Todd Klein's Blog, page 19

My Music: SONG OF THE SEA

Environments 1 album, 1969, Atlantic Records

This is one of several songs I don’t have an exact date for, probably written between the fall of 1969 to spring of 1970, when I was a freshman at the School of Visual Arts, still living at home, and commuting by train from Far Hills, NJ. I recorded it around 1977 in Highland Park, more on that below. The first thing you hear is the ocean, and it runs throughout. That came from the album above, recorded at Coney Island by Irv Teibel, more on the album series HERE. The bird sounds from my previous songs might have been from Side 2, or from another Environments album. Here’s the link to my recording, Song of the Sea.

It began as two separate songs with similar chords and rhythm, and it wasn’t long before I began combining them. Here are the lyrics from my notebooks. At first I simply alternated verses between the two, but when I made the recording I decided to try something more complex.

Here’s the reel-to-reel deck I was using (image found online), it worked with standard home tape size, and could either record in stereo in two directions, or in four channels in one direction, which is what I usually did, so essentially quarter tracks. The feature they called simul-sync allowed you to listen to something already recorded on headphones while you added a new track in sync, pretty much the way four-track recording was done professionally, but that used wider tape. Still, I never had a problem with the quality of the Teac sound, it worked fine for me. You could add reverb easily by playing back the track you were recording at a low level, and I did that here on both vocal tracks. The guitar would have been played with the first vocal track, and the ocean sounds were added in stereo on the two remaining tracks. I may have gotten a bit too complicated with the overlapping vocals, but I thought the way this came out was generally successful.

My ideas about the ocean as a road to adventure were naive, and the only two brief times I was in a boat on the ocean to this point, I got a little seasick, so I doubt I would have made a good ocean sailor, but later I did learn to sail small boats on a lake, and had a great time doing that. Never saw a mermaid or sailed to different countries, more’s the pity, nor can I explain how I might have walked hand in hand with a mermaid. Swum hand in hand, perhaps?

Song of the Sea, and the lyric images are © Todd Klein, all rights reserved.

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Incoming: BATMAN: BRUCE WAYNE, MURDERER TURNED FUGITIVE OMNIBUS

Images © DC Comics

Man, I’m glad I didn’t have to design a logo for this awkwardly-titled monster, which is a massive 1,056 pages. The contents are drawn from all the Batman titles in the early 2000s, I don’t have the energy to list them, but they’re in the second image above. I don’t know which ones I lettered, but I think I was the regular letterer on one of those titles. Original retail price is $125, release date is December 17, 2024. Reading it could get you through the winter!

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Rereading: THE PATCHWORK GIRL OF OZ by L. Frank Baum

Illustrated by John R. Neill

The seventh Oz book by Baum is titled for one of his liveliest characters, originally created for a silent film he wanted to produce that was never made. Baum had tried to end the series with the previous book, “The Emerald City of Oz,” but perhaps his financial situation, and many fan letters, made him rethink that.

The story begins in a lonely forest in the Munchkin part of Oz, where a boy, Ojo, and his uncle, Unk Nunkie, have lived together for as long as Ojo can remember, but now they have run out of food and must find help and a new home. They travel to the house of their only neighbor, the crooked magician, Dr. Pipt. His limbs are crooked, but he seems friendly, though very busy making a new batch of his Powder of Life. Ozma, the ruler of Oz, has forbidden anyone to practice magic in Oz other than herself and her associates the Wizard of Oz, and Glinda the Good, but Pipt feels he can still do magic to help his own family. He wants the Powder to bring to life a girl assembled from a stuffed patchwork quilt that his wife Margolette has made to help her with chores. He’s already used a previous batch to bring life to a glass cat they call Bungle.

Dr. Pipt finishes his Powder and brings the figure to life, and they give her the name Scraps, but she’s more independent than expected perhaps because Ojo added some extra brains to her before she was finished. Then a terrible accident causes Margolette and Unk Nunkie to be turned to stone by another of Dr. Pipt’s magic potions. Ojo is heartbroken, and willing to do anything to bring him back to life. Dr. Pipt tells him he will start at once on a new batch of the Powder of Life, but that will take six years. Or, Ojo can go in search of the ingredients he would need for another potion that could restore them. Ojo agrees, and soon sets off with the list. Patches decides to go with him, as does Bungle, the glass cat. They have many adventures, making new friends, and getting in and out of trouble, but the list seems impossible. Will Ozma be able to help? When they arrive at the Emerald City, Ozma has Ojo arrested!

This was much more fun to reread than the previous book, and is recommended.

