My Favorite Song

Doing what I promised yesterday...

6 - What is your favorite song at the moment?
I'm going to have to write a blog entry about me and songs and why I can never answer a question like this!

I can't remember when music was not part of my past life.  My father was a huge music aficionado, particularly jazz and more particularly jazz piano, but also those pop hits of the 30s and 40s.  He had a large collection of 78 rpm records and I loved to play them, especially the old Bing Crosby records. (In grammar school we were supposed to bring our favorite music and all the other kids brought classical pieces, I brought Bing's "Don't Fence Me In.") It sometimes amazes me that when I hear an "oldies but goodies" station, I know the lyrics to just about every song, yet I always bomb on the current music questions on Jeopardy.

I have a playlist in the car of popular music of the 40s and 50s which I know my mother loved when she listened to music and if I am taking her somewhere, I put on the playlist and though she can't remember she has great grandchildren, she can remember every word to every song and sing along with them.  She doesn't have a necessarily "good" voice but a sweet voice and I remember her singing around the house when I was growing up.

But throughout my life, my musical tastes and often even the specific genres were influenced by someone else.

As I was getting into my teens, Rock and Roll was in its infant stages.  My father declared it "the worst music ever written" and so I stuck with the balladeers like Perry Como, Vic Damone, Johnny Mathis, Rosemary Clooney and others.  When I mentioned that I was thinking of buying "Lollipop" by the Chordettes and "I Love You" by Sam Cooke, which I kind of liked, my father issued such a diatribe about rock and roll being "junk," that I never did buy those records (and regretted it all my life until they came out on iTunes!).  I'm sure my father would be amazed to see where rock and roll is today and how Sam Cooke is considered a legend.

So I just kind of missed the whole rock and roll thing.  Perhaps the only thing that was all "mine" was my love of show tunes.  The very first 33-1/3 album I bought after we got a player was a 10" record of the soundtrack from the movie Calamity Jane and I continued to buy soundtrack records for many years.

At one point I discovered radio station KKHI, which was San Francisco's classical station and I started listening to that.  I remember being at my grandmother's and sitting in the kitchen listening to the radio when she came in and said "that's nice, Bev, but could you really listen to it all day?"  She was from the world of vaudeville and my grandfather was part of a barbershop quartet, so classical music was not her milieu.

I don't remember being obsessive about any genre while I was in high school.  I didn't like Elvis and didn't really know anything about the Beatles and never followed their music.

But I remember that when I worked at the Physics Department, my boss, who played classical violin, introduced me to several pieces that I just loved (like Cesar Frank's Sonata in A for violin and piano) and I felt it was OK to like classical music again.  I was also working for the Lamplighters, with people who ate, drank, slept, and performed classical music and I was obsessed again.  Gilbert introduced me to a lot of music and once conducted the entire score of Mahagonny (Brecht and Weil) for me in his apartment.  Gilbert was a conductor and I remember his sitting on the floor with his baton and describing what was going on on stage, while the record played.

Of course there was Gilbert & Sullivan in those years, which I still enjoy, but rarely listen to.

After Gilbert died and I stopped being around Lamplighters I just kind of got away from classical music.  We had tickets for the San Francisco Symphony for many years, but they were so expensive and 9 times out of 10 I slept through half of the performance and I have come to really hate being on the freeway after dark. I was also working for Dr.G and frequently had to work late, and thus could not go, so I suggested Walt not renew my season tickets.  I haven't gone back since.  While I do go to performances in the city sometimes, it's not often and still I hate the ride home.

Of course during the Lawsuit years, I often had Lawsuit CDs on the CD player in the car, and after I met Steve Schalchlin, his CDs were a constant for several years.

When I met Peggy, and when she was here visiting, we both liked John Denver and he was the mood music of all of our Thelma and Louise adventures.  I can remember the exact spot where we were when I first heard certain songs and for the years after she left, John Denver replaced Steve's music.  I often sang along with "Grandma's Feather Bed" and never did get all the words right. But after our rift, which I still don't understand, I find John Denver to be more depressing than uplifting, so I almost never listen to his music any more either.

And audio books have replaced music in the car anyway.

There is no radio in the back part of the house, so even if I wanted to listen to music, I don't have a way to do it.  When I was working for Dr. G, we had the radio on most of the day to a popular radio station which almost always played Sarah McLachlan's "In the Arms of the Angel," which Marta and Paul's wife sang at his memorial service at least once during the day.  If it did nothing else for me, I finally no longer cry when I hear that song.

But over the years, music, which was once a very big part of my life, just isn't any more.  So I rarely have ear worms or favorite songs because I just almost never listen to music, which is really kind of sad, now that I think of it, given my history with music.

---

This morning around 9, I received a call from Atria saying my mother had been "unresponsive" when they went to give her her meds and they had to call the paramedics.  This was more than her simple passing out for a few minutes and then being groggy, this was full-on unresponsive.  Of course we don't know how long she was out before they found her in bed, but they found her, called the paramedics, they came, couldn't rouse her, put her in the ambulance, took her to the hospital, Atria called me and I was at the ER within 15 minutes and she was still out.  Her eyes were closed and she was not responding to anything.

I remembered how scared she was the first time she was taken to the ER and I went to hold her hand and told her I was there and her eyes flickered but then they started rolling from side to side and she didn't seen to recognize that I was there.

Eventually she started to come out of it, but she had to have been in this state for at least 30-45 minutes, if not longer (previously her spells only last a minute or two).  She couldn't remember where she was or why she was there and I explained it to her endlessly.  I knew she was going to be OK when she started flirting with the cute paramedic who had worked on her in the ambulance.

When I took her back to Atria, I was going to spend the afternoon, but she was so chipper and active that I decided I should just leave her alone so she could take a nap.  I arranged for Atria to put her on a 2 hour watch for the next couple of days just in case.

My Checkered Musical Past

Our friends Rick and Judy are living one of my bucket list items that I will never do now.  But if you are at all interested in an African experience, I encourage you to read her wonderful blog entry about their safari adventures.  Definitely worth your time (also check out her other entries about this trip they are on.  She's not only a wonderful writer, but a great photographer as well.)

And speaking of great photographs, I encourage you to check out my review of the show I reviewed on Sunday, Bars and Measures at the B Street Theater in Sacramento.  The review is nothing to brag about, but the dramatic publicity photo is one of the best I've received to accompany a review and such a shame that the Enterprise can't print these photos in color!

The show focuses on the relationship between two brothers, one passionate about jazz and the other a classically trained pianist.  One in prison, one trying to free him.  One Muslim, one Christian.  Lots of layers to this show, but I thought often, especially as Bilal, the jazz guy, was scatting with brother Eric and talking about his jazz passions how much my father would have enjoyed the play, at least the music part of it.

My father had many passions and he was so passionate about things that he wanted to share them all with you.  But, as my mother was fond of saying, he felt that if a little of something was good, a lot of it was better.  It was the thing that prevented him from being a great cook...very heavy handed on the seasonings.  If a tsp of chili was good, a tablespoon would be better.

