I Feel the Earth Move (Carole King)

My husband and I had the honor and pleasure of attending the Carole King concert last night at the Hard Rock Cafe in Hollywood (Florida, not California!), where my daughter Sarah works - such a memorable evening from start to finish... :-)

It was billed as The Living Room Tour, and the stage was set up with couches, chairs, plants, rugs and lamps (as well as the piano, of course) - Carole came on stage about 8:15 p.m., escorting an older woman to a seat on one of the couches... and we soon found out that was her mom ("a local", she said), who sofa-danced and sang along all evening.

Carole was later joined by instrumentalist (guitar and mandolin) Rudy Guess, Nashville singer/songwriter Gary Burr and Louise Goffin, her daughter from former husband/songwriting partner Gerry Goffin who each showcased some of their own original material - the harmony vocals throughout the concert were sublime.

Seems in the 70's, Carole wrote a song about the Hard Rock Cafe... so of course I had to go googling - in her introduction of it, she said something like "this is the portion of the show where I have a brief costume change"... and she put on a black Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt (which the hotel manager had given her earlier in the day) before sitting down at the piano and starting to sing... :-)

I thought the show felt very smooth and intimate, especially for such a large venue (I'm used to coffeehouses and house concerts these days) - I loved the way Carole encouraged audience participation (how gratifying to an artist for their fans to know every word to every song). She performed a good many songs from Tapestry, did a medley of her early Brill Building hits, finished with You've Got a Friend... and the encore was Loco-Motion - my husband and I were both moved to tears throughout the evening with memory floods from a very important time in each of our lives.

Here are photos and an article about her pre-show appearance, autographing a guitar for charity... as well as a March 2008 interview with Tavis Smiley and the Wikipedia entry detailing the overview of Carole's extensive career...

Rewind to 1994: When my husband and I finally purchased a CD player, in a fit of practicality I vowed that I wouldn't replace anything we already owned on album or cassette but would just move forward from that point on - my sister came to my 40th birthday party, gifted me with the Tapestry CD and said, "that's the stupidest f*cking rule I've ever heard"... :-)

P.S. My book club just finished discussing the book mentioned below, so the timing of this show was perfect - I highly recommend Weller's retelling of the lives of these three legendary singer-songwriters!

SONG: I Feel the Earth Move by Carole King

BOOK: Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon - and the Journey of a Generation by Sheila Weller

POEM: Songs for the People by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

Let me make the songs for the people,
Songs for the old and young;
Songs to stir like a battle-cry
Wherever they are sung.

Not for the clashing of sabres,
For carnage nor for strife;
But songs to thrill the hearts of men
With more abundant life.

Let me make the songs for the weary,
Amid life's fever and fret,
Till hearts shall relax their tension,
And careworn brows forget.

Let me sing for little children,
Before their footsteps stray,
Sweet anthems of love and duty,
To float o'er life's highway.

I would sing for the poor and aged,
When shadows dim their sight;
Of the bright and restful mansions,
Where there shall be no night.

Our world, so worn and weary,
Needs music, pure and strong,
To hush the jangle and discords
Of sorrow, pain, and wrong.

Music to soothe all its sorrow,
Till war and crime shall cease;
And the hearts of men grown tender
Girdle the world with peace.

QUOTE: "So she poured out the liquid music of her voice to quench the thirst of his spirit." ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Song About the Moon (Paul Simon)

"The fascination with the moon started long before Pink Floyd. It has been the inspiration for poetry, paintings, songs and even whole religions over the history of man. Every human that's ever lived has looked upon the moon and pondered it, as well as our own existence. Many believe that a 5,000 year old rock carving found at Knowth, Ireland represents the moon, in which case, it is the earliest depiction yet discovered. There is much folklore associated with the moon including that it's responsible for insanity... thus the word lunatic. Even today, after we have walked on the moon and know exactly what it is, it continues to be a great inspiration to songwriters across the world. "

The moon can be full, red, half, silvery, crescent - it can be harvest, yellow, paper, bad, new, pink. And, of course, it can be blue... which is the premise of this post - last night was the Blue Moon, which refers to the second full moon occurring within a calendar month. I attempted to honor it at 1:00 a.m. from the warmth and peacefulness of my jacuzzi, but the cloud cover was too thick - however, I didn't have to see it to believe it was there... :-)

SONG: Song About the Moon by Paul Simon

BOOK: Conversations with the Moon by Amy Neftzger

POEM: Song by Wendell Berry

Within the circles of our lives
we dance the circles of the years,
the circles of the seasons
within the circles of the years,
the cycles of the moon
within the circles of the seasons,
the circles of our reasons
within the cycles of the moon.

Again, again we come and go,
changed, changing. Hands
join, unjoin in love and fear,
grief and joy. The circles turn,
each giving into each, into all.
Only music keeps us here,
each by all the others held.
In the hold of hands and eyes
we turn in pairs, that joining
joining each to all again.
And then we turn aside, alone,
out of the sunlight gone
into the darker circles of return.

QUOTE: “Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon and the truth.” ~ Hindu Prince Gautama Siddharta, the founder of Buddhism