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Rereading: THE MONSTER OF WIDGEON WEIR by M. E. Atkinson

Illustrated by Stuart Tresilian

The eighth book in the Locketts series by Atkinson takes place on the Thames, and involves boats, but unlike the books of Arthur Ransome, none of them are sailboats.

Oliver, Jane, and Bill, the Lockett children, have been allowed to camp on their own on a small island in the Thames owned by a family friend. They soon run into their nemesis Fenella and her siblings, who are camping not far away, while Fenella acts with a small traveling company. Fenella is her usual infuriating self, and a feud soon begins between the two families, who are both going to compete in various kinds of boat races (punting, rowing, etc.) against each other as part of a local festival. Then things take a strange turn when a local man sees what he describes as a sea serpent in the Thames just below Widgeon Weir, again not far from where Fenella and her sibllings are camping. Could there be a connection? Jane is determined to find out, and she invites her friend Anna to join them for the boating and investigations. They also meet several new friends as they reach out to other children to help make up larger teams for some events.

This book is one I didn’t remember at all, and I enjoyed it. There’s plenty of mystery, thrills, and midnight adventures as well as the final exciting competitions. Stuart Tresilian takes over from Harold Jones as illustrator, I knew his work from Enid Blyton’s “Adventure” series. His human characters are more realistic and his illustrations are excellent, though I kind of miss the almost Art Deco approach of Jones. Recommended.

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My Music: MY WINDOW and AWAKEN

Driveway side of our Pluckemin house, 1978

Two short tracks I decided to run together, the first is but 38 seconds, My Window. A fragment, really, but I liked it well enough to record it in 1977, adding bird sounds from an album of natural sounds, I don’t recall which one. It was probably written in the spring of 1969 when I was a senior in high school. The top window in the photo above (taken in winter) is the one I wrote about.

My room, over the garage, was my refuge, where I read, wrote, drew, and dreamed. My two younger brothers always shared a room, I had this one to myself. I was interested in birds, I already had my first binoculars, and we had a window bird feeder in the living room. On my walks in the woods I would keep a list of the bird species I saw each time. It was always a short list, just the ones I could identify from a paperback field guide by Roger Tory Peterson, but I had fun with it. The guitar part is again very simple, four notes on the two top strings. My vocal sounds very young to me now, more than 45 years later.

Awaken has lyrics that were part of a longer song written in 1972, but one of many where I had forgotten the chords and melody. Writing actual music was a struggle I rarely took on, I would usually just write the lyrics in my notebooks, sometimes with chords, but often not even that. If I forgot how they went, I figured they weren’t memorable enough to keep anyway. The guitar for it is played backwards, me experimenting when I recorded the song probably in 1977, it sounds like an organ. I also added bird sounds here probably from the same album, so the two tracks kind of fit together in that way. As for meaning, it was probably influenced by the writing of George MacDonald, though there isn’t much to it.

Longer and more complex songs are coming soon. My Window and Awaken are © Todd Klein, all rights reserved.

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Rereading: CALL ME BANDICOOT by William Pène du Bois

Another book for young readers, 63 pages with many color illustrations by the author, in the same series as “Lazy Tommy Pumpkinhead.” Each of these focuses on a particular sin, and here the sin is greed. The author has a talent for writing charming con-men, and in this book that’s the teenage boy the author says he meets on the Staten Island Ferry. The boy is full of charm and intriguing stories about his “friend” Ermine Bandicoot, and for the price of food and drink at the snack bar, he tells the story of a giant cigarette created from Bandicoot’s collection of cigarette butts, used as a prop and advertisement next to the Statue of Liberty. The author is so fascinated by this hard to believe tale, he continues to ply the boy with food and drink, and even buys postcards of the stunt from him. But who is the boy really? The author is determined to find out.

Clever, funny, an excellent read.

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Rereading THE TERRIBLE CHURNADRYNE by Eleanor Cameron

Illustrated by Beth and Joe Krush

Tom and Jennifer are staying with their grandmother in the small northern California coastal town of Redwood Cove. Their grandmother’s friend, Mr. Looper, collects fossils and ancient artifacts, and is convinced that he once saw an ancient sea-going dinosaur in the ocean below the high hill of San Lorenzo, next to town. A few other people also think they saw something that could be the same huge creature, but no one else had a very good look because of the fog that often covers the hill.

Tom is determined to climb the hill at sunset and look for the monster, and Jennifer, while afraid, decides she has to go with him. On the way they meet Mrs. Larkin, who lives next to the hill, and she warns them to watch out for the Churnadryne. Jennifer and Tom decide that’s her name for the monster, and she knows more about it than she’s saying. On the hill, they do see something looming in the fog, a large creature with a long neck and tail. Is it the monster? They think so.

