Together in Joy and Creativity – Reflections on marriage and music
15 May 2012 3 Comments
in Memoir, Miscellaneous Musings, Music, Vignettes from my life Tags: Alive at Five, anniversary, Julie Lomoe, successful marriage, togetherness, Woodstock Festival
My husband and I celebrated our thirty-seventh wedding anniversary on May 3rd, and I’ve been thinking about what’s kept us together all these years. Paradoxically, one of those togetherness factors is separation – especially when it comes to music.
About a decade ago, when the City of Albany was building the pedestrian bridge over Route 787 that leads to the Corning Preserve adjoining the Hudson River, they offered the citizenry the opportunity to purchase an engraved paving stone. I bought one for my husband’s birthday, and it reads “Julie and (his name) together in joy and creativity.”* I love looking at it every time I cross that elegant bridge to the river’s edge, and I suspect I’ll be crossing it quite a bit this summer, since Albany’s Alive at Five concert series has the best lineup in years.
I’m virtually positive he won’t be going, though. He despises crowded, heavily amped rock and country concerts – always has, always will. One of the factors contributing to the disintegration of his first marriage was his refusal to accompany his wife to the 1969 Woodstock Festival.** He’s gone with me on occasion, but not happily. The last time I remember was a concert at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, maybe three years ago.
We were enjoying our annual day at the track. I’d picked a few winners with my $2 and $5 bets, and I’d placed my bets on the last race when I heard a man calling, “Anyone want two tickets to The Police and Elvis Costello at SPAC tonight?” At his side in record time, I learned he and his wife had planned to attend with another couple who couldn’t make it, and he was selling two lawn tickets for $60 each.
“That sounds great,” I said. “Let me go ask my husband.” Then I reconsidered and pounced. “Oh, what the hell. I’ll get them right now – then he won’t have a choice.”
He was fairly gracious about the surprise, but the traffic jam was so horrendous that we missed half of Elvis Costello’s first set. He was great, and The Police were fantastic – at sixty plus, Sting still has rock star charisma to burn. But the low visibility in the darkness and the crush of the crowd were a tad overpowering. My spouse swears he’ll never go back to SPAC, and I respect his wishes. That’s why I’ve got a single ticket – a reserved inside seat – to hear the Zac Brown Band there on June lst.
Don’t get me wrong – we do partake of an occasional concert together. He likes classical music, especially of the chamber variety, he’s okay with some jazz and folk, and we frequent the avant garde performance pieces at EMPAC. For the most part, though, I feed my musical Jones by ushering at The Egg and the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, occasionally springing for a big-ticket concert I can’t bear to miss, like Bruce Springsteen’s latest swing through Albany.
Oskar Kokoschka
We usually go out to dinner on our anniversary, but this time I decided I’d rather go to a benefit for the Mental Health Association of New York State, featuring music from Tom Chapin, the brother of the late Harry Chapin. As both a therapist and a consumer of mental health services, I strongly believe in the cause, but I was also lured by the prospect of the music. In general, my spouse loathes “sensitive” singer-songwriters, especially those he claims sing through their noses or as if they’re suffering from an acute digestive upset – think Bob Dylan and his descendants – but for the sake of our own harmony, he agreed to humor me. We both thoroughly enjoyed Tom Chapin.
Humoring each other, tolerating each other’s proclivities and foibles, has helped us hang in there all these years. Perhaps equally important, we’ve always heeded the words by Khalil Gibran that we read at our wedding in 1975: “Let there be spaces in your togetherness.” We’ve never felt the necessity to move in lockstep, or to share totally in each other’s enthusiasms. Music’s perhaps the major area where this holds true, but by no means the only one.
After all these years, we’re still “together in joy and creativity.” It’s even written in stone.
*I’m omitting his name because he prefers to remain anonymous when it comes to my blog posts, lest I say something that might reflect badly on his public persona.
**I was at the Woodstock Festival almost from start to finish – and, for the most part, alone. See my three posts about the experience elsewhere on this blog.
