154: Laura Nyro, ‘Save the Country’

Laura Nyro – Save the Country (Stereo Single)

Laura Nyro – Save The Country (Mono Single)

Laura Nyro – Save the Country (Album)

Laura Nyro – Save the Country (Live TV performance)

I learned something this week: you can appreciate music even when missiles are falling on you. Well near you, anyway. Certain music you can appreciate even because missiles are falling near you.

I live in southern Israel. My city had 86 missiles shot at it over eight days from our neighbors in Gaza. There’s an Israeli-developed anti-missile system called Iron Dome. It detects the missile, sets off alarms in the targeted areas. This is what it sounds like from my room. Everyone runs for ‘safety rooms’ made of reinforced concrete. Poets in the heat of inspiration. Kids on potties. Couples in flagrante delicto. Barbers in the middle of a haircut. Everyone.

Iron Dome

After half a minute’s warning, the whoosh of the Iron Dome. Then we wait 10 seconds for the boom. It might not come at all. Or it might happen up in the air above an open field outside of town. Or it might be among the 1/3 of the incoming rockets that aren’t caught, and it might fall on your next-door neighbor, or on you, or on your children. That’s the bad time, those 10 seconds.

There are people around the world who say that Israel’s at fault in this conflict. I’m here to talk about music, not to shout polemics, but let me just say that Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza to the recognized international border seven years ago; that Israel’s rationale for the sea embargo is to prevent Hamas from stockpiling missiles; and that anyone who thinks one side is all wrong and the other is all right in a conflict as complex as this one is too biased to talk to.

Velvet Dome

On one level, I dealt with the 86 sirens and the explosions with equanimity. No tears, no screaming, no bed-wetting; I’ve had a pretty full life. But still, I do feel a certain indignation, deepening with each day of sirens and explosions. Stop shooting at me! I don’t want to hurt you! Stop trying to hurt me! This war stuff is crazy!

And a sound track emerged:

I got fury in my soul, fury’s gonna take me to the glory goal –

In my mind I can’t study war no more.

Save the people, save the children, save the country, now!

It’s ‘Save the Country’ by Laura Nyro (1947-1997). I’ve known it intimately since for 44 years, but it never resonated as strongly as during those sirens and explosions. It’s a furious demand for an end to violence, sung in her unique street gospel style. ‘I will not tolerate this evil! I personally am going to fill this world with love, goddamit, and if you keep shucking your ugly, I’m personally gonna kick your ass!!’

I’m reminded of a story my college friend Steve told me. He was in a bad place, dropped acid in the worst possible circumstances, and took off on a Bad Trip. He told me that he felt The Devil was about to envelop him. But he did have the presence of mind to sit himself down and put on “Eli and the 13^th Confession”, knowing that Laura would protect him; she knew all about fending off Lucifer. That’s sort of how I felt this week. Laura’s unbridled love would protect me. Together with Iron Dome.

Come on people, come on children,
Come on down to the glory river.
Gonna wash you up  and wash you down, gonna lay the devil down.

The song and the atmosphere that evoked it sent me on a binge of listening to Laura Nyro (not that I need much of a push). I listen to her frequently and intently and passionately. She is one of my very favorite artists. I usually confine myself to her masterpiece “Eli and the 13^th Confession” and to “Spread Your Wings and Fly: Live at the Fillmore East”, recorded in 1971 but released only in 2004. Here’s ‘Save the Country’ from that show. While we’re at the Fillmore, here’s ‘Walk on By’, a knock-out ‘Spanish Harlem’, and the sublime ‘Emmie’.

This time I revisited her entire oeuvre, particularly enjoying the 1970 “Christmas and the Beads of Sweat” (including ‘When I Was a Freeport and You Were the Main Drag’ and ‘Up on the Roof’) and this hour-long low-quality video “Live in Pittsburgh” from 1994. It begins inauspiciously – overweight (from chemotherapy?); in Pittsburgh; in daylight; at a low point in her career and nearing the end of her life; on electric piano (why in heaven’s name?) accompanied only by 3 singers; and including songs dedicated to Animal Rights, Native Americans, and her own menstruation (no kidding). But amazingly, it’s a knockout.

Here’s ‘Save the Country’ from that show. And just for good measure, here’s ‘Dedicated to the One I Love’ and from her first album ‘Blowin Away/Wedding Bell Blues’. Oh, and one I never appreciated before, ‘Oh Yeah, Maybe Baby (The Heebie Jeebies)’.

