Music Box: Mike Acerbo’s THE SEARCH
I can’t remember the last time a song made me cry, but toward the end of Mike Acerbo’s evocative, engrossing CD, THE SEARCH, it happens. “Robbie” chronicles Acerbo’s soul-kept memories of his childhood best friend, who drowned in the Delaware river when he was in his early teens. But the images this poet evokes bear neither a scintilla of schmaltz nor a hint of histrionic melodrama. No, he allows his memories speak for themselves in the simplest of fragments, both heartbreaking and tragic. His pain is palpable, as you ache alongside his longing. Yet, even when describing the indescribable, his pen whispers in heart-wrenching profundity:
“Oh, the water flooded you…there were angels on air…
Had I known your fire would simmer in that river, shimmering…sparkling stars up to the sky…
I would have fought with every angel…”
The rest of this gorgeous self-released album isn’t so saddled with tears. THE SEARCH is about just that, as he sojourns his soul and the ghosts that linger, and the fantastical world he inhabits, for answers sometimes – and sometimes not – found. I’m reluctant to use “fairytale” to describe these pieces because they strike such a cathartic and emotional innate chord in Acerbo, and the listener, that these are more “truth tales”.
From the fanciful carnival feast of “Blueberry Moon” (“I take a stroll there’s a blueberry moon peering above the treetops…”), to the quiet devastation at the intangibility of his “Mother”, who passed away from breast cancer when he was only 14 (“…keep the candle burning through the window pain so that I may find my way again to your embrace…it held me near, hold me near again…where is your embrace…?”); from the questionable nature of love itself – is it a “Fairytale Love” (“…you rode in on your horse of gold, swept me away, we were bold…”) or is the very idea of love a fairy tale (“…this is not real…this is not real…”)? – to the dark forces sometimes winning the war between light and despair in the breathtaking “Trilby” (“…her lips scarred and torn from a thousand misplaces kisses…she’s been dancing with so many men, none of them would love her and that little girl is a stone woman now…”); from the irony of the country-tinged sound waves of the exhilarating “Where The River Meets The Sea” juxtaposed with its escapist, almost ironic, lyricism (“…I’m sitting here upstream next to a fading fire, thinking about my life and knowing there’s got to be a better place…”) to the often psychologically manipulating terrain of unrequited love in “Like The Tide” (“…I am the nothing that you see, when you look into my eyes…I am the empty well you’ve drunk dry, you are like the tide…”) – track after track Acerbo bares his soul with mystical stories layered in intricate imagery and truth – some dark, some tinged in hope, some reticent – each all-too human.
While each song is a monument in itself, this collection is really fully realized as a whole, from the start of the voyage until the finish. The album ends with “The Night Light” and the cautionary hope that perhaps love isn’t really a pipe dream, that despite those battles with the aforementioned darkest forces, it can bloom into fruition (“…I can feel the heart of the masses, I can see the tired eyes and hear the hatred…if you grasp it, we ain’t gonna make it…don’t you know that the night light in your hands baby, is a fire that will lead you to my darkened heart…”) – maybe all one needs to accomplish this is to detoxify the soul of such influences.
If Acerbo’s voice sometimes struggles to keep up with the glorious melodies he writes, or sounds strained, or if a few tracks get mired in the layered production, it’s those imperfections that make such songs like the brilliant “Beast” (the other side of the mirror, so to speak, to Stevie Nicks’ classic “Beauty And The Beast”, with the viewpoint of the beast himself) ring true; he’s not overtly concerned with sounding pretty (though he mostly does), he merely needs to tell his stories. And we sit there, enraptured by his pen, swirling in sonic paintings that are so ineffaceable – and even archetypal – they become tattoos to your soul. (It would be remiss of me not to mention Acerbo’s extraordinary band – their vast taut musicality never loses focus and at times, on varying cuts, actually reign Acerbo’s vocal flippancy back on track.)
From the images of castles, forests, dreams, witches and beasts, to the swooping melodic cadences, to the vulnerability-masqueraded-as-fortitude, the muses of Acerbo’s past might appear to be obvious. But appearances can be deceiving, for his is a singular pen, and when such muses are perceptible, he never stoops to mimicry, rather he heralds their aesthete, learning from the masters while forging his own unique identity as a dazzling modern troubadour for the still-new millennium.
And that he does so with some of the most haunting, ravishing and indelible melodies is merely icing.
My grade: A
Order (and sample) THE SEARCH via CD BABY, BandCamp, and iTunes.
Here’s the full music video to the album’s first single, “Trilby”:
The Greatest Farce Of All
Sorry, I ain’t buying Wendy Williams’ spurious bullshit. Making Whitney’s death all about her is tacky enough, but this is the woman who was relentless on outing Houston and her best friend Robyn as lesbians back in her radio days. She’s been an interminable bully for years – to Whitney and various other celebrities – when (and why?!?) have people started taking this category 5 phony seriously? Her tears are about as authentic as the hair on her ginormous head.