Everybody look what’s going down – Stills song still rings true
17 Oct 2011 Leave a Comment
in Music, Social Action, Uncategorized Tags: Buffalo Springfield, For What It's Worth, Stephen Stills
There’s something happening here – what it is ain’t exactly clear.
Stephen Stills
Last week at The Egg, the crowd cheered when Stephen Stills sang the opening words to his classic song, “For What It’s Worth,” as his final encore. The lyrics ring as true today as they did 45 years ago when he wrote them for Buffalo Springfield, and he sang them with a gutsy sense of urgency.
You can find the lyrics in full at the end of this post, along with a surprising twist on the events that inspired them. But what motivated me to write about the concert was the vivid memory of my encounter with Stills in1972. He was playing with his band Manassas at the Academy of Music on 14th Street in New York City, the same venue where I first heard the Rolling Stones. A man I can’t recall had scored tickets to the Manassas concert and a coveted invitation to the party that followed, and he invited me along.
The concert was excellent, but Stephen thought otherwise. At the party, in a high-rise apartment on the East Side, I found myself in a bedroom with him and numerous others. Various drugs were there in abundance – even opium – but for the most part, I wasn’t partial to those kinds of substances. Perhaps I’d had a bit too much to drink, though. Stephen was critiquing the concert, saying that the band had sounded shitty and the whole performance was crap.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” I remember saying. “You shouldn’t put yourself down like that; you sounded great.” He mumbled something in reply, and we went back to partying. So much for that fleeting brush with fame.
At The Egg 39 years later, he still had that same self-deprecating quality. He joked about his failing memory for lyrics, attributing it to drugs as well as aging. Mentioning Aspen, he said “I spent most of the time face down in the snow – no, wait, that was Miami.” The 1980’s went by in a blur, apparently, but his recall of lyrics was just fine, and his guitar playing was excellent.
His voice is beginning to fail, and he actually sang off-key at times, especially in the first set. Remembering the elegant harmonies of Crosby, Stills & Nash, I could barely believe it was the same singer. Even so, his raggedy voice has a lived-in quality that’s still compelling. Yesterday I heard the original Buffalo Springfield version of “For What It’s Worth” while I was driving to the YMCA, and his voice was much less expressive than it is today.
Researching Stills and the song online, I learned that although people consider it a protest song about the war in Vietnam and our society in general, in fact he wrote it about a riot on the Sunset Strip in 1966, protesting early curfews for the clubs. The title, “For what it’s worth,” comes from a conversation he had with Ahmet Ertugun of Atlantic Records – “Here’s a new song, for what it’s worth.”
Even so, the song packs a powerful message today, especially as we approach the tenth anniversary of the Patriot Act:
For What It’s Worth
There’s something happening here
What it is ain’t exactly clear
There’s a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware
I think it’s time we stop, children, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down
There’s battle lines being drawn
Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind
It’s time we stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down
What a field-day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly saying, hooray for our side
It’s time we stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down
Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you’re always afraid
You step out of line, the man come and take you away
We better stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down
You better Stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down
You better Stop, children, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down
The Sixties were a tumultuous decade. Fifty years later, as the gulf between the haves and the have-nots grows ever wider and our Big Brother government has the wherewithal to track our every move, we’re on the verge of another seismic shift in our society. Stephen Stills is right: everybody look what’s going down. It may well be the country we used to call the land of the free.
So what can we do about it? As they used to say, “think globally, act locally.” Or, with an election year coming up, act nationally. Too bad it’s probably too late for a viable third-party candidate to come along, but let’s make ourselves heard.
Paul Simon – How terribly strange to be seventy
14 Oct 2011 4 Comments
in Art of Aging, Music Tags: aging, Keith Richards, Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney, Paul Simon, Rolling Stones, Turning 70
Paul Simon
Yesterday was Paul Simon’s seventieth birthday, and he’s still going strong. Nonetheless, I can’t help remembering his lyrics from “Old Men,” released on the Simon & Garfunkel album “Bookends” in 1968:
Can you imagine us years from today, sharing a park bench quietly.
How terribly strange to be seventy.
These days, he’s not sitting sedately on a park bench – this year he released a beautiful new album, “So Beautiful or So What,” and he’s about to embark on a fall tour.
