A Dream Comes 'Round at Last

by Patrick J. Walsh

Fragments from a life-long friendship with the
artist behind the new CD "Keeping the Dream Alive"

• • •

I remember talking with my cousin Kelly when he was in the midst of seeking out expert advice to help him achieve the sound he wanted for what would become his first CD, Keeping the Dream Alive.

I had heard some of the songs he was talking about, and they sounded great. Exasperated, I gave him my own advice:

"Just get it done and put it out there."

That was about two years ago.

• • •

Lately, as I've been working toward the reboot of my portfolio website EchoesAmongtheStars.com, I've had occasion to revisit the large amount of music journalism that I've written over the years.

As I read through many of my old clips, I realized that I am afflicted with the reporter's occupational hazard of being able to recall the circumstances of virtually every interview and performance that I've covered, as well as the particulars of how I went about writing each article.

At the heart of all those details, though, it is my personal memories of the people and places and music that remain most vivid.

Interestingly, at the same time that I've been experiencing this musical and emotional rewind, I have been listening to some new music — the first CD released by my cousin Kelly, who I've known for virtually my entire life.

• • •

Separated in age by just a handful of months, each the youngest in a family of brothers, each having fallen in love with rock and pop at just about the same time — that moment when psychedelia first began to show up on "classic rock" playlists, and the first mention of the term "punk" as a music genre began to show up in the media — my cousin Kelly and I got along famously from the first moment we met, and have ever since.

Although our family situations were different when we were growing up, we were never at a lack of words or welcome whenever we saw each other.

Kelly always seemed a lot cooler than me, but in a way that never made me feel bad. He dressed cooler; his hair was longer; and he was easy to talk to, even for me, as quiet as I often was as a child.

Kelly (right) always seemed a lot cooler than me...

• • •

When we were little, our dads took us on a camping trip: Kelly and his two older brothers, and me and my older brother. Back then I was overwhelmed by being in the woods. Everyone seemed to know more about camping and fishing and cooking out than I did.

I remember being glad to find that our campsite had a wooden platform where we were to put up our tent — not for fear of what otherwise might find its way into our sleeping quarters, but simply because it reminded me of the platform my Dad had made in our backyard, where we had already spent so many happy times.

Even then, when I had yet so little of it, I was borne back into the past as surely as Fitzgerald's Gatsby.

For his part, Kelly seemed relaxed and at ease, enjoying the quiet of the woods and the company of his Dad and brothers and his beloved uncle and cousins. Gradually, I grew less anxious.

Ultimately, it was one of those experiences that form up in your heart and mind years later like a series of Monet landscapes, providing a window into the best parts of your connections with people you love, as those relationships evolve over time.

Years later, Kelly would take his own young family camping at the very same spot.

• • •

When we were a bit older, Kelly and I were at a party — one of those gatherings that would, over time, attain a sort of mythical status among my friends and family. It was the kind of get-together that resulted in people looking through the bushes in the yard the next day, trying to locate a misplaced family member who hadn't quite yet found his way home.

I have a friend who to this day delights in the memory of a discussion he had with Kelly at that party. He remembers how the two of them started up a flight of stairs while Kelly was deep in the midst of a point-by-point exegesis of the then-new Jethro Tull album, as a means of exploring the merits of progressive rock as a whole.

On a step about halfway up, Kelly suddenly stumbled and fell to one knee; then, hardly spilling his beer, he steadied himself, regained his balance, and continued upward — still calmly discussing Tull, and Ian Anderson's place in the pantheon of great rock songwriters.

By current standards, it was a crazy time. But as I look back, I realize that it was probably that period in the lives of our parents' generation when the last possible dreams of youth were still swaying just at the edge of the horizon; tantalizing, maddeningly close, but still just far enough away to cause even the wildest romantic to wonder if maybe, just maybe, those dreams would never slow down enough to be touched, or to be made real.

And for our generation, still so young, it was a time when all dreams still seemed on the table, just waiting to be put into motion.

• • •

Over the years, Kelly and I have shared similar career paths, a deep gratitude for (and devotion to) our family and friends, and a deeply held creative impulse that we each recognized in the other early on.

I became a writer, and I've been blessed to have been able to make my writing a key part of my life and career, as well as an outlet for my creativity. At the same time, I have also always loved music — whether I'm just listening, or composing, or writing about someone else's work.

