The Superhero Sandbox Summer Special 2017

The Superhero Sandbox Summer Special, a two-hour music program produced by Christopher Smith, will air on WFVR-LP 96.5FM Royalton Community Radio on Wednesday, June 28, from 7-9 PM EST. After multiple trips across the country over the last year, this program will feature many unique and rare recordings-- but will focus primarily on some of my favorite works of recorded music of all time. 

Typical songs of summer-- "Hot Fun in the Summertime" by Sly and the Family Stone, Janis Joplin's version of Gershwin's "Summertime," the Lovin' Spoonful's "Summer in the City," Don Henley's "Boys of Summer"-- are available just about everywhere else on any radio dial, Pandora feed, etc. Instead, this program will include music and songs that represent something about the lazy season that follows the 'merry month of May' and all its frivolity. For so many educators and students, summer represents a reprieve from academic diligence. However I find this early summer I am seeking a deeper diligence of the spirit nowhere near the conscious and academic mind. I am looking for the subliminal this summer, the clustering of moments that allows our time to slip right by. The cresting of the ocean waves that we pay attention to in summer; how the wind can whip those leaf-heavy branches of the tall trees that we only notice in a storm and near our homes; those moments when we find ourselves caught, relatively unprepared, by the blinding sun. In some places of the country, summer has been all but subliminal already, but rather a threat to health and safety. In this season or any other, none of us can understand fully how our environment may changes our plans and our lives. 

So with this lackadaisical spiritual thesis and a stack of new recordings discovered during my recent coast-to-coast travels, the Superhero Sandbox Summer Special will represent some of my very favorite recordings-- not 'desert island' recordings, but a mix tape of unavoidable and immediately-gratifying musical favorites. A playlist will be added to this post following the program's conclusion. 

What follows are some images taken from albums to be heard (in part) during the Superhero Sandbox Summer Special. I am very interested in providing listeners an immersive and transformative musical experience. Were I to interrupt the music for poetry or readings, I would likely use the four excerpts included in this post. 

The fact of the matter is, all of the radical people in the country are emotionally disturbed people. If you were able to psychoanalyze them you would see that they are deeply disturbed. People who are religious fanatics, people who are fanatical in political ways, military ways, these are sick people. These are not normal minds, and our society tends to treat all these people with equanimity. So, we, as comedians, find it our duty to express the fact that you can’t, the people can be crazy, and dangerous. And that you must not be fool enough to say, “The emperor has no clothes.” To be a nonconformist in that degree, and to appreciate the fact that you aren’t necessarily insane, because you think somebody else is. And to be able to also accept the kind of madness that comes out of creative thinking. There are degrees of being mad. These are difficult issues, but these are issues we [the Firesign Theatre] like to deal with. 

--Phil Proctor, in Backwards Into the Future: The Recorded History of the Firesign Theatre, by F. Weibel (Bear Manor Media, 2006). 

Where once the waters of your face

Spun to my screws, your dry ghost blows,

The dead turns up its eye;

Where once the mermen through your ice

Pushed up their hair, the dry wind steers

Through salt and root and roe.

Where once your green knots sank their splice

Into the tided cord, there goes

The green unraveller,

His scissors oiled, his knife hung loose

To cut the channels at their source

And lay the wet fruits low.

Invisible, your clocking tides

Break on the lovebeds of the weeds;

The weed of love’s left dry;

There round about your stones the shades

Of children go who, from their voids,

Cry to the dolphined sea.

Dry as a tomb, your coloured lids

Shall not be latched while magic glides

Sage on the earth and sky;

There shall be corals in your beds,

There shall be serpents in your tides,

Till all our sea-faiths die.      

                                    

                      – Dylan Thomas

Der Einsame [The Solitary]

As one who has sailed across an unknown sea,

Among this rooted folk I am alone;

The full days on the tables are their own,

To me the distant is reality.

A new world reaches to my very eyes,

A place perhaps unpeopled as the moon;

Their slightest feelings they must analyze,

And all their words have got the common tune.

The things I brought with me from far away,

Compared with theirs, look strangely not the same:

In their great country they were living things,

But here they hold their breath, as if for shame. 

       – Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. C.F. MacIntyre (Rilke: Selected Poems, University of California Press, 1940)

The next few hours driving through new Mexico and Arizona were relatively quiet. Larry could see Elvis mulling over the conversation and trying to come to grips with it.

And then it happened. Just before twilight, as they were climbing the mountains south of Flagstaff, Arizona. Larry was in the front with Elvis, while Jerry Schilling, Billy Smith, and Red West were in the back, chatting. Drawn perhaps by the same impulse, Elvis and Larry looked up into a glowing sky that was a strange iridescent blue. As their gaze wandered off to the horizon, they saw a lone cloud. And then their eyes stopped and they sat almost transfixed. The cloud was in the shape of a man’s head. And inside the outline of this cloud they saw clearly the definite image of a face. It was a face they had seen many times before. There was no question whose face it was. The features were all there, set off by dark ridges in the fleecy white background. There were event he familiar mustache and bettled brows.

It was the face of Joseph Stalin.

Elvis cried out in excitement, “Do you see what I see? That’s Stalin’s face up there.”

Larry was equally excited. “It’s exactly like him,” he said. “What’s he doing up there?”

The features began fading, until Larry saw them become completely dissolved. He turned to Elvis, and saw him still staring. A radiant expression had come over his face. His eyes glowed with a soulful quality. And then, suddenly, he shook his head as if bringing himself out of a trance.

With one twist of the wheel, he brought the bus over to the side of the road.

“Follow me,” he said to Larry in a hoarse voice. He jumped out first, and rubbed his hand over his eyes. Larry had never seen him like this before. He looked like he was about to burst with excitement. 

He grabbed Larry and hugged him, crying:

“My prayers have been answered. I have seen the Christ and the Antichrist, and I know what I have to do.”

There on the lonely road, as the entourage looked on uneasily, the tears streamed down his face. “I have felt the presence of God,” he announced.

“It’s happened,” he shouted. “It’s God, it’s love, it exploded inside me. I’ve finally seen what you were trying to tell me. And you were right, there’s no way to convey it. It’s beyond words, beyond mental concepts, it’s the very essence of life.” Emotionally, he flung his arms around Larry again. 

“Thank you, I love you, what can I say. I feel like Paul on the road to Damascus. I am reborn.”

Elvis was now laughing and crying simultaneously. One of the entourage, thinking he might have snapped, approached cautiously. “What’s wrong, Elvis? Are you all right?”

Elvis was fighting to maintain his composure. “I’m okay,” he said. “I’m okay.”

Only Elvis saw the vision of the Christ.

He was too agitated to drive. Red West took the wheel. Larry and Elvis sat together in the back, neither speaking for a while. 

     – from The Truth About Elvis by Jess Stearn and Larry Gellar, p. 47-48 (Jove Books, 1980) 

Hey Jude-- Stan Kenton and his Orchestra Live at Redlands University
Summertime-- Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross
Old Man River-- Papa John Creach
Gentle On My Mind-- Mills Brothers with Count Basie
When I Fall In Love-- Jeri Southern

Loved In Loss-- Riding Shotgun
All Your Favorite Bands-- Dawes
End of the Line-- Traveling Wilburys
With a Little Help From My Friends-- Richie Havens
How the Heart Approaches What It Yearns-- Paul Simon
It's All Over Now Baby Blue-- Them

Hard Headed Woman-- Kelly's Heroes
It's Not My Birthday-- They Might Be Giants
You Can't Roller Skate In a Buffalo Herd-- Roger Miller
Heaven Is In Your Mind-- Traffic

A Place In the Sun-- Stevie Wonder
This Must Be the Place-- Talking Heads
Pure Imagination-- Lou Rawls
Every Man Needs a Companion-- Father John Misty
Take It With Me-- Tom Waits
Unchained Melody-- The Sweet Inspirations

Peace In the Valley-- Sam Cooke and the Soul Searchers
Bound for the Promised Land-- Naomi Shelton and the Gospel Queens
Strange Things-- Sister Rosetta Tharpe
There Are Angels Hovering Round-- Jean Redpath and Lisa Neustat
Have You Heard About the World-- The Alphabetical Four
Keep On the Sunny Side-- The Lewis Family
Just a Closer Walk With Thee- The Dixie Hummingbirds
Up Above My Head-- Sister Rosetta Tharpe