Robbie Robertson’s Greatness And Modern American Madness

The thing I love about the way the late Canadian-born Robbie Robertson played guitar is the way that he could pluck one note out of the universe and let it sit there like an image of God. From Who Do You Love through Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat and This Wheel’s On Fire to one of my personal favourites in Ophelia, the man never wasted a note. And he wrote glorious songs.

Such music is a wonderful medicine for much modern American social malaise (which is a state of robust health compared to some of Trudeau’s Canadian crap).

Robertson himself said about the malaise:

“There’s a thing that has happened in the U.S. where the spirit has been beaten so badly and so you feel no unity in the voice of the country.”

That wasn’t true when Jaime Royal Robertson took us closer to heaven in song.

God Bless Music

Praise The Lord

Geoff Fox, November 4, 2023, Down Under

My Melting Pot #6 Madonna born Elvis and Babe Ruth died

Pop diva Madonna was born in Bay City Michigan on the 16th august, 1958. On the same date, in 1948 and 1977 , Babe Ruth and Elvis Presley died.

A Sultan Of Swat, A King Of Rock and Roll and, arguably, a queen of pop.

The Bambino thoroughly deserved his GOAT (greatest of all time) title. To my knowledge, only Bradman in cricket could compare with him in that respect.

Until the Beatles came along and reinvented rock as Mersey beat pop music then, on Sergeant Peppers, as a dazzling kaleidescope, Elvis was King, transcending in some but not all both Sinatra and Hank.

His voice. His unashamedly masculine personality. And his mainstream popularisation of Rhythm And Blues were all great.

And the guy could really communicate with the people in their language:

“If you let your head get too big, it’ll break your neck.”

 “Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain’t going away.”

“When your intelligence don’t tell you something ain’t right, your conscience gives you a tap you on the shoulder and says ‘hold on’. If it don’t, you’re a snake.”

“Rock and roll music, if you like it, if you feel it, you can’t help but move to it. That’s what happens to me. I can’t help it.”

“Madonna felt the spirit of Elvis Presley pass through her when he died, according to her brother-in-law, singer songwriter Joe Henry.”

Possession is 9 tenths of the law.

Geoff Fox, 16th August, American time, 2023

August 4, 1962, Marilyn Monroe’s Deathday

In May 1962, Marilyn Monroe sang her legendary breathy version of “Happy Birthday, Mr President” to JFK at a Democratic Party fundraiser in Madison square Garden. Two and a half months later on this date, the 4th of August, at home in Brentwood, Los Angeles, she died.

In The Guardian, in 2016, David Thomson described her appearance in May 1962 with these words: “……. (she) stood there, with her massed blonde waves jutting off to one side, like the control on tower (of) an aircraft carrier, in a dress that could have been painted on her. ……. This is maybe her greatest moment – the most reckless – and she knows it, even if the summer of 1962 is her hell.”

Marilyn’s deathday is a legend.

So was she.

Because of the way so many of us men love beautiful women who appear to be free.

Lest We Forget.

Geoff Fox, 4th August, 2023, (Los Angeles time)

IMOTA #16 George Gershwin

On July 11, 1937 Gershwin died tragically young, 38 years old.

He had a marvelous way with words, making him an outstanding contributor to the Anglosphere.

Here’s some proof:

“True music must repeat the thought and inspirations of the people and the time.”

“All great composers of the past spent most of their time studying. Feeling alone won’t do the job. A man also needs technique.“

But feeling wasn’t completely unnecessary to Gershwin:

“When I’m in my normal mood, music drips from my fingers.”

With Irving Berlin and Paul McCartney, he dominated the crafting of great popular melody in his century:

“I frequently hear music in the very heart of noise.”

And he knew that craft isn’t everything:

“Life is a lot like jazz… it’s best when you improvise.”

………….

The capacity for Great Music is a gift to us from God.

Geoff Fox, 11th July (Chicago time), 2023, Down Under

Previous IMOTA (Indigenous Men Of The Anglosphere) are:

1. John Wycliffe
2. Douglas MacArthur
3. George Pell
4. R.S. Thomas
5. Donald Trump
6. John Barrymore
7. William Shatner
8. Thomas Jefferson
9. Count Basie
10. Clint Eastwood
11. Walt Whitman
12. Brigham Young
13. John Wayne
14. Sitting Bull
15. Marlon Brando

My Melting Pot #2 John Curtin, Diana Lynn And Robbie Robertson

“Subtleties mean so much, and there is a stunning beauty in them.” – Robbie Robertson (born July 5, 1943)

John Curtin died in office as Australian Prime Minister on this date in 1945.

In a defining moment of modern Australian history a few years earlier, Curtin said: “Australia looks to America” in response to Imperial Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbour. National Security was the first thing on his mind then, but the cultural reasons for Australia to be aware of America are many and deep and travel and resonate around the world.

With its complex mix of continual, living change, freedom and conservatism, America is now, in my eyes, the single most important bedrock of the Anglo Saxon part of Western Civilisation.

Civilisation depends on knowing who you are. Rock music genius Robbie Robertson understood this when he talked about the efforts of his famous rock group The Band, of which he was the leading guitarist and song writer, without dominating as some other rock musicians did:

“The Band was rebelling against the rebellion.” said Robertson, “The rebellion went to a place where it became too obvious, too trendy, like you were just following the pack. So it was our choice to get off the bandwagon – no pun intended – and do things that were in our background and what was the most honest thing to do.”

