Yesterday was Billie’s birthday. Her 50th birthday. She wanted to see a movie. We searched the various local movie listings, and Billie found a trailer for Young @ Heart, which was playing at the Little Theater.

So that’s what we went to see.

Here’s a recommendation for you: See it.

See it especially if you want a little inspiration. See it if you want to understand the human spirit and the strength of optimism. See it because it’s just outstanding documentary film making. See it because you’ll meet a cast of people you will want to meet and know in real life.

Young @ Heart is a chorus of older people — average age 80, according to the movie — who love life, love to sing and specialize in singing rock and roll, even punk rock.

The movie documents a seven week period in which the chorus prepares for a new tour. It shows their struggles to learn new songs, reveals bits of background of select members, and takes you some of the sorrow that goes with a group of elderly people bonding (friends die, you know).

YouTube is full of Young @ Heart videos. I could show you I Want to Be Sedated, or Fix You (one of the emotional peaks of the movie), Golden Years, Road to Nowhere, or this cool home movie of David Byrne singing with Young @ Heart. But I’m going to show you “Staying Alive,” because it captures the fun spirit of this group and features my favorite singer from the chorus (and after writing that, I actually watched the version on YouTube — it’s longer than the movie, as it contains a great, and I mean great, take on “I Will Survive.”

You can buy the movie poster: YOUNG AT HEART DS ADVANCE POSTER

I’m a huge Nick Lowe fan, and of course I’ve heard of — even own a couple of LPs by — Brinsley Schwarz, but I’ve never paid much attention to the names of the other guys from Brinsley Schwarz.

Today, I’m listening to XM Radio’s The Loft, and a song comes on that I’m digging. I think, “Sounds a bit like Nick Lowe.”

I look at the radio display. It’s Ian Gomm. When I get out of the truck, I pull out my iPhone and send myself an e-mail as a reminder to investigate Gomm further later.

Well, it turns out that Gomm is also ex-of Brinsley Schwarz, and according to his site, co-wrote “Cruel to Be Kind.”

He even has a sample of the original Brinsley Schwarz version, and is offering up a CD of a long-lost Brinsley Schwarz LP with the song on it.

I can’t pass judgment on Ian’s solo work yet — haven’t heard enough of it — but I’m eager to see what I might discover that’s worthwhile.

Meanwhile, when I went to gather the Nick Lowe link for the first graph of this post, I learned that A 30th Anniversary edition of Jesus of Cool has been released. Well, there’s something else I’ve GOT TO spend money on.

Man, 30 years since Jesus of Cool (aka Pure Pop for Now People for us up-tight Americans) was released. When I was 17, Buddy Holly and Eddie Cochran hadn’t even been dead for 20 years, and I thought they were ancient Rock and Roll history.

Somebody told me the other day, I’ve gotten more gray hair than I did a year ago … so it goes …

Here’s the Nick Lowe CD reissue: Jesus of Cool

And Ian Gomm: Hold On

On the web, you can find out news in the strangest ways.

A friend sent me a link to the MySpace page of Rev. Keith A. Gordon, a music critic and music fan, just because he thought I’d find him interesting.

I looked over the page a bit, and just as I was about to click off, I noticed a headline “Remembering Sean Costello.”

That knocked me to the floor. It implied Sean Costello is dead.

Sadly, he is. Unknown causes just a day before his 29th birthday.

To my ears, over the past 10 years or so, there hasn’t been a better blues musician than Costello. And he never got the recognition he deserved. It’s sad, sad news.

I interviewed Sean a number of years ago. He was quite, nice guy. He loved his music and a deep appreciation for the roots of blues and cherished an authentic, electric sound. I longed to see Sean Costello play live, but he rarely made any west coast trips. He finally did, after I left California. I figured at some point, he would make his way to western New York. That isn’t to be.

My favorite Sean Costello CD: Sean Costello: Cuttin’ In

My friend Dave Insley has a new CD coming out. Based on what I’m hearing on his MySpace page, it sounds great — I’ll buy it from CDBaby.

Previously, I’ve written about Dave’s music, calling it Western Soul, back when he was with the Trophy Husbands.

It’s good to know that Dave is still recording some damn good shit.

Also available from Amazon:

• Here with You Tonight
• Call Me Lonesome
• Trophy Husbands: Dark and Bloody Ground
• Trophy Husbands: Walk With Evil

Shouldn’t some rock and roll song, a power ballad maybe, or a good dance tune, be the music that pulls your mind back to your young life on a college campus.

A piece of classical music shouldn’t do it for you, should it?

This evening, I happen on the Grammys just as they’re about to start a performance of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.

I’m sure I heard this piece years before college, but it was in college where it came to life. Point Loma Nazarene College was a religious school, and we were required to attend thrice-weekly chapels.