And here’s a fine 10-minute film with and about Laura made by her long-time lady partner in 1995.

Up On The Roof

It reminded me just how much I love and admire and am inspired by Laura Nyro. She’s a major artist. Together with Joni Mitchell, the two most accomplished women to emerge from the rock idiom. Joni is an artisan, a craftswoman, a perfectionist, every song a finely cut gem. Laura is all soul and inspiration, a look-ma-no-hands roller-coaster trip.

If Laura was too quirky to be fully appreciated during her prime years, recognition of her talent and influence has been growing by quantum leaps in recent years. Elton John, guesting on Elvis Costello’s TV show, said “This is music so far ahead of its time that it still sounds unbelievable – the soul, the passion, the audacity of her rhythmic and melody changes was like nothing I’d ever heard before.” Rickie Lee Jones told me how deeply indebted she is to Laura. This year Laura was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by Bette Midler.

‘Save the Country’ was Laura’s response to the assassination of Bobby Kennedy on June 5, 1968 (Keep the dream of the two young brothers). I remember the event and its context well. It was a trying time, difficult to maintain your equilibrium let alone envision peace. Not Universal Harmony. Just let-me-get-through-the-day-unscathed peace. The song was originally recorded  that summer as a single, her first release after her monolithic second album, “Eli and the 13th Confession”, then subsequently in a different version on her follow-up “New York Tendaberry”.

Joni Mitchell, Laura Nyro

Laura was having a lot more success in the late 1960s as a songwriter than as a performer. She had bleached hit treatments of her songs by Three Dog Night (‘Eli’s Coming’); Barbra Streisand with “Stoney End”, “Time and Love”, and “Flim Flam Man”; Blood, Sweat & Tears and Peter, Paul & Mary with “And When I Die”; and especially The 5th Dimension with “Blowing Away”, “Wedding Bell Blues”, “Stoned Soul Picnic”, “Sweet Blindness”, “Save The Country” and “Black Patch”.

Columbia President Clive Davis and Producer Bones Howe appreciated Laura’s talent and wanted to help her take off commercially. Bones Howe, on ‘Save the Country’: “She was excited about it when she did [the single version]. But when she stepped back she said, wait a minute, that’s not me. It was too produced, too pop for her. She wanted to do ‘Save the Country’ just sitting at the piano. She said ‘you make records that sock it to the people. I can’t sock it to the people. I just don’t do that.’”

I’ve always felt closer to the single version. I find it a finely fashioned pop funk production. To tell the truth, I’ve never succeeded in snuggling up to “New York Tendaberry”. I find her slow, rambling songs (‘December’s Boudoir’ and ‘Woman’s Blues’ from “Eli”, most of “Tendaberry”), hard to follow – diffuse, unfocused, less engaging than when she’s being melodic. The first half of the Tendaberry ‘Save the Country’ is solo piano, and is fine. At mid-song it shifts gears in typical Nyronian fashion, to my taste to too hysterical a tempo, the orchestration overbearing.

The version that grabbed me most strongly this time is the rare TV appearance (1968, I’m guessing), in unfortunately low quality. She takes beautiful rhythmic liberties, she swings and sings and rocks and smiles. She lays the devil down. She makes me believe – even as the sirens are wailing and the explosions are shaking my walls – that we can build the dream with love. That’s what music can do. Thank you so much, Laura.

Come on people, come on children,
Come on down to the glory river.
Gonna wash you up  and wash you down, gonna lay the devil down.

 Come on people, come on children,
There’s a king at the glory river.
And the precious king, he loved the people to sing
Babes in the blinking sun, saying “We Shall Overcome”

I got fury in my soul, fury’s gonna take me to the glory goal –
In my mind I can’t study war no more.

Save the people, save the children, save the country, now.
Come on people, come on children,
Come on down to the Glory River.
Gonna wash you up  and wash you down,
Gonna lay the devil down.

Come on people, sons and mothers,
Keep the dream of the two young brothers.
Got to take that dream and ride that dove.
We could build the dream with love.

I got fury in my soul, fury’s gonna take me to the glory goal –
In my mind I can’t study war no more.
Save the people, save the children, save the country, now.

