In the United States anyway. Love and Mercy is the new movie about Brian Wilson (not the baseball pitcher with the silly beard).
It’s also the name of a song from his first solo album. The performance below, by members of Libera and the Boys Choir of Harlem at the Kennedy Center Honors in 2007, gets me every time.
The story goes that when Woody Guthrie was on the road in the 1930s, he heard people in the migrant camps singing an old Baptist hymn called “This World Is Not My Home” (sometimes also called “I Can’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore”). It’s a song about the better world to come. Here’s how it begins:
This world is not my home, I’m just passing through
My treasures and my hopes are all beyond the blue
Where many many friends and kindred have gone on before
And I can’t feel at home in this world anymoreOver in Glory land, there is no dying there
The saints are shouting victory and singing everywhere
I hear the voice of them that I have heard before
And I can’t feel at home in this world anymore
Guthrie didn’t like the other-worldly message at all, so he wrote new lyrics, turning it into a protest song, “I Ain’t Got No Home in This World Anymore”:
I ain’t got no home, I’m just a-roamin’ ’round,
Just a wandrin’ worker, I go from town to town.
And the police make it hard wherever I may go
And I ain’t got no home in this world anymore.My brothers and my sisters are stranded on this road,
A hot and dusty road that a million feet have trod;
Rich man took my home and drove me from my door
And I ain’t got no home in this world anymore.Was a-farmin’ on the shares, and always I was poor;
My crops I lay into the banker’s store.
My wife took down and died upon the cabin floor,
And I ain’t got no home in this world anymore.I mined in your mines and I gathered in your corn
I been working, mister, since the day I was born
Now I worry all the time like I never did before
‘Cause I ain’t got no home in this world anymoreNow as I look around, it’s mighty plain to see
This world is such a great and a funny place to be;
Oh, the gamblin’ man is rich an’ the workin’ man is poor,
And I ain’t got no home in this world anymore.
He could have written that last verse yesterday.
It would be necessary to invent him. Oh, wait…
Voltaire didn’t quite put it that way, but he didn’t have a blog.
Here’s how Randy Newman put it in “God’s Song (That’s Why I Love Mankind)”. (The music is below if you want to listen while reading.)
Cain slew Abel, Seth knew not why
For if the children of Israel suppose to multiply
Why must any of the children die?
So he asked the Lord and the Lord said“Man means nothing he means less to me
Than the lowliest cactus flower or the humblest yucca tree
He chases round this desert ’cause he thinks that’s where I’ll be
That’s why I love mankind”I recoil in horror from the foulness of thee
From the squalor and the filth and the misery
How we laugh up here in Heaven, prayers you offer me
That’s why I love mankindThe Christians and the Jews were having a jamboree
The Buddhists and the Hindus joined on satellite TV
They picked their four greatest priests
And they began to speakThey said “Lord the plague is on the world
Lord no man is free
The temples that we built to you have tumbled into the sea
Lord, if you won’t take care of us
Won’t you please please let us be?”And the Lord said
And the Lord said“I burn down your cities, how blind you must be
I take from you, your children and you say how blessed are we
You all must be crazy to put your faith in me
That’s why I love mankind, you really need me
That’s why I love mankind.”
In a different vein, Brian Wilson made some recordings in the 90s with Andy Paley that have never been officially released. They’re known as the “Wilson/Paley Sessions”. This song is “Must Be A Miracle”.Â
Here’s one of those coincidences that make the world seem nicely symmetrical:
I happened to be looking for a version of the old Irving Berlin song “Blue Skies” this afternoon and eventually found a good one by the American jazz singer Maxine Sullivan, recorded in 1937:
Maxine Sullivan’s biggest hit, somewhat oddly, was her jaunty recording of the traditional Scottish tune “Loch Lomond”. That’s why her greatest hits CD (shown in the video above) was called “Loch Lomond: Greatest Hits 1937-1942”.
While listening to “Blue Skies”, however, I noticed a video for a 60s group from Boston called the Rockin’ Ramrods. It’s called “Bright Lit Blue Skies” and is pretty good:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJLYq0tHAPk
Now, somewhere along the way, the Rockin’ Ramrods shortened their name and became the Ramrods. This, however, led to some confusion, because a rock band from nearby Connecticut already went by that name.Â
These other Ramrods had one hit, an instrumental version of “Ghost Riders in the Sky”. Unfortunately, their follow-up single, released in 1960, didn’t become a hit.
But it was called “Loch Lomond Rock”:
If only they’d called it “Rockin’ Loch Lomond”. That would have been perfect.
There have probably been a billion words written on how most of us are now carrying a little camera with us everywhere and how that’s changing our lives for better or worse.Â
But think of all the events that could have been photographed if everyone had a cellphone in decades past. We’d have more pictures of UFOs (but not flying saucers). We’d have more photographs of the Kennedy assassination and more views of Marilyn Monroe on that subway grate. From certain decades, we’d have many more pictures of people looking at themselves in their bathroom mirrors.
There was a story in the news today about an actress being handcuffed in Southern California after she apparently refused to identify herself to police officers. She wasn’t doing anything illegal at the time and wasn’t arrested. There are photographs of her in tears standing next to a cop, but not of what happened earlier. We’ll probably have to wait a while before it’s common to film every moment of every event that seems like it might be worth filming.
Anyway, I was walking into the grocery story this evening and stopped to take a picture with my phone. Future historians can study it if they want:
Whereof One Can Speak 🇺🇦 
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