New York Regular
Guy Hat, Just Like John Lennon
He's got a New York regular guy hat
just like those lesser-seen photographs of John Lennon
when Yoko finally civilized him
but he still wanted to seem
on the level.
He's got a beard too, but it's obvious he's had it since before 2013
when every other guy started growing beards
because every other guy had one.
He looks like a bass-player,
one you see on
PBS
in hotel rooms in San Francisco
and the jetlag is killing you,
concerts recorded in TV studios in 1979
where you kind of know Bill Evans hasn't long left.
He's got a New York regular guy hat.
He drops it going to the desk,
Michael Rosen books under his arm.
I take-off on horseback across the sierra,
catch him just before the creek
becomes the Rio Grande, reunite him with his hat.
I don't like to see a man and his hat parted.
John Lennon and his first born boy spent too long going through that shit
John Lennon, the leader of the Beatles, met Yoko Ono at a London art gallery in November 1966, where she was preparing an exhibition of her avant-garde work. Both were married at the time but quickly became lovers. They married in 1969, a year before the Beatles broke up. The couple moved to New York in 1971.
ReplyDeletePBS (the Public Broadcasting Service) was established in 1969 and began operations in 1970, in effect replacing National Educational Television as a distributor of TV content, mainly public affairs and educational programs but also entertainment and other genres.
Bill Evans was an American jazz pianist and composer whose use of impressionist harmony, inventive interpretation of traditional jazz repertoire, block chords, and trademark rhythmically independent, "singing" melodic lines continue to be influential. In 1958 he joined Miles Davis's sextet (which included John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Paul Chambers, and Philly Joe Jones, soon to be replaced by Jimmy Cobb), and with Philly Joe and Sam Jones he made "Everybody Digs Bill Evans." Evans influenced Davis' development of modal jazz, which offered an alternative to chord changes and major/minor key relationships, relying instead on a series of modal scales. While the group worked on the material that would comprise "Kind of Blue," Davis handed Evans a piece of paper with 2 chords (G minor and A augmented), which became "Blue in Green." The song was attributed to Davis alone, but Evans demanded a share of the royalties. Davis offered him a check for $25, and Evans left the group to form his own trio. They made 4 albums in 1961, including "Sunday at the Village Vanguard" and "Waltz for Debby," recorded from the same live date. In 1963 his "Conversations with Myself" was made by overdubbing himself. Over the course of his career he garnered 31 Grammy nominations, winning 7 of them, despite years of struggles with addiction and psychiatric disorders. In 1979 his brother committed suicide, leading to Evans' own emotional and physical collapse. He recorded his last album, "We Will Meet Again," in August 1979. After "the longest suicide in history," he died at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York on 15 September 1980.
Michael Rosen is an English children's novelist and poet; the author of 140 books, he served as Children's Laureate from June 2007 to June 2009. His 1st book of children's poetry was "Mind Your Own Business" (1974).