There is a sense of both ethics and aesthetics in this Robertson quote: “We need to have a taste factor in our life. It isn’t about what’s popular; it’s about what’s really good.”

Actress Diana Lynn, pictured above, was also born on July 5, 1926, in Los Angeles.

God Bless The Glorious And Manifold Beauty Which American Freedom Gives The World

Curtin lead Australia in the right direction.

Geoff Fox, 5th July, 2023, Down Under

The Bikini And The Bomb And The Band (My Melting Pot #1)

“I don’t play to jam, but because I’m fishing. I’m looking for something, that I hope you can never find.” – Robbie Robertson, one of my favourite guitarists.

One birth of the bikini on Frenchwoman Micheline Bernardini‘s body in a photo shoot on July 5th, 1946, owes its then new name to the island where, four days earlier, America tested one of the first of the atomic weapons which still both terrify and (hopefully) stabilise the modern world.

Robbie Robertson, who was born 0n July 5, but in 1943, said:

“You don’t stumble upon your heritage. It’s there, just waiting to be explored.”

God Bless Beauty And The Fearsome Freedom To Enjoy It.

Geoff Fox, July 5th, 2023, Down Under

Women For Freedom #37 Kylie Minogue

I love Walt Whitman’s phrase “democracy ma femme”.

On the basis of her statement “With one man, there was a freedom and liberation. That was with Michael Hutchence, my partner in life.” I feel I can call Australia’s somewhat democratic Pop Princess Kylie Minogue a Woman for Freedom.

Her freedom presents to us in these words of hers as a freedom balanced by commitment to true love.

Who agrees?

This piece of Word Art is an original photo authored by Sport the library with words added by Geoff Fox and published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported licence by Geoff Fox.

Geoff Fox, May 28, 2023, Down Under

The crescent moon Word Art at the top is a photo by sosodave from Australia with words added by Geoff Fox and is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic licence.

Gentleman Bing #2 Great Popular Music (A Personal Choice)

Bing Crosby was born on 3rd May, 1903.

Bing said of his profession: “I think popular music in this country is one of the few things in the twentieth century that have made giant strides in reverse.”

For my personal tastes, popular music’s peak was spread across the middle of the twentieth century: Bing, Count Basie, Glen Miller, Sinatra, Elvis, Hank, The Beatles, Dylan, The Beach Boys, Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell, David Ackles, Michael Murphey, The Dillards, Steve Young, Paul Siebel and Willie Nelson. (The last four of the links here are to songs whose gentle feel might have a resemblance to the feel of the great crooner’s music.)

(For all his undoubted cleverness, the 1980’s-1990’s ethos of Eminem – and other rappers – just doesn’t stack up with the spirit of Gentleman Bing.)

I rate the zenith of last century’s popular music as lasting from 1965 with the Nobel Prize quality of Highway 61 Revisited to 1972’s return to something like highbrow vaudeville through David Ackles’ critically revered album “American Gothic“, which included Love’s Enough a song that could have been written for Bing:

“Every time you fall in love / that’s the best time of all. / It’s holding sunlight in your hand, / it’s heaven come to call ………”

Apart from the Beatles, Van and Joni, all of my personal favourites listed above from last century were Americans.

God Bless America – the nation which showed the world how to sing.

Bing helped kick that off.

Geoff Fox, 3rd May, 2023, Australia

(The above Word Art is words added by me to a photo by Allen Warren and is published by me under a  GNU Free Documentation License)

IMOTA # 9 Count Basie

In 1985, Ronald Reagan awarded Count Basie the Presidential Medal Of Freedom, the year after the Count died on April 26, 1984.

He had lead his big band orchestra for close to fifty years and, in 1958, was the first African-American to win a Grammy.

I now call him an Indigenous Man Of The Anglosphere (IMOTA) because he could use the English language brilliantly to explain the gorgeous mystery of swing:

“The real innovators did their innovating by just being themselves.”

” I think the band can really swing when it swings easy, when it can just play along like you are cutting butter.”

“If you play a tune and a person don’t tap their feet, don’t play the tune.”

God Bless Count Basie

Geoff Fox, 26th April, 2023, Australian time

Linda McCartney – The American Love Of A Beatles Life

Linda McCartney died on this date 25 years ago.

She died in Tucson, Arizona. (“Get back to where you once belonged?” sang Linda’s husband Beatle Paul McCartney (to JoJo from Tucson), when he wanted the Beatles to go back to being a band who played live to people.)

Linda lead Paul McCartney from the world’s 1960’s obsession with Beatlemania into a rural life raising a family. As his wife and as the mother to their children, she gave him the healthy base where he created what many people now see as the first two great Indie albums, “Ram”, a homage to domestic bliss, and “Wild Life” where McCartney attempted and mostly pulled off a Dylanesque commitment to spontaneity in the studio.

This photo of Linda McCartney by Kurt Schollenberger is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International licence with a quote from Linda added by me.

Geoff Fox, April 17, 2023, Down Under

Addendum 14/09/2023

Linda was born in New York City on this date 82 years ago.

Perhaps the greatest Beatle mum.