With music, he was so filled with jazz that he wanted to share it with Karen and me--and anybody else who would listen. He inundated us with instructions we couldn't understand about piano chords that he particularly loved and how to make them.  He would show me a major cord, a minor chord and to this day I don't know what an augmented chord is, but he would practically swoon, trying to get me to learn it.  He'd play jazz records he particularly liked, but never talked about why.  Just expected us to love them the way he did.

I often think about how he could have shared his love of jazz with me in a way that I developed an appreciation for it.  Instead, today I not only understand nothing about jazz, but I have an almost irrational revulsion of anything having to do with jazz.  (However, I must have learned something from him because I seem to be the only critic who has mentioned the brothers in the show doing scat duets.)

Music was just one of many things that we could not share, though we each loved our own kind of music.  When rock'n'roll came along, he went on long diatribes about how it was the worst music ever written (second only to Gilbert and Sullivan, which he loathed) and how it would die a quick death.  He was so adamant about how terrible rock'n'roll was that to keep peace, I never became a fan of rock either, until Lawsuit came along many years later (how he proud he would have been of the kids if he had ever seen them perform, but he died before the band really got going).

When we went to a production of Hair the other night, we walked into the theater and rock music was playing over the loudspeaker to set the mood.  My fellow critic turned to me and laughed "Did you ever think that you would be in a place like this and hear the Jefferson Airplane playing [name of music]?"  I didn't tell him that not only had I never heard of the music he mentioned, but I only knew the name "Jefferson Airplane" but couldn't pick them out of a crowd of famous bands to save my soul.  

Occasionally some rock star will show up on the Today Show, one of those stars with gender neutral names like Stevie Nicks, a name I've heard for many years.  I still remember being amazed a few years ago at finding out she was a girl. I couldn't tell you any song that she is famous for (though if I heard one, I might recognize it), so I always assumed that with a name like Stevie it was a man.

(But I can sing along with almost every popular John Denver song and join with my mother in singing all those Perry Como and Bing Crosby favorites on the playlist I made for her!)

The only reason I can sometimes identify the Talking Heads by sound is because of how important they were to Paul and Ned and because David Byrne has a very distinctive voice.  

I don't listen to much music any more since I discovered audio books  Somehow, though I have an iPod filled with music, I have lost the desire to listen to it, most of the time.  Maybe too many sad memories that go along with the most special recordings.  Or maybe too many good books I am hungry to finish.

But---there is good news today!  I called my mother to remind her to take her meds.  She answered the phone (yay!), sounded bright and chipper (yay!), and when she went to see if she had taken her pills or not she had!  We take these small triumphs where we can!

AND, I'm lovin' my new refrigerator.

Always Something There to Remind Me

This is one of those prompts at The Daily Post at Word Press, which reads, "A song comes on the radio and instantly, you’re transported to a different time and place. Which song(s) bring back memories for you and why? Be sure to mention the song, and describe the memory it evokes."

There are a handful of pieces of music which instantly catapult me back to a certain time and a certain place.  They aren't necessarily my favorites, but the memories embedded with them are very strong.

1.  I'll start with the opening chorus to the second act of Die Fledermaus.  Alison and I were doing research for Book I of the Lamplighters history and decided we needed to see a real rehearsal.  Later, rehearsals would become ho-hum, but this was the very first time that we would be kind of backstage, watching how a show is put together and we were feeling very privileged indeed.

We arrived at the Presentation Theater when rehearsal was in progress.  They were rehearsing that opening chorus (What a JOY to be here at this wonderful occasion... went the lyrics in the Ruth and Thomas Martin translation).  We quietly slid into seats in the middle of the theater and watched the chorus being rehearsed over and over again until the blocking was perfect.  To this day, I can't hear that chorus without remembering how special we felt on that night.

2.  A song that transports me back to a place and time is "You Are My Sunshine."  Every summer I spent two weeks visiting with Peach at her house in Citrus Heights and then she came and spent two weeks visiting me in San Francisco.  This particular year, I guess she had been singing in a school chorus or something, but she taught me the alto part to "You Are My Sunshine."  I discovered that I loved singing harmony to her soprano and we would sit out in front her house, under the beautiful weeping willow tree growing there, and we would sing.   I actually drive her nuts with it to the point where she finally refused to sing it with me any more.

3.  People would think that a Judy Garland song that would bring back vivid memories of a place and time would be something like "Over the Rainbow," but people would be wrong.  The Judy Garland song that always transports me to a place is "Stormy Weather."  It's on her Carnegie Hall album.  I was living by myself in the apartment I lived in before Walt and I got married.  I loved to put the album on, lie on the floor as close to the speaker as I could, and play "Stormy Weather" over and over again.  (Thinking about it now, I'll bet I drove some neighbors crazy doing that!)

4.  "Scarlet Ribbons" always reminds me of when Jeri was a little girl.  I would put her to bed, sit by her side and sing that song to her.  It was her "good night" song and if I could not for whatever reason sing the song, Walt would sing it to her.  She probably doesn't remember it, but there were lots and lots and lots of parental performances of "Scarlet Ribbons" sung to her, starting when she was a toddler, before Ned was born.

5.  There is a part at the beginning of the first movement of Beethoven's 8th symphony where I am transported instantly to the classroom where I was taking a class in the 9 symphonies.  Maestro Josef Kripps was the guest lecturer who gave the talk on the 8th symphony, where he demonstrated to us that this symphony was "Beethoven's Joke."   I have not heard that symphony since when I have not thought of Krips and that class.

6.  The old song "There's a Long, Long Trail a-Winding" takes me back to 1953, when my mother was taking instructions to become a Catholic.  She was meeting with Father Joe O'Looney (henceforth always called nothing but "Father Joe"), at Old St. Mary's Church in San Francisco. Fr, Joe had a group that got together for parties frequently (often at our house) and, as he had a wonderful singing voice. he would always choose the songs and invariably they sang "Long, Long Trail" before the night was over.  Whether Karen and I were allowed to stay up for the singing or lay in our beds listening to it, I loved hearing that song.

7.  Johnny Mathis' "Chances Are" reminds me of a party I attended in high school.  All I remember is that the lights were dim and some of us were dancing (I don't think I was one of them).  I don't really remember anything else about it, but all I know is that when that song comes on, I'm back at that party again.

8.  Finally I'll mention one by John Denver.  It's a song called "The Flower that Shattered the Stone."  I had never heard it before, but Peggy and I were driving around Lake Tahoe and it came on the radio and she mentioned how much she liked it.  I can still picture exactly where we were, turning onto Hwy 89 on our way to Emerald Lake.  To this day, whenever I play a Denver CD that has that song on it, I am instantly again in the car driving past the place where they carve tree trunks into bear statues and sell them to tourists.

Music, of all kinds, has been a part of my life since birth, since I grew up in a home where there was always music playing.  I love that I have so many happy memories connected with so many pieces of music, whether popular or classical.  

(Of course, I still get teary eyed when I hear Melissa Manchester's version of "In the Arms of the Angel," which Marta and Audra sang at Paul's memorial service.)

It's Quarter to 3

I woke up this morning thinking of that old Frank Sinatra song

...it's quarter to 3
there's no one in the place
except you and me...

