February Made Me Shiver
Mutterings And Murmurs . Poly Tics . Social Studies
Money was tight for our working class family in 1972. I was in grade 5, my first and last year of school in the big city after growing up in the country on farms owned by others. Dad was that post war immigrant that just wanted to get back to the farm roots he was pulled from at 16, to fight in a war that was close to ending. He was captured in Cherbourg, France, shortly after the Normandy invasion of June 6, 1945, and spent the next 5 years doing P.O.W. farm labor in Arizona and New Mexico. He picked cotton. He was lucky. So very lucky. Fast forward to 1972. That year we were living in a ramshackle house that my dad bought years before in the gritty, multi cultural neighborhood of New Delton in North Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. For perspective, the Transit Hotel was its cultural center. Wayne’s Groceries, the ubiquitus Chinese confectionary and laundromat was across the street. It smelled of bubblegum, Asian cooking grease and comic books. The CN Railway yards, Burns and Swifts slaughterhouses and meat packing plants wheezed, clanked and spewed reeking smoke and diesel exhaust. The house that I was born into was built in 1923 of sticks, straw, lathe and plaster and newspaper on a brick foundation. It had a root cellar. There was an indentation in the back yard, next to the sagging garage where the outhouse and the community water tap used to be. Years later I ended up owning that house in North Edmonton but that’s another story. I don’t own it anymore. The house still stands.
I don’t remember where the money came from but somehow I ended up with a ‘shoebox’ RCA compact cassette player/recorder for Christmas. I’m pretty sure I bought it myself with gift or allowance money. We didn’t really celebrate Christmas and didn’t have a Christmas tree that year, or any other year that I can remember. A half life later, while going through some old photo albums, I found a white bordered picture that was taken in the living room of that house with my two older brothers in it. They were in pajamas, in front of a Christmas tree opening gifts. It was a snapshot from a simpler, ‘make do’, difficult time, before I was born, a time when our, not yet complete, dysfunctional family was still together, out of necessity and mostly toxic traditional values. A time before I had brothers that weren’t dead to me, a father that was dead, a time before now, as my poor mother fades into the fog of dementia. At least she can’t remember the times she worked so hard to forget. When I visit her, I play some old German folk songs for her. She weeps.
I can still remember the excitement, the sound of the unboxing, that cardboard cut, and the smells of the styro-foam, the ink of the manual, the plastics and electronics. I remember reading the instructions on how to record using the external microphone. I remember holding the microphone up to the speaker of a little blue and white checkered transistor radio to record the top 100 songs of 1972, on the New Years Day of 1973. I can’t remember all of the songs that I recorded that day but two stand out. One was Todd Rundgren’s, ‘I Saw The Light’ and the other, Don Mclean’s ‘America Pie’. ‘I Saw The Light’ was an upbeat, throw-away poppy love song of sorts that made the top 20. ‘American Pie’ reached No.1 on many charts in spite of it’s 8 minute playing time and sometimes obscure lyrics that have been re-interpreted as the pop cultural human experience progressed, or more accurately, re-regressed into the latest wars and conflicts. ‘American Pie’ wasn’t just about the plane crash in 1959 that killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper. It played out like a summary of the turbulent times of the 70s, the events of world wars, including the existentially tired and much protested Vietnam War, The Yom Kippur War, the Woodstock carryover/hangover, widespread racial and social upheaval type conflicts, and economic, labor and oil convulsions and of all the other struggles that are now playing out under different names, in these modern, regressive times. Perhaps the world was still in mourning from the Malcolm X, Kennedy/King assassinations. Could ‘American Pie’ have been prescient in its time or cited as ‘pre-programming’ in ours? The lyrics are as open to interpretation as any of Nostradamus’ predictions.
Go nuts!
Dig in!
Listen up!
