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Posted on November 1, 2017 by j.g.lewisLeave a comment

When it published The 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time in 2005, Rolling Stone magazine proclaimed Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band the absolute best. The 1967 album by The Beatles always had a wonderful reputation, but this was a pretty big thing.

Of course I bought the book, read it thoroughly, and re-discovered many of my all-time-favourites included in the list. I’ve gone back and read the thick volume, many times, and always there has been this persistent question: why is this album considered so good?

Further: why did I not own it?

I’ve owned thousands of albums over the years, and I’ve heard more than that. I’ve never questioned Rolling Stone album reviews in the decades I’ve listened to, and absorbed, rock and roll. Many times I’ve purchased LPs because the magazine, (music’s Bible, as far as I’m concerned) has piqued my curiosity. Rarely has the magazine steered me wrong.

I like all genres of music and, as I grew older, was never afraid of embracing new styles, new directions, and new artists. So why, in the 50 years Sgt. Pepper’s has been in the cultural marketplace, have I never purchased this album?

I’ll make mention that I’ve never really been a Beatles fan. Yes, of course, there are a few of the band’s tunes that have fallen into my personal top 500 (Hey Jude and Helter Skelter immediately come to mind) but, overall, the Fab Four have never fared well for me.

You see, my Mom had a few Beatles albums. I specifically recall the red and blue albums with her signature on the front of the cover, as if she was staking claim on the band, or the album, as her personal property. I guess I was alright with that as, realistically, the Beatles were before my time. When Sgt. Pepper’s was released, Tubby The Tuba was probably my favorite album at the time, or any of my brother’s Herman’s Hermits or Monkees discs. Or I was content with the radio.

I didn’t really get seduced by any of the Beatles post-break-up solo work until Paul McCartney’s Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey started playing on AM radio. Admittedly, I became more of a Paul McCartney and Wings fan. I even enjoyed Ringo’s albums and George Harrison, to an extent, but never paid much attention to John Lennon’s work.

I began wondering more about Sgt. Pepper’s this past summer as word of the album’s 50th anniversary (and the upcoming digital remastering) crept into every newsfeed on the planet. I guess I honestly had to see for myself what the fuss was all about, so I bought a used copy of the CD (what’s another six bucks on another album?).

Sgt. Pepper’s became my road music throughout the summer. I’ve listened to the disc, many times, front to back during long commutes or leisurely drives to somewhere or another. Then I forgot about it for a while, but popped it into the player on the drive home last weekend.

It’s hard to get your head around an album that carries such fanfare. It’s difficult to listen to it, out of context, and appreciate its mind-blowing sense of sonic reality. I can only imagine how amazing it would have been for a Beatles fan to place the fresh vinyl on a turntable for the very first time.

I can even imagine how it might have seemed better had I experienced the music in my teenage years and listened to it before I had listened to thousands, and thousands, of other albums. For its time, the production, the arrangements and experimentation, would have been amazing. Then.

It has taken time, but the album has grown on me.

It is so obvious how long-time producer George Martin was, essentially, the fifth member of the group. Martin’s influence – not just strings, but full orchestration – is astounding. This album, with its studio tricks, techniques and technology – and this is total hindsight – has influenced engineers and producers in the five decades since.

You cannot consider albums like Supertramps’s Crime of the Century, 10 cc’s The Original Soundtrack, Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon without giving a nod to the magic of this album.

There, right there, is the reason why the album is questionably the best: it inspired. Sgt. Pepper’s showed musicians, and producers, that limits and boundaries could go further than ever imagined. This was when the possibilities of multi-track recording showed potential.

I finally got it.

This, if for only this reason, is why Sgt. Pepper’s is so amazing, and may well be the greatest album of all time.

I’m not going to bother really commenting on the album’s tracks in terms of strength. I will say that the instrumentation and orchestration made some of the weaker tunes sound stronger than they were, but you cannot discount the imploringly endearing She’s Leaving Home, or the stunning Day In The Life (truly one of the greats).

As I listen to the disc, and have over and over, I can easily see how people older than I would be (and probably still are) in awe of the disc. I can see how this was a major step forward for rock and roll music, from a solid pop band at the top of its game. I totally get the production value and the album’s place in history.

I can even say I have a greater appreciation for The Beatles.

This disc has grown on me in ways I never imagined. I can say it’s good, I will even say it is great, but I still can’t say it is the greatest album ever.

The album was before my time, but it has improved every album since.