Bob Dylan turned 70 last May 14, and John Lennon would have been 71 this past Sunday, October 9. Perhaps not so coincidentally, Sir Paul McCartney chose to marry his third wife, Nancy Shevell, that same day. At 69, he doesn’t fit the “When I get old and losing my hair” image of “When I’m Sixty-Four,” and
Paul McCartney
he’s still taking on new challenges, like writing a musical score for a new ballet, “Ocean’s Kingdom,” for the New York City Ballet. This maiden voyage was almost unanimously panned – critic Tobi Tobias said the score “runs the gamut from movie music to faux-Broadway” – but you’ve got to give the “cute Beatle” credit for trying, even though he’s not as cute as he used to be. I can’t help wondering what marvelous music John and George would have created had they lived this long. I’ve heard all these artists live in concert more than once, including the Beatles’ famed Shea Stadium concerts in the Sixties.
Then there are the Rolling Stones, arguably the world’s greatest rock band. Their peerless drummer Charlie Watts turned 70 this past June 2nd, and Mick and Keith will hit that milestone in 2013. Despite all the hard-won wrinkles in their faces and the ribbing they’ve taken from late-night comedians who claim they’re geriatric, they still put on a fabulous show, or at least they did when I caught their “Bigger Bang” tour in Albany in 2005. The music sounded better than ever.
Why all this concern over a mere number? It’s because I turned 70 on July 31 – a milestone I’d been dreading. But when I woke that morning, I felt strangely relieved. I took a stab at blogging about it, but I was still suffering from depression and writer’s block, and the words refused to come. Perhaps I was still ambivalent about revealing my true age, but if rock superstars come clean about their advancing years, why shouldn’t I? Maybe because I’m a woman, and when it comes to looks, the sexist double standard still reigns supreme.
Physically I’m feeling as healthy as ever, though no doubt I’m losing a fair number of brain cells every day. I’ve been calling myself a crone for about a decade now, ever since I turned 60. I’ve used the term in various computer passwords. (One of them, long obsolete now, was NorseKrone. I changed the spelling in honor of the famous woman jockey, Julie Krone.) But I’m still taken aback when I tell people my age and they don’t seem surprised. Part of me longs to hear those unbelieving protests, along the lines of “I don’t believe it – you don’t look a day over 60.”
More and more people are calling me “Ma’am” and offering to carry my luggage or help me up from an awkward seated position. I’m okay with that, but less okay with looking in mirrors. Currently we’re remodeling our bathroom, which for years has been forgivingly dim, and I cringe at the idea of installing those theatrical strips of multiple bulbs, but I suppose I’ll adapt in time.
Maybe eventually I’ll learn to joke about my age. Stephen Stills managed to pull that off at a concert on Tuesday night, making cracks about his less than acute hearing and the gaps in his memory, but he’s still only 66. And he has some valid explanations – all those years of playing rock and roll in front of banks of amplifiers and blunting his brain with drugs.
That reminds me of the wild party where I met Stephen Stills and gave him some unsolicited advice – hard to believe that was 40 years ago! But I’ll save that for the next blog post. In the meantime, rock on, all you oldies but goodies!
Charlie, Mick and Keith
Dave Matthews concert – a senior imposter at a summer ritual
07 Jun 2010 3 Comments
in Memoir, Miscellaneous Musings, Music Tags: Dave Matthews, Dave Matthews Band, DMB, Julie Lomoe, Saratoga Performing Arts Center, SPAC
Dave Matthews
“I hope I’m as cool as you when I get to be your age.”
Thus spoke the lithe and shirtless underage guy at the Dave Matthews concert on Friday night. Then there was the one who high-fived me and said, “I hope I’m just like you when I’m 80.”
He was off by too many years to count. “I don’t look 80, do I?” I riposted.
“Oh no, not at all – I was just saying . . . “
Yeah, right. Clearly I was over the hill for this crowd, as I tried to relive my youth at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center for the second time in the same week. (Country Throwdown was the first – see my May 31st post.) Will the Dave Matthews concert be the last time? Maybe, though I’ll never say never.
I bought both tickets a couple of months ago, when I was feeling perhaps a trifle manicky, and I came close to copping out on this one, especially since I had lawn seating rather than a reserved seat. The prospect of a wild crowd didn’t scare me so much as the thought of the bottleneck traffic before and after. If it gets too bad, I can always turn around and head home, I kept telling myself as the traffic backed up on the Northway. But lo and behold, I hung in there, made it into a $10 parking lot a reasonable walk from the venue, and arrived with an hour to spare.
I found a pleasant perch with a decent view fairly close to the amphitheatre and unfolded my canvas chair in close proximity to a middle-aged couple, seeking safety in similarity since most of the crowd were in their early twenties at most. I was flattered when the aocohol security mavens insisted on checking my ID before fitting me with a chartreuse wrist band which qualified me to buy overpriced Coors Light. 
Shades of Woodstock 1969 – my comfortably roomy spot was soon overrun by an enthusiastic mob eager to get as close to the band as lawn seating allowed, and by the time Dave Matthews took the stage, it was standing room only. Kids jostled me, but invariably did a double take and apologized when they got a good look at my face. Then came the incredulous comments:
“Are you having a good time?”
“How great you’re here.”
“You’ll love Dave, just wait and see.”
The well-intended gallantry gave me a glimpse of what it must feel like to be conspicuously disabled.
So why did I subject myself to this mob experience? I’d been intrigued by the music on FM, and I knew the DMB summer concerts at SPAC were a symbolic summer rite, maybe the closest I was likely to get to a mass religious ritual, so my curiosity got the better of me. And the music didn’t disappoint – Matthews’ compositions are intriguingly quirky, with unexpected chord changes and complex polyrhythms, and his band has strong jazz overtones reminiscent of idols of mine like Coltrane and Mingus.
The crowd sang along with every number, and their ability to do so spoke volumes for their musical sophistication. And they were amazingly well behaved, in part because of SPAC’s strict alcohol controls, and despite – or maybe because of – the overwhelmingly fragrant presence of pot. A young couple passing a ceramic pipe in front of me asked, “You don’t mind, do you?” and though I gave them a thumbs up, they didn’t offer me a toke.
For much of the night, I was on my feet with the rest of the crowd – essential if I wanted to see the band on the huge video screens, let alone the tiny figures on the distant stage. But increasingly I took refuge in my canvas chair with its spidery metal legs. The crowd broke around me, and I had surprisingly ample room, but I felt more and more alone. Early on, a young woman gave me a dayglo chartreuse bracelet to match my alcohol ID band, but as night fell, alas, my bracelet proved defective. Unlike the brilliant orange, green and yellow circlets of the neighbors waving their arms in rapture, mine gave off only a minimal, defective glow, like that of a dying firefly.
After a couple of hours, as the music segued into lengthy, repetitive jams, I realized I’d probably experienced the best of what the night had to offer and decided to beat the traffic out of the park. Slowly and carefully I picked my halting way uphill through the crowd, doing my best to avoid the prone and supine bodies of wasted fans who littered the lawn in the darkness, feeling smug that despite my several decades of seniority, I’d survived in better shape than they.
Country concert distilled as poem
31 May 2010 2 Comments
in Julie's Poetry, Memoir, Music Tags: concerts, country music, Country Throwdown, Jack Ingram, Jamey Johnson, Julie Lomoe, Little Big Town, Montgomery Gentry, poetry
Jack Ingram
Sometimes a poem’s the best way to capture the essence of an experience. Case in point: my excursion yesterday to “Country Throwdown,” a marathon country music concert in Saratoga Springs with many bands, including Montgomery Gentry, Jack Ingram, Jamey Johnson and Little Big Town. There was lots of excellent music, but maybe it’s time to face the facts: I’m not the music fan I was 40 years ago, either in body or spirit.
It’s fascinating how modern country musicians channel the musical styles of rockers of my generation, including Jimi Hendrix, Tom Petty and Crosby, Stills and Nash. Jamey Johnson was the only headliner who played what might be termed traditional country.