“American Pie”
A long, long time ago
I can still remember how that music used to make me smile
And I knew if I had my chance
That I could make those people dance
And maybe they’d be happy for a while
But February made me shiver
With every paper I’d deliver
Bad news on the doorstep
I couldn’t take one more step
I can’t remember if I cried
When I read about his widowed bride
But something touched me deep inside
The day the music died
So bye, bye, Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry
And them good ole boys were drinking whiskey ‘n rye
Singin’ this’ll be the day that I die
This’ll be the day that I die
Did you write the book of love
And do you have faith in God above
If the Bible tells you so?
Now do you believe in rock and roll?
Can music save your mortal soul?
And can you teach me how to dance real slow?
Well, I know that you’re in love with him
‘Cause I saw you dancin’ in the gym
You both kicked off your shoes
Man, I dig those rhythm and blues
I was a lonely teenage broncin’ buck
With a pink carnation and a pickup truck
But I knew I was out of luck
The day the music died
I started singing bye, bye, Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry
Them good ole boys were drinking whiskey ‘n rye
Singin’ this’ll be the day that I die
This’ll be the day that I die
Now for ten years we’ve been on our own
And moss grows fat on a rollin’ stone
But that’s not how it used to be
When the jester sang for the king and queen
In a coat he borrowed from James Dean
And a voice that came from you and me
Oh, and while the king was looking down
The jester stole his thorny crown
The courtroom was adjourned
No verdict was returned
And while Lennon read a book on Marx
The quartet practiced in the park
And we sang dirges in the dark
The day the music died
We were singing bye, bye, Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry
Them good ole boys were drinking whiskey ‘n rye
Singin’ this’ll be the day that I die
This’ll be the day that I die
Helter skelter in a summer swelter
The birds flew off with a fallout shelter
Eight miles high and falling fast
It landed foul on the grass
The players tried for a forward pass
With the jester on the sidelines in a cast
Now the halftime air was sweet perfume
While the sergeants played a marching tune
We all got up to dance
Oh, but we never got the chance
‘Cause the players tried to take the field
The marching band refused to yield
Do you recall what was revealed
The day the music died?
We started singing bye, bye, Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry
Them good ole boys were drinking whiskey ‘n rye
And singin’ this’ll be the day that I die
This’ll be the day that I die
Oh, and there we were all in one place
A generation lost in space
With no time left to start again
So come on, Jack be nimble, Jack be quick
Jack Flash sat on a candlestick
‘Cause fire is the devil’s only friend
Oh, and as I watched him on the stage
My hands were clenched in fists of rage
No angel born in Hell
Could break that Satan’s spell
And as the flames climbed high into the night
To light the sacrificial rite
I saw Satan laughing with delight
The day the music died
He was singing bye, bye, Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry
Them good ole boys were drinking whiskey ‘n rye
And singin’ this’ll be the day that I die
This’ll be the day that I die
I met a girl who sang the blues
And I asked her for some happy news
But she just smiled and turned away
I went down to the sacred store
Where I’d heard the music years before
But the man there said the music wouldn’t play
And in the streets, the children screamed
The lovers cried and the poets dreamed
But not a word was spoken
The church bells all were broken
And the three men I admire most
The Father, Son and the Holy Ghost
They caught the last train for the coast
The day the music died
And they were singing bye, bye, Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry
And them good ole boys were drinking whiskey ‘n rye
Singin’ this’ll be the day that I die
This’ll be the day that I die
They were singing bye, bye, Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry
Them good ole boys were drinking whiskey ‘n rye
And singin’ this’ll be the day that I die
When I looked at one of the many ‘top 10 to 100’ lists of 1972, I started to remember the songs that I heard and recorded that New Years Day, ones that I heard in the years that followed as music became such an important soundtrack to my life. Most of the pop songs from that era were doing what they were supposed to do – to provide some light distraction from the horror and pain of what was really going on.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billboard_Year-End_Hot_100_singles_of_1972
What’s going on now?
What are you listening to?
What Really Happened The Day The Music Died – Terrifying Pilot Mistakes That Killed Buddy Holly
https://www.bitchute.com/video/MQK0OUNeA58Q