Back in November, I posted a brief narrative piece from the Moody Blues’ album Days of Future Passed, along with some thoughts on the album’s New Age underpinnings and its influence on me and on my novel The Ten Weeks.

A snatch of that narrative piece is a good way to note the sad passing of the album’s producer, Tony Clarke:

The record producer Tony Clarke was one of the architects of symphonic “prog rock” through his work with the Moody Blues. His production on the group’s album, Days of Future Passed (1967), and its hit single, Nights in White Satin, blended the sounds of an electric rock band with a symphony orchestra and came to be seen as a hugely influential landmark. He went on to work with the group on six more albums, helping them to become one of the most commercially successful bands of the era.

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Since this is the day we’re supposed to think about these things, I’m going to feature an album from The Ancient Star-Song that’s a favourite of mine: Choose Life, from the School Sisters of Notre Dame (in Mankato, MN.)

Since the album dates from 1976, I would think that, when they recorded the title track (which you can download here,) they were thinking about Roe v. Wade.

The thing that separates this album from a lot of the Catholic music of the era is the quality and complexity of the vocal arrangements.

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This is the last in the series of music videos from music alluded to in the novel The Ten Weeks. But it’s not a video: it’s a more prosaic “photo and sound clip” combo from a scene in the book combined with a brief excerpt from the Moody Blues’ Days of Future Passed.

This album is, IMHO, the best fusion of rock and symphonic music to come out of the 1960′s and 1970′s.  There were others that tried the same thing, and then there were those who performed classical music in a rock way (like Emerson, Lake and Palmer.)  But none of them quite pulled it off the way the Moodies did in on this album.

Below: the starry scene from the novel (with the planets conveniently annotated.)  You can click on the image for the audio clip, which comes from the first part of the album.

Thoughts on the Album, and the New Age Idea

Although released in 1967, I didn’t get this in my collection until 1974.  It’s always been an album that appealed the most in times when things weren’t going well (for a Christian album that serves a similar purpose, click here.)  That’s not an accident; Days of Future Passed is a very strong expression of what has come to be called “New Age philosophy,” more so than even the more explicit In Search of the Lost Chord.  That deserves an explanation.

One leitmotif in G.K. Chesterton’s work is his idea that Eastern religions are basically pessimistic at heart, a giant sigh of despair.  It’s too bad that this album wasn’t out at the time, because it’s as powerful of an illustration of that as one could want.  The choice of using a day as the framework for the album, although seemingly benign, only adds to the gloom.  It implies that life is a giant cycle, that we are trapped in an inescapable round that, instead of centuries or aeons, only lasts 24 hours per course.  Transferred to the daily life of the urban and suburban 1960′s UK, and one longs for a Chestertonian characterisation.  The lyrics only add to the impression, including those in the audio clip.

“New Age” philosophy, which was most in vogue in the 1960′s but still very much influences our culture, is derived from Eastern religions, and specifically those of India.  For all of the happy face that many of its practitioners put on, it’s still a message of despair, that we’re trapped in a cyclical round and round we can’t get out of, not any time soon at least (I’m thinking about the reincarnation cycle.)  Happiness needs to have a stronger basis in fact than just raw “belief” or “positive thinking.”  It needs an objective that is real and attainable.

I think that one reason why people in places where religion such as this have been predominant are turning to Jesus Christ is that he offers them a way out of the cycle of despair, and he can do the same for you.

As I said at the start, this ends the series of music alluded to (or perhaps shouted out) in The Ten Weeks. I trust that you have enjoyed it and hope you have a blessed Thanksgiving.

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This week, I’m going to veer away from the “Top 40″ stuff in this series of music alluded to in the novel The Ten Weeks.  And veer is a nice way to put it: it’s a video of Jethro Tull’s “A New Day Yesterday,” originally on their second album, Stand Up.

This live performance comes from Fillmore East in 1970, not only contemporaneous (more or less) with the novel’s setting, but probably with the same performers who made Stand Up (Ian Anderson of course, but also Martin Barre, Glenn Cornick and Clive Bunker (they also made the next album Benefit, but with the addition there of Jeffrey Hammond-Hammond.)

It’s fair to say that Jethro Tull dominated my gramophone for most of the first half of the 1970′s, as evidenced by posts like this:

• There Was A Rush Along the Fulham Road…
• Remembering the Anti-Moon Luddites
• Special to Jethro Tull Fans: When Prayers for Souls in Kentish Town Get Answered
• Selling Upward Mobility, Delivering Downward
• Thick as a Brick: Britain Approaches Bankruptcy
• Throwing the Minstrels Out of the House

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Continuing the “Top 40″ music alluded to in the novel The Ten Weeks is the Osmond Brothers’ “One Bad Apple.”