Here’s my poetic take on the dark side of the day’s happenings (it’s always easier to wax poetic about the shadow side of things):
Country Throwdown Concert
“On your feet!” The singer screams the order.
The crowd obeys, fists pump the air.
A shirtless youth salutes with horny fingers.
Erratic heartbeat of the bass thumps in my chest.
Extrasystoles hammer, relentless, triggering fears
of cardiac arrest. Red searchlights swivel
through clouds of smoke, target band and fans –
the entryway to hell. Batted by the mob, enormous vinyl balls
with New York Lotto logos crash endlessly above. One hits me
on the head, sparking phobic high school volleyball flashbacks.
Yellow-shirt security patrol with eagle eyes and walkie-talkies.
Outside the music shed, the crowd queues up and funnels through
metal barricades in quest of precious liquid.
Blue shirts check IDs and brand us with plastic bracelets.
We’ve been stripped of private bottles at the gates,
so now are forced to pony up eight bucks a cup to quench our thirst
on the arid patch of chewed up grass
called a beer garden. Shades of Germany.
Outside, the ATM machine attracts long lines –
suckers in search of cash, desperate for food and drink,
cowboy hats and black skull-logo tee shirts.
I’ve come here trying to conjure up
that long lost summer of love in Sixty-Nine.
Crows feet around my eyes and fifty extra pounds
brand me an imposter among the lanky girls
in skimpy shorts and cowboy boots. Ten hours of music
is seven too many for my aging psyche and physique.
To my relief, the headline final act is crass and mediocre.
I steal away to beat the traffic jam, pass through metal gates
emblazoned with a banner overhead:
All exits are final. No reentry.
They’ve got that right – I can’t go back again.
© Memorial Day, May 31, 2010 Julie Lomoe
Support The Egg – Don’t let the music die!
22 Jan 2010 3 Comments
in Miscellaneous Musings, Music Tags: Albany, Ani DiFranco, Brian Wilson, Capital Region, Gregg Allman, Julie Lomoe, Lyle Lovett, Ray Davies, The Egg
The New York State Budget proposed by Governor David Paterson this week eliminates funding for The Egg, by far my favorite venue for live music in the Capital Region. I’ve volunteered as an usher at The Egg for several years now, and I can’t begin to count the number of fabulous shows I’ve enjoyed there. These come to mind off the top of my head: David Byrne, Brian Wilson, Ray Davies, Ani DeFranco, Lyle Lovett, Ben Folds, The Tragically Hip, Gregg Allman – and that’s just within the past year!
Brian Wilson
This afternoon the staff at The Egg sent out an e-mail SOS asking volunteers to write or e-mail Governor Paterson and other legislators asking that this funding be restored, and I decided to pass the information along on my blog. The proposed budget contains many disastrous cuts; health care and education are especially affected. Support for the performing arts may appear lower on the list of priorities, but our lives would be bleak indeed without them. The presence of an adventurous venue like The Egg adds immeasurably to the quality of life in the Capital region.
The Tragically Hip
As a volunteer, I enjoy most of these concerts for free. Nonetheless, last spring I was so knocked out by the quality of the programming that I became a paying member of The Egg as well. (This enables me to get first dibs on tickets to newly announced shows, too, in case I want to guarantee myself a seat, kick back and enjoy the concert as a paying patron for a change.)
Other arts organizations that receive my modest donations include the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, the Arts Center of the Capital Region, and WEXT-FM, aka EXIT 97.7, the alternative rock station that operates under the auspices of the classical station WMHT.
Don’t just pay lip service to the arts – support them in every way you can.
To read the appeal from The Egg, including contact information, please click below.
Hit On at The Egg with the Tragically Hip
16 Oct 2009 4 Comments
in Miscellaneous Musings, Music
The Tragically Hip
Last night, while I was ushering for The Tragically Hip at The Egg in Albany, an aggressive young lesbian put some serious moves on me. It’s been decades since that happened, but somehow it seems emblematic of how my life gets ever more interesting as I age. Whether it’s downhill skiing or ushering for groups whose music I don’t know at all, I continue to take on fresh challenges and explore the unknown. I’m surprised how many people my age – and even people much younger – are afraid to do that. In the words of David Byrne, most seem to prefer the “same as it ever was.”
