Last Saturday, Baltimore writers and musicians gathered at the G-Spot Audio-Visual Playground for the city’s second Literary Cabaret. The Literary Cabaret isn’t exactly an official annual event; it’s just something I cooked up to gather writers together and raise a little money for AWP, the Association of Writers and Writing Programs. I was the president of that organization for two years and am still on its board. Last year’s Literary Cabaret went well enough that I figured I’d try it again this year, only do it better.

Better meant asking the twenty-two readers this year to limit their time at the microphone. Now, this is a touchy topic because once you get a writer in front of a mic, anything can happen. The worst that can happen is that the writer will not leave the microphone. Last year, I must confess, we did have some problems with time limits. Said one reader (last year) when another reader kept on and on, “What’s so complicated about the concept of five minutes?” This year, I limited readers to two double-spaced pages and, happily, they took this seriously. As a result, the readings were fast and punchy–just enough to give us a taste of the writer’s work and leave us wanting more. It made for a heady mix. I recall hearing about sex and chickens and war and marriage and killing a dog and breasts and growing old and growing up and fist fights and sex and everything except flying to the moon. Local presses and publishers — like Smartish Pace , Shattered Wig Press, and the Potomac Review — picked the readers.

These readings were interspersed with music by writers who are musicians, as well as professional musicians. There was internationally renown novelist Madison Smartt Bell performing some of his music (he has two albums produced by famous indie songwriter-producer Don Dixon). Flannery O’Connor winner Geoff Becker — whose latest novel, Hot Springs, was a recent NYT editor’s pick — performed his rocking version of a few standards. Geoff used to be a pro and he plays his Stratocaster with the kind of authority that makes listeners say, “Holy shit!” (Pardon moi.) Speaking of which, we also had Kevin Robinson, who may be Baltimore’s reincarnation of Jimi Hendrix. Good god, the man holds forth. My own Jazz Caravan showcased one of the city’s musical treasures: Atlay Washington. She is one of the best performers I’ve seen in any genre. When she sings, she brings joy to the room. Dave Hughes, from Jazz Caravan and Oblivion Sun, was the house bass player and anchored the stage all night. You just can’t do a show like this without an outstanding bassist.

Our music headliners were the incomporable Victoria Vox, who has just released her third album, Exact Change. Vox plays pop-powered ukulele. She has a clear, sweet voice to match a sweet, mischievous stage persona. You may have caught her recently on a Jay Leno spot playing her mouth trumpet: she can mimic the music of trumpet beatifully (look for this on YouTube). If you don’t have her in your I-pod, you’re missing someting special. Our other headliner, Greg Holden, I brought down from NYC because I thought Baltimore needed to hear him. He’s very talented singer-song writer in the acoustic indie tradition. Greg and his manager stayed in an apartment at the G-spot, thanks to a generous loan of space from Heather Rounds. When you bring in musicians you haven’t met — for an overnight stay — you never know what might happen. I’ve been at gigs where the lead singer shows up two hours late or doesn’t show up at all. When I married Jill, I enlisted my own band to perform and our bass player at the time never showed up (we called another at the last minute and, remarkably, he was available and did a great job and became the bass player we now have.) In short, I’ve been around a lot of musicians and seen a lot of quirk and weirdness — because musicians are, well, just out there — but Greg was sweet and thoroughly professional. I wish I could have spent more time with him and his manager, David Margolis. Greg puts on a great show, very personable and humorous. He’s got an outstanding voice and well-developed melodic sensibility. He sold lots of albums. Check him out.

One of our participating editors, Clarinda Harris, had a little trouble finding the event site, because it’s off the beaten path, in the Mill Center area of Hampden. She said, “Now I know why they call it the G-Spot: you hear about it and you’re eager to get to it, but you look and look for it and can’t find it, though you’re pretty sure you’re in the right vicinity. When you DO find it, you’re not sure you’re really there. And then, when we’re you’re pretty sure you’re there at last, that this is indeed the spot, you’re not sure you’ll ever find it again!”

