kept my heart from the dark side of the force. The VSM (“Very Strange Medley”) and “Bandstand Boogie” lightened the mood when I couldn’t cry anymore. When “Copacabana” and later “Hey Mambo” came along, it added just the right amount of play. With an irresistible dance beat, a tacky set, a tragic story of a love duel between Rico and Tony over Lola, a true love lost, a hot spot goes to seed as a disco while Lola desperately needs an AA intervention. A tragic story made fun. Who can beat that?
Look at how much fun “Copa” caused. It was used in the movie Foul Play. Barry earned a Grammy Award for Pop Male Vocalist in February 1979 for “Copacabana.” In 1985, “Copacabana” was made into a full-length, made-for-television musical, then into a two-act stage musical for two years in London. Other productions of the show have been done in the United States and around the world. What about that “Copa” getup? How much fun is that? What do you even call it? I googled and ogled and asked around, especially to my “Copa’patico” crowd. You know the jacket, the one with the sleeves with the endless swirls that look like they were sewn on with a Cuisinart during a tornado. The closest I came to an answer was the “kitschy, puffy-sleeved jacket.” I am such an ignorant when it comes to such matters. Someone, someday, will enlighten us I’m sure. Just imagine the field day the Chorus of Critics had with that outfit alone. What cajones it took to play it out as far as you can take it. It was goofy but it is also joyful. That’s infectious.
By the end of my study I was reved up. There was so much more to learn. Now what?
Notes:
http://www.wright-house.com/religions/christianity/mother-teresa.html
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/w/walter_savage_landor.html
Give the gift of music to the next generation through donations to:
The Manilow Music Project
8295 South La Cienega Boulevard
Inglewood, CA 90301
info@manilowmusicproject.org
Click here to go to the next post or click here to return to the previous post.