Tuesday, June 05, 2007
Royal Houses
The big band secret I never heard
was 15 or 20 musicians
at the front of a cavernous hall
in 1939
a crowd of kids pushing against the stage
others dancing behind
as the noise bounces off the walls
the people & it echoes
& the echoes echo
one band one instrument
a gasoline-powered sound machine
But now we're going to war
it's the last dance gentleman
please return to your units
& we can't possibly lose
because we sure know how to build 'em
so we're building 'em by the thousands
When the war ended
everything was obsolete
the B-29s & 78 revolutions
of beautiful things
took their time going
but they're gone now
& won't be coming back
(1980?)
**
Kings, Dukes & Counts. Big band music "coming back" was a woeful, hopeless litany of many in my parents' generation. Of course, it came back. Everything in pop culture comes back & coexists now. Rock & roll wasn't an antidote to big bands, but to "How Much Is That Doggy In the Window?" & "Three Coins In A Fountain."
When my stepfather, a working class guy from Bayonne, mentioned girls putting on bobby sox & them all piling into a car & driving up Pompton Turnpike to a show at the legendary Meadowbrook Ballroom, middle-class mom testily said, "Bah, we all wore stockings when we went there!"
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
was 15 or 20 musicians
at the front of a cavernous hall
in 1939
a crowd of kids pushing against the stage
others dancing behind
as the noise bounces off the walls
the people & it echoes
& the echoes echo
one band one instrument
a gasoline-powered sound machine
But now we're going to war
it's the last dance gentleman
please return to your units
& we can't possibly lose
because we sure know how to build 'em
so we're building 'em by the thousands
When the war ended
everything was obsolete
the B-29s & 78 revolutions
of beautiful things
took their time going
but they're gone now
& won't be coming back
(1980?)
**
Kings, Dukes & Counts. Big band music "coming back" was a woeful, hopeless litany of many in my parents' generation. Of course, it came back. Everything in pop culture comes back & coexists now. Rock & roll wasn't an antidote to big bands, but to "How Much Is That Doggy In the Window?" & "Three Coins In A Fountain."
When my stepfather, a working class guy from Bayonne, mentioned girls putting on bobby sox & them all piling into a car & driving up Pompton Turnpike to a show at the legendary Meadowbrook Ballroom, middle-class mom testily said, "Bah, we all wore stockings when we went there!"
