Significant Song Number 8  -  "Band on the Run" by Wings

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BOXkChyhAM

     One of the many advantages of working at Penn State's radio station (then WDFM) was being able to listen to more records than I could ever hope to buy. We had a large speaker hooked to a turntable in a large open room that contained the record cabinets.
     With this album, Wings solidified their sound. The change in tempo throughout this song attracted me. Much later I began to use this same technique in poetry, varying the rhythm from section to section as I wanted to set a different mood or talk about a different place.
     Creative people inspire each other, even without knowing it. Being able to make those connections and extrapolate from them is wonderful!

Significant Song Number 7

Liege and Leaf by Fairport Convention

 This time, it is an entire albums! Mixing traditional folk with original compositions so seamlessly with electric guitars, Fairport Convention ignited interest in older music. My mother had a copy of Francis James Child's one-volume abridgment of English and Scottish Popular Ballads which I pored over. Friends of mine could play and sing, I could read and dream of writing. I heard Fairport in Berkeley, CA in 1975 minus Sandy Denny.  Later on I used songs from this album and others like it when teaching British Literature.

  I post a link to "Matty Groves": . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK_7AqH1VGQ

https://soundcloud.com/arthur-turfa-1

Germany's oldest city, Trier, was founded in 9 BC and was the site of a marvelous Summer for me as I prepared for what  thought I was going to do with my life. The Porta Nigra, or Black Gate, is the only remnant of the roman walls.

The Pub in the Double Wides

Two double-wides jerry-rigged together,

the Bull and Bush became part of

Orange County that would be forever England

until a developer coveted the space.

A Google search shows only fancier places

fanning out across the Southland.

Years later my memories as blurred

as the division between Costa Mesa,

Fountain Valley, Garden Grove, with

similar houses, businesses, so unlike home;

I did not know where one ended

and the next community began.

Fragments of visiting the pub emerge.

Searching in vain for a beer garden

we found this outpost of the Empire.

Expatriates clustering at the bar,

Canucks mingling with the Brits,

A stray Aussie or two, occasionally an Irishman.

Not being regulars, we occupied several tables

between the dartboards and the chintzy piano

whose desperate player wearing oversized Carnaby Street

clothing on his small frame repeated

the same mistakes in the same songs

all night long in confused consistency.

We found our niche there, avoiding garish discos,

upscale places full of leisure suits, white shoes and belts,

the whole trendy Fashion Island scene

or beach bars attracting hordes of hip people

and the cowboy bars that didn’t like our kind..

Shooting darts, drinking pints of John Courage pulled

by the raven-haired barmaid whose name I never knew

life was enjoyable, the world ours to savor.

In those two double wides jerry-rigged together

we found relaxation and community there

that eluded us elsewhere in Orange County.

© Arthur Turfa, 2014

Published again in Altpoetics! Thanks so much!
http://altpoetics.wordpress.com/

Release date set for Poems of Places and Times, Reflected

eLectio Publishing will release my first book of poems on Tuesday, April 7, 2015. Needless to say I am excited, humbled, and grateful for this news. So many of you have supported me, given me advice, feedback, and encouragement. I appreciate all of that and you so much!

Watch my blog, “Some Poetry” awturfa.blogspot.com, or my Facebook author page, “Arthur Turfa- Poems of Times and Places, Reflected” https://www.facebook.com/pages/Arthur-Turfa-Poems-of-Times-and-Places-Reflected/293732337470677?ref_type=bookmark for updates and further information. 

S

Significant "Song" Number 6.5  Beethoven's 9th Symphony, fourth movement "An die Freude"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pbMUEHvoAo

 Of course I realize this is not a song in the strict sense; that is why I place quotation marks around the word! In high shcool I bought a paperbeck of Friedrich Schiller's poetry, and labored word by word to translate. At Penn State I saw how one artistic genre influenced another. Beethoven, while completely deaf, composed this outstanding symphony and set to music Schiller's poem.
  Also at Penn State I directed the Third Program, the old WDFM's classical music station. The name comes form the BBC, and the campus radio station (now WPSU) . I learned about classical music there. Actually I was on the news staff, then did public affairs, and my organizational skills coupled with a lack of anyone else who could do it I suppose, vaulted me into the position. At least I could pronounce the names of the composers and performers!