The Social Network

I have a love-hate relationship with the Internet. In my last post, I briefly touched upon how the Net has naturally evolved into yet another in a long line of advertising and marketing mediums (albeit an incredibly efficient and optimized one). Newspapers, radio, TV, magazines, Internet. The beat goes on. I am sure another one will come along soon. The Next Big Thing.

The anonymity of the Internet also seems to bring out the worst aspects of our human nature. Ever visit some of the leading Left and Right Wing Websites and actually read the public comment sections? I’ll admit that, when reading them while shit-faced, they do provide some level of entertainment. But, Jeez Louise, what is the point? Nobody is going to change anybody’s mind – you can’t even get basic agreement on facts anymore. You think you are going to sway “The Other Team” over to “Your Team”? Sigh.

It is just a great big steaming pile of Race-to-the-Bottom where the most “successful” are the loudest, rudest, and most-willing-to-caricature, lie, and offend (Hi Bill Maher). Of course, since there is good money to be made in that gig and all the talking points have been so well-refined and market-tested by slime-ball political operatives, we are pretty much guaranteed status quo forever on that front. A deadlock in the truest Computer Science sense of the term. Each team (Go Team!) is waiting for the other to release the lock (be converted). I know how we deal with software deadlocks - time to kill the process.

So I have now established that the Internet is full of assholes and that it is a great way to purchase goods and services. Hey I didn’t say I was brilliant. But every once in awhile you will come across an unexpected interaction on the Net that just blows you away. For me it happened a couple of months ago in a Facebook Group called You Know You Are From Altoona If… Here is that interaction:

My “Big Bro” Rich is having this intimate discussion about my Dad, twenty years after he passed away, with a former band mate of his on this social network of 880 (and counting) million users. One of them is in Altoona, PA and the other is in Manassas, VA – and I, in Hillsborough, NC, am learning stuff about my Dad that I never knew. Like his chops on the flute and the vocal affinity with Andy Williams. (I already knew my Dad was a huge fan of The Chairman of the Board.) Forget what I said before about the Internet sucking. That is pretty magical stuff, isn’t it?

I was really moved by Mr. Daski’s comment. Here was such a wonderful, heartfelt, sentiment from a colleague  of my father’s – one of his peers – one of the guys who would pile their equipment into beat-up old vehicles and schlep around the back roads of Central Pennsylvania a couple of times a week. Playing VFWs, Knights of Columbus’ or small dive bars in front of five or fifteen or twenty-five people. Getting up on a stage in front of a paying crowd and performing – laying it out there as professional (albeit, part-time) musicians. Earning some scratch (however meager) and bringing it back home. Maybe to pay for an unexpected housing expense or that month’s private school tuition or the Christmas Club at Mid-state Bank that would always yield such wonderful holiday memories for us kids. That is pretty noble stuff if you ask me.

I would like to highlight that the Nocturnes (the band made up of Dad, Jim, and Bob) were apparently a bizarre three-piece: drums, accordion, and my Pops on vocals and, apparently, damn near any woodwind or brass instrument ever known to man. That had to have been a really interesting sound. I’d give my left you-know-what for an opportunity to listen to some of that music.

(As an aside, Mr. Daski, far right in the above photo, and a colleague have put together a 500-page book highlighting the Altoona music scene since 1900. That work is described in this Altoona Mirror article. You can order a copy of the book at the Blair County Genealogical Society website.)

A lot of ink has been spilled (and, frankly, profits accrued) by folks like Tom Brokaw and the late Tim Russert writing about The Greatest Generation. I don’t intend to sound like a jerk, but those of us whose parents were of that generation really didn’t need a Brokaw or Russert to tell us all that stuff. We lived it.

I’ve noticed that there is a particular personality characteristic that is common across my parent’s generation. For lack of a better vocabulary, I term it “understated graciousness and humility”. You certainly see it in Mr. Daski’s comments about my father. But, once you start looking for it, you will find it in spades elsewhere as well. Just one example. Last year, The MLB Network had a wonderful program that brought together selected members of the Pittsburgh Pirates and New York Yankees to discuss Game 7 of the 1960 World Series. I was struck by the mutual respect, graciousness, and humility that all parties showed towards each other. Dick Groat was such a gracious winner. I loved seeing his interplay with classy Yankee Bobby Richardson (who had every right, but refused, to bring up the Yankee’s overall dominance in that WS – it truly was a fluke that the Pirates prevailed). Graciousness indeed.