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Tags: Christmas and the Beads of Sweat, Eli and the 13th Confession, Joni Mitchell, Laura Nyro, New York Tendaberry, Pittsburgh, Save the Country, Spread Your Wings and Fly

150: Matti Caspi, ‘Not Good, A Man Being Alone’

This week we synagogue-going Jews finish a month of holidays with Simhat Torah, finishing the annual cycle of reading the Pentateuch, the Five Books of Moses. We go right from the end of Deuteronomy into the beginning of Genesis, just to rub in the fact that there’s no respite for the pious. It’s a particularly appropriate time to show you

LtR: Matti Caspi, Elsie

The funniest video I’ve ever seen.

Did you know that God created the world twice? Well, not really, that was just a teaser for all you fantasy buffs. But the Bible does tell us the story twice, in Genesis 1 and in Genesis 2. At first glance, they seem pretty similar—we get sky and earth and sun and moon and oceans and mosquitoes in both version. But if you look carefully, there are some pretty significant differences. (We discussed these stories in a recent SoTW).

(L to R) Man, God

For example, in the first version (1:27), on Friday afternoon Man is created androgynously, guy and gal all in one package (see SoTW 149), and given the job of ruling over the animals. All’s fine and dandy, God’s pretty darned pleased with His handiwork, so he takes Sabbath off and presumably goes fishing or watches a baseball game.

LtR: Tar Baby, Br’er Rabbit

In the second version (2:6–18), God makes this really cool garden, home theater and all, then out of the dust fashions Man to enjoy it – Man, all by his little lonesome self. God gives Man almost no limitations: to make his bed in the morning, take out the garbage, and “Just don’t eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge” (why does that sound like Br’er Rabbit?). He gets his first job, in the world’s oldest profession of course – taxonomist (see Zimmerman, R., ‘Man Gave Names to All the Animals’).

LtR: Man, Womb-Man

In other words, in God’s initial experiment, you and I would have been coupled with a cute zebra with streaked hair, or a hot little blonde chickadee. But no, somehow He in His infinite wisdom foresaw that that wouldn’t do the trick.

You see, God had created all the animals in pairs. But Man He created in a state of blessed bachelorhood. Why? You may ask. Well, here’s how B’reishit Rabba, the compilation of homiletic exegeses on Genesis from about 3^rd–4^th century AD, explains Womb-Man, Woman, Eve:

“’But for Adam there was no helpmate to confound him’–indicating that He paraded before Adam all the beasts and the animals and the birds, all in pairs. Adam said, ‘Hey, they all have mates! Where’s mine??’
Why did God not create a mate for Adam from the start?  Because The Holy One Blessed Be He anticipated that she would confound him, so He refrained from creating her (out of affection for Adam) until he demanded it.”

I’m not going to make any misogynist wisecracks here about how Adam should have kept his mouth shut. I just remember when my grandmother would be giving my grandfather a hard time, he would look at me wryly and say “עזר כנגדו”, a terrific Genesisical phrase describing Woman as ‘the one who helps against him’; or as my father used to refer to my mother, ‘my best friend and severest critic’.

Do you realize that if Adam/Man had kept his mouth shut, each one of us would be living in his own private fraternity house for eternity? Well, he didn’t, and we don’t, because apparently God hard-wired us to need Womb-Man, be she what she may. If only He hadn’t made them so darn pretty!

The Israeli poet and lyricist Natan Zach (b. 1930) put it like this:

James Thurber’s ‘Woman’

The wonderful composer/arranger/singer Matti Caspi (b. 1949) put these lyrics to music. Matti was born and raised on Kibbutz Hanita, a collective agricultural community. When he was growing up, he worked in the citrus groves, in the wheat fields, in the kitchen, and in the cow shed.

Hanita was one of the original Homa uMigdal (wall and tower) settlements, which we touched on in a jazz context in SoTW 109. We’ve also discussed another early Matti Caspi song with a more oblique biblical allusion, ‘Song of the Dove’ (SoTW 102).

Matti’s one very talented guy. His melodies and arrangements are among the most refined and sophisticated I’ve encountered in popular music. He also has a highly evolved sense of humor. He employs a poker face so dry you need to soak it for 24 hours before you can begin to detect the twinkle in his eye.

Here’s the original studio version of the Caspi/Zach composition ‘Lo tov heyot adam levado’ (‘Not good man being alone’), by charming young Yehudit Ravitz (who later became a big star) and the very annoying Danny Litani (circa 1977). Here’s the same song in a live performance.

