Operation 365... Blog 297

Operation 365 - Jefferson Jay - Archives - 303 Don Truesdail "Hello Nancy" - 10-27-08
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBhdSGAv_KE


What a pleasure it is to teach. Actually teaching people stuff is a rewarding feeling like no other. Unfortunately what I often do is babysit students who have no desire whatsoever to be in the room, much less try to learn anything. At that point, it's still a job, but a far different one than the title, teacher, would indicate. The reason I write this here is because Don was a teacher too. He and I spent may hours discussing the pros and cons of the profession and all involved in trying to break into it.

Good intentions typically get beat out of you within your first few years trying to break into the business. It is a business, like any other, and petty politics and negative nellies conspire to drain all the love from what you once thought was such a righteous and upstanding ideal. This is life. Don sings about his sort of perversion of morality in many of his songs. He didn't like it. He didn't accept it. Like many of us, he was forced to work around us and like very few of us, he did something to fight back against these insidious norms.

What he did was he wrote songs. He detailed all kinds of things that he thought were not right. And he was an artist about. He told through stories, through characters. He told with a sarcastic smile and he told it, irate at the injustice. It was all under control though. It was music. These were songs. Where would songwriters be without them? In jail? Homeless? Insane? They are gifts for our subconscious and from our subconscious to the world They come out of us when whatever's in there can't stay inside us anymore.

Don was a hero 'cause he did this. So may people just accept they things they can't stand about the world. resigned to do whatever it is they feel they have to to get by. Getting by is a bare minimum. Life, like these songs, is a gift and even when there is crap clogging the roads, we need to get out and walk, or drive, or build a tank to get down these roads with a smile and a purpose, or otherwise, how is life worth living?

Don is a hero to me, personally, 'cause I know him as a man. I know how loving, clever, protective, and thorough he was. Extremely well-intentioned to. I look up to him and follow his example every day. Don is hero to the rest of the world because because he excavated his mind and heart and soul to share his cares, concerns, thoughts and feeling with the rest of the world as well. He could have just kept it to himself. No, he couldn't. He was songwriter and not just any songwriter, but The Parlor City Bard. My man, Truesy-Wuesy!

I wrote that whole rant at school, before I even knew which song Don played. Hello Nancy" was Don's closer at The Athenaeum Music and Arts Library in La Jolla, where this was filmed by Don's wife Nancy. It is the opener on Don's 1st CD, "Dasvidanya Binghamton, Hello Nancy." It was also an opener, of sorts, and Don courtship of Nancy, as it was the first song he ever wrote for her. You can get your hands one of these at www.truesdailstudio.com. Nancy, a heroine in her own right, took up the enormous chore of producing Don's three full-length CDs since his passing. She and I have recently started working on Don's 3rd CD, "Schmoozetales." Their love and particularly they treated Nancy, both when she was and wasn't around, schools me daily and the way a woman should be treated. Without the time I spent so close to their life-affirming adoration, I highly doubt I would one year into a relationship with a woman I love so much.

Thanks again Don, for all the life lessons, all the good times, and all the schooling. Always.

Operation 365 - Jefferson Jay - Archives - 303 "How Will I Know?" - Whitney Houston
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inByIXvbAu4


wikipedia told me, "How Will I Know?" is really by "George Merrill and Shannon Rubicam, the song was originally intended for Janet Jackson, but she passed on it. Houston then recorded the song with altered lyrics and production from Narada Michael Walden." I wanted to make sure they got proper credit.

One of the trickier conundrums in covering love songs is the whole "he" and "she" thing. A woman sings a song, she says "he," a guy sings a song, he says "she." As for me, well, these things confuse me, so sometimes I just sing the song however it goes. Once in awhile, I may change the pronouns, but then, the next thing you know, you're flipping he's and she's and saying both and making the whole ting even more confusing. So, for today's "How Will I Know," I stuck with "he."

It is probably the girl in me that made me like this song so much in 6th grade anyway. Those days, Chicago (80's weepy love song Chicago, not 70's cool horns Chicago), "We Built This City," and Billy Ocean's "When The Going Gets Tough," were my idea of awesome songs. "Mad About You," by Belinda Carlisle and "The Theme to St. Elmo's Fire (Man In Motion)" also really got me going, so I think you can see the theme here. I wasn't very bad-ass as a 12-year old.

Only on the 365, can you get The Ramones one day, and Whitney Houston the next. Here and only here. Now and only now. Enjoy it.

Operation 365 - Jefferson Jay - Originals - 303 "Smile, Child"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4OlWsdlTD4


I hit record today and I really liked what came out. C minor, Fm, Bb, G, I believe. "Smile, Child" was born. She is a positive child. To get through the days at school, sometime I read crap on the internet. Mostly, but not always, it is sports crap. Sometimes amidst the crap, I find a perspective worth absorbing. Today, somehow, that belonged to Brad Pitt. In an article that was probably only printed in the New York Post (Yankee coverage) because he (sort of) talked smack on Jennifer Aniston, Brad said this,

Pitt meanwhile talked at length about his activism with Jolie, including their adopting kids from around the world.
“I’ll tell you why: I hit the lottery -- the whole cliché of moving to Hollywood and getting paid silly amounts of money,’’ he said. “I’ve traveled the world and seen mothers and babies dying because they don’t have a 30-cent treatment that is available in industrialized nations.
“I feel like I have to share whatever I can. You’re culpable if you don’t act.”
Parade asked Pitt why he and Jolie adopted kids from Cambodia, Ethiopia and Vietnam instead of the United States.
“I can’t place the importance of one child over that of any other,” he replied. “I have seen children suffer far beyond what we experience in America -- like our oldest daughter [Zahara]. I know she would not be alive [if she hadn’t been adopted]. I know what care was available to her, and it was nil.
“I guess I just don’t see America as separate from Vietnam or Ethiopia.
“This mentality of our team’s better than yours -- it’s a high school idea. My kids don’t see those dividing lines, and I don’t want to either.”

I agree, with these statements, Brad. It's good someone as famous as you are, is saying them in public. If you want to read more, including all that Jennifer Aniston crap, go here, but I probably wouldn't bother. Maybe if you're really bored. http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/marriage_to_jen_the_pitts_brad_uR0t64ywfqUGX5wIWtEh3N#ixzz1YoHX4wQh

Interesting to me is the fact that Brad is talking 'cause his new movie "Moneyball," hits theaters today. "Moneyball" is the first movie coming out based on a book I actually read (In fairness, I think I only got to like, page 128) in roughly 15 years. You got me. I don't read books too much...

To speak the language of books or the language of the people of the world. It's a choice we all have to make. Be right or be now. You decide. Right now, I'm tired.