The Purple Reaction is a music blog that focuses on music in our culture and explores the history, theory and artistry that make the music we love so great. This is a celebration of art, the emotional connections that we feel through music and the deep personal meaning we experience through great music.
This blog features new posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Yoko included this song on her "John Lennon Playlist" recent issue of Rolling Stone.
He [John Lennon] was saying it to me, but also to a whole generation: "Let's grow old together." After his passing, all I had was a cassette of it. I had it in my handbag. When i went to sleep, I had some bells on my door so if anyone came in, I'd hear it. I didn't want people to take it from me.
"Grow Old With Me" became an unfulfilled dream with the passing of John and through this hopeful song we feel Yoko's pain. While we all have dreams for the future we never know what we have left so we can never take for granted the time we have in the present to share life with the ones we love.
I’ve always loved music but I haven’t always loved my passion for music.
In high school as I discovered The Beatles, Motown and delved deep into my studies of classical music, I found that none of my classmates seemed to shared my enthusiasm and love for music.
It was “dorky,” that I liked 1960s music, “nerdy” that I loved classical music and incredibly “un-cool” that I admitted to enjoying the resurgence of pop music with the Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears (which you know other people did, I mean look at the sales of this artists at that time). But there was one person who thought my love of music was cool, Vauhini.
One night after hanging out with a group of friends, she gave me a ride home. As she drove “Crush” by The Dave Matthews Band came on the radio. Vauhini was a big fan of Dave Matthews Band and it was “Crush” and its accompanying album, Before These Crowded Streets that really helped me realize the greatness of The Dave Matthews Band.
“Crush” melded DMB’s jam band sensibilities with Jazz creating a dark and emotional opus. Like the best of DMB’s songs “Crush” had a dramatic arc that made the music go somewhere significant. Something changes for the character in the music and us as listners also experience this as we are taken to somewhere we never expect.
In the soft glow of the instrument panels of Vauhini’s car, I described the magic between the notes. I talked about the way that DMB holds back allowing different layers of instruments to come through. I guided her through the long verse that gradually opens up to choruses full of elation and the unforgettably ending of this song.
Throughout “Crush,” DMB creates a feeling of something building, like someone barely able to hold in his joy. Each chorus gives us a little release but never leaves us fully satisfied. In the second to last chorus, it seems like we get there and as Dave Matthews pulls back the song takes a breath. Then the song builds back up as Matthews, almost growling builds to a final exclamation of joy. He changes the lyrics and the melody adding syncopated rhythms while the band to a climax in a way that is beautifully symphonic.
After the song ended, Vauhini smiled with a sense of joy you can only get from seeing someone describe something they love. I’ll never forget how free I felt at that moment to be exactly who I was, feeling no need to hide or be ashamed of how I felt about music.
I often think about that moment when writing about music because it reminds me that I’m not alone. Yes, most of the people in high school didn’t understand me but Vauhini did and that gave me hope that there are other people in the world who would like me for my passions. Now I have a whole family of friends and who do just that.
Thanks Vauhini
It's crazy, I'm thinking just as long as you're around.
I'm here I'll be dancing on the ground.
Am I right side up or upside down?
To each other, we’ll be facing.
Teachers often talk about how much they learn from students. Sometimes this “learning” comes from research that goes into preparing lessons and other times the students literally teach teachers things. And it was my students who taught me the meaning of "Simple Gifts."
For the past month, I’ve been preparing for our Thanksgiving Assembly. This program is like a school play involving students acting out stories telling about the origins of Thanksgiving and Native American folklore. My part involved teaching my third graders “Simple Gifts” with an Orff accompaniment (those xylophone instruments). Closing the assembly with “Simple Gifts” is a much-loved tradition in this school and I was more than happy to teach this song.
“Simple Gifts” is a song composed by the Shakers, a religious organization formally known as the United Society Of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing. They were most active in the early 1800s and lived in communal communities. This group got the nickname “Shakers” because of the way they danced. Music and dancing was central to the Shakers spiritual experience and “Simple Gifts” like many of their songs is a dance tune.
Aaron Copland popularized this song including it in the music he composed for the ballet, Appalachian Springs.
An arrangement of this song was also performed at the inauguration of President Obama.
That is pretty much where my knowledge of this song stopped.
Last week ten minutes before I was going to teach a class, I found out I was going to teach a different class. Without a lesson plan I hurriedly created a worksheet about the song “Simple Gifts.” The first two pages were a fill in the blank lyric activity and on the last page I asked my students to write down their three favorite “simple gifts” from the song and to come up with three “simple gifts” that were not in the song.
The worksheet did a nice job of filling up most of the lesson and at the end I brought the class together to discuss what they had written down. After going through the worksheet, I asked my students to define a “simple gift.”
They told me that “simple gifts” are not things that you can out put in a box. One of my students articulated that a simple gifts is something that you do for each other. When I asked them what wasn’t a "simple gift," they gave me examples like video games and televisions and when I asked them to come up with “simple gifts” they responded with the idea of sharing and being kind.
Thanks to my third graders now I understand why “Simple Gifts” is a fitting song for Thanksgiving. The most important gifts in life, the things that we are thankful for are not things that you can put a price tag on. They are things that we do for each other and with each other. In thinking about the gifts that we are thankful for it encourages us to pass on those gifts to the ones we loves transforming the act of thanksgiving to an act of giving.
‘Tis the gift to be loving,
‘Tis the best gift of all,
Like a warm spring rain bringing beauty when it falls,
And as we use this gift we may come to believe,
It is better to give than it is to receive.
