Crippled and Creative, Il Volo's Grande Amore and Bob Cowsill-Inspired Art

FINALLY – Il Volo released a new cd – I might even call this a mini-cd, as it only has 7 songs on it – recorded to be released in conjunction with their triumph in San Remo.  I hear that the version released in Italy has even more songs on it – and, to my dismay – the version of this on Amazon is sold out already!!  How is that possible?

The centerpiece of the cd is, of course, Grande Amore, winner of the 2015 San Remo Festival – I would also tell you who wrote the song, except this Amazon Prime cd download doesn’t have liner notes with it!  I’ll update once I have the cd in hand, and my apologies to the songwriter for not crediting him or her where due.

I think the guys just found their signature song .... to replace their original signature song, which was "O Sole Mio" ... a classic, to be sure, but I think it just got supplanted by this one.  A soaring, passionate, soul-stirring, absolutely magnificent song – as sung by three of the world’s most magnificent voices.  I’ve been sitting here, listening to it over and over again, totally in love with the song, the lyrics, the incredible passion of the delivery, the performance, the recording ... all of it.  Those guys just nailed this song.  Completely.

This is going to be a global blockbuster ... everywhere except the U.S. of course, because we are the world’s most ridiculous, arrogant, self-absorbed bunch of musically illiterate yahoos on the entire planet, unable to hear a word not sung in English without having a nervous breakdown ... all I can say is, thank goodness for the internet.  No, really.  I’s a lot of things, but mostly, it enabled those of us who long ago realized that mainstream American music was heading straight for the proverbial toilet, to escape the horror of it, and surround ourselves with actual MUSIC that lifted us into the stratosphere, where music was at its finest.

And there they are, from the Billboard International chart (digital):  #1 already, a week after the performance in San Remo.  And I would imagine that it will go viral in all of Europe, South America, Mexico ... all over the place.

Except here.  Because we just love wallowing in our own self-righteous idiocy and narcissism, and love drowning in the hideous crap this country produces and, in their feeblemindedness, tries to call label “music”.  It isn’t.  Never was.  Never will be.

So, way to go, Il Volo ...!  Grande Amore is absolutely awesome, and the entire rest of the world knows it.

The entertaining part of it is watching them on You Tube confront in their own country the same hysteria we saw in South America in 2013 – the screaming girls, the huge crowds of people – and Italy was pretty much the last country to recognize them, really – Italy tends to celebrate everyone else EXCEPT for their own native sons.  But they finally broke the Italian trend, and are now superstars in their own country – which I think is entertaining to watch.  Suffice it to say they are having a lot of fun over there, right now.  And hopefully, for my own listening pleasure, let’s hope they release a full-sized recording one of these days.  Seven songs just isn’t enough.

Moving on ... I went for the “legal tasering” – my term for the EMG, possibly one of the most sadistic, painful medical tests they can inflict on anybody – and I was so not looking forward to it. 

By way of keeping myself entertained and distracted, I’d been designing and making a new textile art wall hanging  based on “We Can Fly” - #2 in my stolen “Women With Wings” series ... my way of processing this supposed “Causa Equina Syndrome” the neurologist thinks I have – and the walking issues I definitely have. 

I am assuming the rest of my patterns and partially made textile art pieces were in the North Andover storage room, and now reside in the Salisbury storage room ... so until I can dig those back out, I’ve been creating new ones.  I can think of no better way to distract myself than creative endeavors, at the moment.  I finally bound my older “The Guitarist In-Between ” ... based on the famous quote from Federico Fellini: 

“What is an artist? A provincial who finds himself somewhere between a physical reality and a metaphysical one…. It’s this in-between that I’m calling a province, this frontier country between the tangible world and the intangible one—the realm of the artist.”

Yes, guess who THAT is named for – or, actually, dedicated to, I should say.  I dedicated it after watching him play “Rescue”, because that moment was so awesome it was truly a depiction of the interpretive creative process, at its core – the ability to tap into the unfathomable and create beauty from the ethereal.  I started that thing back in the 1980’s; have been carrying it around, unfinished, since then.  I’m astonished I finally got it done.  Not sure what will happen to that after I’m gone, but he will be immortalized on it, at least:  on his own, musically and lyrically and now also ... quilt-istically?

