Blind by Deep Purple: Issa's Sunday Service, #78

I could have never foreseen when I started this series a year and a half ago that, among the first 78 songs to be featured, two would come from the group Deep Purple's self-titled album third album.  Even if that would be the case, why not simply feature songs by other groups that haven't made it on to the Jukebox instead of dipping in the well a 2nd time so early on?

Here's the reason:

I got super busy about a month ago (2 poetry sessions for life-long learners teach - one on haiku, one on Robert Frost - two poetry readings to give, 1 session of 3 Poems by discussion group to participate in, and one lecture at the local library school - all within a span of 3 weeks!) and decided that, since the trusty IPod has over 12k worth of tunes and I often listen on shuffle, I would choose tunes that chose themselves.  In other words, if a Litrock tune got in my face or, more specifically, my ears, that would be the week's selection.  Since I listen to anywhere from 60 to 90 tunes every week walking to and from work, it seemed like a low stress, serendipitous approach to selection.

A go-with-the-flow method, if you will.

This week's tune wasn't even on my Excel list of 400 plus (and still counting - I'm always open to suggestions, folks) Litrock songs, so it was a bonus.

"Blind" is a cut from the days before Deep Purple became hard rock gods - a much more interesting, if decidedly less successful time.   Not that they couldn't rock out - listen to the lead guitar over the wonderful harpsichord on this cut to catch a glimpse of what was right around the corner for this group.  I realize this is hardly a popular pick (with tons of Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave, U2, Pink Floyd, Dylan etc to go) but there you go - I didn't pick it, it picked itself.

The Litrock connection I noticed first was the use of the word "poet" and that was going to be enough for me until the myth of Daedalus and Icarus jumped out - it was a forest for the trees situation upon my first listening.

In any case, I have to say if ever there was a great lost Art Rock or Litrock album, this particular one by Deep Purple is it.  And don't take my word for it; just in case you didn't get a chance to click through to the all music guide's review above, let me pull a succinct quote: "This is one of the most bracing progressive rock albums ever."   Plus, it's not everyday that two Hieronymus Bosch artworks appear on this blog at the same time.

I have to say I may go to this well once or twice more time before the Sunday Service wraps up.

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This week's featured poems come from Lilliput Review #116, from March 2001.  Any day with Albert Huffstickler is a good day.  And it certainly is a lot easier to ponder the winsome, wayward vagaries of a fruit fly in mid-November than later August, at least in this neck of the woods.

Enjoy.

    It's good to be
    cold somedays,
    good to feel
    the skin tingle,
    to remember
    how vulnerable
    we are to weather,
    how we and the
    air interpentrate
    each other.

Albert Huffstickler

A fruit fly found me

up seven flights of marble staircases

one crooked hallway

inside a huge cavernous room

under a wooden beamed ceiling

in room

with one tomato.

Kathleen Serocki

And Master Issa:

blindly following
the setting sun...
a frog

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

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April: Issa's Sunday Service, #38

For those familiar with the group Deep Purple, their selection in the LitRock category might be a head scratcher: isn't this the head banging, hard rock, heavy metal band of "Smoke on the Water" and "Space Truckin'"? And right you would be, 70's classic rock mavens. However, Deep Purple started out a bit differently and this cut is probably the apex of that difference: a near 13 minute suite that combines rock, pop-rock, heavy classical, and, yeah, literary pretensions, the later being used in the strictly non-judgmental sense. This after all was the edge of experimentation; rock operas, suites, the cross-pollination of genres, album length songs etc. Here is their intro to the piece from the liner notes:

A sort of 3 part concert about the month of April. The first
section is played by just Jon and Ritchie. Jon played piano
and organ, and Ritchie played acoustic guitar (a rhythm
pattern and a double tracked lead pattern) and electric
guitar. The choir was added afterwards. The whole section
used about 11 different tracks. Also Ian on timpani can be
heard in the background. The second section is Jon's
orchestral description of April. The instruments used were:
two flutes, two oboes, cor anglais, two clarinets, two violins,
viola and two cellos. The third section is a treatment of the
chord sequence of the first section in a more "Purple" way.
As a whole, we hope April hangs together as personal
evocation of a beautiful, but sad (to us) month.

And the lyric (which, be forewarned, does not kick in until around the 8:45 or so mark):



April

April is a cruel time
Even though the sun may shine
And world looks in the shade as it slowly comes away
Still falls the April rain
And the valley's filled with pain
And you can't tell me quite why
As I look up to the grey sky
Where it should be blue
Grey sky where I should see you
Ask why, why it should be so
I'll cry, say that I don't know

Maybe once in a while I'll forget and I'll smile
But then the feeling comes again of an April without end
Of an April lonely as they come
In the dark of my mind I can see all too fine
But there is nothing to be done when I just can't feel the sun
And the springtime's the season of the night

Grey sky where it should be blue
Grey sky where I should see you
Ask why, why it should be so
I'll cry, say that I don't know
I don't know

The literary allusion here is, of course, to Eliot's "The Waste Land" and its infamous opening line: "April is the cruelest month ..." It is amazing that this song has stayed with me for 40 years. The lyric itself is feather light, but the striving for something else in the rock medium is not and, I believe, they pulled it off in a way so many genre bending/blending experiments did not. The album from which this comes is the self-titled third album, "Deep Purple," the original cover of which was a detail from the Hieronymus Bosch painting "Garden of Earthly Delights," pictured above (It now inexplicably looks like this.) Bosch, you probably know, is responsible for the Lilliput logo at the top right of this page. Some of the rest of the album has some LitRock connections: "Why Didn't Rosemary? (Ever Take the Pill)" rather glibly alluding to the then culturally resonant Ira Levin book, Rosemary's Baby, and the successful Roman Polanski movie adaptation, and the cut "The Painter," referencing both art and writing.

And, because we are here, an odd bit of business: a mashup of T. S. Eliot reading the opening section of The Wasteland" (Burial of the Dead) with an excerpt from the biopic about Joy Division lead singer, Ian Curtis, entitled Control:






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This week's poem comes from issue #59, in August 1994, 5 other poems from which may be found in this post. This one is from the inimitable Albert Huffstickler, on one of his favorite subjects: rain.

Grey Rain Day

Grey rain day in Austin, Texas.
The soul slips in and out,
never straying far
as though fearing the rain might catch it.
I dream over coffee,
something in the back of my mind,
some final perfect thought
that eludes me finally,
slipping away
into the grey rain air.

Albert Huffstickler

And from that other master of the elements, Issa:




the winter rain
dumps and dumps...
Buddha in the field

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don