Kelly has been a successful professional for a very long time, regularly expressing his creativity through the technical expertise and business sense that he puts to good daily use for the benefit of others. But he has also always loved music — and in his case, his long-held passion for writing and performing music has now resulted in the release of Keeping the Dream Alive.

• • •

Recently, as we chatted over dinner, getting caught up on family and friends and careers and yes, reminiscing, Kelly and I got talking about some of the technical aspects of music recording and production.

He tends to chide himself for having taken so long to finalize the recordings that have now become his first CD. In truth, however, it is the careful attention to detail that he devoted to their production that provides the finished work with much of its beauty and power.

He approached the task of recording and producing Keeping the Dream Alive with the same quiet, good-humored expertise that has long made him a successful professional: reaching out to family and friends for support and advice, seeking the help of experts where necessary, enlisting other creative artists where helpful.

And then — now — he has taken the final step in the long creative process, moving from dreamer to doer, taking ownership of his own music and sharing it with the world.

From dreamer to doer, taking ownership of his own music...

Both the process and the result represent a great deal of what is important to him, in music and in life. And in a very real way, the finished product honors all those moments through the years when any of us felt that little creative spark inside, calling for a pen and paper, a guitar, a microphone, to document the bits and pieces that form the first ragged outline of a dream.

He has now set that outline in stone, and set those dreams to music.

• • •

In addition to being justifiably proud — or at least, well satisfied — as he enjoys the initial reaction to Keeping the Dream Alive, I'm sure he will also be relieved to not have to deal with the impatience of those who have long encouraged him to "just get it done and put it out there."

At least until he starts work on the next one.

© Patrick J. Walsh

 Keeping the Dream Alive, 06.01.14

Available at Amazon.com

That Every Mouth Can Be Fed: Remembering the Extraordinary Desmond Dekker

By Patrick J. Walsh
Eating. Not one of the ‘usual’ places, but an okay option for a hot meal on a cold night.

The food was good. It served well as the catalyst for the larger experience of sharing a meal — the sharing being the more important part, providing the context and meaning, while the food itself provided an opportunity to enjoy someone else’s enjoyment of eating as much as I would the taste of the food on my own plate.

Toward the end of the meal, a little bubbling of chatter on the radio, the other tables a little more sparsely populated, the last of my coffee losing its heat at the bottom of the thick ceramic mug. A brief quiet in the flow of the conversation; and then the first familiar emanations of an irreplaceable presence in the soundscape...

Desmond. Desmond Dekker. “Israelites.”

By that particular point, it had been somewhat more than 15 years since I had seen Desmond Dekker perform live, and more than five since he passed away, on May 24, 2006.

Desmond Dekker at 7 Willow Street,
Port Chester, New York, 05/26/95.

He had been in his late 20s when “Israelites” first made its way from his homeland in Jamaica into the pop radio airwaves of the late 1960s, and then into the top 10 of the U.S. charts and to #1 in the UK — according Desmond the honor of being the first Jamaican musical artist to enjoy international commercial success with a song that was entirely a product of his own culture. As such, it was also the first taste of a marvelously vibrant musical milieu for a generation of listeners in the United States and Europe.

In the mid 1990s, when I stood swaying in the animated darkness of 7 Willow Street in Port Chester alongside some friendly fellow travelers who were equally enwrapped in the experience, as Desmond shared the mystic heart of the composition that had at that point defined the course of his life and career for more than two decades, he was in his mid 50s.

And in 2006, when he suffered the heart attack that would claim him for the choir of a higher stage, he was 64. It is an age that seems very young for dying, for an individual of such energy and spirit.

Fortunately, for those not fortunate enough to have encountered Desmond during his lifetime, as well as those who simply wish that he was still here, the energy and spirit of the man is well reflected in his life’s work.

As his signature song and as the nominal starting point for anyone foraging for information about his music, “Israelites” provides a telling example of the kind of small miracle that occurs whenever Desmond Dekker’s music is embraced by a non-Jamaican audience.

The song’s journey, like that of the artist and his audience, is evidence of the unlikeliest sort of conveyance, from an intensely singular vision imbued with the particulars of its time and style and character, to the far reaches of the world, where it is often embraced even by those who are themselves surrounded by styles and statements that are utterly foreign — and even antagonistic — to its own nature.

