Part Five: Fairfield, Iowa - Casiotones and Vocalese
In 1982 I decided to pursue my interest in meditation and moved to Fairfield, Iowa - home of what was then known as Maharishi International University (now Marharishi University of Management), the hub of the American Transcendental Meditation organization. And I have lived in Fairfield ever since, although at this time I have no official connection with the University or the organization.
For the first two or three years, though, I worked on staff at the university. I managed to write a few songs on various pianos on campus but wasn’t able to record them for many years. We’ll get back to those.
After leaving staff in 1985 I began working for Hedquist Productions - where I have remained ever since - as producer/recording engineer and occasional voice talent. The company specializes in radio commercials, industrial A/V, audio books and the like. Jeffrey Hedquist is a former college-radio geek like myself, and the company has won hundreds of awards, including the London International Award, for creative radio spots.
For the first two or three years, though, I worked on staff at the university. I managed to write a few songs on various pianos on campus but wasn’t able to record them for many years. We’ll get back to those.
After leaving staff in 1985 I began working for Hedquist Productions - where I have remained ever since - as producer/recording engineer and occasional voice talent. The company specializes in radio commercials, industrial A/V, audio books and the like. Jeffrey Hedquist is a former college-radio geek like myself, and the company has won hundreds of awards, including the London International Award, for creative radio spots.
You can hear samples of the company's work at the link above, but here's the big award-winner, which was pieced together on a 4-track reel-to-reel machine, 'flying' in the sound effects manually from other reels on another machine:
And since this is, after all, the Festival of Me, here are two short montages of my voice-work for Hedquist:
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Shortly before leaving for Iowa I had my first encounter with a Casiotone keyboard, courtesy of a friend of my brother’s. These were still new technology at the time, and I was fascinated by the way it would allow a non-musician like myself create basic chord/bass/rhythm accompaniment in different styles using just three fingers. I recorded two compositions onto cassette, wrote down lyrics for one and promptly forgot about them.
When I started working at Hedquist Productions we had, as described above, a ¼-inch reel-to-reel four-track recorder and a ¼-inch reel-to-reel half-track stereo/mono recorder, both with a maximum speed of 15 inches per second. Somewhere along the line we also acquired one of those new-fangled CD players and some sound effects discs.
In 1988 I transferred one of my Casio tunes to the four-track and, bouncing back and forth between that and the half-track machine, I layered in several vocal tracks (the studio had a reverb unit as well, so I could finally have some echo) and some sound effects.
Yes, the basic track sounds extremely cheap and lo-fi by modern standards, but I do like the song itself, which is called, “Make It Through (Another Day).”
Make It Through (Another Day)
Time to get up again,
try to remember my name.
Looks like today has arrived -
guess I should pretend I’m alive.
No one ever told me why,
but somehow now I’ve got to try and make it,
make it through another day.
Time was when I had my reasons,
and a chance to watch the seasons.
But the days seem shorter now
and there just isn’t time somehow
for friends that I’ve been losing to
the things that I’m too tired to do.
A paycheck’s all I’ve got when I’m through.
Money’s here and then it’s gone.
It’s not enough - I can’t live on my dreams.
Flying in my dreams...
Falling in my dreams...
Dying in my...
Oh no....
Time to get up again,
try to remember my name.
Looks like today has arrived -
guess I should pretend I’m alive.
No one ever told me why,
but somehow now I’ve got to try and make it,
make it through another day.
Time is passing by so slowly...
I was drifting further out to sea,
but then somebody smiled at me -
and I start to see
that I’m really gonna make it through the day.
Ahhhh....
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I never got around to writing lyrics for the other Casio track, and I must admit that I completely forgot about it until just recently when I found the original cassette.
I have no idea what my original intentions were for this piece - something cosmic, apparently, to judge by the Sun-Ra-meets-Terry-Riley-in-a-cheap-bar intro and the intergalactic chord progression that follows. It has kind of a 1967 feel, although played on 1980’s technology. I hear hints of The Steve Miller Band’s Children of the Future, which I’ve always loved, but that’s about it. I like the waltz-time segment in the middle - perfect music for a zero-g roller-rink.
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While I was doing radio at WMFO I got my first exposure to vocalese - a style of singing where lyrics are written to jazz melodies, including previously improvised solos. This was pioneered by artists like Eddie Jefferson, King Pleasure and Lambert, Hendricks & Ross in the 1950’s. The group that I heard first was Rio Nido - a contemporary (at the time) band whose second album, Hi-Fly, was very much in the style of Lambert, Hendricks & Ross.
At any rate, in the late ‘80’s I decided to try my hand at writing lyrics to some of my favorite jazz tunes. I didn’t have access to jazz musicians, obviously, so I wound up just singing over the original recordings. The first one was John Coltrane’s recording of “Soul Eyes”. I didn’t actually tackle any of the solos (and in fact I’ve edited out a big chunk of them to make the piece more song-like in structure - please forgive the sacrilege) but I stuck pretty close to Coltrane’s variations on the melody:
Soul Eyes
Your eyes are aglow,
but is it love that they show?
