Maze - Golden Time of Day

SONG: Golden Time of Day

WRITTEN BY: Frankie Beverly

PERFORMED BY: Maze

APPEARS ON: “Golden Time of Day” (1978)

Every now and then in the evening I like to go stand outside when the sky is clear and the humidity isn’t so bad to watch the sun go down. The evening is the transition between all of the pressures of the day you just had and the preparation for the next day ahead. It’s where you take a few minutes to reflect. I’m always over thinking everything anyway so I really don’t need any inspiration but there are a few moments where looking up at the sunlight sends me drifting. If it’s a really good day in New Orleans I might drive to the lakefront or the river to sit around and watch the water. I like going sit on the lake to smoke a cigar and think. In the evening the sun is setting on the west and it gets that bright orange look and makes the water shine.

The neighborhood and the rough environment of the city isn’t that far away but for some reason being in that spot helps you escape for a few minutes. Even if the day doesn’t allow itself for a trip to the water a few minutes of sitting on your porch or your front steps will do the trick. We’re looking for that space that says everything is going to be okay. The bills are going to get paid. The family is going to be alright. I’m going to be happy.

After the Saints game today I drove to the store and Golden Time of Day by Maze came on the radio. The song was recorded in 1978 and appears on the album of the same name. I have introduced this blog to Maze featuring Frankie Beverly before. I hate to go back to one of their songs so soon but I’m from New Orleans and they are a big part of my community’s personality. A lot of their songs are like song tracks to our lives. They recorded a live album here in 1980 and their popularity has been based down from one generation to the next. When the song came on I wanted to keep on riding for awhile, enjoy the fresh air and see what was going on around the city. The lyrics of the song are a perfect description of how you feel during moments like that. I just wanted to give the song some love with a blog post. I and my friend were supposed to be working a blog project that would list our life soundtracks. We haven’t done it yet but I am sure we will. This song may be on mind for all the days I tried to get away form it all even if it was just for a few minutes.

Lyrics:

There's a time of the day when the sun is going down

That's the golden time of day

It's a time that the sun turns a gold all around

That's the golden time of day

At the end of the day when the wind is soft and warm

Don't it make the flowers sway

When the sun settles down and it takes a lovley form

That's the golden time of day

People let me tell you

There's a time in your life when you find who you are

That's the golden time of day

In you mind you will find your a bright shining star

Ooh that's the golden time of day

When you feel deep inside all the love your lookin for

Don't it make you feel ok

Like the time of the day when the sun is going down

That's the golden time of day

That's the golden time of day

That's the golden time of day

Shining can't you see it shining ooh ooh ooh ooh

Shining can't you see it shining ooh ooh ooh ooh

"All Apologies" - Nirvana

SONG: "All Apologies"

WRITTEN BY: Kurt Cobain

PERFORMED BY: Nirvana

APPEARS ON: In Utero (1993); MTV Unplugged in New York (1994)

I have often thought that Seattle, the city I grew up in and around, lacks real artistic identity. If every township and metropolis has soul then surely it is the duty of resident creative types to identify and expose what it is that makes a city hum. And certainly every world-class town must have at least one great artistic statement made in its honor. Yet Seattle boasts not a single classic film, nor one indisputably great novel. Sure, the houseboat from Sleepless in Seattle still drums up a few tourists every season, but is the tired remake of a movie that wasn’t that great to begin with something we want to be known for?

As far as the music scene goes, our northwestern-most corner of the Great Northwest has produced a couple of giants over the years. Bing Crosby hailed from Tacoma, Seattle’s southern cousin. And James Marshall Hendrix spent his formative years in Seattle’s offbeat Central District. But great as these native sons were their art was never particularly representative of Washingtonian roots. Hendrix belonged as much to London as to any part of his native country and at the height of Crosby’s fame Seattle was little more than a slimy backwater.

All in all, Washington State has only ever produced one artist whose body of work owes as much to the location of his birth as to his obvious brilliance. Kurt Donald Cobain, born in Aberdeen, WA in 1967, was the greatest of a musicians’ enclave who stubbornly refused to abandon Seattle in favor of traditional entertainment hubs like Los Angeles or New York City. Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Sound Garden and their be-flanneled cohorts became synonymous with the Grunge movement, which, in spite of the genre’s near-extinction, remains an integral element of Seattle’s public image. Cobain and Nirvana, rounded out by Krist Novoselic (bass) and Dave Grohl (drums), rose to the top of the ranks in 1991 with Nevermind. Buoyed by the runaway success of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and subsequent singles Nirvana launched into sold-out world tours and met with near-universal critical acclaim. And 1993’s In Utero solidified the group’s claim to the rock crown. Nirvana’s potential was limitless. Then of course it all came to a sudden end in 1994. Cobain died at the age of 27 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

Nirvana’s place in musical history is assured, though some, the jaded and inattentive, say it was the fatal blast of Cobain’s shotgun that secured his enduring fame. Indeed, it is fashionable these days to say, “Nirvana wasn’t so great.” or “Cobain was overrated.” and it is especially trendy here in their hometown. Every Seattleite teenager goes through a period of open indifference to the group’s music. But in the end most come around and admit what they have known all along in their hearts – that Nirvana is one of the all time greats.

No. It is not the tragedy of Cobain’s demise, nor the faded hype of grunge music that keeps Nirvana fresh in our collective memories. It is the quality of the songs. Like his hero, John Lennon, Kurt Cobain was an angry young man with things to say and his love of the Fab Four is evident in the ingenious pop-craft of his work. Cobain took cues from Lennon’s darkly humorous kaleidoscope visions and his lyrics are cut from the same matter-of-fact confessional cloth. It is a style that lent itself well to the confusion and apathy of Generation X and its successors. Cobain himself came from a broken and abusive home – an evermore common situation in the Love Generation’s wake. His work spoke directly to the young disillusioned, to those left derelict by the deflated ideals of free love and the crass plundering of Reaganomics. His was a fresh voice rallying against postmodern severity and crying out for understanding, for genuine affection.

“All Apologies” stands as Kurt Cobain’s seminal work. The words, full of hurt and disappointment, speak for themselves. But, if I may lead this little piece full circle, I have one thing to say about them. Since I began college, and for first time met people en masse from outside my home state, I have been telling my friend’s that this song is the artistic statement of Seattle made in just under four minutes. I stand by that statement. One need only hear this song to feel what it is like living under the broad gray skies and to suffer their depressive fallout. Its author, who now belongs to the world and to history, is Seattle’s one great poet. Our bard. The embodiment of our ever-living spirit.

---

ALL APOLOGIES

-Kurt Cobain

What else should I be?

All apologies

What else could I say?

Everyone is gay

What else could I write?

I don’t have the right

What else should I be?

All apologies

In the sun,

In the sun I feel as one

In the sun,

In the sun

Married!

Buried!

I wish I was like you,

Easily amused

Find my nest of salt

Everything’s my fault

I’ll take all the blame

Aqua sea foam shame

Sunburn, freezer burn

Choking on the ashes of her enemy

In the sun,

In the sun I feel as one

In the sun,

In the sun

Married!

Married!

Married!

Burried!

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

All in all is all we are

All in all is all we are

All in all is all we are

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The epitaph of a genius:

The original: