I post a weekly diary of historical notes, arts & science items, foreign news (often receiving little notice in the US) and whimsical pieces from the outside world that I often feature in "Cheers & Jeers".
OK, you've been warned - here is this week's tomfoolery material that I posted.
CHEERS to Bill and Michael in PWM, our Laramie, Wyoming-based friend Irish Patti and ...... well, each of you at Cheers and Jeers. Have a fabulous weekend .... and week ahead.
ART NOTES— when the famed Pompidou Centre in Paris closes for renovations in late 2023, its first North American satellite location should be soon ready to open in Jersey City, New Jersey (my mother’s birthplace) — joining the museum’s other outposts in Málaga, Spain plus Brussels, Belgium, and also Shanghai, China.
According to a French native on this site, former French president Georges Pompidou (the successor to Charles de Gaulle) was not an art lover at heart.
YOUR WEEKEND READ #1 is this gripping essay by Gabriel Sherman in Vanity Fair, describing the individual who (perhaps more than anyone else) facilitated the rise of Jeffrey Epstein to financial prominence …. who was the (recently-retired) CEO of the fashion chain whose flagship is The Limited, Leslie Wexner.
THURSDAY's CHILD is named Esme the Cat— an Oregon kitteh who swiped things from the neighborhood then (proudly) presents them at her home.
YOUR WEEKEND READ #2 is this six-part series of editorials in the Boston Globe this week — mentioned by Rachel Maddow the other night — on “Future Proofing the Presidency” in the wake of FormerGuy (including ditching the DOJ policy on no indictments. And they have turned-off the paywall for the series — use this link.
SPORTING NOTES— for the next month, Europe will be holding its men’s mini-World Cup, Euro 2020— delayed a year due to the pandemic — and while most of the games will be on ESPN (schedule at this link), tomorrow’s Belgium-Russia match will be on free TV (ABC) at 3 PM Eastern, noon Pacific.
FRIDAY's CHILD is named Timber the Cat— a California kitteh who first needed an operation to correct her kneecaps from popping out, then needed water therapy to regain her ability to walk … and is now up-for-adoption.
BRAIN TEASER— try this Quiz of the Week's News from the BBC ...… and the usually easier, less UK-centered New York Times quiz (one BBC question will provide a correct answer for the NYT quiz).
DIRECT DESCENDANTS? — Swiss psychologist Hermann Rorschach (yes, of inkblot fame) and film star Brad Pitt.
...... and finally, for a song of the week ...........................… someone whose fifty-year career in music and the arts has gone largely under radar is Van Dyke Parks– who taunted a reviewer for the Guardian newspaper about the use of the words quirky and eccentric to describe him. Well, they seem accurate to me: in describing someone who has been a composer, arranger, session player, producer, performer, actor and author (just for starters). He successfully pitched a song that Frank Sinatra recorded, turned down offers to join both The Byrds (as well as Crosby, Stills & Nash) and has worked with Harry Nilsson, Randy Newman and most famously Brian Wilson – yet claims to have sought anonymity following the JFK shooting.
His own performing is an acquired taste .... he has sometimes over-complex melodies and lyrics that endears him to critics, yet not always so accessible to fans. But he has such respect from the musical community that the Guardian reviewer referred to him as a "well-loved college professor whose classes are lessons in far more than the subject at hand".
Born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi in 1941, his family first settled in Louisiana and then in Princeton, New Jersey (at the age of nine). His father was a psychiatrist who served during the Dachau liberation during WW-II, and played clarinet in a dance band while earning his was through med school. While studying music, Van Dyke once performed as a child soprano with the Metropolitan Opera in NYC and sang in German when a guest violinist (named Albert Einstein) visited the school. Later, he worked as a child actor in Grace Kelly’s last film and as Little Tommy in a lost episode of "The Honeymooners".
He attended Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh - where one of his teachers was Aaron Copeland— before graduating from the University of Pennsylvania but settled in Los Angeles in 1963 to join his brother Carson in a coffee-house folk group. This later expanded into the Greenwood County Singers (which included future RCA producer Rick Jarrard). They were seen by David Crosby, who cited them as a reason to join the music business. Parks left, moving East in order to join the Brandywine Singers in 1964.
In a chance encounter with the pioneering San Francisco band The Charlatans they were impressed with a song he wrote entitled High Coin– which (a) garnered some airplay in California for The Charlatans, (b) was later recorded by Jackie DeShannon and Bobby Vee, and (c) led to a recording contract for Van Dyke Parks – first at MGM and later with Warner Brothers. While at Warners, he also gained work as a session musician and songwriter for other bands.
Although his early recordings (and whose back-up band included a then-unknown Stephen Stills) did not sell: his songs were increasingly performed by others, and he helped transform an unknown band called The Tikis into Harpers Bizarre– who did become a financial success for Warners.