It made me think about music and general and why it's not a part of my life any more.  Oh, it's part of my life (can't see all those musicals and not have music a part of your life!), but my knowledge of contemporary music died somewhere around the time of Elvis.

I'm an award-show-a-aholic, yet the only award show I never watch is the Grammys because I know so little (read: "nothing") of today's music.

I don't know when or how that happened.  For so many years, from my teens, I was never without music.  The radio was on all the time at home, I always played music in the car, I knew all the current singers.

Part of my problem is that I was raised by a music fanatic, who had every record of everybody from the 30s and 40s.  Bing Crosby, Perry Como, Rosemary Clooney, the Andrews Sisters, Louis Armstrong ... these were the musicians I grew up with, the singers of my parents' (and grandparents') generation.

I don't remember how I was introduced to classical music, but somewhere in high school, I found station KKHI in San Francisco, a 24 hour classical music station.  For all I know it had been going for years, but I took to it like a duck to water.  I remember one time at my grandparents' apartment.  The old guys were talking in the living room and I was bored and went out into the kitchen to turn on the radio and sat there listening to KKHI.  My grandmother came into the kitchen to stir something in a pot on the stove and said "That's nice, but could you really listen to it all day long?"  I wonder why that is such a strong memory.

When rock 'n' roll came on the scene, my father was so adamant that it was the worst music ever written (second only to Gilbert & Sullivan) that I never played it in the house, so somehow just never got hooked.  I stuck with the balladeers and folk music.  I loved the Kingston Trio, Judy Garland and other sing-able individuals and groups.

I also continued my love of classical music, though I couldn't discuss it intellectually.  I just knew what I liked.  There was a piece that was the theme song of an eveing show on KKHI that I loved listening to--just a snippet of it. I was always happy when I was in the car at the start of that show.  I found out later it was the fourth movement of Cesar Franck's Sonata in A Major for violin and piano

)

(amazing how quickly you can find anything on the internet!)

I still usually had music on in the house, sometimes popular, sometimes classical, but I guess I got out of the habit when I started working on the computer.  I know some people have Pandora, that internet radio, on all the time, but I found that having background music made me jittery and I preferred having the TV on which, surprisingly, does not make me jittery.  And then in the car, after years of All Steve Schalchlin All the Time, I discovered audio books and now I listen to books in the car instead of music.   (I had never read Steve's Wikipedia entry before...never realized he sounded so important!)

Of course there were the Lawsuit years, when we attended most of the concerts, loved the music, and shared our kids' love of groups like Talking Heads, though that never became part of what I listened to when by myself.

When Peggy was here, she re-awakened an interest in John Denver in me and for awhile I bought lots of his CDs and listened to him in the car often, but since the whole debacle with Peggy, I find his music depressing and rarely listen to it.

It's strange that I have two children for whom music is their life, Jeri at Berklee School of Music, and Ned at Jack-FM radio.  I occasionally listen to Jack-FM in the car, but mostly to hear Ned's jingles.  Some of the music I like, some I don't, but I don't know any of it.  Not really.  When I watch a talk show on TV and the final act of the show comes on, some musical performer, I will often turn it off.  I don't know why.

So music is not a part of my life any more, not in the way that it once was.  It kind of makes me sad but not in a "I must listen to music again" way.  It's just strange that what was once such an integral part of my life just isn't any more, though I can still sing all the lyrics from all those records that I grew up with, most of the musicals I review, and the entire canon of Gilbert & Sullivan.  When I do listen to music today, it becomes like an old friend I used to spend a lot of time with but rarely see any more -- nice to visit, but something that is no longer part of my present.

The Peripatetic Clarinetist

The one thing for which I am very grateful about my growing up years is that I grew up with music.

Being the granddaughter of show biz folk and the daughter of a wanna be pianist, who taught himself to play (at parties, he would put on a pair of oversized ears and tell people that he played "by ear."), I can't remember a time when music was not a part of my life.

My father loved the pop music of the 30s and 40s and our house was filled with the records of Bing Crosby, Perry Como, the Andrews Sisters, Dinah Shore, and all the other bands and singers of the era.  He was particularly passionate about jazz, so I grew up knowing Art Tatum, Count Basie, Artie Shaw, Louie Armstrong and a host of others.

My mother liked the more pop tunes and the radio always had some pop station on, and it was on all day long (when she wasn't listening to soap operas).

Theirs was a party house.  When my mother decided to become a Catholic, the religious instruction came with a built-in social network of couples who rallied around "Father Joe," who eventually baptized her and remained her friend until his death a couple of years ago (he buried my sister, my father, and my son David).

Father Joe was an Irish tenor, had a great voice and loved to sing.  So all of Father's parties came with lots of singing.  Our house was a favorite place to have them because they could roll up the rug in the living room and dining room and my father could play the piano all evening while people danced.  

(I'm so glad I have those memories, because they are some of the most pleasant of my childhood.)

As a child I learned almost all of the popular songs of the day and could (and did) sing along with the group whenever there was a sing-along.  The songs I learned went up to the late 50s, but once rock 'n' roll took hold, my lyric learning was hit and miss, the most consistent lyrics those of musical theater.

My mother's second husband was not a music guy.  He liked music, but it was never as pervasive as it was in the day of my childhood.  My mother didn't really sing any more because the "white noise" of music playing in the background bothered her, but I fixed up a CD for her to play when she and Peach and I went to see the old ranch in Valley Springs.  She was first upset that I would be playing MUSIC when we were going to be driving, but when she heard those songs that she had loved so much, she got into it and we all sang all the way to and from Terra Linda.

One of the things there is a lot of at Covell Gardens is music.  There are the sing-alongs every Tuesday afternoon, led by Judy Boock-Davis, David's old kindergarten teacher, with accompaniment by dear Ida Sue, who used to be a very good pianist, I am told, but she is 95 now and she has had a couple of falls and now finds it difficult playing chords, so mostly we get one-finger accompaniment.  We've seen the Davis Banjo Band and a guy playing solo banjo, accompanying a tape of piano music.  On the 4th of July there was a patriotic sing-along, accompanied by a "real" pianist. I missed the father and daughter piano-violin duo and a violin concert.

I make sure my mother gets to all of these musical events.  At first she went grudgingly, but now she seems to really enjoy them and sings along with the group, remembering all the words and not needing the lyric sheets.

This week we went to a Klezmer band.  I love Klezmer music, though usually leave feeling like I've just seen Fiddler on the Roof without dialog!

This was a small group of viola, accordion, drum, cello and clarinet,   It was fun in the way that Eastern European / Jewish music is ever fun.   Always that sense of melancholy interspersed among the lively passages.

But the clarinetist was kind of weird.  He sat, he stood, he changed positions, he walked around the lobby, all the while playing.  I never did figure out why he needed to move around so much. Maybe he, like my mother, is dealing with back problems.

The cellist had a round face and a pink complexion and his jowls quivered whenever he got to energetic passages.  He was fun to watch.

The woman on the accordion was a woman whose name I have heard for decades around Davis, as she has mine.  We talked a bit and I friended her on Facebook, after which I discovered that we share lots of mutual friends, like Ellen and Shelly and two of the medical people I worked with at Women's Health.