Today – a full moon in Virgo.  I reached the point with this medical issue that I needed direction.  Decided to tap into my subconscious with the Thoth deck.  Imagine my surprise when the final two cards I drew were both “Magus” cards.  Said, “Huh?”  Looked it up.  Apparently, there are a few decks which have three Magus cards instead of one – mine was apparently one of them.  The additional two cards were rejects by Crowley; considered novelty items in the deck, not part of the deck itself.  Usually, the Magus card had stood for Mr. Signpost – not sure what the two of them in succession meant, in this context.  I now associate him with both sigils and direction, so wondered if that’s where the reading was going.  I wasn’t sure what sigils would be useful, however.

And on to the sonnet cycle.  Experienced a huge burst of inspiration on that as well and went from stanza 3 to stanza 7 in a matter of days.  Not sure what all is happening with me – crippled and yet creatively fulfilled, at the same time?  What is that all about?

 I leave you with “The Time Has Come”, with Paul Cowsill singing lead for a change of pace.  Also:  Waddy Wachtel, John Cowsill of the Beach Boys on drums, Barry Cowsill in the hat and blue shirt on guitar, in one of his last appearances, and Susan Cowsill singing harmony vocals.

Back from Vacation

At long last I was on vacation ... a real vacation, unlike the four day frantic packing and unpacking “vacation” when I moved here at the end of April.  I finally made my way to the beach, after a few days packed with a barrage of thunderstorms rolled through ... although I had made the mistake of trying to investigate a useful spot one hot and sunny afternoon (Saturday, I think it was) and had never seen so much traffic in my life.  Took me forty-five minutes of stop & go bumper-to-bumper misery before I turned around and came home, vowing never to try THAT again.  Lesson learned:  mornings only!  (Which is what my skin tone prefers anyway, as prone as it is to sunburn.)

I’ve never lived at oceanside before, so was thrilled when something unusual (for me, anyway) happened:  it is a beautiful sunny morning, cool and breezy.  The beach was fairly deserted at that hour (9:15 am) and I had enjoyed wading in the water, strengthening my legs and core by walking through the pleasant waves ... back and forth.  All of a sudden I looked out to sea and saw a huge fogbank out near the horizon.  Next thing I knew, the bank had rolled onshore, and I couldn’t see the people 15 feet away from me.  The sun was still shining down on me; the fog was all at ground level, and you know me and fog – I love fog.  It always feels like a cool, enveloping blanket to me.  It was such a wonderful experience, although I’m sure it happens fairly regularly.  I’d just never experienced a ground level fog bank rolling in off the ocean like that, on a clear sunny day.

I was just thinking, “This feels like being embraced by the universe,” when I looked down at my feet only to find a sparkling, flat stone shaped like a heart laid directly in my path.  Welcome to the seaside, it said to me.  At last, I was where I was supposed to be.

And yet ... I spent a measly two hours that morning in an awesomely sunny fog bank and still had a sunburn by morning's end - again!  Go figure.  I decided I’d stay out of the sun the next day and try to recover.  Of course I didn’t listen to myself.

The next day, I took one of my periodic tumbles in an incoming wave I wasn’t expecting – rolled around in the surf for a few minutes, and was forced to take a day away from the beach recovering from the resulting bumps, bruises and scrapes.

The next weekend, I ventured further out and had a wonderful time swimming.  In fact, I had such a  wonderful time, swimming around and diving into waves, I lost all track of time ... with the expected results – sunburn on top of fading sunburn. I finally took my own warnings seriously, and sat at home avoiding sulking by listening to Juan Diego Florez.  Well, maybe one of these days, my skin will toughen up and I won’t be so sunburn prone.

While I recovered, moaning and groaning, I also re-re-discovered The Cowsills.  For those who don't know who they are:  they had started out as four brothers from Rhode Island with dreams of being  a brilliant r&b, rock band – (“who, the Cowsills?”, “Yes, THEM!”) – for those unfamiliar with them, they were the family who inspired the Partridge Family television show.I had re-discovered them for the first time after a documentary done about them; now I discovered they were on You Tube.