I had a great time seeing Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows last weekend. It is without a doubt the best Harry Potter film out of the seven and the first since the first two that didn't feel rushed. Even without having read any of the books (I know I'll get on it), I could feel that things were left out in the other films but not in this one.
I love the slower pace and it really makes me wish they did each book as a full season television show. The atmosphere and the mood were great and I continue to be impressed with the actors especially the leads. I also continue to be annoyed with the look of Voldemort. I know that he is suppose to have the look of a snake but sometimes things don't translate from the page from the screen. Grandpre (the illustrator for the Harry Potter series) got it right with the angular face and big red eyes.
Conan knows what I mean:
[note how all of this footage is from Part II!]
And to the girl a couple seats down from me who freaked out a end of the film "Oh My GOD!!! I can't believe I have to wait months to see what happens!!!" go buy the book or at least read the wiki summary . . . like I did.
Imagine you are going to visit a 5 year old whoes parents are getting a divorce. Now imagine that the child’s father is one of the most famous people in the world that has been absent for most of this child’s life and cheated on his wife.
This is what Paul McCartney faced in as he went to visit Julian Lennon, John Lennon’s son with his first wife Cynthia. In 1968, John met Yoko Ono and had an affair with her that resulted in a divorce leaving young Julian at the center of it all. Paul sat down to write down his thoughts to Julian and what these comforting words became was one of Beatles most enduring classics “Hey Jude.”
This song shattered pop music’s song forms as one of the longest songs ever to be a number 1 hit but what makes this song uniquely meaningful is what this song is at its heart: a song of comfort and reassurance.
Amidst love songs, protest music and psychedelic rock, Paul is singing to comfort us all balancing an ambiguous subject with emotional clarity, the Beatles created a universal song of comfort and reassurance that has stood the test of time.
The song begins giving advice about how to approach a girl.
Hey Jude, don’t be afraid,
You were made to go out and get her.
The minute you her under your skin,
Then you begin to make it better.
In the refrains where Paul digs deeper the situation with Julian helping him understand that the divorce is not his fault, “don’t carry the world your shoulder.” Then there is the most touching line in the song in the last refrain when Paul reassures Julian that he is worth something and that all he needs is within himself.
So let it out and let it in, hey Jude, begin,
You’re waiting for is one to perform with.
And don’t you know that it’s just you, hey Jude, you’ll do,
The movement you need is on your shoulder.
Paul wraps up all of these thoughts and feelings in an extended ending sections, a sing-a-long of sorts with a chorus of na’s repeated for the last half of this seven minute song. What is going on here? It’s repetitive, lyrically non-sense and up until this point in pop music was something that was never heard before. Even though this sections seems illogical something about it works.
The ending of “Hey Jude” provides space to reflect on the song. It frames all of the emotions and give focuses us on one of the main points of the song, making one’s life better. It is not the words that we speak that we comfort each other in times of need. The words are merely an expression of being there with someone in a time of need that makes them meaningful.
Hearing a chorus of people singing inviting us as an audience to sing along creates the ultimate feeling of comfort as a chorus of voice beyond is saying that things will be okay. It is not just one person’s belief that things will improve, it’s our shared humanity, our shared hope that this ending expresses which is what gets us through the darkest moments in our lives.
On a crisp fall night, I stood in front of a campfire surrounded by almost sixty 5th graders. I felt the cold steel under my fingertips as my left hand formed a chord around the neck of my guitar. I flicked my pick between my fingertips of my right hand trying to summon the courage to play. Turning away form the onlookers I looked into fire, slowly exhaled and drew my right across my guitar and let the my guitar sing out into the night.
I’ve never led a campfire sing along or even participated in one. It’s not that I have anything against campfires, the opportunity just never came up. So I had some apprehension at the idea of leading a campfire. All of that melted away as soon I started singing “Mbube,” better know as “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”
The cool night air, the smell of the smoke and the light of the fire mixed with the sound of the guitar making the tone of the instrument glow. Now there may be no scientific way that those factors could change the sound of a guitar but I swear it did.
Leading a campfire is like conducting but more intimate and immediate. There’s a beautiful feeling of letting go when you stand in the center surround by voices that is humbling and truly unforgettable.
We ended the sing along with a song that is traditional for all 5th graders to sing at my school, “Orion.” Before we began I told them this:
One of the many things I love about music is how music can make us feel. Sometimes that feeling comes from the subject, what the lyrics in a song are about, and sometimes it comes from somewhere else.
When I mentioned to my 8th grade students that I was going to this retreat with all of you, they started singing “Orion.” When I asked them what that song was about, instead of talking about the starts they told me about this moment, singing this song together around a campfire.
Music has the ability to transport us to different times and places. When you experience a song in a special moment such as this, the song becomes linked to that experience and every time you hear that song it will take you back to the that memory.
While the subject of a song is important what is personally meaningful is how music ties into our lives, our memories and our hearts.
Let’s shares this moment together. Make this memory special so when I see you in 8th grade and I mention that I’m taking my 5th graders to this retreat you come back to this movement and feel how special it is to share this time together.
I can’t wait until next year when I get to revisit my first campfire experience playing
"Orion" and create new memories for my future students as my current students created for me as we shared the magic of creating music.
There's always been a layer of sadness behind the quirkiness of Rivers' music but in this song he lets the darkness come to the front. This song is about gratitude and desperation all at the same time as he explains how much help he needs to be put back together.
There is something fascinating about watching Rivers Cuomo singing this emotionally draining and intimate song in front of children in a playground. I am sure that the meaning of this song is lost on the children in the audience but he tries anyways. It is this attempt that makes this song that much more powerful as sings to anyone who will listen to his pain.