Today when we went to bring my mother home, after our trip to the bank and lunch out, we were going to just go home but The Psychiatrist's car was there in the parking lot (it has a personalized license plate, which I recognized instantly) and I went in to see if he was around (he was not).  However, he plays with a folk music group and I hope that one of these days they will be the entertainment in the front lobby!

While I was listening to the klezmer band, I got this idea for an article for the newspaper, but it will take several more of these front lobby concerts before I can really get a handle on what I want to do with the idea.

Czech Haggis???

It's fairly safe to say that if you were looking for a place to spend a Robert Burns night, you probably would not start with a Czech Restaurant, but that is where we went tonight to listen to 2 hours of Celtic music, hear Robert Burns poems, and watch some celtic dancing.

Our friend, Lee Riggs, his brother, and a handful of other guys form the band Riggity Jig, which is well known around these parts and so when Walt read that they were going to be at Little Prague celebrating Robert Burns, we decided to go.

Lee Riggs

When we arrived, the band was just getting set up, and naturally they started with a number that featured the bagpiper ... two nights in a row with pipes in them!  My Celtic roots are positively giddy with joy.  (I thought it very strange that this Celtic band was standing under a sign that read Koureni Zakazano! with a bunch of accents on some of the letters in the Czech saying.  We also put our Celtic beer on Krusovice beer coasters.)

After the band had played for awhile, they introduced a man named, I think, Tom McKeith, who read some Robert Burns poems.  I loved the way he read.

In time, the piper left the stage and went to the back of the room, and pretty soon he started playing there, and paraded to the stage in front of a big haggis, carried by the Czech owner of the restaurant, who placed it on a table in front of the stage.

There was some discussion about who was going to cut it.  Tommy had to read the "Address to a Haggis," by Burns, so Lee's brother David did the carving honors.

Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face, Great chieftain o' the puddin-race! Aboon them a' ye tak your place, Painch, tripe, or thairm: Weel are ye wordy of a grace As lang's my arm... [omitting 6 verses] Ye Pow'rs wha mak mankind your care, And dish them out their bill o 'fare, Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware That jaups in luggies; But, if ye wish her gratefu' prayer, Gie her a Haggis!

Next, all who wanted some of the haggis lined up to get a serving.  Walt did, I didn't.  Someone asked me what it was and I said "awful."  He asked "is that offal or awful" and I said "yes."

There was a bit more music and another few poems read and then the piper played Auld Lang Syne and we packed up to leave. 

When we got home, Walt admitted that he had really liked the haggis.   "I guess nobody makes haggis like the Czechs," he said.

The Night I Murdered Beethoven

Kymm Zuckert, a long-time journalist/blogger (longer than myself, I believe) recently wrote an entry in which, in part, she talked about singing in a chorus and being unprepared for part of what they were singing.

I was very angry, though, when I got to a section of music that I had never rehearsed. See above in that not all of us had been singing this music for years, and how this could never have been rehearsed, I don't know. I suppose that the people who were at the concert the day before got to learn it then, but why had it never showed up at a regular rehearsal? I only missed a couple of Thursdays since August, those couldn't be the only times they were glanced at. I just don't think it was fair that us newer members were hung out to dry like that. I don't ever want to be caught sight-singing at a concert again.

It brought back memories of the night I almost murdered Beethoven.

In the years when I was working with The Lamplighters Music Theater in San Francisco, my best friend, Gilbert Russak, was the musical director.  Though he had studied music all of his life, he had never conducted an orchestra until he took over conducting the new Lamplighters orchestra.   At one point in the last couple of years of his life he was also the assistant conductor for the San Francisco children's chorus or orchestra or something like that.   And he liked conducting, but he had this dream to conduct something other than Gilbert & Sullivan and the light operetta fare that the Lamplighters performed.   He wanted to conduct the Beethoven symphonies.

The Lamplighters has a loyal orchestra, many of whom have been with the company for decades and are professional musicians.  But the thing about being a musician is that you only get to play the music that your orchestra decides to play.   It's all well and good to love Mahler, for example, but unless somebody hires you to play in an orchestra that is doing one of the Mahler symphonies, you don't get the chance to play that music.

So Gilbert and the orchestra decided they were going to do the Beethoven symphonies, just for fun.  

The company then performed at the wonderful Presentation theatre an ~400 seat theatre in a Catholic girls high school (which my sister had attended).   Though it was a high school theatre, it was one of the best theatres in the city, for its size.  It was beautiful and had great accoustics and the Lamplighters pretty much had the run of the place when school was not in session, so they could pop in on a Sunday and play a Beethoven symphony to a more or less empty house just for the fun of it.

The "concerts" were great.  A handful of us knew about them and could come and listen, but they didn't publicize what they were doing because then they'd have to pay the orchestra a salary, and this was just a for fun thing.

I even was able to request a symphony.  Beethoven's 8th has always been my favorite, ever since I took a class on the 9 symphonies and listened to Maestro Josef Krips, the then-conductor of the San Francisco symphony, give a lecture on that symphony and how it was "Beethoven's joke," playing sections of it and pointing out in what a light-hearted mood Beethoven had been when he wrote it and the little funny things he included in it.  I never hear that symphony without thinking of Maestro Krips and when I asked Gilbert if the orchestra could pay that symphony at their next concert, they did.  It's one thing to call a radio DJ and ask him to play a tune for you, but to be able to request a symphony was really special.

The last symphony they did for fun was the magnificent 9th symphony.   This one took a bit more preparation, and they invited lots of company members, professional singers most of them, to come and sing along with the 4th movement, the well-known Ode to Joy.  

There were others in the house, not professional singers, but people who had come for the fun of hearing the orchestra play this magnificent work.  As they got to the 4th movement, Gilbert invited anybody who wanted to sing to come up on stage and join them.

Now, I'm not a singer.  I had sung choruses in public all my life, singing with various church choirs.  I had even sung in a choir or two that did some pretty complicated stuff and I was once even a quasi-soloist.  They couldn't find an alto, but my voice wasn't strong enough to d the solo by myself, so the conductor chose two of us.  We were the "Benedictus girls" and got to sing that part of the Mass as a solo duet (the Benedictus is the shortest part of the Mass, so he figured we couldn't screw it up too badly). So I decided to join the Ode to Joy group.   How bad could it be?  I knew I couldn't really keep up, but I would have someone who knew what she was doing at my elbow, and I'm generally good at following. I knew the tune and it would be fun.

Now, the first problem was that I had never seen the sheet music to this work before and should have realized how complicated it was.  Duhhh!

Second, I do not sight read.  I can pick out a tune on the piano from a piece of music, but to sit down and play something with lots of chords, I'm totally lost.  

Third, I am an alto, so though I know the tune to Ode to Joy, I had never sung or heard the alto part and would have to be reading it off of the music that was being held by the person standing to my left (since of course I didn't own my own copy of the music).

I already knew I was in over my head the minute the music came out and I looked at it, but I was too embarrassed to slink down off the stage and back to my seat.

And then came the coup de grace.  Gilbert looked at all of us assembled there and said "do you want to sing this in English or in German."   With one voice they all said "German."  Gleep.  I barely knew it in English and though I could speak French and had sung in Latin, German was a language I did not know.