Back in town, the children tell Mr. Looper and other townsfolk, creating a sensation. The local paper prints an account, and an expedition is planned where Mr. Looper will be lowered on a cable to the cliff caves that can’t be accessed any other way, where he thinks the creature lives. It’s a dangerous plan, will it succeed?

A short book, but a satisfying read, where the true nature of the mysterious creature and its name are finally revealed. The illustrations are excellent. Recommended.

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Rereading: THE ISLAND STALLION’S FURY by Walter Farley

Illustrated by Harold Eldridge

Steve and his uncle Pitch are back in the secret valley hidden on Azul, an apparently barren rock island in the Caribbean, where last year they discovered many wonders. Steve’s favorite was the fiery roan stallion he named Flame, leader of a band of horses of Arabian ancestry left behind by Spanish Conquistadors centuries earlier. Pitch is focused on the artifacts also left by the Spanish, and is busy exploring the caves they used, and writing about it.

Back on the nearby island of Antago, Pitch’s brother Tom, a cruel bear-like man who owns the plantation where he and Pitch live, has grown suspicious of the time Pitch and Steve spend on Azul, and he follows them, finding a way into the cave system, where he gets lost and passes out from thirst and hunger. Pitch finds him, and then he and Steve are in a world of trouble. They can’t let Tom die, but if Tom comes into the hidden valley, everything they love there is in grave danger, especially Flame.

I didn’t enjoy rereading this as much as the previous books in the series. The fantasy wish-fulfillment of the setting is more pronounced than ever at the beginning, and Tom is rather a cartoon villain along the lines of Popeye’s Bluto. There’s action and excitement in the hidden valley, but it’s not as convincing as in earlier books. Still, worth reading for horse fans and Farley fans.

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My Music: WINDOW IN THE TOWER

There are few photos of me during the high school years when I learned to play the guitar and began writing songs, this one from 1967, probably taken by my dad in our Pluckemin living room, is the best I have. The hair is pretty long for me at the time, and note the heavy plastic frames on the glasses.

Though I know November Woods was the first song I wrote, I’m less sure of the order after that, or the years they were written for the next few. There are two probably from early 1969, Window in the Tower is one. The guitar part is two similar triads repeated alternately, very simple. I can’t explain the lyrics, other than to say it was meant to paint a picture and create a mood rather than describe anything specific. I think I was influenced musically by Donovan songs like Legend of Girl Child Linda, heavy on medieval imagery, perhaps a bit psychedelic, though my song was not drug influenced, wasn’t doing any of that in high school.

1968 edition from my library, Bob Pepper cover art.

Another influence most evident in the title are the Gormenghast novels of Mervyn Peake that I was reading at the time, full of dense, gothic imagery about a vast, crumbling castle sparsely inhabited by inbred, ineffective royalty, scheming advisors, and cranky servants. Some of the song’s images may also have been suggested by these books. (The second, Gormenghast, is equally good, the third, Titus Alone, is disappointing, written when Peake was ill.)

The recording, made in my Highland Park living room studio around 1977, used a phase shifter, I think the one above, though I no longer have it. A single microphone cable ran to the input, another went from the output to my Teac reel-to-reel tape recorder. It added those swishing, rotating effects that I thought were cool. This sort of thing is now much easier to do digitally. I used it on only a few songs.

November Woods and Window in the Tower are © Todd Klein, all rights reserved.

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Rereading: DEVIL’S NOB by Philip Turner

The sixth book in Turner’s Darnley Mills series returns to the Victorian era of the fourth book, “Steam on the Line” to continue the story of teenagers Taffy and Sarah. Taffy is now working as a carpenter for the railway that links the slate mine in the hilltop with the town’s port on the river, as well as carrying passengers. Sarah’s mother has died, leaving her in charge of four younger children and their ailing father. The two friends live in adjoining cottages near the rail line, and their story includes the beginnings of the romance that will eventually lead to marriage. Taffy is assigned work in the slate mine itself as part of his apprenticeship, and makes a new friend, young miner Georgie, and they have some harrowing adventures in the dangerous mine.

Meanwhile, Sir Henry Bridgebolton has agreed to a race with his friend Sir Josiah and his horse Black Prince. It will pit one of the railroad’s steam locomotives against the horse in a race from the moor-top station to the Darnley Mills port, with Sir Henry shoveling coal for the engine, and Taffy along to help. The race is full of thrills, but Taffy is disappointed not to see Sarah on the course to cheer him on. What could have happened to her? Did she have an accident?

Somehow these past times stories are more serious, emotional, and well-rounded than the present-day ones, but the entire series is excellent and recommended.

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