Flight Plan

 




    23rd & 24th May, 2013

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Rod & Boots photographed by Christian Tabor February 13, 2013
© 2013 Stanyan Music Group. All Rights Reserved

A Thought for Today

If you love somebody, tell them.

 

TO BEGIN WITH / A Report from Ben at Stanyan House

Thanks Rod for turning the top of your blog over to me today. Here’s a tally of what folks in the middle of May are buying from Stanyanhouse.com.

Hi Everyone,

There have been a few major changes on our best-seller list since last month; as far as music goes Listen to the Warm & Sold Out at Carnegie Hall now occupy the #1 & #2 spot respectively and The Platinum Album Vol. I stays in place as #3. Vol. 2 moves up two places to grab the # 4 spot, this in a tie with ConcertoWorks. The Unknown War soundtrack is #5 and Rod’s jazz tinged After Midnight clocks in at #6, Petula Clark’s much praised rendering of Rod’s songs Solitude & Sunshine is now #7.

Two concert collections (The Amsterdam Concert & Live in London) are tied at # 8, while Beatsville & In Search of Eros both occupy #9. Here’s a real surprise - With Love by The San Sebastian Strings (with Rod speaking the words) enters the list at #10. But not for long since there are now only six or seven copies left in stock and as QVC loves to say, “Once they’re gone, they are gone.”

Here’s the complete list of the top CD’s and books at Stanyan House.

BEST SELLERS AS OF 5/15/2013

Compact Discs:
1. Listen to the Warm
2. Sold Out at Carnegie Hall (2 CD Set)
3. Platinum Album Vol. I
4. TIE: Platinum Album Vol. II / ConcertoWorks
5. The Unknown War Soundtrack (2 CD Set)
6. After Midnight
7. Solitude & Sunshine (Petula Clark)
8. TIE: Amsterdam Concert/Live in London (2 CD Sets)
9. TIE: Beatsville / In Search of Eros
10. With Love (The San Sebastian Strings)

Books:
1. And Autumn Came
2. TIE: A Safe Place to Land / Frank Sinatra: A Man Alone
3. Rusting in the Rain
4. Lonesome Cities (book) The Sea (CD) combo
5. Stanyan Street & Other Sorrows
6. Beyond the Boardwalk
7. Suspension Bridge
8. Seasons in the Sun
9. Moment to Moment
10. Watch for the Wind

Happy Listening & Reading,

Ben
ben@stanyanhouse.com

IN PRAISE OF ANITA KERR

As much as I like being in total control of a song I really enjoy working from time to time with other songwriters. My work with Anita Kerr on the San Sebastian Strings project was a joy so naturally I’m pleased that “With Love,” our fifth album in the series is a near sell out in its 1st CD incarnation.

I first met Anita when I was under contract to RCA. She had recently married and re-located from Nashville (where she was very much in demand as an arranger) to try her luck on The West Coast. Neely Plumb, my producer thought she might be right to arrange & conduct a session for an album I was set to record entitled “Other Kinds of Songs.” The three charts she turned in more than held their own with those done by the other arrangers working on the LP. I decided then and there that Anita should be composing original music. She had never done so up until then but on the other hand when you frame a song for an artist if your arrangement is any good at all there is plenty of original stuff in it.

I had a project in mind that I had long been thinking about called “The Sea.” I kept putting off working on it because at the time I had a few too many things on my plate to give something new the time it needed to become a reality. There was my solo career as a performer and recording artist and the songs I was writing for myself were beginning to attract other singers. To complicate things further I had become, of all things, a best-selling poet. So, I figured, rather than writing both music and words for “The Sea”, it might not be a bad idea to have another writer compose the score. What about Anita Kerr? The rest is history. “The Sea” went on to become the first double platinum album Anita or I had ever had and The San Sebastian Strings was soon established as one of the hottest acts in contemporary music.