And when I look within, will I have to begin
to understand my surrender was planned -
while the touch of your hand
leaves me helpless?
And your dark eyes, so near,
seem to say just what I want to hear.
But can I ever believe
in the silent enchantment I’ve let you weave
around my heart, with such an effortless art?
I’ll play my part
just as though I’ll ever know
the soul within those eyes.
Why did I look in those eyes? Don’t tell me, I know:
I’m only weeping for what I’ve sown.
I can tell myself that I’m absurd,
that I’m cured,
that I will leave as soon as I find the words.
But if I can’t stay, why do I pray
you won’t turn away those eyes.
Oh, those soulful eyes.
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Next I took on The Dave Brubeck Quartet’s “Take Five,” and using the title as a starting point I wrote an ode to taking life easy. Paul Desmond was such a lyrical sax player that it was comparatively easy to write lyrics to his solo. I actually tried writing lyrics to the drum solo as well but got bogged down and never finished, so that section has been edited down quite a bit.
By this time the studio had a half-inch, eight-track reel-to-reel, which made overdubbing a lot easier.
Here it is:
Take Five
Well, if you’re feelin’ in the mood where you know
hoein’ your row is no way to go,
and it’s more appealin’, then we could simply thrive
on bein’ alive. We can take five.
Let’s take off, ‘cause our business
is to shake off all our listlessness
and wake softly to is-ness.
That’s the way to spend our time.
And I really don’t care whose rat-race this is,
I know where that oasis is.
Let’s go where a glad face is not a crime.
If you’ve been noticin’ there’s more kinds of blues
loose in the news than you’d ever use,
let’s let a daydream float us into shores that revive.
Free from the jive, we can take five.
My, ain’t it good to know
there ain’t nowhere that we have to go?
So we can show our devotion
to life in slow motion,
in a groove like the ocean.
There’s no explanotion for
people who keep score instead of playin’.
It seems that the kind of dreams that they’re weavin’
ain’t the kind of dreams we’d ever believe.
What are they livin’ for?
So much more to explore - how do they manage to ignore
the sunshine that fills the air
with some wine that lets you dare
to unwind and live your share of your love affair with love.
Love.
Well, if you’re feelin’ in the mood where you know
hoein’ your row is no way to go,
and it’s more appealin’, then we could simply thrive
on bein’ alive. We can take five.
Let’s take off, ‘cause our business
is to shake off all our listlessness
and wake softly to is-ness.
That’s the way to spend our time.
And I really don’t care whose rat-race this is,
I know where that oasis is.
Let’s go where a glad face is not a crime.
It’s time we show the world the way hearts can sing,
and bring on the spring, so fling on your wings.
And then we’ll find each boy and girl a way to survive
when we all decide it’s time to take five.
We can take five. Let’s all take five. We can take five.
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Another lyrical salute to not working and not taking life too seriously (Do we notice an ongoing preoccupation here?), set to Oliver Nelson’s “Stolen Moments.” The rhyme-scheme for these lyrics just about killed me:
Stolen Moments
Stolen moments.
Take a walk in the dark early mornin’,
be the last one to catch a star.
Fill your eyes with the sky day is born in.
Play that day like a sweet guitar.
When you can’t find the rhyme, wastin’ time
stood in line, puttin’ shine on the dime,
then you’ll find that it’s time
to let go, ‘cause you know what you’ve got’s not worth what
these stolen moments are.
Take a breath and forget where you’re going,
tell your shoes they can do no wrong.
Throw a sneeze to the breeze that’s blowin’ *
while a smile goes where it belongs.
When you’ve fled to your bed ‘cause you dread
playin’ dead in your head for the bread,
cut that thread or instead
watch your gray, busy day turn to rust. Then it’s just
another moment gone.
And then in your eyes that quiet desperation is gonna start to grow.
You know it’s so.
Why must everything we feel have to kneel,
or hide behind the faces that we show?
A life designed with peace of mind
is worth a try.
Or spend your life waiting to live
and watching as you die inside.
And you’re not alone - it’s not unknown
to try to own a piece of what nobody has.
Everybody must play their part
until it’s clear to them that there’s an art
of living that steers off the chart.
Then what could be as near to your heart
as stolen moments?
Take the sound all around you and hear it
turn to music that moves your heart.
There’s a song comin’ on, don’t ya hear it
shoutin’ out for your life to start?
When you’ve seen that the greed to exceed
what you need’s not the key, set it free.
Climb a tree next to me.
Then we’ll share all the rare
kinds of bliss that we miss
in moments spent apart.
Take your time, I’ll take mine. So together
we’ll have more time than most folks to
watch the streams of our dreams flow together,
let them get where they’re goin’ to.
‘Cause we know that the show has been goin’ on
so long that nobody knows when it’s s’posed to be over.
Suppose it should close. Let the clocks leave in flocks.
We’ll be the one who knew
these stolen moments too.
Stolen moments.
(*If I ever record this song again I’ll change this particular line to, “Watch the trees dance the breeze that’s blowin’...”)
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