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ASK ROD |
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While inventorying the still left
over turkey and fixings, thought I’d get around to answering a bit of left over mail
CARNEGIE HALL
I was pleased to find your new website with many interesting features. About a year
ago I purchased your Carnegie Hall Sold Out CD and was surprised to find that it didn't
include all the tracks from the original recording. This has long been a favorite album of
mine despite the fact that the Warner Brothers pressings were never really very good. Much
to my surprise, the extensive information on your site appears to avoid mention of this
limited CD release. Have you any plans to release the whole concert? George Townsend
Rod, I have been looking for news of you for years,so imagine how great it was to run
across this site which I have been visiting regularly since it began!!! I used to look
forward to your concerts every year...mostly in San Francisco but also L.A.. It truly was
a great and emotional experience to see and hear you interpret your songs and poems in
person with the emotion that only you can bring. Have been to hundreds of concerts, but
yours always left me feeling as if I had been allowed to be someplace special, an intimate
performance for your friends and no less great than seeing Sinatra or any of the other
legends. Because of that, my favorite albums are the live ones. Do you have plans of
releasing the complete Carnegie Hall concert on CD, or any of the others, which I do have
on LP? Or perhaps some unreleased material? Thank you for this site... welcome
back...I’d love to see you soon. Thanks, Randy
Dear George & Randy, The Complete 1969 Carnegie Hall Concert will be released next
year in a 30th Anniversary edition, if I can get the time to put it together. And there
will be additional material included that was recorded at the concerts but never before
issued. One of the next boxed sets planned is an all concert collection, containing both
familiar and unreleased performances from concerts around the world. Meanwhile the
abbreviated Carnegie Hall Concert is still available by mail order. Best Regards, Rod.
AT THE MOVIES
Rod, I just watched "Wild Heritage" and enjoyed it. Why didn't you make more
movies? Ron Evans Jackson, MS
Ron, Lets put it this way, I feel lucky to have made any at all. Regards, Rod
IMAGINE THAT
I read your interview, and was amused by some similarities
between us. You're 65 I'm 56, your waist went from a 34 to 36, me to. I'm a Taurus, and my
first cat looked exactly like yours on the cover of " The Carols of Christmas ".
Looking forward to seeing you perform in the LA area... Bob Ryan
Bob, you forgot to mention that we went to different schools together.
MEMO TO KEN, RICH, DWIGHT & ED: Re DOWNLOADABLE ROD
I am so psyched that you have a website, and that you are answering emails! You are my
all time favorite singer (bet you never heard that before)! I love your voice (speaking
and singing)! I grew up listening to your music. (My Mom played your albums and she
recently let me take her entire "Rod McKuen" album collection . . . after some
pleading on my part!!) We saw you in concert at Carnegie Hall (in 1970, I think). I still
remember going to get your autograph after the concert was over. (I was around 5 years old
at the time.) Anyway, my question / suggestion is: Do you have any plans to make
commercial Midis (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) of your songs? I've been looking
for "Rod McKuen Midis" but I'm having no luck. Your website might be an ideal
place to offer your songs in MIDI format! Just a thought from an avid fan . . .I'm hoping
you'll get to New England on your next concert tour!!! Kerry
Dear Kerry, Funny you should mention ‘The Downloadable Rod." It could be a good
idea that has come and gone. Webmaster Ken suggested some time ago that we should have
vocals on the site "because the techno to do it exists". OK, so where are they?
Rick Kegler, who’s company p22 released the "Beatsville" CD, keeps saying
we should have "audio clips" available. I agree. Uncle Dwight, who believes he
can make a go of Stanyan Direct Mail, says "What we need are downloadable audio
clips." Yawn.
Edward, the infamous brother, pipes in "How come there are no audio clips on "A
Safe Place To Land?" or on "P22"? I’ll bite. How come? Guys, guys we
gotta have sound bites of some kind that can be downloaded. Please, for Kerry’s sake.
And the boss wants them too.
PIRATE ALBUMS
Dear Rod, I want to thank you for your graceful return to my life. I suppose that I
don't really have anything new to say that you haven't already heard a dozen times from
other fans. But you were a strong influence in my developing life more than twenty-five
years ago, and I've missed you. Welcome home.