A few words about planning an event. If you’ve ever built a house of cards or played Jenga (stacking little small blocks of wood in tall precarious piles), you have some idea of what it’s like to put on an event with 22 readers, ten magazines, 6 bands, 6 volunteers, a caterer, and so on. You can read about my getting a liquor license in an earlier blog. Two days before the event, the septic pump at the G-spot went out — which meant we had no toilets and no water. Ruben Kroiz, who runs the G-Spot, assured me that it’d be fixed. But, man of the world that he is, he couldn’t promise that it’d be fixed in time. Twenty-four hours before show time, the septic-system pump was working again, thankfully. The day of the event, my watch stopped, the battery dead, apparently. I tried not to be superstitious about it. The night of the event, we had a little electrical fire, probably because I overloaded an outlet with lights. But Ruben came to the rescue here too. And everything went off very well, the readers were fabulous, the music marvelous, and we made a little money for a good cause too. Special thanks to Ruben Kroiz, Joe Bradley, Heather Rounds, Tim Finnegan, and Rosalia Scalia for their help.

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Last week, rock singer/guitarist/band leader Alex Chilton died of a heart attack. Not unusual for a 59-year-old these days. If you’re a baby boomer, you may remember Chilton as the voice on “The Letter,” the 1967 hit by The Box Tops. (Wayne Carson Thompson, a Nashville musician, penned the tune.) Joe Cocker covered it in 1970 and made it a hit again. Chilton was 16 when he sang “The Letter” in a distinctive growl that thousands of teen wannabes attempted to emulate in late-sixties’ garage bands.

“The Letter” is memorable nowadays not only for its perennially tuneful appeal but also for what its lyrics say about communication (writing) back in the day: “Get me a ticket for an airplane, ain’t got time for a fast train/ Lonely days are gone, I’m a goin’ home,/ my baby, she wrote me a letter.”

Nobody takes a train for long distance travel anymore, much less talks of it in the same sentence as the word “fast.” More interesting is the power of the letter in the situation this song describes. One wonders why his “baby” (the ex who wants him back)  didn’t just phone him: granted, my baby, she just phoned me doesn’t have much poetic power. And maybe this guy didn’t have a phone. Maybe he was working odd jobs, staying in a room.  Maybe the phone he used, when he used one, was down the hall. That would not have been unusual in the 1960s (think of Benjamin staying in a Berkeley rooming house in 1967’s “The Graduate”) .

The song’s assumption is that there’s a great, unbridgeable distance between the speaker and his loved-one. He’s got to get home and it’s going to cost him (”don’t care how much money I’ve got to spend/ got to get home to my baby again”) and, apparently, it’s going to take time. He’s got this letter in hand, maybe tucked into the back pocket of his jeans. And he’s scraping up money for that plane ticket.

Problem is, he can’t spend any cash on a long distance phone call. Long distance cost quite a bit in the 1960s. It wasn’t part of any phone plan. You had to dial the operator and get her (always her) to connect you. He could have reversed the charges but who wants to do that to an ex who’s waiting for your arrival? No, he’s got to get to her—she’s sent him word. That’s it.

No internet. No cell phones. No easy way to contact anybody from a long distance. How’s that for a different world? You had mail, I mean pen and paper mail, and land-line phone. And now, well, we can even find you with GPS as you’re texting your friends from China. I’m not sure what the equivalent situation would be for a song like “The Letter” written in 2010: “Get me a ticket for an airplane,/ ain’t got time for a migraine/ Lonely days are gone, I’m a goin’ home/ my baby, she texted me a message.”

I guess some things we’ll just have to leave behind.

If you want to read more about Chilton’s ultra-influential but perennially overlooked 1980’s band “Big Star,” check out the LA Times’s obit:

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While shopping for grapefruit in Safeway this morning, I was surprised to hear — drifting from speakers in the ceiling — Black Sabbath’s “paranoid.” Not a copy of the Goth heavy metal hit. No, ma’am, the original, with manic Ozzy Osbourne shouting, “People think I’m insane because I am frowning all the time!”

If you came of age before, say, 1985, you should find this astonishing. Remember the grocery store of your mother’s day? For those of you too young to remember, Muzak was the only offering in public places. It was all instrumental copies of the hits, usually done in syrupy violin orchestrations. If there was guitar, it was cleaned up and toned down, the palest version of the original, sounding like granddad’s idea of “sexy.” Oh man, it made for painful listening! Whenever I found myself within earshot of Muzak, I felt tormented and I think I better understood how much pain the mentally impaired suffer when they hear hateful voices in their heads.