Believe me, I wasn’t doing Anita Kerr any favors. The San Sebastian Strings project turned out to be a totally equal partnership. To this day I treasure every moment we had together and apart that made the SSS a success. Our friendship was unique and so was our working relationship. As for her ability as a composer you have only to listen to any one of the dozen albums we did together to see how meaningful her music was to my words. And her musicianship is on display in dozens of arrangements she did for nearly every major act that walked into a Nashville recording studio during the decades she spent there. Then there is her own group, The Anita Kerr Singers, one of the most unique vocal quartets ever. All Hail Anita Kerr.

-RM 5/22/2013 Previously Unpublished.

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notable birthdays

Thursday May 23

Mitch Albom o Barbara Barrie o Drew Carey o Lauren Chapin o Rosemary Clooney o Joan Collins o Michael Colombier o Scatman Crothers o Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. o Betty Garrett o Marvelous' Marv Hagler o Ella & Athol Harley o Libby Holman o Jewel o Herbert Marshall o Franz Mesmer o Robert Moog o John Newcombe o Helen O'Connell o John Payne o Donna Stone Pesch o Artie Shaw o Ray Wood

Friday May 24

Gary Burghoff o Jane Byrne o Roseanne Cash o Tommy Chong o Sybil Danning o Joe Dumars o Bob Dylan o Billy Gilman o Patti La Belle o Jean-Paul Marat o Elsa Maxwell o Siobhan McKenna o Wilbur Mills o Lili Palmer o James Peale o Priscilla Presley o Queen Victoria of England o Kristen Scott Thomas


Rod's random thoughts
If you haven’t heard the sunset, you haven’t been listening.

A gift accepted has no strings.

If I were sure I’d go to hell for loving, I’d demand a road map.


INNER WORKINGS


I have seen you
when your smiles and frowns
were so tied up and intermingled
that none - not even you
could have said
with any sureness
what face you were giving
        to the crowd.

I have walked with you to subways,
then twenty minutes later
I have been with someone else
and loved you no the less.

I have spied on you
and looked accusingly,
when I, myself, knew well
that I was in the wrong.

I have wept for you,
                 about you
and one time with you.
I have shared your secrets
and kept private
secrets of my own.

I have fought with you
and over you,
loved you and disliked you
in equal parts
and at the same time.

I have thought
that I would die
if you failed to turn up
on some pre-selected night
and when you didn't -
wished I would.

I have loved you
never asking if I should.
I have trusted you
not caring if I could
        or couldn't.

In company
with strangers or your friends
I have smiled and gone on smiling
when I thought no single smile
                           or grin
was yet left inside me.

If we were unhappy
with one the other
why shouldn't it be
                 just our concern ?

I have watched you play
with other people's children
and felt they were our own.

I've heard you hum
some made-up tune at breakfast
and watched you killing time all day
while you awaited killing me at night.

I have lied to you
for no good reason.
I have troubled you
and even when I knew it
sometimes that didn't make me stop.

The things we do
in love's name
never stop surprising me.
I'm amazed that love
can live at all
through all the subterfuge,
pass through all the barricades,
stumble over all the obstacles
we construct and put up
               in its way.

That first seed
wherever planted
must have been a hearty strain.

Just now
what kind of passion
stirs inside of me
        I can not say.
I feel for you

and it's as much as love
but whether it's because
I feel you leaving,
slipping from me day by day
or because I need, depend on,
                 want just you
I have no way of knowing.

Our lives together
have become so knotted,
                      muddled up
that who's to say where the heart ended
and habit started in to open up?

I love you - yes
but I do not mean for you
to know it.

-from Moment To Moment, 1974




 
    AND FINALLY

Please join me on the weekend, play nicely and sleep warm.

-RM Holmby Hills CA / 2:54PM PST 21 May 2013


Happy Landings - see you tomorrow

© 1968, 1974,1976, 1980, 1999, 2008, 2013 by Stanyan Music Group & Rod McKuen. All Rights Reserved
Webmaster: Ken Blackie • Media Consultant & Sound Supervisor Eric Yeager • Birthday Research by Wade Alexander • Poems from the collection of Jay Hagan • Stanyan House: Ben McMillan • Editor at Large: Bruce Bellingham • Emeritus: Melinda Smith

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