Legacy: RIP Whitney Houston
“The” voice – unmistakable, unparalleled, almost extraterrestrial – has been silenced. We do not know why, yet, and it’s a fool who’ll assume before the cause is revealed, but in everyone’s heart we think we know. Whatever the cause, one of the great magical voices in pop music, Whitney Houston, is now gone.
Her superhuman vocal athleticism was incontestable, but never overshadowed the intricacy of her delivery. Beneath the bombast of her version of Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You”, for example, you hear the vulnerability of Parton’s lyricism – Houston didn’t allow the pomposity and over-production to deter the song’s bittersweet delicacy, even when belting the modulated chorus to unnecessary crescendos. In another #1 hit, “Didn’t We Almost Have It All”, you can practically hear the tears in her defiant assertion. In the best – and even the worst – of her catalog, her Herculean gifts were always obvious.
(Lest I’m accused, I won’t play revisionist – I was never a fan of Houston’s music at its beginning. It wasn’t until her fourth album, MY LOVE IS YOUR LOVE, that I connected to her innate persona. Houston found a groove befitting her natural gifts – it burst with a mixture of kinetic energy, and finally, clarity. She finally delivered on the soul she owed – and that we craved – for years.)
It’s also a fool who’ll try to discuss Houston without mentioning those damned demons. Her voice, once a wonder of the world, had sadly deteriorated over the past decade or so due to that years-long decline into the abyss of self-destruction. Her lucidity gone, her range limited, by the time her last CD, 2009s “comeback” I LOOK TO YOU, was released, her once absolute voice had dissipated into an unfocussed grasp – sad for a singer whose mightiest gift was that of vocal command.
I’ve often been accused of cold heartedness when I voice my low sympathy levels for addiction deaths and received a lot of flack over the years in my belief that if addiction is a disease – and I’m not stating it’s not – it is the only disease that is curable by the addict. I still believe that.
But it makes it no less heart-wrenching for all the victims, including the self-inflicted.
As the world mourns the death of a musical legend, I can only sit here and bow my head. Not again, not again.
We’ll Take A Cup Of Kindness…
When George Baily gave up all hope, Clarence, an angel-in-waiting, needed to show him that his life had more meaning that he could ever have fathomed. How, as mere mortals, was George (and all of us, actually) able to grasp the profundity that every being effects/affects every other being he/we come in contact with? Stephen Sondheim touched upon that message too, in the song “No One Is Alone”, from INTO THE WOODS: “You move just a finger, say the slightest word…something’s bound to linger…be heard…you are not alone…” (that show touches me on a deeper level than any other of his masterpieces – and that’s saying a lot coming from a self-proclaimed Sondheimite.)
2011 was too rough a year for too many people I love, so my hope is for a 2012 that is filled with promise and peace and prosperity – mentally, monetarily too, but most importantly, soulfully. I know these are clichés, but clichés are clichés for a reason – because they are borne of truth.
The power of intestinal fortitudinous is mighty. It’s a fundamental, natural gift we all born with, and it lives within the caverns of our deepest souls. It is revitalized in need, during our darkest times, resurrected right on the cusp of us giving up. But we never give up – it won’t allow us to. For we are the captains of our own souls and the creators of our own fates…we survive.
But we also need to be the people that we can actually look into the mirror at…and be more than that reflection, not less.
Happy 2012. Bring it on.
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne…For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne.
We’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet,
For auld lang syne…
Christmas Angel, Sing To Me…
Even as an unapologetic non-believer in myths and fairies and tall-tales (you know, religion), I’ve always adored Christmas and all that it entails – the principle of the holiday, the spirit of love and compassion and the conceptual peace-on-Earth-good-will-toward-men. Naïve, perhaps, maybe even foolish; some might proclaim (as I’ve done so very often) that reality dictates it is not love that makes the world go round, but money, greed, hate and intolerance. And, more often than not, they are masqueraded in the religious dogma that, ironically – and speciously – enough, they allege opposition to.
But it is not – and never was, for me – the religious doctrine of its mythology, rather the ideal of the season, and I never let that aforementioned reality imbue my unabashed immersion of Christmastime and the power that rescinds that reality.
Sorta like Linus explains…
Specifically, his last paragraph.
For me, Christmas is my partner. Christmas is my family. Christmas is my friends. Christmas is believing, if even for a nanosecond, that perhaps love – and not hate – makes the world go round, or at least our love makes our worlds go round – those of us fortunate enough to have love, family and friends.
