Writer's Notebook - James Rafferty Blog

Walking in Asheville

This past week, I spent several days visiting Asheville, North Carolina. It's a great city for walking and I stayed in an apartment which wasn't too far from the downtown. I found myself taking long walks on most days, either in the city or nearby. On my first full day, the rains came. Merrimon Avenue filled with water on either side and I decided to wait out the storm in a fine music store called the Musician's Workshop. I tried out an Ibanez hollow body electric guitar and messed around with a crazy pedal called Superego + that had multiple effects and even allowed overlays of one effect on another. It was fun, but really getting the most out of this kind of effects pedal would take more time than I currently have. Maybe someday. 

When I looked up, the rain had stopped and I decided to take a walk at the Botanical Center right next to UNC Asheville just down the road. Normally, a quiet stream curls through the center, but not on this day. Here's a glimpse of the churning brown waters of the stream that afternoon. 

The next day, I walked into downtown late in the morning. Most of the trees in town were still green, but here's an exception I saw along the way walking on Broadway.  

My favorite stop in downtown is the Malaprop's bookstore. This week I had a gift card at the store, so I had the luxury of browsing through titles in various sections of the store.  I did my research on one day, then bought the books on another day.  I like science fiction books, so I looked at those possibilities, but I also checked out books of regional interest and the general fiction area as well. The store is replete with other sections such as Banned Books and Staff Picks, so those books are also worth checking out. On prior visits, I had seen books such as 1984 and the Just Kids memoir from Patti Smith that I later read.  

But since it was lunchtime, I walked downhill toward the Green Sage on Broadway. This restaurant has great coffee and tea selections, and also has innovative fare for lunch or breakfast.  On this day, the temperatures had dropped a bit, so I wanted a lunch with both hot and filling foods. After asking a few questions when I got to the head of the queue, I made my selections and they were brought to my table a few minutes later. My sandwich was called a Rainbow Wrap and its mix of veggies included beets, carrots, lettuce and alfalfa sprouts, augmented by olives and small hunks of feta. Very tasty. My soup was intriguing and warm -- lentils served in a curry-based soup.  The piece de resistance was a spicy chai cider which brought the rest of the meal together and whose hot spicy taste felt like a pure burst of autumn. Green Sage is a magnet for a diverse group of people -- single, couples or in groups -- and ages ranging from students to retirees. Across the street, a new building is being erected, which will house a mix of condos and hotel rooms; the city continues to evolve from the one I first encountered about 8 years ago, with a big push toward providing more rooms in and around the downtown. 

Later on the trip, I took a ride up into the hills of the Blue Ridge Parkway. Asheville has beautiful views even from the downtown, but it's magnified up on the parkway. Here's a couple glimpses of what I saw:  

 

 Back in Asheville, one can encounter some surprising sights. Here's the side of the original Moog studio off of Broadway:  

 Whether it's music, books, food, wine. beer or the outdoors, it seems there's always another adventure lurking around the corner in Asheville.  

British Invasion of Norwood

Last evening. my wife Cindy and I went with friends to see a highly entertaining musical performance at the re-modeled Norwood Theater in Norwood, Massachusetts. The show was called The British Invasion Years and used a clever premise to transcend the typical tribute band scheme. The four musicians played music from The Beatles and their Sixties contemporaries and then back stopped that with music they called The American Response. Even better, they didn't limit the music to the 1963-1965 period, but stretched out to cover music throughout the decade as long as it fit the themes.  

The four musicians managed to play music from some very different groups and still make it succeed musically. The band's co-leaders are guitarist Lee Scott Howard and bassist Bobby M.. They've played together nearly 30 years and their musical rapport contributed to the band's tight musical feel. Lee and Bobby play their instruments well, but also are fine and versatile vocalists. Lee has unusual gifts -- he can hit the high notes akin to the Zombie's lead vocalist Colin Blunstone, but also plays some fine guitar. He mostly stayed with Sixties style licks, but couldn't resist occasionally adding some sizzle from more contemporary rock guitar licks.  Bobby M. sang lead vocals on numerous tunes and anchored the bottom on his cherry-colored Rickenbacker bass guitar. Bandmate Jon Wolf adds versatility on keyboards and guitar, along with harmony vocals and the occasional turn on lead vocals. The fourth member of the regular group, Jeff Alai, is off the tour for now, but the substitute drummer played well and looked the part with his long blond hair.  

So what about the music? The band kicked off the night with three songs from the early Beatles including I Saw her Standing There. Both Lee and Bobby were able to sing McCartney style vocals and the three singers added a nice harmony blend. The music then shifted both in time and style, as the band played Time of the Seasons from the Zombies. I saw the Zombies play a few years back, but this band did the songs justice. Lee's vocal range is outstanding, so did well on the lead vocals, with the band filling in the rest.  Then Jon Wolf played the Rod Argent keyboard parts with verve.  They followed with She's Not There, which was equally good. And so it went.  In the British Invasion section, they flash cut between multiple groups of diverse styles including Herman's Hermits, the Kinks and notably, The Rolling Stones.  

The Stones mini-set was impressive. It kicked off with Satisfaction, with Bobby on vocals and then they followed in quick succession with Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown and Jumping Jack Flash. Both of the latter tunes were done extremely well, with a mix of Jagger style vocals and expert guitar work from Lee Scott Howard. Here the guitar was much like the records, but had the verve of life performance. A bit later, the band did Back in the USSR and noted that the Beatles' White Album was celebrating a 50th anniversary.  

