Seven Pleasures...

I'm currently reading the book Seven Pleasures: Essays on Ordinary Happiness by Willard Spiegelman, which was released on May 6, 2009 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). Here is a review of Seven Pleasures by June Sawyers that appeared in the April 15, 2009 issue of Booklist.

In this luminous, compelling book, Spiegelman comments on seven activities that can bring us ordinary happiness - reading, walking, looking, dancing, listening, swimming, and writing - injecting biographical elements into the universal messages he imparts. First, though, he tries to define, or at least capture the essence of, happiness.

"Happiness," he observes, "has received less respect and less serious attention than melancholy." He notes the American propensity to see happiness as a right and contrasts it with the gloominess of the European mindset.

With the exception of dancing, every activity he writes about involves solitude. In the reading chapter, he refers to his generation as "the last children born before the ubiquity of television"; if watching TV's early, fuzzy images was unpleasant, reading was fun. In the walking chapter, he flees Dallas, his hometown, for London, a city in which walking is normal, not a chore or something to be avoided (Dallas and much of modern America, apart from the older cities of the East and Midwest, are simply too big and, in the case of Dallas, too hot to walk in comfortably).

Writing in a leisurely manner, Spiegelman takes time to make his points and, whatever activity he's engaged in at the moment, to be a thoughtful, genial companion.

A Strange Little Girl Plays Oakland on July 13, 2009...

The talented Tori Amos plays the beautiful Paramount Theatre in Oakland, California on the evening of Monday, July 13, 2009. Time...

The Question of Favorite Music, Part IV (in a series)...

Order. The matter of song order on an album is critically important. One of my rules, that I've applied on this site, is that an album can receive a score of 90 points out of 100 only if the songs on it are in perfect order - Which is one of the reasons that Joni Mitchell's For the Roses falls just short of ninety points.

Roses starts with Banquet, probably her least accessible song with its jazz rhythms and odd structure. Roses should have started with the welcoming and friendly See You Sometime ("Pack your suspenders, I'll come meet your plane... I just want to see you again..."), which requires no deep analysis.

But then stop and try to think of the albums you know in which the songs were arranged perfectly. Probably not more than a handful will come to mind... My mind answers with Domino by Van Morrison, The Rising by Bruce Springsteen, Straight Up by Badfinger, Abbey Road by the Beatles, and Medusa by Annie Lennox.

Medusa shows that the artist is sometimes in charge... Lennox took just a few minutes to write down a list of favorite songs she wanted to cover; she then insisted that the songs be recorded in this order... and placed on the resulting album in this order. Good for her.

But sometimes the artist is not in charge. Back in 1986, Peter Gabriel recorded the album So, which he intended to start with the reflective song Red Rain before transitioning into his great single Sledgehammer. The album was to end with the beautiful and even more reflective In Your Eyes.

When So was released, Sledgehammer - as the single - was the first track and In Your Eyes was lost in the middle of the collection... It was to be 14 long years before this placement error was corrected. Today you can buy So and hear it the way Gabriel, as the creating artist, intended you to hear it.

Then there's the matter of, as Bob Seger phrased it, "what to leave in and what to leave out." The Beatles Sgt. Pepper's album arrived in good order, but to this day seems overly short at 43 minutes long. Two songs were recorded during the time of the Pepper sessions that might have fit perfectly on the album... Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever.

Think about these two songs for a second... They both have the feel and sound, the "voice" of Pepper if you will. Adding them would not have - in my view - taken anything away from the psychedelic theme of Pepper, it would only have made the album stronger. And today's Pepper would be a respectable 51-minute or so road trip CD that would be quite fine to listen to in the car.

I know, some people see Pepper (or, to be more exact, hear it) as a 90-plus point album. To me, because of this missed opportunity, it remains an album to be scored in the realm of 80-or-so points.

Order and inclusion/exclusion. Two small issues of great import in music.