As for the humility part of that equation, it wasn’t until my Father passed away that I truly appreciated how accomplished a musician he really was. I certainly never heard it from him. His generation didn’t roll like that. But, at his viewing and funeral, I recall a number of remembrances from former musical colleagues (similar to Mr. Daski’s above). Unlike his third son, my old man didn’t have an arrogant bone in his body.

When I was growing up, our Saturday’s would have such a familiar rhythm and cadence to them. The morning would start with cereal while watching classic cartoons like Looney Tunes and HR Pufnstuf. Then outside to The Alley to play whatever sport was in season. Saturday morning was also Cleaning Time – but that mostly involved Mom and my sisters. (You had to be careful, though, not to mess up a room that had just been cleaned. Hell hath no fury…) I think I have blogged before about our standard meal of hamburgers, pickles, and chips my Mom would prepare on Saturday. There was also a killer lineup of TV Shows on Saturday night on CBS like The Carol Burnett Show and The Bob Newhart Show.

For my Father, I think Saturday was his day to cut it loose a bit. During the day, Dad would enjoy quite a few Cold Ones while watching two of his favorite shows of the week: the PBA Tour Show (3:30-to-5:00 PM on WTAE) and then Hee-Haw (7:00-to-8:00 PM on WTAJ). I always found my father’s attraction to Hee-Haw a bit odd. In addition to the corny humor that he enjoyed, the one comment that Cody N made like clockwork damn near every Saturday was “Boy, Roy Clark and Buck Owens are such great musicians.”

Now, mind you, I know a little, but not a whole lot, about music theory and I am not a musician, so who the hell am I to judge. But, from what I have learned, I am pretty sure that the sophisticated arrangements as well as the intricate chord and time signature changes in the Big Band and Swing compositions my Father could play were in a whole other musical universe apart from what Roy and Buck were picking in the mid 70s. But I didn’t hear anything to that effect from Dad – just an admiration of musicians playing a style of music well that my Father wasn’t even particularly really into.

A personal tradition around this time of year (Play Ball!) is to pop in the DVD of Field of Dreams, the 1989 melodrama starring Kevin Costner and James Earl Jones in which Iowa farmer Ray Kinsella (played by Costner), in response to directives he hears from voices in his corn fields, plows under his crop and builds a baseball field.

The movie tackles big themes. From the cultural and generational conflicts of the 1960s to dreams unrealized and the unintended consequences of those unsatisfied dreams and, finally, to redemption, resolution, and closure of those personal demons that we all carry with us through life. Heavy – and universal – stuff.

My God. I only saw him years later when he was worn down by life. Look at him. He's got his whole life in front of him, and I'm not even a glint in his eye.

I have seen the movie probably forty times, but the climactic scene when Ray meets his father John still chokes me up. Who among us wouldn’t want to go back to a time and place when our parents were young and unencumbered by the responsibilities and stresses of adulthood, marriage, and parenthood? A time when they weren’t “worn down by life”?

Well, I can’t go back in time, but I can use this awful and wonderful Internet to relish some of the culture that my parents experienced in their formative years. I can listen to popular radio programs of their day on the XM RadioClassics channel like the Phil Harris and Alice Faye show (which stills stands up well to this day). Or I can stream the 1951 season of Dragnet through Netflix.

Or, alongside my usual steady diet of classic metal, progressive metal, and grunge, I can pop into my weekly “commuter rotation” a CD like Tommy Dorsey – Greatest Hits. My Dad was a big Dorsey fan. While apparently not the easiest guy in the world to work with (he fired his own brother Jimmy), Dorsey’s band featured amazing soloists – like Buddy Rich and Ziggy Elman – and, of course, he brought Big Frank to the big stage.

I came across two versions of the classic Dorsey track “Well Git It” on YouTube. The first one is the original from the ‘40s. Just perfect. The second version (below) was performed by Buddy Rich with the Tonight Show Orchestra around 1985. I don’t know where to even start with that one. Tommy Newsome’s clarinet work. Of course Buddy’s solo. Check out the dueling trumpet blasts between Doc Severinsen and Snooky Young after the band emerges out of the break from Buddy’s solo. When this clip was made, Buddy was just off a heart attack and only a couple of years from death, but, damn, he could still drive a Big Band!

As I listen to these wonderful Sy Oliver arrangements played by Tommy Dorsey’s Band or The Tonight Show Orchestra, I feel nothing but pride. Immense pride in knowing that my Dad could play these arrangements – all of this music – in his sleep.