And here’s our Song of The Week, the funniest video I’ve ever seen, Matti singing the song himself, serenading his childhood girlfriends. In the last verse he improvises ‘Not good the cow being alone’. When Elsie tries to French kiss him, he protests, “Dai!”, which means ‘Enough!’ or ‘Quit it!’ in Hebrew. Note the Wellingtons Matti wears on his date.

James Thurber understood it. Matti Caspi understood it. Even Elsie the Cow understood it. We’re hardwired. It’s inescapable. Can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em. That’s just the way God made us.

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Tags: Br'er Rabbit, Elsie the Cow, Genesis, James Thurber, Man Gave Names to All the Animals, Matti Caspi, Natan Zach, Yehudit Ravitz

135: Kaveret, ‘Medina Ktana’ (Little Country)

Kaveret, ‘Medina Ktana’ (Little Country)

Happy birthday to us, happy birthday to us, happy birthday dear Israel, happy birthday to us.

It’s our 64^thtoday, and the few millions of us here are mostly out on the roads, visiting air force bases, national parks, waving flags and fanning the grill with our families and friends. But not far below the surface there’s a sincerity in it all, a true recognition and celebration of our very existence, something we don’t take for granted.

The Center of the Universe

Did you know that Israel is the only country in the world whose national anthem is in a minor key? Could be because after 2000 years of persecution it was built on the ashes of a near genocide. Israel has fought three existential wars in its 64 years, and hence lives with an acute sense of fragility. It’s the only country in history recreated by a miraculous act of will out of a tribal imagination, the only nation to return to its homeland from dispersion, reviving a dead language on the way. It’s also the only democracy in this part of the world, a bizarre mix of refugees from every corner of the world stuck in the middle of the Levant, hence a sharp sense of irony regarding our still-evolving national identity. People run around like crazy trying to be normal in the most abnormal of societies.

Kaveret

In the wake of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, in which the country barely survived obliteration, a bunch of army buddies formed a band called Kaveret (‘beehive’), sometimes also known as Poogy (after the name of their first album, “Poogy Stories”). The leader and chief songwriter was Danny Sanderson, an Israeli who grew up in the US on rock and roll. In three years they recorded three albums as out of place and ahead of their time in the Israeli musical landscape as the country is in the Middle East – sophisticated in music, production, performance and content.

Patriotic symbol

Many of their songs have become cultural icons, still sung today by teenagers and recycled by rock stars. I’d like to share one with you, sort of a mock anthem, a modest little song that captures the spirit and ethos and self-image of this noisy, neurotic little country better than anything else I know of – ‘Little Country’.

We Israelis get pretty tired of seeing ourselves on the front page of the NY Times every day. On the other hand, we also see ourselves as the center of the universe. Go explain it. Well, Sanderson’s lyrics do it best – our wry perception of our very existence, our precariousness, our homey patriotism better expressed in self-effacing humor than in pompous parades.

Happy birthday, Israel. Here’s SoTW’s official nomination for our unofficial anthem.

מדינה קטנה

Additional Listening from Kaveret:

Medina Ktana (Little Country)

Shir HaMakolet (The Grocery Store Song)

Yo Ya

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102: Netanela, ‘Shir HaYona’ (Matti Caspi)

109: Daniel Zamir, ‘Shir HaShomer’ (Red Sea Jazz Festival, 2011)

Tags: Danny Sanderson, Independence Day, Israel, Kaveret, Poogy, Yom Ha'atzmaut

109: Daniel Zamir, ‘Shir HaShomer’ (Red Sea Jazz Festival, 2011)

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This is a story about shifting gears, about accelerating tempi, about breaking through to the other side, and about new modes of perception. It’s also a story about the early days of Zionism, about nostalgia for childhood, about Lubavitch Hassidut, about prodigality, and about having fun.

And it’s ultimately about jazz. But it going to be a bit of a journey till we get there. Read more…

Tags: Amir Bresler, Chabad, Daniel Zamir, Gilad Abro, homa umigdal, Lubavitcher, Modzitzer Rebbe, Nitay Hershkovits, Omri Mor, Red Sea Jazz Festival, Shir HaShomer, אמיר ברסלר, דניאל זמיר, חומה ומגדל, שיר השומר