So there I am with this marvelous orchestra and this glorious chorus and I'm trying to sight read the alto line of a piece of music that I'd never seen before but everyone else knew practically by heart, and at the same time trying to figure out the German words everyone was singing.  And I'm standing next to Jean Ziaja, one of the leading contraltos of the Lamplighters.

I did the only thing I could possibly do.  I opened my mouth and made singing-looking movements, and didn't sing a note. 

I have to admit that standing in the middle of this wonderful chorus and a professional orchestra for the performance of this magnificent work was, in itself, a thrilling experience, but I was glad that at the end of the movement, Jean had the good grace not to mention my "performance" at all. 

The Music (Wo)man

I'm becoming a real wimp.  I turned off The Daily Show last night after 10 minutes because every molecule in my body was screaming SLEEP!  NOW!   Thus, I did not, as planned, write this entry before going to sleep--the second night in a row where I have put off writing an entry until morning because of being too tired.

This means I am actually writing an entry on the day that it is dated, instead of writing it the night before.  How strange.

I worked at Logos yesterday.  It was fairly quiet for the first hour or so and then three women came in with two children.  They were grammar school aged kids, but toward the upper end of grammar school.  I think that two of the women were a couple and the third was the mother of one of them.  Mom sat in a chair in the front of the store, whipped out a tiny book, perhaps a prayer book, and read it without taking her eyes off the page for the whole time the rest were rummaging around in the children's room.

The "Children's room" is about the size of a walk-in closet, but filled with all sorts of gems.  One of these days I swear I'm going to choose an old Nancy Drew mystery to read just to remind myself of what it was like in the days when I devoured them.

I was enjoying the sound of four people excitedly checking out the book selections, since I can't see into that room while sitting at the cash register.   It always makes me happy to see little kids excited about reading.

But after awhile I noticed that the women were still in the room, but the children had found books about cars.  Each book was in the shape of a car, and each book had wheels.  The kids were building roads out of books and then racing the book-cars along them.  Later they gave up on the book roads and started crawling around on the floor pushing the book-cars to go as fast as they could.  Then they took books and began building hills with them to roll the book-cars down.

I really wasn't happy about this, and envisioned having to clean up a huge mess when they left the shop.  I hadn't said anything, but at one point glanced back at the kids and the mother, who was now standing at the desk said "don't worry; we're buying those." 

And buy they did!  Considering that the most expensive book they bought was $8, their bill of $70 was quite impressive!  They bought Harry Potter and Lemony Snicket and Mark Twain, and Charles Dickens and a host of small "early reader" type books.  Not only that, but they left the room so organized you'd hardly even know they were there.  I felt bad for thinking ill of them.

While one of the women was paying for all the books, I happened to notice that the other was looking through a stack of sheet music and I was catapulted back to my own grammar school days, because I recognized the book she was looking through.

I saw a lot of David Carr Glover's music books for children when I was taking piano lessons.  To be sure, after she lelft, I checked the publication date, and sure enough it was early 1950s, about the time I was struggling through these simple tunes on the piano.

One of my father's big regrets in life was that he never stuck with his piano lessons.  The piano was his whole life and the only time I ever really saw him happy was when he was at the piano.  It was only in the last 20 years or so that I learned that his mother also played the piano and was quite in demand as a young woman, but she preferred to party and realized that while she was providing the entertainment, everyone else was dancing and having fun, so she stopped playing the piano entirely, and once she made that decision, she never touched a piano again. My mother begged her to play something for her but she steadfastly refused.

I don't know why my father gave up on his piano lessons, but he did and though he played "by ear" and even once had a job as a piano player in a bar, he always regretted that he never followed through on his lessons.

So for both of them, it was important that I become the piano player.   Problem is that I never got the music gene that passed by me and down to my children.  I suffered through those lessons for two years before I quit, something my father never forgave me for and for the rest of his life talked about the money he wasted on my piano lessons.  My grandmother at one time told me that if I learned to play Debussy's "Claire de Lune," her favorite classical piece, she would give me $100.  I never did.

Sister Mary Victor was the piano teacher, a wizened old nun whose domain was the top floor of St. Brigid's grammar school.  I remember climbing the stairs to her tiny room and sitting at the piano with her tapping out rhythms with her ever-present ruler, which was all too handy to rap knuckles if my wrists weren't limp enough or my fingers didn't curl the right way.  She sure couldn't get away with that sort of stuff today!  I was terrified of her.

But I did learn the basics.  And I played a lot of music by David Carr Glover.  I also remember I had a book of I believe it was dumbed down Hayden Sonatas.  One of those was my favorite because for some reason it reminded me of the movie The Seventh Veil with James Mason and Ann Todd.  I had such a crush on the stern Mason in that movie.  I can still hum the tune from that book in my head and it still brings back memories of that movie.

I also had my share of "cross-hand pieces" (I threw that in for Jeri), which I practiced so I could be part of Sister Mary Victor's annual recitals.   I may have hated those more than the lessons, having to get up on stage in front of an audience and hope I didn't screw up.

I played the piano for awhile when the kids were little and we bought a big upright piano (which we only gave away about five years ago), but, I didn't have that gene that let me play by ear and I read music poorly, so I gave up when the kids started to play.  It never was the joy for me that it had been for my father.

The Soundtrack of Your Life

There are two moments in my life that I remember very clearly for a specific reason.  The first was the death of the wife of the man who owned the little grocery store near our house.  I had known them all of my life (maybe 10 years by that time).  We were coming home from Mass that day and as we passed the store we could see a black wreath on the door and we knew that one of them had died.  So clearly I heard a loud ominous musical chord in my head that was so real I was surprised there wasn't an orchestra in the car with me.

The second moment took place at Peach's house when we were visiting,   I had to have been early teens at the time.  We knew that my Aunt Marge was pregnant and I can still see her standing at the ironing board, cigarette hanging out of her mouth as she announced that she had lost the baby.  Again, a musical chord sounded in my head.

Think how interesting our lives would be if we had a soundtrack playing everywhere we went (our lives would either be interesting or they would haul us away to the loony bin!)

Imagine how dull the battle scenes in Braveheart would have been without music, or the battle scenes in Star Wars.  How would Dorothy have gotten from Munchkin Land to Oz without Follow the Yellow Brick Road?   

Would we still cry if Love Story or Steel Magnolias had no music? And would we tense up as effectively during any scary movie or TV show without eerie music to set the scene for us?

I want to have music to give me a clue what to expect...or to help enhance the mood while I'm experiencing it.  I want John Williams moments in my life.   I want something so wonderful that my emotions will be lifted by the wonderful swelling melodies.

I want Jeri to write quirky, bouncy tunes (which she has already done--but I want more) to accompany my watching the antics of the dogs as they chase each other around the house.

I want country music when I'm sad.  I want to know that other people are enduring trucks that break down and dogs that die and lovers that leave and crops that fail...and yet they survive.

My time in the bookstore has its own soundtrack already, as there is usually classical music from a local FM station playing softly in the background.