Even for the most earnest American ear, it is the kind of composition whose basic elements are as difficult to grasp as those of a Gregorian chant or a hymn in Latin — but equally rewarding, for those willing to listen.

Those interested in the etymology of the song’s title will likely come across descriptions of a particular group of “Israelites” — a local sect of the time whose belief system blended elements of Christianity and Rastafarianism. Whether the name of the song is derived from observation of that particular group or from the Biblical Israelites is probably less important than to simply note the obvious comfort Desmond displays with Biblical ideas and imagery in many of his songs (“Honour Your Mother and Father,” for example, was one of his most popular early compositions).

As a whole, the lyrics express the songwriter’s empathy for the displaced and downtrodden in his own mid-century homeland, and in his vocal performance and musical accompaniment, their bleak outline of the struggles of the poor are elevated into a universal anthem of shared experience.

The lyrics are drenched in the Jamaican idiom, and are likely to be interpreted by an American audience more in snippets of phrases than as entire ideas, initially leaving half-formed impressions in the fashion of a watercolor or an epic poem.

Details filled in by subsequent listening, however, reveal very concrete, carefully observed descriptions of the heartaches of deprivation and poverty: the hardest work for the lowest pay, the disintegration of family life, the empty pocket leading to the empty stomach, the worn clothes leading to the loss of dignity, the suspicion of one’s fellows following the suspicion of one’s own self as desperation gives way to temptation — these themes are each struck in the succession of brief lines, with the whole presenting a vividly impressionistic observation of the experience of being poor.

The musical environment for such observation also presents a challenge to anyone unfamiliar with its genre or genesis. Like many of Desmond’s most formidable compositions, “Israelites” is characteristic of the mid-1960s shift in Jamaican music that is known as ‘rock-steady’ — a brief period which saw the predominant beat of the island’s music transformed from the fast paced, uptempo ska of the decade’s early years to the languorous, bass-dominated reggae that would emerge at its closing.

While less driven than ska, rock-steady is a bouncy, danceable music; its suitability to lyrics embracing the strife of human suffering may well seem a bit bewildering to the uninitiated. The buoyancy of the loping beat of “Israelites” could cause the mind to wander, were it not for the remarkable vocal performance that Desmond brings to the song. His exquisite tenor is the kind of voice that, heard once, remains in the head and the heart like the familiar tones of the greeting of a friend.

The voice and the beat evoke a spaciousness that give the song a broader feeling, expanding it, as it were, to hint at a larger context in a manner similar to the way in which the Biblical allusion at the heart of the lyrics bespeaks the larger experience of all those journeying toward deliverance.

Ultimately, the words and the music and that unmistakable, irreplaceable voice converge to elicit an intense sense of recognition in the plight described in “Israelites,” sounding down the decades from its creation so long ago, during the early days of a new kind of music that emerged largely from the hardest part of life in a place and time that was otherwise abundantly blessed.

Along with the myriad of other recordings that represent the remarkable life and spirit of Desmond Dekker, it is a music that still feeds the soul, even a lifetime after it is first heard.

© 2012 Patrick J. Walsh

For more information:

• The Official Desmond Dekker website: http://www.desmonddekker.com/

Recommended listening:

Exceptional Rhino
Greatest Hits collection.

Early Recordings
anthology.

Uplifting mid-1990s 
compilation.

Five Minutes in Space: One Year Online

The Apollo 1 crew (l to r): Gus Grissom, Ed White, Roger Chaffee

photo courtesy of NASA • www.nasaimages.org

The new episode of my video series "Five Minutes in Space," which I've just posted today, marks the start of the series' second year.

This installment, "Apollo 1: The First Team," recalls the tragic loss of the first Apollo crew, who perished when a fire broke out in their spacecraft during a test on January 27, 1967. Rather than dwell on the grim details of the accident, I've focused on the lives and legacy of crew members Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee, and their dedication to the ideals of service to others and exploration of the unknown.


This episode also features snippets of two of my musical compositions: the FMS theme, "Stomp It," which appears at the start and end of every episode; and for the first time, a few brief clips from "Landing at Noctis Labyrinthus," which I've only previously used once, in an ad for my book Spaceflight: A Historical Encyclopedia.

Five Minutes in Space #13 - Apollo 1: The First Team

is available now at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXFEX6QztGU