While at Warners/Reprise he (as the Guardian essayist noted) "fitted-in everywhere … and nowhere". He became friends with fellow songwriters Randy Newman, Phil Ochs and especially Harry Nilsson. He was briefly a member of Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention but left because "I didn’t want to be screamed at". He met Frank Sinatra while the singer was having a mid-life crisis, and pitched a song that Parks’ brother Carson had wrote. On the advice of Lee Hazelwood, Nancy Sinatra joined her father to record Something Stupid– whose popularity quickly ended the mid-life crisis.
In 1967, Van Dyke Parks released his debut solo album Song Cycle– with songs ranging from folk, show-tunes, rock, jazz, classical and other genres – that sold poorly and cost quite a bit in production for its day, leading to some upset executives at the label. But in a pattern that would repeat itself, Song Cycles was a big hit with critics (winning "Album of the Year" from Stereo Review) and stayed in print for nearly twenty years as a classic release. And in 1970, he took over the audio/visual department at Warners, producing an early version of promotional videos for the label’s artists (of which, only one for Ry Cooder has survived).
Meanwhile, producer Terry Melcher introduced him in 1966 to Brian Wilson– and the two worked together (sporadically) for thirty-five years. He helped arrange the song Good Vibrations, and was asked by Wilson to write lyrics for his magnum opus Smile– which remained unfinished for many years, as Wilson descended into his drug-induced depression.
Van Dyke Parks was blamed - at least in part - by Wilson’s bandmates for his drug use, which Parks says was closer to being the other-way-around. Parks walked away at that time, though did later help arrange Sail on Sailor - one of the few Beach Boys hits during the earlier part of the 1970’s.
Parks resumed his own recording career in 1972 with Discover America– influenced by Trinidadian music – and in 1976 released Clang of the Yankee Reaper… another collection of eclectic music that did not sell well but got critical acclaim and a cult following.
He then left Warners and for most of the next ten years focused on work for film studios - writing scores for everyone from Sesame Street to Ry Cooder to Robert Altman to Jack Nicholson’s The Two Jakes to Pee-Wee Herman, to children’s shows to the old "Savvy Traveler" radio program on NPR. In 1984 he wrote the music to the album Jump!– based upon the stories of Brer Rabbit and Uncle Remus – and wrote some children’s books.
In 1989 he recorded the album Tokyo Rose– a concept album based upon the state of US-Japanese relations. And during the time Brian Wilson spent apart from the band, the Beach Boys did work with Parks (on the song Kokomo and the Summer in Paradise album) but Mike Love in particular did not want Parks to work with Wilson. The two did join forces on a Wilson project in the 1990’s, Orange Crate Art from 1995. In 1998 he released his first live album (including Sid Page as concertmaster) and helped arrange indie folk/rock singer Joanna Newsom on her second album in 2006.
Parks worked with Brian Wilson on two more projects: arranging a live performance of the abandoned Smile project (which Wilson toured with) and also contributing some lyrics to Wilson’s album That Lucky Old Sun in 2008.
In recent years, Van Dyke Parks has had his hand in several projects: performing (with Bob Dylan and Ry Cooder) in the 2009 documentary The People Speak– based upon A People’s History by historian Howard Zinn - which you can hear at this link performing the Woodie Guthrie tune "Do Re Mi" - and arranged recordings for the electronica Skillrex project. In 2011, the Beach Boys’ original recordings of Smile were released after forty-four years – yet Parks was left not only out of the promotional campaign but also the liner notes (at the behest of Mike Love). In 2013 he released Songs Cycled— six singles (yes, 45’s) with both new material as well as old unreleased matter and re-workings of old tunes
Most recently, he has released two duet albums with musicians from Latin America: in 2019 with Guatemalan singer Gaby Moreno and due out this month: an album with Mexican singer-songwriter-harpist Verónica Valerio.
At age 80, he is in no mood to retire: while allowing that he might like to perform more concerts (if the demand was there) he is satisfied with where he is and is still in demand for his services (as producer, arranger and session musician). And why not: in addition to the names already mentioned, you add Phil Ochs, Bonnie Raitt, Tim Buckley, Little Feat, Loudon Wainwright III, Rufus Wainwright, Ringo Starr, U2, Judy Collins and others.
One of the songs that he recorded with Brian Wilson in 1995 was Sail Away, from Orange Crate Art - which is perhaps the best way to close, as Parks will forever be linked with Wilson. You can hear the complex, image-laden lyrics and melody from Parks and Brian Wilson's pop sensibilities coming together.
When I desire company I'll leave my footprints on the sand by a reckless sea Hoping you'll come to meAnd we'll explore what might have been And leave the shore and give this tired old world a spin When my ship will come in
Sun up! We'll sail away the day that my ship comes in Fast as the highest mast can take us to any old where but here One captain's paradise for two Sky in a sea that's twice as blue It all waits for me and you when my ship comes in