I want to drive down the highway with the music of Sideways accompanying me as I make my roadtrip, whether it is short or long, and when one of those big semis pulls up along side me, I want ominous chords to warn me if I should be worried or not.

When hundreds of crows come home from the fields each night and settle into the trees around our house, I want to hear either Alfred Hitchcock soundtracks or National Geographic soundtracks playing so I know whether it's safe to go pick up the paper in the driveway or not.

Unfortunately, most of my life is so plain vanilla that if it were possible to have a music of your life soundtrack, it would probably be elevator music.   

And I'd hate that.

---

What music would I choose for "life is good right now"?  Our TV is back and running without a problem, the 49ers just defeated the Packers for the first time in Green Bay since 1990, and we have a working microwave again.

Ned and Marta came yesterday and worked with Walt at getting the microwave put in.

Given how long they had to hold the oven up while Walt went to get various tools and try to screw in the screws at the top, I am SO glad that I asked Ned to come and help.  I remember when I was several months pregnant with Ned.  We had bought a new refrigerator and Walt had to put something in on the bottom of it.  He tipped the fridge over to have me hold up and said "Here hold this; I'll be right back."  I think I must have balanced the weight of the fridge on Ned's head.   But I think my days of holding up a heavy machine while Walt does whatever he needs to do are behind me.  And those machine cost too much to give in to my pride and chance it!

So thanks, Ned and Marta.  You get gold stars in your crowns this weekend!

50 Songs

I saw this list on Kwizgiver's home page, only she did 100.  I didn't think I could list 100 songs which have meant something special to me throughout my life, but thought perhaps I could do 50.  These are definitely in no particular order as I'm sure when I list one song, another in the same genre will come to mind.  Probably half of these songs will be songs nobody but me and a handful of others have ever heard of.

1.  You Didn't Quite Know me Yet - I don't know why this one was the first to come to mind.  You will never hear it anywhere.  It's a song my father wrote, which I helped write the lyrics for

I fell in love when first we met
My heart says she's the one to get
So I started to sing, and picked out the ring
But you didn't quite know me yet...

(It was not a brilliant song and later on even has a June/spoon rhyme)

2. Don't Fence Me In sung by Bing Crosby.  I had to bring my favorite record to grammar school to play to the class.  Everyone else had brought something classical.  I suspect I was the only honest one--but I felt like a dork for bringing a bouncy, popular tune

.

3. Gary, Indiana from The Music Man, which makes me think of Paul every time, since Paul played the role of Winthrop twice.

4. Where is Love from Oliver!.  Like #3, this reminds me of Paul.  I would come into the theater every night to watch that pinspot on his face as he croaked out the song.  A mother's proudest moment.

5. Bump As You Go.  This song still gets me teary.   It is the song Ned wrote after his dog, Bert, died.

6. In the Arms of the Angel, which Audra and Marta sang at Paul's funeral

In the arms of an Angel far away from here
From this dark, cold hotel room, and the endlessness that you fear
You are pulled from the wreckage of your silent reverie
You're in the arms of an Angel; may you find some comfort here

7. When Irish Eyes are Smiling  I can still see my grandfather standing in their tiny apartment, his hand in the pocket of his suit coat, singing this song, which he used to sing on the stage in the waning days of vaudeville, when he was the company's Irish tenor.

8. The Rainbow Connection.  Who doesn't love to hear Kermit the Frog sing this song?  I remember the first time I heard it after Jim Henson's death and realized that Kermit was dead too.  (Of course he's not really, but he doesn't sound like his old self any more.)

9. I have a song to sing, O.  One of my favorite Gilbert & Sullivan songs.  I wish there were a Lamplighters version to embed here.

10. The Flower that Shattered the Stone.  There are several John Denver songs on this list.  The recording of this song that I love best of this one is Denver doing a duet with a guy called "the John Denver of Japan."  It made me cry every time I heard it because it was just so beautiful.

11. For you.  Another John Denver song.  Perhaps one of his most beautiful love songs.

12. Home Grown Tomatoes.  Let's get these John Denver songs all together here.  I love this one.  Just a fun, bouncy song...and, of course, I love home grown tomatoes.

13. Grandma's Feather Bed, of my favorite JD songs.   Just a fun song that reminds me of playing in my parents' bed with their satin quilt, "flufty wufty."

13a. Flying for Me.  After I got this list done and printed, I started doing some clean up in my office and put on my playlists of favorite John Denver songs.  Oh man, there is so much emotion connected with these songs, when you think back on when they were written, when they were performed, and where we are now.  I was sobbing by the end of this song.  This was written after the Challenger disaster, specifically for Christa McAuliffe, the teacher on that launch.

14. Don't be Stupid by Shania Twain.  I don't even know the lyrics to this one, but I loved the bouncy tune and it makes me smile whenever I hear it.

15. It's all coming back to me now by Celine Dion.  I think this was the first Celine Dion song I ever heard, when Peggy sent it to me on a CD of her favorite songs in the days of Napster, long before I met her.  I really liked it--and still do.

16. My Heart Will Go On.  If we're going to talk Celine Dion we can't not include this one, can we?

17. Well of course Over the Rainbow.  Judy, Judy, Judy.   Love 'em all, but this was the one that started the Legend.  I still remember watching her sit on the edge of the stage at the Opera House in San Francisco in her tramp makeup and sing her signature song.

18. Defying Gravity from Wicked, with those amazing, empowering lyrics.  Even better to see it done live on stage.

Something has changed within me
Something is not the same
I'm through with playing by the rules
Of someone else's game
Too late for second-guessing
Too late to go back to sleep
It's time to trust my instincts
Close my eyes: and leap!

It's time to try
Defying gravity
I think I'll try
Defying gravity
And you can't pull me down!

19. For Good from Wicked

Another empowering song, for different reasons.  A celebration of friendship and the way it changes everyone.

20. The Twelfth of Never by Johnny Mathis always reminds me of grammar school, and the parties we had in 8th grade, where Johnny was always on the turntable.

21. How Do You Fall Back in Love? by my friend Steve Schalchlin.  This song still gives me chills.  The embedded video is just the vocal.  It was the "11th hour" number Steve wrote while The Big Voice: God or Merman was in previews.  It's a beautiful, powerful song.

22. Non, je ne regrette rien by Edith Piaf.  I first heard this song when I was studying French in high school.  I had read Piaf's biography and knew the kind of life she had lead and the unapologetic anthem "No, I regret nothing" was all the more powerful.

23. Les Grands Boulevards by Yves Montand.  While I'm in France with Piaf, might as well add this one which I learned when I was studying French and sang over and over again. 

24. Puff the Magic Dragon, which Walt and I decided was "our song" when we were dating.  It was years later before I realized it was all about marijuana!  (No, we never smoked marijuana)

25. I Am What I Am from La Cage aux Folles.   I've loved that song since I first heard it in San Francisco back in the early 1980s.   Such a powerful affirmation, again, unapologetic.

26. Mama Look-a BooBoo by Harry Belafonte. I was going through my list of music on my iPod and laughed when I saw this one.  I remember when my then-boyfriend Bill and I decided that Bill would dedicate it to my father.  I don't think my father was pleased.