I do have a question to ask. Recently, the Public Radio station in my hometown, Knoxville,
Tennessee, has been sponsoring a record drive to raise funds. They've asked listeners to
donate to the station any records or tapes they no longer want, to be sold in a
flea-market type promotion. In going through the thousands of discs they've collected, I
was appalled and delighted to find several of your records (appalled that anyone could
think of giving them up; delighted that I was the one to find them). I pulled your
discography in order to keep track of what I was buying, and one of the records I have is
not on your list. I wondered if you could tell me something about it.
The title of the album is "Rod McKuen - About Me." It is identified as
Pickwick/33, with the numbers SPC-3189. I can find no date on the cover or record. The
cover has a sixties-style op art drawing of you on the front, and a not-very-good, quite
young photograph on the back. The text on the back cover states that you developed this
record yourself, including composing the music in the background; because it says this as
if it is an unusual occurrence, and you've done it on so many albums, I assume that this
was a very early recording. The record itself is in wonderful shape. In fact, it looks and
sounds like it's rarely been played. Your voice seems very young to me, compared to the
deep raspy sound we've grown accustomed to over the years, and you tend to speak a good
bit faster than I'm used to. Could it be that this is one of your first records, one that
you perhaps self-promoted?
In any case, I am thrilled to own this bit of your history. I'll be watching your answer
section in hopes of seeing some information on this. Again, thanks so much for being
willing to share your life with us again. Keep gazing at our world; keep us seeing
clearly. Sincerely,Cheryl Hodge
Dear Cheryl, If you can make anything out of "About Me", then you’re a
better man (er, woman) than I am, Gunga Din. "About Me" is one more in a series
of pirate albums that include Desire Has No Special Time, Rod McKuen Takes A San Francisco
Hippie Trip, The Sounds of Day, The Sounds of Night and "Rod McKuen & Josh White
in Concert" [the latter features nary a performance by either of us.) These albums
were a scam perpetrated on record buyers in the 60’s & 70’s by Everest
Records, They consisted of two albums "Beatsville" & "Time of
Desire", edited, reedited, shuffled like cards then put together with blind folds on
and rushed by the record company to any city I might be about to have a concert in, to be
sold as the genuine article.
A bitter court battle resulted in the edited & unedited masters being returned to me
where they will eventually find their way back out there in the original & correct
form. Thanks to hard work by Michael McLaughlin, the interest of Richard Kegler and
concern of Kim Carson, "Beatsville" has recently been reissued and if your local
store doesn’t have it P22 does. Check out the Home Page for more details about
ordering from Stanyan by Mail. Time of Desire made it back to LP and we’re speaking
of the CD version now. Though it doesn’t sound that way, I’m less emotional now
than when I first discovered what these crooks were doing. Do the names Shabba Ranks &
Andy Kim ring any bells? Rod.
- RM
11/23/98 |
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Louisa May Alcott o
Busby Berkeley o Suzy Chaffee o Joel Coen o Ann Corio o Dagmar o Gaetano Donizetti o John Gary o
Dard Hunter o Diane Ladd o Chuck Mangione o Howie Mandell o Jess Marlow o Gary Shandling o Ferdinand Ries o James Rosenquist |
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To hit the target,
aim above it.
If nothing is happening, make it happen or don’t
complain.
All of life is instruction.
Winning isn’t always the best way to end a game. |
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OFTEN IN WINTER |
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Often in winter
that feared but unseen hand
old banker priests can still depend on
to help them herd their flocks
up the steps of stained-glass banks,
returns dependably
to work me over too.
Christ knows my span of concentration
and the time to teach me lessons
is the time when I’m boxed in by grey.
For when the sun shines
what man fears God
or his one begotten Son.
Loving is the new salvation,
with Gideon the king providing bibles
for each final prayer and evensong.
And bedroom soldiers
on ten million battlefields
fighting nightly sword to sword
would not dispute their uncrowned king.
I presume
that International Harvester
can take its proper credit
for bales of straw and wheat.
But man must not forget
who fostered love
and fed it.
Whatever moral tract
or bulging bible
gave him rules and regulations
man aspired to love
and learned its practice well.
Just as man is good
at finding further rainbows
when the near ones fade.
What litany you use
I leave to you,
but let it be the testament of touch
however tentative.
A Mass to keep the cold out.
At the breakfast table
or your dresser altar.
Let us now proclaim
the new religion real
after far too many trial runs.
- from "Fields of Wonder", 1971 |
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