Saturday, April 11, 2015

Drove My Chevy to the Levee

I’ve heard the phrase “priceless work of art” and understand what is meant and have a general list of items, artful or not (no Dodgers, please) that might be on it. These days, it’s one less as Don McLean’s manuscript for American Pie went under the auctioneer’s hammer and “Sold American (Pie” or elsewhere) for about 1.2 million American dollars.

Very little in the rock music community spun people up at the time of its success four plus decades ago like McLean’s opus. Trust me on that one, I was there. Rolling Stone, you might be surprised to learn before they failed to accurately report campus news, used to be all about music, and they offered a review if my memory serves me well (and it does) offering that McLean’s (second) album from which AP was released labelled McLean, “Nixon’s Dylan.”

I had enjoyed his first album, a year earlier on a little tiny label that had a lovely sweet song, And I Love You So, which Perry Como (whose sweater I proudly wore as a wee slip of a lad) made into a Top Five pop hit sometime after McLean’s American Pie had topped the chart.

Point in fact, Rolling Stone reviewer guy in my memory, his records were well-made and very enjoyable (Vincent, The Grave, and Babylon are three other cuts from that album which have held up very well, in my opinion) and you were a whiner and a closed-mind, open-mouthed cretin. But I could be wrong.

Speaking of Dylan and “money doesn’t talk; it swears,” I’ve got a ways to go before I hit 70, fingers crossed while typing that, so let me endorse the idea of finding out how interesting it might be (to me) to find out what all of this stuff in the ether for the last seven or so years might be worth.

There’s a small island, coincidentally quite near Don’s (I'm guessing its purchase is the reason for his curio$ity), I’ve got a hankering to settle down on and sure could use the cash.
-bill kenny

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