Speaking of music – which I seem to do a lot on this blog – I’ve got a prize for someone in the Capital District who reads to the end of this post. But first, I’ll fill you in on last night’s Egg experience. I’ve been ushering there for about three years now, and at the Troy Music Hall for longer than that. The major benefit from these volunteer efforts is the opportunity to hear a lot of great music for free. Both venues send out sign-up sheets around Labor Day, and we’re asked to select those shows we want to usher for, as well as to select some that are harder to staff and might not be our first choices.
Like most ushers, I go for known favorites first. Since I’ve been reasonably friendly and reliable, I tend to get many of my first choices. For Troy this fall, that includes Steve Martin and his banjo bluegrass band, Herb Alpert and Frank Sinatra Jr. At The Egg, I’ll be ushering for Loudon Wainwright and Richard Thompson this Sunday, followed by Keb Mo’, Lyle Lovett and his Large Band, Brian Wilson, Ani DiFranco, and – just added – Ray Davies with a band, though he’s not calling them The Kinks. Okay, I’ll confess – I bought the Brian Wilson ticket, because I didn’t want to risk being one of the unchosen ushers.
Ben Folds
Not all the artists are this well-known, so I also select a few that I’ve heard good things about, or whose songs I’ve heard a few times on the radio. Ben Folds’ concert at The Egg fell into this category. I remembered only one song of his – the lugubrious ballad with the line “She’s a brick and I’m falling slowly” – but it intrigued me enough to sign up. When I commented on Facebook that I was going, my Albany poet friend Don Levy commented, “I wouldn’t have thought you’d be a Ben Folds Fan.” Well, I wasn’t – until that night. The sold-out show was absolutely fabulous.
I knew even less about the Tragically Hip, but I liked the name. Another sold-out show, another marvelous discovery for me, although as with the Ben Folds show, most of the audience seemed to recognize every song right from the opening chords. Ben Folds was loud – I cringe to think of the damage he inflicted on that grand piano – but the Hip were louder – a six-piece, guitar-driven band verging on heavy metal but with intriguing and unpredictable words and music. Gordon Downie, the lead singer and songwriter, reminded me of John Malkevich channeling Mick Jagger with a touch of David Bowie. In other words, not just a singer, but a wonderful actor and dancer.
And now back to my lesbian story. I’d signed up to usher near the orchestra pit, and when the Hip took the stage, two aisle seats in row A were still empty, so I stood in front of one of them. (The audience was on its feet from the get-go.) Midway through the first number, two young women arrived to claim the seats, but one of them immediately threw her arm around me and pulled me close, saying “Stay here with me – you’re so adorable.” As she nuzzled my neck, I caught the unmistakable aroma of gin. I disengaged myself with a smile, tried to move away, but to no avail – she grabbed me again from behind. I decided my best bet was to walk purposefully away, and I found an equally good vantage point on the other side of the theater.
Did I feel threatened? Not really – I believe she was just out for a good time, more than a little drunk, and feeling very, very friendly. I’m straight, married for nearly 35 years, but had my admirer been a man, I’d have been furious, probably called security. (At the band’s request, The Egg had laid on extra security, so I was surrounded by big, muscular guys.) This was my weirdest ushering experience to date. Will I avoid ushering at hard rock concerts in the future? No way. Besides, standing, swaying and boogying for three hours was great exercise.
I started out blogging about my willingness to try new experiences as compared with all the old fogies I know. But I’ve rambled on long enough for today, so I’ll save it for next time.
AND NOW FOR THE GRAND PRIZE: I’ve got two tickets to WEXT’s benefit concert next Friday, October 23, 7:30 p.m. in WMHT’s North Greenbush studios. I donated $60 to the station for the two tickets, but I’m only using one. My husband went last time, but he’s really not interested. If you are, e-mail me at jlomoe@nycap.rr.com. If someone wants to pay $30, that’s great, but I’ll consider lesser offers – or even give it away. There’ll be four local bands. Do I know what they sound like? No – but I’m going to find out.