27. Halleluja.  The first recording of this I heard was by Jeff Buckley on the West Wing episode "Posse Comitatus," where C.J.'s love interest, the Secret Service agent Simon Donavan (played by Mark Harmon) is killed and President Bartlet has to give the order to assassinate the defense minister of Qumar.  I've since heard several versions of it, including Justin Timberlake's version to raise funds for Haiti relief, Susan Boyle's emotional version. and even Neil Diamond.  It's beautiful, whoever sings it.

28. She Shanty by the Righteous Mothers.  A salute to childbirth.  Need I say more?

29. Old Fat Naked Women for Peace.  This was the song that made me a Righteous Mothers fan.

Don't you wish we'd been there In Nigeria
In Eskravos in 2002
Those mothers and grandmothers
They organized, they strategized
They occupied refineries -- woo woo!
Chevron gave in to all their demands
The final threat they never had to use
'Cause economic justice is easier to deal with
Than lots of older women in the nude.

Knock it off, or we'll take it off
We're old fat naked women for justice.
It seems to me
This strategy
Could def'nitly
Work cross-culturally
Even Dick Cheney
Doesn't want to see
His granny's titties in the breeze

30. Bound for the Rio Grande by the Robert Shaw Chorale.   Gilbert had this record of sea shanties that I just loved, and kept after he died.   This was one of my favorite songs from the album.

31. Baby Mine.  This is the song that is played while the mother elephant rocks Dumbo in her trunk out the bars of her jail cell.  A tear jerker.

32. You Send Me by Sam Cooke.  I wanted to buy this record when I was a teenager and my father threw a fit.  It was junk and would never be worth anything.  I never bought the record. I'm sorry my father didn't live to see Sam Cooke celebrated as one of the grand old men of rock 'n' roll.  And I now have the recording.

33. It's a Round, Round World from Stan Freberg's "History of the United States of America, Part 1" which was played over and over and over for years.  How can you not love a record that includes the song Take an Indian to Lunch this Week ?

34. Don't Go to London (it's under construction), another Lawsuit song.  I love this song because we all went to London in 1988 and as we rode around the city, we remarked on how many buildings were surrounded by scaffolding.  Ned came home a week before the rest of us did, and by the time we got home he had written this song.   It's a fun song that brings back fun memories of our time together in London.

35. I first heard Glitter and be Gay from Candide when our friend Lenore sang it here in Davis, but this video of Kristin Chenowith is just...indescribable.

36. Maybe This Time from Cabaret.  When I saw Liza Minnelli sing it in the film, it sent chills down my spine.

37. Don't Cry for Me, Argentina from Evita.   Long before I ever saw the show I came to love this song because the Brasilian guy who was living with us at the time, Marcio de Vassimon, had seen the show and had fallen in love with it.  He bought the record and played it frequently. I never hear the song without thinking of Marcio, with many saudades.

38. Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again from Phantom of the Opera.  There are so many people I wish were somehow here again that this song gets me every time.

39. Barbeque by MumboGumbo.  An early song by this Davis-born group, which has gone on to greater fame.  This song, with a cajun sound, is my ring tone for Tom

...open the gate, come on through
everybody wants barbeque...

40. Secret Love by Doris Day.  This was the very first album I ever bought.  It was from the soundtrack of Calamity Jane and was a 10" LP record that we played on the brand new portable record player that my father had just bought.  He was excited about something called "high fidelity."   Boy, if he could see where music has come now!  Whenever I happen to catch the old movie, I can still see putting this record on the turntable for the very first time.

41. Seven Old Ladies.  Ahhh, the songs of our carefree youth.  Walt was a great hit at parties in college when he sang this 8-verse song, accompanying himself on the ukelele

Oh dear, what can the matter be?
Seven old ladies locked in a lavat'ry
They were there from Sunday to Saturday
Nobody knew they were there.

42. Dancing Queen by ABBA.  Actually it could be any one of the songs from Mamma Mia.  I didn't really know ABBA until Peggy started putting together a CD of their songs for the little girl that lived next door to her.   Peggy didn't know ABBA either.  But she came to really enjoy their music and made a copy of their album "ABBA Gold" for me.  I was very glad that I was familiar with all the songs before I saw Mamma Mia for the first time.

43. Merano from Chess.  I don't know when this song was dropped from the show, but it was the opening number on the original cast recording that I have and I always liked it and was disappointed when I saw the show and it wasn't there.

44.  I also love I Know Him So Well from that show, two women in love with the same man, each thinking they know him, neither of them really knowing the whole man.

45. Potato by Cheryl Wheeler.  I only saw Wheeler in concert once, but loved this fun song she sings about the lowly potato.  Embedding the video was not permitted, but you can see it here

46. Lollipop by The Chordettes.  This was the other song I wanted to buy in my teens, along with Sam Cooke's You Send Me.  I now finally have this recording too, thanks to iTunes.

47. Sur le pont d'Avignon by Sandler and Young.  I have been a fan of Sandler and Young for SO long.  They don't perform any more, but check out some of their songs on YouTube.  They were famous for pairing songs like Dominique with Deep River, sung together with Sandler's French tenor and Young's deep bass.  I like this song, which pairs the original song with Frere Jacques, not only because it's a light-weight cute song, but it also reminds me of being in Avignon with Jeri.

48. Save Me a Seat by Steve Schalchlin.  I want this song played at the start of my memorial service.  It's really about HIS funeral, and so a lot of it has to do with his going away for awhile and playing the piano across the street, but I still want it at my funeral.

Perhaps some day for several hours
You'll fill some church with lots of flowers
And display some saintly shot of me
Somewhere in the hall
And stick a tray of NACHOS
up against the wall.....

Then I'll find my way back to the seat in the back
And I'll be a good boy til it's over
Then I'll get to do something that you cannot do
I'll follow you home everyone of you

Then on a day when you feel lost or hurt
Go to the kitchen and get some dessert
Then sit at the table and eat
Just remember to save me a seat
Please remember to save me a seat

49.  And somewhere in the middle of my memorial service, of course you have to play Funny since that became a whole blog.

Funny the world in a world all alone
I feel like I've lost everything that I own
Funny the funnies aren't funny any more.
Funny the tears as they fall from my eyes
There are two kinds of tears--
one from truth, one from lies
There's a broken soldier,
who's going home...

50.  Thank God, You're Doing Fine.  I want my memorial to end with this upbeat song, by Lawsuit.

Whew.  I did it.  I was right--there was no way that I could have done 100.  And I think that this list is a pretty clear example of how very little I am in touch with current popular music!

Musical Christmas Memories

This is an entry inspired by Sherck of "Where's My Plan?"

What would Christmas be without music? Not only the tunes we love, the tunes we hate, but the whole thing--elevator music, mall music, sing-alongs, etc. Here are some of the musical memories that are special to me (for good or bad reasons!)

I don't actually remember if we played music when we were decorating the tree when I was growing up, but music was a huge part of my childhood, and Christmas was no exception. Whenever I hear Bing Crosby's first Christmas record (we had vinyl records in those days...78s, when I was very young!) it reminds me of Christmas when I was growing up.

