Wednesday 12th October, 2005
Rod in Concert
Holland, December 2005!
San Sebastian Strings
albums now available on CD! Order
now!
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A Thought for Today
Clouds are the food of let’s pretend.
This
One Does It For Me!
Ken,
I have always treasured the album Lonesome Cities.
I doubt if anyone, save maybe Sinatra, has done such a complete thematic
gem as that. And of all the tracks the one that still comes to mind in
any circumstance is The Language of Hello.
Do you know if the album did well on the charts and what the critical
reaction was to it?
Jack Goodwin
I'm not sure about chart
positions, Jack, but "Lonesome Cities" earned Rod a Grammy Award for
Best Spoken Word Album back in 1969.
And boy, was he in good
company! Other winners that year included Paul Simon, Glen Campbell,
Jimmy Webb, Bobby Russell, Judy Collins, Dionne Warwick, Jose Feliciano,
Otis Redding and Mason Williams among a host of others. A veritable
Who's Who of the music business.
Here are the liner notes
from the album.
LINER
NOTES FROM LONESOME CITIES
I used to hide from the
snow. That was part of growing up. But even now I sleep with the
electric blanket on in summertime. Sometimes when I travel there are no
electric blankets where I stay, and so I bed down with last year’s or
last night’s memories. Those times when I’m wrapped up in love I push
aside the memories and build on what is happening now, knowing now must
be worth remembering every tomorrow. I am not a collector of people, I
am a saver of places and things - I know they’ll bring the people back
for me when they’re needed.
My step father was a cat skinner, leveling hills into highways. We never
stayed in one place long. Portland, Oregon. Skamania, Washington. Alamo,
Nevada. When he worked we had a Model T or a second hand Chevrolet. When
he didn’t, it was thumbs up along the highway for the family, to get to
where the work would be. ( My mother looking beautiful and getting us
rides. )
I learned my first four letter word from fellow hitchhikers in Winemucca,
Nevada. The second one I learned was “love”, because I needed it. Today
that word is used as a noun, pronoun, verb, and catch all word for a
generation coming up that isn’t getting much of it either. You see it
chalked on men’s room walls and leading every slogan used in every
protest march. They’re even writing books telling us how to go about it
now; technology is so advanced the Kama Sutra’s nothing but a comic
book, and Pompeii’s hardly worth the extra dollar for the hidden rooms.
That word will bury us before hate does, if we’re not careful.
Lonesome Cities ? I’ve known some. Some of them are here. Cheyenne - my
camera catching blood speckled cowboys on white speckled horses. Gstaad
- I liked the snow that time and all the views from the Gondelbahns that
gave a not so Disney look at cows and countryside. Paris - ah, the maids
in the rooms of the Hotel Crystal... quoting everybody’s business but
their own. And roaches lined up in cinema seats along the bathtub,
arriving so frequently I almost gave them each a name.
London has a heart, if you can find it, and I almost have.
Mijas is a town in Spain. The day they laid Bob Kennedy to rest, I sat
upon my roof and listened to a folk mass ringing down the mountainside
and mixing with the goat bells. The birds were speaking Spanish, but I
understood. I got to wondering where all of us are going. “We’re on a
treadmill to oblivion,” Fred Allen would say. Maybe so. But there must
be one lonesome city somewhere where a man can go and not see children
throwing rocks at one another, while the elders burn their heroes in
order to insure their memory.
I’m in Los Angeles right now amid mid-August sheep dog days. Tonight
I’ll sing some songs where once I thought I had a friend. He smiles now
and counts the money that my craggy face and creaky throat bring in, but
never sits through one performance. He’s changed, as have so many who
wish me not success but a kind of limbo where a friend or foe might come
and gape.
It was a climb. God knows it was ( He’s about the only one who does), up
hill all the way. Here I am, as the poem goes, my cardboard suitcase
traded in for leather. I’ve put a few more pounds on, but I don’t live
too much better.
Tomorrow, off to other cities. Lonesome? Some of them. To fill another
book with the observations of a man who’s come to love (that word again
) all people, but who prides himself on saving just enough dislike to
heap on those for whom that second four letter word is tied upon a yo-yo
string and snapped back at convenience. You know your names. Stay away.
I’ve little enough time and love to share with sheep dogs and civilians
in Grand Rapids or off along the coasts of France.
I’ve some friends in Caliente I haven’t even met. If I get through one
more winter here, I might get to know them yet.
Rod McKuen, August 1968
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