Blues for T

Working in the newspaper business is a bit like riding a rocket right into the ground.

Today was another of those sad, surreal days that are becoming all too commonplace.

We’ve known for some time that another round of layoffs were coming. We’ve known for a while that the news would come down today. So you sit and wait and try not to worry about it because there’s nothing you can do about it … except have Plan B ready.

Thankfully, I will go back to work tomorrow. However, 19 others will not.

One of the 19 is my old friend T, whom I have known for more than 25 years. We long ago played basketball and downed many beers. We’ve seen all of T’s kids grow up. His youngest daughter was one of our babysitters when our son was little.

So here is a song for T.

I wrote about it a couple of years ago, recalling the night it blew us away as we drove home from a basketball game.

“Rememberin’ Stevie,” Buddy Guy, from “Damn Right I Got the Blues,” 1991. The CD is out of print but is available digitally.

You might think the title track might be more appropriate for this situation, and you might be right.

However, “Rememberin’ Stevie” — a tribute to Stevie Ray Vaughan — is a tune that reminds me of the good times with T.

Anywhere but Margaritaville

One night last week, I spent a couple of hours ripping some old Jimmy Buffett tunes.

I mentioned it, and a friend sent a good-natured little rip of his own.

“I’ll let you slide on this,” he said.

I know what he’s thinking. Jimmy Buffett? Not cool. Not cool for a long time, really. Sold out long ago. Too much marketing. Too many shade-, Hawaiian shirt-, board short- and flip-flop-wearing wannabes out there.

Yeah, maybe.

But I was looking to kick back that night, and I was scouring my old Buffett records for some laid-back tunes. That was the great thing about listening to Buffett way back when, that you could chill out to him as easily as you could get your party started with him. That seems to have gotten lost in the endless celebration of the Margaritaville lifestyle.

So I dug, and I found some Buffett from the leeward side of the islands.

Snap the cap on a cold one, put your feet up and go with the flow.

“A Pirate Looks At Forty,” Jimmy Buffett, from “A1A,” 1974. Ah, the wistfulness that comes with age.

“Banana Republics,” Jimmy Buffett, from “Changes In Latitudes, Changes In Attitudes,” 1977. The cautionary tale of the expatriated American.

“Growing Older But Not Up,” Jimmy Buffett, from “Coconut Telegraph,” 1980. Yeah, I’d rather die while I’m living than live while I’m dead.

Michael reconsidered

I wrote the other day that I liked the young Michael Jackson’s work with the Jackson 5 — the singles, really — but not much beyond that.

That sounds cold, but it’s true. I don’t have any of his records.

But over the next couple of days, I kept thinking: “Is that all you have to say about an American icon?”

No, it isn’t. I’d like to add that I dug Michael Jackson the entertainer.

In the early to mid- ’80s, his  videos were extraordinary. I’ll watch “Thriller” over and over.  “Billie Jean” and “Beat It” always are worth watching if they pop up on TV.

My take on it — then and now — was that Jackson simply was reviving and reimagining classic American dance. He was the next generation, following in the footsteps of great dancers I’d seen in old movies. You may not recognize their names today: Bill Robinson, Bill Bailey and Harold and Fayard Nicholas.

Jackson learned from the masters. He was trained by the Nicholas Brothers. They were astonishing. The proof is in this remarkable scene from “Stormy Weather,” the 1943 film also starring Robinson, Lena Horne and Cab Calloway.

Jackson revitalized the moonwalk, which had been done by Bailey as far back as the ’40s. The proof comes at the end of this clip from 1955:

Bill Robinson may be least familiar today. He was 65 when he made “Stormy Weather.” He died 60 years ago. Yet his drum dance in the film foreshadows Jackson’s dance on the lighted sidewalk in “Billie Jean.”

For all too brief a time, Michael Jackson was as good.

Then you’d watch the videos that followed in the late ’80s and early ’90s and you couldn’t help but think: “There he is, grabbing himself again.”

Further recommended reading:

Of all that’s been written about Jackson’s passing, nothing is as extraordinary as Lisa Marie Presley’s blog post on her MySpace page.