We carried that tradition into our family when we began to have children. We didn't often play music throughout the day, but there was always Christmas music when we trimmed the tree. It always started with the Bing Crosby recordings that I remembered from my youth. What it segued to may have changed, but Bing ruled Christmas. ("Silver Bells" was my favorite.) I also have a Mike Douglas recording that is not available on iTunes which I usually put on second. After the kids were older and Lawsuit had recorded its own Christmas song ("The Grassy Knoel"), included in an area Christmas CD, we had to play that first, followed by "The Santa Rumba."

Christmas choirs. I always sang in a choir, from grammar school through our move here to Davis. There were always Christmas concerts, and rehearsals for singing special music at Christmas Mass when I was in grammar school. To this day, I can't sing the traditional songs without automatically taking the alto line.

Caroling, caroling, caroling. I don't remember a lot of opportunities to take to the streets to serenade the neighborhood. The Lamplighters used to get on the cable car and ride the length of the route, from Market Street to Fisherman's Wharf, singing and laughing all the way. We were able to be part of that tradition only once, but I just loved it. There is nothing like singing choruses in public with a group of professional singers! When we got off the cable car at the end of the line, we were at the Buena Vista cafe, where legend says Irish Coffee was born. We would all pile into the place and squeeze into the elbow-to-elbow crowd and have a couple of Irish coffees, to take the cold of the cable car out of our bones.

The Davis Comic Opera Company, in its heyday, occasionally went out into the streets of Davis to sing and again, I loved singing with people who really knew how to sing. The last time I sang carols on the street was a few years ago when we went out with Ned and Marta and Marta's family. I had forgotten how much fun it was.

The fun of playing Christmas carols on the kazoo!

Rest Homes. Throughout my life at various times I have been with groups that went out and serenaded people in convalescent hospitals. When I was in grammar school, especially the early years, all those old people terrified me. Later, here in Davis, various groups would assemble and go out and sing for the town's convalescent hospitals. The last time I was part of that group, it was organized by the amazing Cathy Speck (who is living with ALS) and her wife, Linda Duval. I remember we were singing at one rest home in one hall while in another hall we could hear another choir singing competing Christmas carols.

The Nutcracker. A lot of people in this town have the high school Madrigal Choir dinner as their favorite holiday memory, an old fashioned dinner with songs provided (and food served) by the award-winning Madrigal Choir, in their fancy costumes. We did go to a Mads dinner one time, but our kids didn't do Mads, they did Jazz Choir, which had no Christmas tradition. But our kids performed in, helped with, and designed and built for the annual Davis Children's Nutcracker, and we went to all the performances they were in and probably saw a few of the productions they were involved with backstage. "The Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy" still takes me back, in my memory, to those days.

Egg Nog Gala. Of course, no Christmas musical memories would be complete without the Egg Nog Gala, the annual show the kids did for us after Christmas dinner. Whether it was singing Christmas songs, performing other songs or, especially, David's one-finger rendition of "Deck the Halls," those are such amazingly special memories.

A group of us standing around the grave of David and Paul (their ashes are buried in the same plot), onto which I have arranged a small Christmas tree, passing around a flask of Jim Beam and singing Christmas carols, while we shiver in the cold, and maybe brush away a tear at another Christmas without them.

Mall Music. I don't shop malls much any more, but I did love wandering through stores at this time of year with all the elevator-type music playing, occasionally coming to a group that is all dressed up and singing. It just add another little layer of civility to an otherwise ruthless process! Unless, of course, the song is Feliz Navidad, which is my least favorite Christmas song and makes me want to run screaming from the room.

A not so happy Christmas memory was the time I invited my boss to dinner around Christmas time. He loved hamburgers and I decided I had created the perfect hamburger. So it was going to be my gourmet hamburgers and lots and lots and lots of pop Christmas music. I had forgotten that he loved classical music...and that he was Jewish. I also burned the hamburgers. Not my best hostess night ever!

My final Christmas music memory doesn't involve Christmas music at all. It was the last Christmas we spent with my father, which I've mentioned here a few times. My father and I didn't usually get along, but each year we would go to his house and clean it up for him as a Christmas gift. The previous year he had been so drunk, he couldn't walk straight or remember his grandchildren's names. This year he was sober and though his health was failing, he sat down to show Jeri something on the piano. What evolved was a full-scale jam session involving all the kids. Music had been my father's whole life and this was the happiest I'd seen him in a very long time, discovering that his grandchildren shared the love for music that he had--and didn't believe that they did. I even had a video camera with me to record it in a not-very good video, but enough to bring back the memory. He died the following July, so this was our last Christmas with him and after so many not-very-good Christmases, this was a real gift, to be able to remember that as the last time we were all together.

Back to Bach

Rachel Kessler, the long-time director of the Davis Community Church (DCC) Choir, is retiring, at long last. Under her teaching and baton much glorious music has poured forth from the little community church in downtown Davis.

We are not members of the congregation, but have attended some events there, mostly funerals or concerts, over the years.

Dick Brunelle, the guy who founded the Davis High School Madrigals, led the choir at DCC until his own retirement, when Rachel took over. We attended Dick's memorial service there several years later.

Today the choir performed the Bach B-Minor Mass as a Memorial to Dick and a farewell to Rachel. Instead of performing in the little church, they stood on the stage of the Mondavi Theatre on the campus of UC Davis.

The Mondavi Center is a beautiful facility that takes itself way too seriously. The rules and regulations for how the ushers are to dress, behave, and treat audience are unnecessarily strict (e.g., some friends told of a time they were being bothered by someone sitting next to them, who was knitting during the show, which resulted in poking my friend with a knitting needle. They moved to other seats, which were empty. The head usher told them they couldn't sit there because they were not holding tickets for the seats to which they had moved.)

But it was a great facility to present such a true magnum opus, even if there was only a small a dent made in the 2000 seat theatre.

I sat there watching conductor Kern Holoman (looking for all the word like either a reincarnation of Arturo Toscanini, or a giant condor) and listening to the music, while searching for familiar faces among the orchestra and chorus, and I marveled that such a small town could produce such an amazing chorale.

I picked out the guy who makes DVDs of all the theatrical shows in town, a neighbor (whose daughter was also one of the flute soloists and who watched, like a proud mama whenever the daughter had a solo), the guy we buy oranges from at Christmas time, The Psychiatrist's daughter, Mr. Brunelle's widow, and a husband and wife who perform in the chorus of the Davis Musical Theatre company. I never did see our long-time friend, the former president of the school board, who is listed among the sopranos. The sister of a guy who was the first percussionist for Lawsuit was one of the two soprano soloists (as was a woman who sang with The Lamplighters at one time).

In the house were lots of old friends, looking much older, including a good friend who confided that she contracted a virus this past winter and when she couldn't seem to shake it, she learned that it had affected her heart and nothing can be done because she's too old for a heart transplant. She and her husband, who suffers from Parkinsons, are selling their home and moving to a care facility before it's too late. She seems quite at peace with her sad news; I'm still processing it. I have admired this woman for so long and the grace with which she is handling what seems like a certain death sentence is just another reason to admire her.

The whole afternoon made me remember why it is that I like Davis. Amazing people, amazing talent, old friends.