Notes: The book Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles by Geoff Emerick, recording engineer, is the source for the fact that Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane were recorded during the Sgt. Pepper's sessions. In fact, the first two Pepper songs took three weeks to record, and Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields also took three weeks to record. According to Emerick, "three full weeks (was) a huge amount of studio time in those days."

Also, Emerick alternately refers to the album in question as either Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Pepper's or Pepper, as these different versions of the title now seem to be accepted as common usage.

Coming up in the near future...

Suppose you've become interested in the Motown mega-group The Supremes, but you're on a limited budget and need to choose between a new book on the band or a greatest hits CD... Which should you choose and why?

We'll take a look soon and offer some advice. Stay tuned.

Next: The Question of Favorite Music, part IV in a series.

What if you want to withdraw from Facebook, Twitter or...?

Here's a question... What if you want to withdraw from a social networking site like Facebook or Twitter or Blogger... Nah, you wouldn't want to leave Twitter or Blogger, so let's make believe we're talking about Facebook or LinkedIn. Suppose you not only want to remove yourself from the site but also "want to make sure your information doesn't last forever in cyberspace."

Fortunately, Shivani Vora of USA Today answered the question for us as follows in an article entitled Quick Fix: A Way to Be Less Social; the article is abridged here.

Solution: Signing up for a social-networking site is straightforward, but removing yourself from one can be less obvious. Each site has its own procedure for eliminating a profile, but you can generally find your way out by looking under the "Settings" tab on the home page and choosing the option to delete your account, or going to the "Help" tab and searching for "delete account." Some networks give you the choice to suspend your account, which means your content remains on the site.

Facebook gives members an option to de-activate accounts, which means your profile information is saved and still on the Web. To remove it for good, you need to submit a request by going into the Help section at the bottom of the page. Search for "delete account" and follow the instructions. Other sites are more direct when it comes to deleting profiles. LinkedIn gives users an option to immediately close their accounts by going into the "Accounts and Settings" tab.

Caveat: It can take up to a few weeks for your profile to be removed from search engines such as Google so don't expect your information to be wiped out right away from the Web.

South Coast Plaza is One of the Best of the Best...

Click on the orange link below to read this San Diego Examiner profile of the South Coast Plaza shopping center in Costa Mesa, California. Not only do they have a number of major stores, but they also have USC Collections, a special gift and fan store for Trojan alums and honorary Trojans!

San Diego Fashion Examiner: South Coast Plaza: the best of the best

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Photos: South Coast Plaza circa 1980, photo courtesy of Orange County Archives; middle photo from flickr (machbel); bottom photo from Orange County Chamber of Commerce/South Coast Plaza.

Note: South Coast Plaza 1980? Wow, I think I see my Pontiac Firebird in the parking lot!

Of Joni (Mitchell) and Jenny (Dalton)...

Just last week, we took a look back at Joni Mitchell's classic bridging album For the Roses... Shortly afterward I spent some time listening to For the Roses during my daily commute. The next day, in went Jenny Dalton's Rusalka's Umbrella into the mp3 player in our New Beetle. Mrs. Bear, who'd never heard this album before, said after hearing the first few songs, "She's listened to a lot of Joni Mitchell, hasn't she?" Well, maybe, maybe not... I'd say that if Jenny has not studied Joni she has at least learned to channel Joni's heart, her spirit and her soul.

Here's an experiment for you. Take your copy of Rusalka's Umbrella and proceed to track number 12, Snow Mazes of Norway. Then, beg, borrow or steal a friend's copy of Joni's Roses and play track 7, See You Sometime. [Or listen to both at You Tube.] You'll notice the similarities... Each is almost a mirror-image of the other, not quite the same, but far more the same than different.

This is not meant in anyway to be negative, not at all. I have been a huge fan of Jenny's and remain so, so understand the point I'm trying to make here...

Being a musician who just happens to be talented enough to produce music that reminds some people of a genius, Joni Mitchell, is a tremendous gift. For me, saying that a musician is in Joni Mitchell's league is the very highest compliment that I know how to pay. This is the compliment I mean to pass on here to Jenny Dalton.