“He knew,” a devastated Presley writes, revealing how her former husband believed his fate would be the same as her father’s.

A close second is Robert Hilburn’s remembrance of Jackson in the Los Angeles Times.

Jackson was 11 when he met Hilburn, the paper’s former pop music critic. Hilburn writes of the contrast between what he saw then and what he saw when granted extensive access to Jackson in the early ’80s.

Jackson and Hilburn had a falling-out in 1995. After that, Hilburn was like the rest of us, watching from a distance, occasionally appalled but most often just saddened.

Where were you?

Today was one of those days that you’ll remember exactly where you were when you heard the news. Yeah, but which piece of news?

Farrah Fawcett? My boss came out of his office as if fired from an ejector seat.

Michael Jackson? I’d spent the afternoon looking at old Packers photos and heard the news only after emerging from my friend’s basement.

Among the many tributes pouring forth from the music blogs was this, from Aiken over at Licorice Pizza, as he sorted through the day’s news upon arriving home in Florida:

“In the past hour, my childhood has passed in front of my eyes.”

I’m sure many share that sentiment. But I come from a different time.

Farrah Fawcett became that girl when I was in college. She was pleasant enough on the eyes. I’d enjoyed her as David Janssen’s neighbor on the beach in “Harry O.”

Oh, yeah, there was just something about Farrah Fawcett.

Something that said no, not ever, no way.

As for Michael Jackson, he’ll always represent Christmas to me.

The Jackson 5’s take on “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” was a revelation when I heard it for the first time in 1970. I had no idea there were pop, rock, R&B and soul versions of Christmas songs, all played only at a certain time of year. I’ve been hooked ever since.

The Jackson 5’s singles were all right, but my 11-year-old brother was the bigger fan. So, too, was my wife, when she was 13.

Janet’s copy of the Jackson 5’s “Third Album” — the one with “I’ll Be There” and “Mama’s Pearl” — has been so loved that the album jacket has long been held together by masking tape. She got it when it came out in September 1970. She was in eighth grade.

She’s listened to it countless times. It went to “a lot of sleepovers.”

I listened to it for the first time tonight, curious what was beyond the hits. When released, it was the Jackson 5’s third album in just 10 months. There’s some filler, as you’d expect. But there also are some solid, if less heard, tunes.

“Can I See You In The Morning” and “How Funky Is Your Chicken,” the Jackson 5, from “Third Album,” 1970. It’s out of print.

The former, written by guitarist Deke Richards, has a pop-funk groove that cooks. Richards and Berry Gordy were half of The Corporation, four guys who wrote and produced the Jackson 5’s earliest singles.

The latter brings the sort of stone funk you’d expect from a tune co-written by Willie Hutch (who also co-wrote “I’ll Be There”).

Yet this is where the trail ends, for us at least. Neither Janet nor I were into Michael Jackson beyond the Jackson 5.

But we’ve heard the rest of it. We appreciate its greatness.

Still running late

To my own party, that is.

Sunday was my birthday. I turned 52 and thus remain older than dirt. So let’s celebrate. Better late than never.

One of my birthday presents came all the way from Brooklyn. My friend Alan Wilkis is just out with his new EP. As he’s done before, Alan has taken all kinds of musical influences, tossed them into the blender and come up with new sounds that nonetheless sound familiar.

“Pink and Purple,” made in 2009, is straight outta 1984. Alan explains:

“I consciously tried to be more focused stylistically on this record (than on last year’s “Babies Dream Big,” his debut). … I will inevitably jump through five different genres in any given song, but overall … (I) tried to be a bit more disciplined, set more stylistic rules, and as a result it’s definitely much more decidedly ’80s.”

It sounds that way to me. This is the record of my summer so far.

From “Pink and Purple,” Alan Wilkis, 2009:

This sounds like the single to me: “Dance With You.” On which Kool and the Gang — no, that’s Earth, Wind and Fire — meet Jeff Lynne and Harold Faltermeyer.

This one lives up to its name: “Time Machine.” As the years float past, so do echoes of Peter Gabriel, Queen and Prince.

I mention the influences only as a guide. Alan has reimagined them in remarkable fashion.