After an intermission, the band shifted to music from American bands. For me, this section felt a bit weaker, but mainly due to the inclusion of a few chestnuts of bubble gum music and several tunes from the Monkees. But there were outstanding moments. The band launched into Love Her Madly and Lee Scott Howard dropped his voice into the bass register vocal and neatly captured the Jim Morrison style. Howard had a tough task, needing to both do the lead vocal and add the Robbie Krieger guitar parts, but he did well and the rest of the band were rock solid. The band did an obligatory rendition of Sweet Caroline -- Neil Diamond's song which has improbably made the journey from the NYC Brill Building to become the anthem for the local Red Sox.  The band also played a Vietnam era song, Fortune Son, by the Creedence Clearwater Revival and captured that song's bittersweet mood. Earlier, the band had spent time with local Vietnam Vets and this song closed the circle.  

The band closes the show with more Beatles music. On this night, Twist and Shout got folks dancing in the aisles and Got to Get You Into My Life was a rousing rocker. That was it for the formal set, but they stayed on and Howard began to sing the familiar vocals of Hey Jude and got the crowd revved up one more time.  Afterward, the band members came out to the lobby and we chatted a bit with them as we headed out.  This was a great show and I'd recommend it if they come to your area.  They tour throughout the US and you can find their schedule at their web site. 

Here's a picture of the band in the theater last night.  

 

On The Vietnam War from Burns and Novick

The Vietnam War documentary from Ken Burns and Lynn Novick on PBS offers 18 hours about one of the most traumatic periods in my lifetime. The program begins in 1945, as World War II was ending and the cold war was about to begin. Vietnam had been under colonial rule under the French, but hopes were emerging that the country could become independent. Most Americans knew very little about Vietnam until the early Sixties, but the battle between France and the local Vietminh armies ended with Vietnam being divided between North and South portions, split by a de-militarized zone.  Some viewed this development as a last gasp of colonialism, others as a skirmish in the proxy war between the West and Communism. Even under Eisenhower, Americans were drawn in as advisers to help the South Vietnamese government fend off a military challenge from an insurgency group called the Vietcong, who were supported by the North Vietnamese and to some degree, the Soviets and Chinese. 

The television series pulls the viewer into this history with a mix of television footage, stories from American and Vietnamese participants and a wide variety of audiotapes, journals and other information that give an inside perspective on how Vietnam was being viewed and acted upon by American presidents from Eisenhower to Nixon.  As a baby boomer, I lived through this period, but most of the series focused on the period up until 1970 before I went to college. I remember first hand the marches, the anti-war movement, the horrible clash in the streets of Chicago during the 1968 Democratic political convention and so much more. We were seeing scenes about the war on the evening news on TV and young men from our neighborhood were being drafted and sent to Vietnam. 

The powerful thing about this series for me was to learn so much about what was not obvious at the time. I didn't really hear the stories about the experiences of the veterans until many years later when compelling books like Michael Herr's Dispatches and Neil Sheehan's A Bright Shining Lie brought back stories of the life vets had been living while fighting the war. Sheehan, who was a journalist covering the war, is one of many people who recount their experiences  and those of hundreds of people he talked to while over in 'Nam for the documentary.  At the time, politicians like Johnson and Nixon seemed to be lying about what was really happening over there, but the tapes of their conversations during this period were staggering in highlighting the differences between what they said publicly and what they were saying behind closed doors.  

We also learn a bit about the leadership of North Vietnam and the dynamics of how the Chinese and Soviet communists influenced the leaders of this country.  We heard a lot about Ho Chi Minh in news coverage at the time.  Ho was the spiritual father of the North and a brilliant politician, but the series hones in on Le Duan, who wrested power from Ho in the mid-Sixties and who pushed for a very militant strategy in executing the war. In a huge irony, Le Duan pushed for what became known as the Tet Offensive in early 1968 and it turned to be a military disaster for the North and the Vietcong.  Lyndon Johnson touted this win after the battles, but he'd lost so much credibility with his previous claims of progress that one of the few clear-cut military victories for the Americans became a turning point as the opposition to the war continued to rise. 

One can draw many lessons from this series and the events it depicts. One obvious one is that the US can't win a war if the leadership we support is corrupt and not supported by the people of the nation. Over 58,000 US participants died in the war, but the various US presidents couldn't really explain why we needed to be there other than to fight the communists. But if the leaders in a country aren't supported by the people, even the best military forces can't change that political reality. It's a sad truth we've seen in other wars since Vietnam. On the other hand, the leaders in the North were brutal and even refused to treat captured American's as POWs. At the time, Vietnam just didn't seem like our fight and this documentary reinforced this. Nonetheless, the commentary from South Vietnamese people in the series made it clear that there was strong opposition to the North and communism in South Vietnam, and the clash had strong elements of a civil war as the US involvement lessened.  

The war in Vietnam divided our country and set in motion political and cultural divisions which still exist. But the truth about what happened was complex and not easily boiled down into simple slogans. Burns and Novick have done a great service to the US and likely to the Vietnamese as well in diving deep into this war and the times which surrounded it and letting viewers choose what to make of this mosaic. The ending is poignant, as veterans from both sides of the war, Americans and North Vietnamese, meet many years after the war ended and found understanding at a human level with the surviving warriors of the opposition.