Perceptions
This week:
Jethro Tull vinyl you may not know from 25 years ago.
Gentle Giant
OHO
New releases from Kati Mac and Rodriguez
Laura Nyro
Mountain
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What are perceptions? It can be a surprise when we learn Jethro Tull has played an amusement park in 1988. Or that actor Sherman Hemsley once danced to Gentle Giant on the Dinah Shore show--and he was serious about it. Or that Hispanic artist Rodriguez is as good as Bob Dylan--a musical hero in South Africa while presumed dead in the USA from false rumors due to obscurity. Thats for starters.
Sometimes we are aware of our own blind spots...and sometimes we’re not. It almost sounds like a Bradbury short story to have a band of Tull’s caliber play Kings Dominion in 1988. But its true. I was there. You don’t think its out of the ordinary for them to play Madison Square Garden--and how about the great comedic actor who gave us George Jefferson? Why do we react oddly when a black man loves progressive rock such as Giant, YES, and Gong? I never felt out of place being in an all black Bible school class in Jamaica/Queens, NY. And then there is the 70 year old living treasure we call Rodriguez. His lyrics are no less potent than Bob Dylan--yet he fell into such obscurity people thought he died ! Happy to say he’s very alive and well. After I locked in one of his songs for this week’s show I serendipitously saw him on Letterman doing the same music. Incredible performer.
Its way too easy to stereotype just about any aspect of life. The other side of this is to be gushingly self conscious to the point of ad nauseum--to be forcibly and annoyingly politically correct. What is it in human nature that makes us swing to one side or the other with the all too seldom proper balance?
Rod Serling was a master of gentle admonishment on the highest plateaus of theatrical television. In radio, we can hope to be inspired by music as its own message--and--as a portal to areas we might perceive as unsual, but really aren’t upon closer examination.
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The Electric Croude airs late Saturday night at the midnight hour EDT on WCVE Public Radio.
Communicate with the producer on Twitter: wcvegeorgemaida -- Facebook: Geo Maida or phone: (804) 560.8177.
Tull and "Fairport Friends" at KD in '88 = one of my fav concert experiences. Ever.
Tull...who always came across on stage as Monty Python with flute and guitar...helped on stage in gurneys and wheelchairs by willing nurses caring for these "old men" of rock and roll. Twenty years of playing in a band, in 1988, seemed an eternity, so when their t-shirts exclaimed "oh no...not another 20 years of Jethro Tull!" it was oh-so believable.
And that was nearly 25 years ago.
Highlight of the show for me was "Skating Away on the Thin Ice of the New Day" played in all its glory with the able assistance of Fairport Convention's Simon Nicol and Ric Sanders (joining bandmates Dave Pegg and Martin Allcock, who were seeing double-duty as payrolled Tullsters).
And the live versions of "Farm on the Freeway," "Steel Monkey," "Jump Start," and "Budapest" from their stellar release "Crest of a Knave" did not disappoint.
And so the *perception* that you can't rock when you're "old" that was firmly rooted in 1988, known never to be disproven, has in 2012 gone right out the window. So I say, rock on, gentlemen. Rock on.
Perceptively yours,
Rev. Kevin Salyer
(desperately trying to sleep during the midnight hour of Sunday morning before a full day's work)
What a great missive, Kevin! I agree with you 113%...one of MY fave concerts ever, too. The band and acoustics were perfect and so was the opening act. I remember Pegg/Nicol/Sanders but forgot about mulit-instrumentalist Allcock. Listening under the stars and hearing Barre rip his melodic virtuosity I remember thinking you HAD to be in your 40s to play like that.
A quarter century later....i'm still not to old to play with roaring 50watters in Marshall and Sovtek fashion.
Tempus fugit.....
More realistically Ps. 33:3 !
If King David had a Marshall stack to plug his harps and lyres into, he would've made a JOYFUL NOISE indeed!
BTW...we should jam sometime. I'm a singer.
Kevin Salyer
Sounds like a plan!
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