**********
Many, many years ago, once upon a time when I was a wannabe songwriter and self-proclaimed poet, I wrote this little poem below, and while the innate message is of hope and love, this Christmas poem was crafted during my dark ages – a period in my life I look back upon only in abstract awe that I actually ever survived. Perhaps those stories are better left hidden within the storehouses of my soul. But whatever demons resurrected in my lifetime, I, again, never let them deter my adoration of the holiday spirit.
What has made my heart smile over the years is knowing that friends I cherish love this poem. Especially those with children. After copyrighting it years ago, I hand-wrote it (ah, the lost art of the handwritten word!) inside the Christmas cards I sent that year and the response was lovely and surprising. It was such a simple thing – it actually rhymed! – yet, throughout the following years friends told me they actually read it to their children! How can my soul not gleam at the thought that my unsophisticated words of optimism in darkness would bring such light to others? I was honored and deeply humbled. As I still am.
And, as uncomplicated as it might be, it is how I feel throughout the holidays…and I share it here because if it can possibly put the smallest smile on a face, then it’s worth sharing. It’s not a monumental work of staggering genius. It is not of epic proportions. It’s totally unsophisticated and sanguine. But it, simply, is. And I wish for all who read this – friends, family, strangers – the most magical of holidays. Set asunder your beliefs or non-beliefs, whatever your religious or non-religious persuasions. Forgo the animosity you might imbibe in a world you might find indifferent. Even for a scintilla of a moment, will it hurt for anyone to just…believe?
Christmas Angel
(a holiday dream…)
Where is the snow at Christmastime?
Where are the songs that I sing in rhyme?
They’re inside your heart and they ring in time
Open your soul…let your soul shine
Christmas angel
Sing to me
Meadowlark
Don’t abandon me
Santa Claus
I need you now
Don’t want the Grinch
Coming around
So I dance in the flight of the snow-white dove
As I swallow the flakes as they land on my tongue
And I carol all night to the ivory and pine
With chestnuts afire…an intervention divine?
While the children playing with the snowman, pleased
Creating snow angels at the trunks of the trees
And I thank you, Christmas angel, for bringing me here
Even ol’ Mr. Scrooge full of holiday cheer
Christmas angel
Sings to me
Meadowlark
Lets me fly on her wing
And Santa Claus has come to town
I knew he’d never let me down
He never ever lets me down
@1996 SageSong Musings
I Love Rock ‘N Roll (But…)
Believe it or not, I never saw the Broadway show the film is based on, which was wildly entertaining, according to my friends who actually did see it and whose opinions matter to me. It sounds like pure camp-heaven, so eventually I’ll get off my highfalutin horse and stroll on over to the Helen Hayes Theater to have a good ol’ time.
As fantastic as the show sounds, and appears to be, there are some major hurdles in the trailer for the film version of ROCK OF AGES.
For one, Russell Brand and Julianne Hough are in it. And it’s directed by the not-always reliable Adam Shankman, so strike one, two and, well, two-and-a-half by fiat.
Secondly, Alec Baldwin and Paul Giamatti are great comic actors, but when actors are blatantly winking at the viewer, it sorta negates the camp appeal it’s aiming for (I like my camp unintentional).
Thirdly, the soundtrack consists of the best/worst music from the cheesiest era in Rock N Roll history, the mighty 80s, e.g. Journey, Whitesnake, Quiet Riot, Styx etc. But, actually, this might work in its favor, as tit’s performed as, again, camp , which, if you think about it, is the only way one can perform Journey, Whitesnake, Quiet Riot, Styx etc. “seriously”.)
Lastly, the trailer is pretty dreadful:
See. Yet, I can’t muster a reasonable rationale as to why I can’t wait to see it. I never (okay, rarely) judge a film by its trailer, but there’s something intriguing about this wreckage that compels me to want to see it.
Oh, and P.S. While nothing will ever make me believe he’s anything other than a raving lunatic,I’m about to say something I’ve never ever said – even at the height of his fame – Tom Cruise look friggin’ hot! I know, it’s my evergreen lust for dirty, long-haired rockers. Even the faux ones.
Lady of the Harbor
It’s hard to believe that, as a native New Yorker, it’s been over 3 decades since my first – and last – visit to the Statue Of Liberty. It was during a 4th grade class trip, years before it was closed (from 1984 – 1986) for a much needed face-and-body lift. As someone who’s loath [...]
Encomium 9/11: George Merkouris
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I wrote this in 2003 in tribute to the one friend I knew (at the time) who was murdered on that most heinous of days. I’ll post it annually, for as long as this blog remains active… …and a big thank you, again, to my dear, beautiful friend Donna Falcone – in my counltess moves [...]
“Man, I Miss Them”
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From 1969 to 2001, the Twin Towers made countless cameos in Hollywood films. Sometimes featured prominently in the foreground, sometimes lurking in the distance. This montage celebrates the towers’ all-too-short film career with songs that capture the passing decades. Man, I miss them…” Dan Meth



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