DIG THIS WITH BILL MESNIK AND RICH BUCKLAND- THE SPLENDID BOHEMIANS
My Fellow Americans, Life is actually just a microscopic, deluded moment in time, so let's cut to the freakin' chase. One look at our impending election debacle can solidify my case. It has been my contention since birth, that the answer to every difficulty we encounter on this sacred yet demented Stone, can be revealed with ultimate clarity through the ultra neurotic engagements of Music, Art, Literature, Film, Poetry and a good Pastrami sandwich. Why would any sane human spend so must time on a film set (Do you know how long you gotta wait until your 8 second deliverance of an edited beyond repair line gets a chance to become a professional embarrassment etched in time forever? ) or expend so much energy in a recording studio, piecing together another ode to a man or woman who could not care less how much love existed within your digestive tract? It's all about hymns and prayers and a quest for mercy and forgiveness and silence and faith. We were blessed with Charles Bukowski, Gene Chandler, Lenny Bruce, Mitch Ryder and a legion of creative explorers whose influences provided the air we breathe. So Let's Dance! This site shall explore the reaper, find a way to disarm the stench of injustice, discover some true loves and talk it all over before it's all over. So what's the worst that our desires could produce? Failure? So sue me. I'm going to require your assistance in making as much trouble for the grown-ups as possible. Let the record show that my childish heart yearns to disrupt the madness. Join me Ladies and Germs!
With Gratitude For Gena Rowlands, Nancy Sinatra, Jerry Quarry, Leo Gorcey, Arthur Alexander and Joey Heatherton, Your Splendid Bohemian, Rich Buckland.
DIG THIS WITH BILL MESNIK AND RICH BUCKLAND- THE SPLENDID BOHEMIANS
THE SPLENDID BOHEMIANS PRESENT "DOUBLE TROUBLE" - NO REGRETS: WITH JACKSON BROWNE, LUZ CASAL, RUFUS WAINWRIGHT & SARA BAREILLES. DOUBLE DOWN!!
Edit Piaf once famously sang “Je Regrette Rien” (I Regret Nothing), and listening to the following heart wrenching live performances, I’m reminded that anyone claiming that spiritual stance must be in denial - or, crowing in battered defiance in order to buttress themselves against the memory of life’s cavalcade of pain and tortured conscience. For who can sincerely state that they have no regrets? No harsh word you wish you could have retracted?; No unsubstantiated suspicion that poisoned the well of a friendship or a faithful love?; Are you discounting the abuses large and small that have piled up so high that, somehow, you’ve become numb to them?; What about the road not taken…?
These songs tell tales about the burden of living under the crushing weight of regret. If you don’t shed a tear listening to them, your fluids need replenishing. The divine Spanish diva, Luz Casal singing Jackson Browne’s “These Days”, accompanied by the writer and his ride or die Sancho Panza, David Lindley on his keening fiddle is like hearing a penitent sinner’s weary confession; and, then there’s the incomparable Rufus Wainwright, in a duet with Sara Bareilles, delivering her own anthem with a thrilling operatic intimacy.
THESE DAYS / LUZ CASAL, JACKSON BROWNE, AND DAVID LINDLEY
The preternaturally wise Jackson Browne was sixteen when he wrote “These Days” for Nico, who intoned it with a teutonic world weariness that spoke volumes. What did he know then about regrets? Certainly, the intervening years have instructed the now 76 year old songsmith in all the permutations of tragedy, yet somehow, he has managed to valiantly soldier on, staying creative, performing, and advocating for humanity.
There is something almost mystical about the voice of Luz Casal, and the delicacy with which she interprets Jackson’s lyrics that transcends her heavily accented pronunciations. The words are sometimes hard to follow - but not the meaning - that’s never lost. Time collapses as the message of this song, originally brought into being by the foreign born Christa Paffgen - and resurrected now, almost 60 years later, by this Goddess, comes full circle to enfold the aging songwriter in the arms of his own mortality.
SHE USED TO BE MINE / SARA BAREILLES AND RUFUS WAINWRIGHT
Sara Bareilles wrote She Used to Be Mine as a show stopper for her Broadway musical, Waitress, and it’s a barn burner. Here, in combination with the musical magus, Rufus Wainwright it morphs into something entirely different from it’s template: it has become a religious act of forgiveness and redemption - an acknowledgment of life’s profound losses, and at the same time an appreciation for what was - a ritual of devotion that celebrates living in all its ecstasy and futility - the duality of darkness and light, love and death.
First Rufus sings alone, then Sara… but, when they harmonize the full extent of the love that was lost, and yet remains, lifts us up to the realization of the eternal knowledge that love is never lost. It is a requiem.
