April 7, 2010
Mac’s Music
Things around these parts have been pretty dormant for months, and I’m sorry about that. Life has a habit of getting in the way, and when you’re feeling down, it’s really hard to sit down & write about something as seemingly trivial as music.
It’s been almost six weeks since my grandmother Alice Leveton passed away. She fought a months-long battle against a variety of ailments that were precipitated by a serious fall in the home she shared with my mother in Florida. We all called her Mac: it was a nickname she gained while serving as an Army nurse during WWII, short for McAlister, her maiden name.
Today, as my iPhone shuffled during my AM commute, Johnny Cash’s touching cover of “We’ll Meet Again” played, and all I could think about was Mac. His Rubin-era recordings have been the accompaniment to my experience with her illness: I was listening to his Unearthed collection before I got some serious news about her condition in January, and the only CD I had or driving music while in Florida at the time of her passing was his most recent posthumous set, American VI: Ain’t No Grave. Listening to Cash coming to terms with his mortality and spirituality at the same time I was considering Mac’s and my own was equal parts upsetting and comforting, but I can’t imagine any better voice for the experience.
Grave is an emotional rollercoaster of an album, and the one song that will forever hit me like a sledgehammer is “I Don’t Hurt Anymore.” I was with Mac at the end, and her final hours, her silent gasps for air, seemed like such a struggle — I know the song is really about a breakup, but that sentiment, “At last I am free/I don’t hurt anymore,” makes me feel both barrels of the pain and relief of her passing every time I hear it.
Mac and I had a shared love for many things — The Late Show with David Letterman, cheeseburgers with grilled onions from the now-closed Paul’s Famous Hamburgers in Milford, CT, — but we had very different taste in music. The tapes (tapes!) I remember her playing most came from her sons, my late uncles Peter and Philip, and I think the fact that they came from her boys meant more than any of the music therein.
There are 3 artists who will forever be associated with Mac in my mind. First: Polish-born chanteuse Basia, who, on the cover of her album Time and Tide, I mistook for Tiffany. Mac’s favorite, tho, was London Warsaw New York, which featured this bit of deliciously mangled English, “Cruising for Bruising”:
The second is Michael Franks, who’s giving off a classy pedophile vibe on the cover of the uncomfortably-titled Skin Dive:
Yikes. I never heard her listen to Skin Dive, but that creepy album cover stayed with me all these years. Check out some of his synth “jazz”:
Mac’s absolute favorite singer, though, was Barbara Streisand, who she often just called “Barbara.” Every time she was on TV, it was appointment viewing for her. I remember her listening to Back to Broadway most, a collection of showtunes from the Great White Way:
The last gift I gave Mac was a CD of Barbara’s, her last album, Love Is The Answer. Mac was hospitalized and not completely coherent, and she didn’t have a CD player or radio anywhere in her hospital room, but I thought just having it would bring her a little bit of joy. The back cover photo was a bonus, too, because it featured a little white dog that looked like her last dog Dolly.
After Mac passed, my family began the process of cleaning out her bedroom, and we came across Barbara’s CD, still sealed. My mother offered it to me, but I declined.
I guess there’s no tidy way to sum up and end this post, so I’ll say goodbye to Mac the way Johnny Cash said goodbye on Ain’t No Grave with a tender cover of “Aloha Oe” — we’ll meet again, indeed:
Download: Johnny Cash, “Aloha Oe” (mp3)
(Right-click/control-click link to download)
Last therapeutic, over-personal venting for a while, I promise. New lists & other recommendations to come.