Muzak, and its imitators, served corporate America and illustrated a disdain for popular taste. Truly, it was insulting to hear what they did to the music. It’s analogous to a corporation taking over the National Parks and killing, then stuffing all of the animals and doing it badly, and then setting up those badly stuffed animals in the forest for the tourists to view—and claiming that this is THE wildlife experience.

No doubt, other youngsters like me vowed to change Muzak when they got old enough to make a difference. The result is that, for years, I’ve been hearing — in grocery and department stores — music I like. Real music performed by the original artists. But not until today had I heard Ozzy Osbourne. So the world changes. That old heavy metal has got some rust on it, so why not? Soon, we’ll be hearing post-thrash hip-hop with all the f**ks and c**ts bleeped out.

If you’re lucky, getting older is about staying flexible. I’m a lot more relaxed than I was at twenty,  mainly because I have a better take on what can and cannot go wrong and, really, most things aren’t as bad they may seem at first glance. This week, for example, I returned to work after the holiday break only to discover that my bosses had removed all of the garbage pails from our offices. Cut backs. The absence of trash pails saves the janitorial staff from having to open all of those offices to retrieve all of that garbage. My secretary said, “Just think of the exercise you’ll get walking to the trash can down the hall!”

Those of us who remember the luxury of having a trash pail right there beside our desks – we will be replaced, in time, by those who never had the luxury. That’s how the world changes. All those people who thought Muzak was a great idea, well, they’re dead and gone, probably. And maybe right now, some kid is walking through a grocery store and squinting up in distaste at the music he hears spilling from the ceiling speaker: “What is that heavy metal garbage?” he’s asking. “Man, you must be joking!”

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The holiday season upon us, I am bracing myself for the onslaught of too-familiar music. I mention this because, just yesterday, I heard Joni Mitchell singing “Blue” on the radio and realized I’ve always thought of “Blue” as a winter album, though it’s far far from festive. Starting the day after Thanksgiving, we’ll be hearing “Frosty the Snowman,” “Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer,” “Let it snow,” “I’ll be home for Christmas,” “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” and so on everywhere we turn. These are tunes for which, with few exceptions, there are no original artists. Every tune is a cover.

Hearing Joni Mitchell brought to mind how difficult it is to cover somebody else’s tune. Consider her “Woodstock” as the best example. Her version is dreamy and moody, almost elegiac. Maybe because she wasn’t at Woodstock. Now, compare hers to the Crosby, Stills, and Nash cover Can you tell that CSN were at that concert? Their version churns like a bulldozer through mud. That kind of power. Then it surprises the listener with those sky-high harmonies. It’s the kind of tune that makes teenagers want to jump in a car and drive across America. Full of hope and love and a vague sense of heroism. Yeah, we are stardust. Golden. Had Steven Stills never done anything else in his career, he’d be noteworthy for making Mitchell’s “Woodstock” a rock classic. It’s a galaxy away from the composer’s version and, dare I say it, a better tune.

Now consider another tune I heard recently: Paul Simon’s“Mrs. Robinson.” The original is noteworthy not only for its smart cynicism, which flew in the face of middle-class hypocrisy way back in 1968, but also for its tasteful, cutting-edge mix of acoustic and electric instruments on top of a pronounced conga backbeat. Nobody has come up with a better arrangement. Not long ago, Cake did a predictably mindless version by replicating everything the original does but in post-punk double-time. The Indigo Girls did a ho-hum version for TV’s “Desperate Housewives” that copies the original exactly. And there you have the typical repertoire for artists doing covers: 1) speed up the original, or 2) let a girl sing instead of a guy or a guy instead of girl, or 3) slow down the original, or 4) add a strange instrument, like a sitar, where there was originally a conventional instrument.

In 1975, country artist Ray Stevens surprised everyone, including himself, when he won a Grammy for his cover of “Misty,” which was written by pianist Earl Garner in 1954. Stevens’s version features banjo at the forefront and a seductively catchy half-time beat that almost gives the tune a funky feel. Everybody loved it. Stevens himself happened upon the arrangement when horsing around with his band in the studio.

The question is this: if you can’t improve the original, why are you messing with it? I know, sometimes the fans of a particular artist want to hear their star do a particular song. Nowhere is this more embarrassing than in the case of Rod Stewart. Or Michael Bolton. Or John Bon Jovi. Oh, I could go on. And, of course, everybody has a Christmas album. Had Kurt Cobain lived, he’d have a Christmas album by now. You know who should do a Christmas album? Cat Stevens. That would be interesting.