The Osmond Brothers were certainly the main “competitors” to the Jackson 5 at the time.  It’s interesting to note that, while the Osmonds were (and are) Mormons, the Jackson 5 were Jehovah’s Witnesses, and that makes an interesting “head to head.”

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The trip through the music alluded to in the novel The Ten Weeks will take a mellow turn this week with Gordon Lightfoot’s “If You Could Read My Mind.”  Lightfoot is the only Canadian represented in this list.

This is a relatively new performance, but this is still a very smooth and beguiling song and performer.

One general observation I’d like to make is that you hear the music from this era piped into malls and shopping centres and reperformed.  The first time I noticed this, I was in Boynton Beach, back in the 1990′s.  I thought, “has WQAM‘s signal bounced back from some far planet?”  But the reality is that this was a very creative era, and not just by really well-known groups such as the Beatles.

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This week’s music alluded to in the novel The Ten Weeks is Santana’s “Black Magic Woman,” a song that got a good deal of radio play at the time the novel is set.  But I’d like to digress a bit and use it to illustrate how academics (and I am one, part time at least) can be out of touch with reality.

My wife is an independent music teacher, has been for many years, and is a member of the Tennessee Music Teachers Association.  I usually travel with her to their annual meeting, which allows me to take in the piano recitals and other cultural events.  For the most part, music education in the U.S. (esp. at the collegiate level) is centred around what is improperly called “classical” music, even though that style of music is about 5% of what people actually listen to.

With the cultural events come the feeds.  (I mean the eating feeds, not the RSS ones.)  One year we were at one function where the opening entertainment was done by a member of the jazz faculty of the local university.  That was a nice treat, but at the end of the performance he had to excuse himself because he wanted to take his son to hear Carlos Santana.

One of my wife’s college faculty colleagues turned to me and asked, “Who’s Carlos Santana?”

The video below should explain it all…

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I’m taking my series of videos of music alluded to in the novel The Ten Weeks in a different direction this week with Smokey Robinson’s “Tears of a Clown,” a television performance that is very much from the time the song was released (and the setting for the novel too.)

But it brings up something I’ve wanted to do for a long time: a tribute to radio personality Paul Roberts.

I’ve lived in South-east Tennessee for over thirty years now, but as regulars to this site know I was raised mostly in South Florida.  One day I was driving around these hills listening to WGOW, our premier talk radio station in the area, and I heard a very mellifluous announcer named Paul Roberts reading the news.  I got one of those “déja-vu all over again” moments: where have I heard this guy before?  I racked my brain: maybe on another station here, or even maybe when my family first moved to Chattanooga in the early 1960′s.  Media personalities in this area tend to have longevity, so I thought I had heard him on another station here.

But not so: one day Roberts and some of his colleagues at the station were talking about the “old days,” which for Roberts went back further than others at the station.  Roberts was talking about his days in Miami, and then it hit me: I had heard him on the radio back home, and specifically on WQAM, which was one of America’s great “Top 40″ stations in the 1960′s and 1970′s.  (I know that a “great Top 40 station” is an oxymoron for many of us, but WQAM fit the bill.  That’s Paul at the left from his WQAM days, when he didn’t have to be the “old guy” at the station.)

It’s not very often that a living reminder of the “old country” comes my way, and a good one at that.  Paul Roberts was one of the most professional newscasters out there in any market, and Chattanooga was privileged to have him.

For those of us who heard him–either in the land “where the animals are tame and the people run wild” or here in the hills–it’s easy to say that now.  I was blessed to have  the chance to meet him and to tell him that personally.  Roberts continued to be on the radio almost up to the time of his death in April 2006, and this posting and the next few video postings that follow are in his memory.

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This week’s video relating to music alluded to in the novel The Ten Weeks is the Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”  In this case, the performance comes from their 1997-8 “Bridges to Babylon” tour, so they had come a long way from their heyday and the era of the novel.

But “Bridges to Babylon” is a good way to describe a lot of what was going on in the late 1960′s and early 1970′s, and some of the characters in the novel were busy building bridges of such a kind.

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This week’s video relating to music alluded to in the novel The Ten Weeks is Grand Funk Railroad’s “Closer to Home.”  It’s their performance of this classic in Shea Stadium, New York, on 9 July 1971.

On the album with the same name, the song ends with a very effective fade out.  Unfortunately, that couldn’t be replicated in concert.

In the novel, it’s mentioned right at the end of the book, but I’m not going to do a spoiler here.

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