Once they’d gotten various monkeys off their backs ... and by monkeys I’m referring to the idiots in their various record companies, and their abusive, fist-wielding, mentally unstable baronet of a father ... the rock music began to force its way back out of the bubblegum pop veneer they had been forced to wear; Barry and Bill, when they weren’t battling demons you can trace back to childhood terrors their father inflicted on them, turned out some really astounding hard rock songs that knock your socks off.  Bob, who was forced to take over as lead singer when their father fired Bill (their brilliant lead singer on such songs as “The Rain, the Park and Other Things” for saying he smoked pot) became a solid lead and still is.  And even Susan has turned out some memorable songs with her Susan Cowsill Band.

I went out and bought every Cowsill album I could find and had been wallowing in them.  Now I was able to see them on You Tube performing the songs I only heard on the radio back in the day.  The more I listened to them, the more I thought that, had they been able to sing the material they actually wanted to arrange and sing, they would have shot themselves directly into the musical stratosphere and stayed there.

I found a current version of one of their hits, performed in 2004 or thereabouts, when Barry Cowsill was still alive (he drowned in Hurricane Katrina, 2005) – they still sound awesome.  That's Bob singing lead vocals (brother Bill, who sang lead on the original song, was desperately ill; they're performing a benefit concert for him); Barry is in the hat, Paul is on the keyboards, and for any Beach Boys fans out there, yes, that's brother John Cowsill, drummer for the Beach Boys, on the drums in the rear.  Susan wasn't on the original song, but has taken over the lyrics sung by both Barry and John, when they were boys.  Barry now has taken over Bob's role, who has taken over for Bill.  Following all that?  And yet, despite all of that role switching, they sound exactly the same as they did when the single first exploded up the charts.

That discovery led to Barry’s gorgeous version of “Going Home” (have no idea when he wrote that), and the Cowsill album “Global” which came out in 2009 ...  in fact, they are probably one of the most underrated bands of the 60’s.  Its surreal, spiritual quality comes from its creation after his death; Louise Palanker had created a documentary on them, from which this was taken.  I love this performance – he looks so happy.





But back to Il Volo, who, by the way, recently dashed over to Mexico and performed before a monstrous crowd of 25,000 people in Chihuahua, after winning the Latin Billboards “Best Album” award for “Mas Que Amor”/”We Are Love”.  Hell, I can still remember them performing before a crowd of 50 in a New York Barnes & Noble!  Their next accomplishment was a series of sold out concerts in Italy, who had ignored them for the most part – and then decided they wanted to join the rest of the world in loving the boys from Il Volo.  Taormina was their first Italian concert – a spellbinding performance before an adoring home crowd.  The world is waiting breathlessly for their next album.

And The USA is still listening to relentless crap.

Speaking of music, I had the strangest experience a few days ago – all of a sudden a song popped into my head.  I realize that in itself isn’t strange at all – what was strange was the fact that I hadn’t sung this song since I was probably 7 or 8 years old, I sang it maybe one or two times (at summer camp) and it isn’t a well known song, so I’m quite sure I hadn’t heard it since then.  It just appeared, full-blown, with all lyrics intact, in my head.

    I'll sing you twelve, ho

    Green grow the rushes, ho

    What are your twelve, ho?

    Twelve for the twelve Apostles

    Eleven for the eleven who went to heaven,

    Ten for the ten commandments,

    Nine for the nine bright shiners,

    Eight for the April Rainers,

    Seven for the seven stars in the sky,

    Six for the six proud walkers,

    Five for the symbols at your door,

    Four for the Gospel makers,

    Three, three, the rivals,

    Two, two, the lily-white boys,

    Clothèd all in green, ho

    One is one and all alone

    And evermore shall be so.

Other things I’ve been doing in this period of uncharacteristic silence:  had the pleasure of attending a lecture by Raven Grimassi; had to apply for my own job at work and created a video presentation for it, lost my iPod (now THAT was a disaster), have to create another presentation for a kumbahyah event in September, had my dvd player in the television stop working and had to buy a new television, even though the TV works perfectly; am facing our final exam for my first year as a student of witchcraft and an initiation ceremony; so far, everyone in the WC1 class is planning to continue in WC2; I suspect I’ll decide to join them.

And, while all of that was going on, I had a blood test come back with problems.  You don’t want to know what the problem is, but I was not happy when they told me.  I hate not being healthy.