9 posts from January 2007
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One day while waiting for a bus, I heard a rather mesmerizing sound that I associated with new-age and trance music. On the other side of the bus stop, a guy was playing a kalimba. I waited for him to finish the song and I asked him about it. Turns out, he had a jazz degree from Julliard, but here in Vegas such cats are a dime a dozen, so he was enhancing his employability by mastering rare ethnic instruments.
As for me, my guitars and keyboards are still stored at my parent's house in South Carolina, and it will probably cost $300 to get them shipped to Vegas. A kalimba however only cost $35 including shipping and I wanted some kind of musical instrument, so the choice was fairly easy to make.
Learning to play was not too difficult since I am already fairly well-versed in music theory. Typically, kalimbas are tuned to a major key with the notes alternating from one side to the other, and from this arises some rather interesting limitations in composing songs.
At first I transcribed some standard melodies, but I soon learned that a kalimba is fairly weak as a lead instrument and it is far better suited to a rhythmic role. The closest equivalents I have found to other instruments are banjo rolls, highly repetitive phrases that stay interesting because of their length and speed. For slower music, a mindset similar to the work of Philip Glass works very well.
As for playing with others, the kalimba presents two problems. First, it is not very loud and needs electronic amplification, even a moderately heavy strum of an acoustic guitar would drown it out. Second, retuning is very time-consuming and the short keys are very sensitive to temperature changes. Since Vegas is in a desert, the daily temperature swings are quite extreme. Musicians in this city quickly learn to leave an instrument in the same building where it will be played.
The kalimba is a fun little instrument and pulling interesting music from it is fairly easy. I cannot think of a better instrument for a beginning musician. Not only is it an inexpensive investment, it forces the musician into a rhythmic mindset. Also with its tuning, hitting a wrong note is virtually impossible. Still too, the kalimba offers some rather complex challenges to a more experienced musician that can be more than satisfying.
5 things you don't know about me?
1. I play a kalimba.
2. In the early 70s, my letter was published in Vampirella, the Warren horror magazine, and three years ago, my picture was published in Guitar World.
3. I discovered a simple one-step calculation for determining pot odds of any given hand in Texas Hold 'Em that is accurate to +/- 4%.
4. I recycle small glass jars to store my spices and seasonings.
5. My first major in college, at Penn State in the late 70s, was physics. I would have switched to Computer Science but I did not feel (correctly as it happens) that the technology was sufficiently advanced at the time to warrant my interest. I majored in German Literature instead.
Of all the bands who could have recorded and had a hit with the
title song of the musical "Hair", the Cowsills bucked their family
image and went for broke. However, it works. The tongue-in-cheek
lyrics, as sung by the kissing cousins of Beaver and his mom June,
probably did more to make rebellion acceptable to a generation of
pre-adolescents than any other song or TV show before its time.
Too bad the video quality here is so bad, but in a way, it works.
I have few memories of Tommy Roe's "Dizzy" because no one owned the
single. However, our local AM station (no FM where I lived) played the
Top 5 songs after the 8 am news. A couple of us had transistor radios,
and we would try to sneak them past our parents when the school bus
came. So, hearing "Dizzy" was pretty much catch-as-catch-can.
I liked the song as did many of the girls; the other boys were of a
different opinion. What caught my attention was how the background
vocals pushed the meaning of the lyrics, making the song sound dizzy.
Oh, and those organ stabs! Bubblegum does not get much more basic than
this.
Two elements are at work here. The lyrics and the passion in the melody, of course, but for me, the most interesting part of this song was that piano!
Slightly out of tune with that honky-tonk tone, but played as though all the bar's patrons had left while a breeze through an open window blows out the stench of tobacco smoke and overflowing urinals. This was also the first song I ever picked out on a piano, and mastering that slightly out-of-time harmony was a bear, let me tell you.
"My eyes are not blue, but mine won't leave you." Wow, what a line! So much imagery in those ten short words. The dead blue eyes of a cold, buried wife, the firey-eyed rage that only love can conjure, a bit of contempt for the previous woman for causing such pain in her husband, and finally the continuing love of the living. This is the summit of songwriting, and indeed, this was the only successful song for Jessi Colter.
"In The Year 2525" was the other song that got heavy play on that record player in fifth grade. I guess my little hometown was too poor to afford more than two records among 20 students.
That this song sparks the imagination goes without saying, especially for an eleven year old who devoured L. Frank Baum's Oz books. However, where many heard this song as pessimistic, I found it oddly optimistic and more than a little anti-religion. Reading through the lyrics now, I am not exactly sure why I felt that way, but I am proud that I went against the grain.
Today, l leave you with this bit of lyric:
But through the eternal night
The twinkling of starlight
So very far away
Maybe it's only yesterday
I, however, recognized the opportunity and joined the girls around the record player. As it happened, these were the village girls, as opposed to the extension girls or better known as the middle-class clique. Well, what served for middle-class in Appalachian communities anyway. The point being that from then on, I could always get a date from among the village girls.
Note the lyrics:
Not the most PC in the world, eh? Heheh!Stop the game, you've got too much to lose.
If you stop me again, that's when we might end.
so don't refuse.
The disappointment on her face once she heard the opening screech breaks my heart to this day. I know the pain of having your favorite band go in a direction that you can't stand, much like losing a longtime girl- or boyfriend.
On the other hand, I loved "Crazy Horses". That hard no-nonsense drumbeat and the wailing guitars with that sneering synth screech totally connected with the direction my tastes in music were headed.
Interestingly, listen to the horn section, a close variation of that horn riff will appear a few years later in Alice Cooper's song "Welcome To My Nightmare". Alice also pays direct homage to the Osmonds later on that LP in the song, "Department Of Youth", with the lyric:
The YouTube video linked above is lip-synched, though done very well.We're the department of youth.
We've got the power.
And who gave it to you?
Donny Osmond!
What?!
At first, I passed this novelty record off as fluff, fairly cheeky for a 13-year-old who embraced "Sugar Sugar" as prime musicianship, eh? However, that attitude changed when I overheard my mother and her sister giggling together over the lyrics while pretending faux indignation. So, I gave it another listen and the flashbulb went off in my head, although comprehending the "all around the world" euphemism took another few years.
It almost seems like you're avoiding me.
I'm okay alone, but you got something I need.
Well, I got a brand new pair of roller skates;
You got a brand new key.
and later:
I ride my bike, I roller skate, don't drive no car.
Don't go too fast, but I go pretty far.
For somebody who don't drive,
I been all around the world.
Some people say, I done all right for a girl.