Although Bing Crosby didn’t write it, “White Christmas” seems to belong to the long-gone crooner, and it remains one of the all time favorites, regardless of one’s religion. I must admit I like it very much. The man sings it with conviction. Also, like most Christmas tunes, it has nothing to do with Christmas. It’s more about the weather, isn’t it? Snow and sleigh bells and treetops glistening. Nothing about going to midnight mass or eating turkey with irritating relatives. Maybe that’s why we can listen to these tunes again and again without much complaint: they don’t ask much of us. A little snow, a little sentiment, a little wishful thinking.

Here’s my wish for you: may you hear music that makes you want to jump in a car and drive across America singing till you’re hoarse and dopy with hope.

One more tune:Happy Xmas

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Jill and I went to the funeral of a friend’s father last week. I’m not a fan of funerals. I don’t know anybody who is. But this one gave me second thoughts about funerals—and churches. The presiding minister was a short, vigorous woman of middle age. She reminded the congregation that this was to be a celebration. The deceased was going to meet his maker, after all. The congregants voiced their agreement. Loudly. Oh, yes, I thought, let’s make some noise! Need I add that this was an African American church?

A small one, too. On a good day it might hold two hundred people An organist—a big guy with linebacker shoulders—was playing throughout the service. When there wasn’t singing, he would string some appropriate melody behind the speaker. To get us in the celebratory mood, the choir got up and did a number: four middle-aged ladies led by a woman who reminded me of my grandmother. She had the barrel-big voice of a blueswoman. “If you ask him, He will come,” she told us. The choir agreed. The congregation agreed. We clapped. We sang. But it wasn’t over when the singing stopped because the spirit had gotten into the organist and he kept on. And then choir started up again, singing, “My mama told me one day everything’s gonna be all right!” And how could we disagree? We went on like that for a while. And felt right warmed up by the time the visiting ministers got up to share their recollections of the deceased, who had been a bishop in this little church.

The first speaker was a tall, ebony black man with such stature and cheerful charisma, I was ready to follow him to the river. He didn’t speak to us, he sang. If I had a voice like that, I’d sing everything too. Lord have mercy. As if that weren’t enough, the second minister, an older goateed man, said he felt so good he had to dance. And he did. We accompanied him with clapping. Then we sang “I’ll be going up to meet Him – joy and happiness will be mine!” Then the minister’s son delivered the eulogy. There was more singing and some testifying. Then the choir got up and sang some more. I’ve never had so much fun in church.

Store front churches like this one seem to break all the rules I grew up with. In my white-bread world, church was as solemn as a mausoleum. You weren’t even supposed to cough loudly in church, much less sneeze. The solemnity weighed so heavily on us, we could hardly move. The minister would talk his sermon at the congregation. And talk. And talk. And we would just sit there oh-so-silently and take it, fighting to stay awake. Attendance at church was nothing but dutiful and something of an ordeal. You did it once a week the way folks used take a bath once a week. Then you felt a better person for having gone through the trouble. That was the extent of it.

Our church was big and well-appointed and showed off the congregation’s investment in their religion. Everybody was well meaning, don’t get me wrong. But it was such a joyless enterprise. Is it any wonder that when, as a teenager, I was given the choice to attend or not, I stopped going? So, I’ve got to ask, How did white folk get it so wrong? Some say it’s our dour Calvinistic heritage, a product of cold, treeless Scotland, where hard-bitten parishioners put a premium on pain, not joy. But the African-American heritage has been nothing but pain, so how did they get it so right when it comes to church?

After coming away from the funeral service last week, I was singing. And I felt buoyed for the rest of the week. Had I grown up surrounded by that kind of celebration, my life would have been different, I have no doubt. As it is, Jesus’s hand has never touched my shoulder, and so, when I drive past big, pretty churches on a Sunday, I think not of celebration but of sleep.

Here’s my favorite tune from the service. I’m Going Up Yonder. (Recorded on my phone.) When the song gets rolling (second verse), it rocks. Listen to the organist crank it with his leslie on the B-3. I was tempted to get on the drum set that was sitting idle beside him. I recommend downloading this tune onto your system and cranking it up.

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