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Posted on October 25, 2017 by j.g.lewisLeave a comment

Last week, or last night, or the one before, the
mind-numbing silence raging above sirens, a lyric, or
spouse’s snore, a greater noise than a stream of words.
The life of a poet stretched out to the last stanza.
No longer.
News in the mourning. Not an everyday death. Not
a delinquent child, or deviant mind, trying to fit in, nor
the useless corpse bleeding out in a suburban mall
parking lot. Snuffed-out lives, intended target or otherwise,
the guns, the knives.
Collateral damage we hear on the radio each morning,
as we drive to work, as we try to survive another day.
Street crime, sign of the times, taken for granted.
Death, each day, over and over, and over.
Wilful violence.
This death was different, even expected. A musician
who sang for everyman, as he was himself. A father,
a friend, one we would come to know because his art
allowed more. It went further. He found a purpose
in his calling.
Who will now speak for a generation stuck between
nostalgia and this undefined future. Who will soothe
heaving hearts with the melody required. Illusions
of someday. Each day. Whether we know it
or not.
Cries of anguish above streetlights, beyond sidewalks
littered with deceit and dog shit, or forests brimming
with autumn’s glow. The final hours yet to show as moon
glow, stardust and daily drama, mix with the harsh realities
of hatred.
Undisputed ignorance clashes with brittle indifference.
You can say, and I will believe, this world of violence
has become an extreme. Yet it does not take away from
the efforts to sustain; to fill our lungs with the promise
of another day.
We tolerate as we try, complicit in persistent existence,
to continue moving forward. We all brave on, each
waking hour, defying the only true certainty known
in this life. Death awaits. May we be blessed to
greet it kindly.
©2017 j.g. lewis

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Posted on October 18, 2017 by j.g.lewisLeave a comment

Meditation, the art or the practice, is simply not working for me.

I have tried; damn I’ve tried, but as I sit, as I try to silence the mind and find this eternally elusive stillness, I often end up thinking my time spent meditating is unproductive if not counterproductive.

I try.

I turn on the salt lamp, light a candle (sometimes), burn incense (more than a lot) turn off the music or the radio, and try to tune out all that surrounds me. Sometimes on the floor, other times in a chair or bench, I sit with my thoughts – the profound, the profane, the questionable and the mundane – and try to channel my mind towards a place of purpose.

Of course I have a mantra, a gift I received when I was about 17, and of course I use it. And for a while it provides a focus.

For a while.

Then as I’m sitting as calm as I can be, another thought; a greater thought or a deeper thought (a random thought) pulls me away from my intended silence and I’m no longer sitting passively. Perhaps the interruption is a reflection of the day, or a scene from last winter, or a passage I read ages ago, a vision of Joni Mitchell, or any number of people or memories that travel through my headspace, and my intention has suddenly been hijacked.

My meditation turns into 15 minutes (more or less) of sitting and staring at a smouldering candle. I get down on myself, for this is time I could be using any number of ways. I’ve got stuff to do, things to write, or commitments to tend to.

There’s the regular stuff to take care of, finding time in between work and words, and sleep. Of course I’ve got to find time for exercise, and to eat, and to tend to the people you mutually rely upon to keep life on its fulcrum.

So my meditation becomes more like incidental contemplation. This frustrates me, more than anything, because I’m not sure I want my attempts to meditate to turn into one of those things I sort of leave behind (I’m a Gemini; we do that). I’ve got a beautiful set of fairly-new Tarot cards I once saw a purpose in, and I studied the cards with great intensity (as Geminis tend to do) and they now look nice on the book shelf. They sit idle.

That’s not like me.

I’m impatient. I’m not one to sit still, I never have been. Even in yoga, I have trouble with the extended savasanah in the middle of the class, the break where you are supposed to let thoughts flow through you like your breath. I can’t. There’s always something else on my mind, even just the next posture.

I had tried transcendental meditation years and years ago. I remember very little, except my mantra.

I do think, regularly. I contemplate, foster ideas, and compose thoughts that grow into poetry, or essays, or excuses.

I have even developed a practice at the end of the day where I will lay in bed, breath consciously, and take internal inventory, slowly allowing the thoughts to slow to a trickle. Some people may simply call this falling asleep, but I believe it is more purposeful. I believe I’m actually emptying my mind so I may find stillness, and – insomnia be damned – perhaps enter the most meditative state of the day. That’s my rationalization, and I’m sticking to it.

But meditation, the sitting-cross-legged-and-sitting-totally-still-type-of -meditation, is not working for me. Maybe I’m not cut out for this kind of inner peace. Maybe just sitting with volume of poems is enough for me to calm my mind for a stanza or too. Maybe letting my head follow the flow of Mahler, or Kernis, or any one of a number of Yo Yo Ma compact discs is enough to relax me.

Maybe this weakness, this inability to settle right down, is not a weakness, but a strength. I just need to fully figure out how to use it.

I admire those who can, daily, for more than 15 minutes at a time, sit and sort out details, or accept themselves, or think of whatever they do that provides the balance and the bounty they require. I’m not so sure that is me.

I’m feeling it’s not as important to meditate as it is to find a practice that gets you thinking about something. Some people may find a contemplative walk is enough, others may get caught up in the rhythm of long distance running, or the intense concentration of power lifting, or archery.

Give your mind the time to do what it needs to do. Do what you need to do.

Find your peace wherever you are, however you can, and more importantly, whenever you are able to.

©2017 j.g. lewis