At the 1984 Olympics, the opening ceremonies included some 50 (or more, I don’t remember) piano players playing Rhapsody in Blue. One of the players was a fellow PLNC student, Victor Labenske.

At chapel, after that performance, Victor and a music professor, reprised that performance. Two pianos, no orchestra, playing what seemed to be the must stunningly beautiful and brilliant piece of music I had ever heard.

Over the years, my appreciation for the piece has only grown. Gershwin perfectly captured post-industrial, modern America. No piece of music, with the possible exception of Aaron Copeland’s Fanfare for the Common Man, so eloquently speaks for the United States, than Blue.

The song, with its blues-tinged jazz (the very definition of American music), captures all of the emerging moral ambiguity of the era, along with the hustle and and hurry of a modern American big city, from the trains and scurrying pedestrians to the factories that still defined the economy.

The music both soars and weeps, celebrates and reflects.

Blue clearly comes with a point of view, which is that of work-a-day American who both chases the dream and longs for a gentle touch. There is an ambition in the song that speaks both for America as it was and for the man watching the modern world pass as he tries to live out his own sometimes frustrated dreams.

If there is a companion poem for Blue, then it is T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”

If you want to understand America in the early 20th Century, listen to Gershwin and read Eliot. Then you will know something about the transition from the Romantic notions of the pre-Great War era to a disillusioned but still vibrant America that would grow into an economic dynamo like no nation before it.

And I conclude my post with one more note about Labenske: Nearly a decade later, many years since I had last spoken with Victor, I found he had become a professor at PLNC. My wife and I decided to get married on the PLNC campus in a little chapel called Goodwin (it has since been torn down). I ask Victor to play Blue while guests filed into the Chapel, and then Victor played the rest of the music for our ceremony. I’ve never known a better piano player and to this day, I still think it’s cool that we had such a great musician provide the music for our wedding.

Book and Music: Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue W /CD

I don’t think vinyl will ever go out of style.

Even with the advent of digital distribution, I’ve never known a town of any size that didn’t have a record shop. CD stores may close, but vinyl shops seem like a pretty stable store-front business.

Ebay has always had a robust collection of LP records for sale.

But at least once a year, some journalist discovers the LPs are still alive. This time, it’s Kristina Dell at Time.

Like the comeback of Puma sneakers or vintage T shirts, vinyl’s resurgence has benefited from its retro-rock aura. Many young listeners discovered LPs after they rifled through their parents’ collections looking for oldies and found that they liked the warmer sound quality of records, the more elaborate album covers and liner notes that come with them, and the experience of putting one on and sharing it with friends, as opposed to plugging in some earbuds and listening alone. “Bad sound on an iPod has had an impact on a lot of people going back to vinyl,” says David MacRunnel, a 15-year-old high school sophomore from Creve Coeur, Mo., who owns more than 1,000 records.

Funny, music never sounds bad on my iPod.

But as I’ve said before, I love LPs, and for all the reasons described above.

Try some vinyl coasters: Vintage Vinyl LP Record Coasters - Set of 6

If I were still doing MP3Caravan, this is the kind of free MP3 I’d tell you about.

Boing Boing says of the band, Marseille Figs,

My pal called them a “three piece big band” who trade instruments around a lot and change up on every track. That’s a great explanation — they sound like a cross between Violent Femmes and Tom Waits, with some Squirrel Nut Zippers and even a little Louis Jordan tossed in for good measure …

Well, that’s just the kind of music genealogy that commands your attention. I also catch a little Nick Cave in there, too, based the MP3s available on their site.

Recommended CD (Figs, sadly, not available on Amzon): Squirrel Nut Zippers — Hot

Some three or more years ago, I wrote a song called, “Trouble and Turmoil.” Believe it or not, I wrote it before moving to Bakersfield.

The song was inspired by what I was into at the time: Johnny Cash, Nick Lowe’s “Dig My Mood,” Dave Alvin’s “Public Domain” and Charles Bukowski. My aspiration was to write a cycle of songs as dark and depressing as I could possibly muster — not because my life was so dreary (though, it has grown decidedly better since), but because I thought it would be a cool thing to do. Of that cycle, Trouble and Turmoil is the lone finsihed song. I moved on to other things. It wasn’t long after that I got promoted to director of new media in Ventura. Life became much busier with stuff that seemed far more important than writing songs few people would ever here.

After I recorded my version, I sent the MP3 to a bunch of friends. I got good feedback from Matt Welch, Ken Layne and Buddy Blue, but only Kevin Featherly promised to record it.

A while back, I got an e-mail from Kevin saying the song was finally recorded and he was mixing it. He warned me that this wasn’t the rockabilly/country song I initially envisioned, but something much darker, and it’s now a rock song.

It might feel a little as if you gave your child up for adoption, then reunited much later, only to find the child had been raised by wolves.

When I heard the first rough mix the next day, I was blown away. The wolves raised my baby right.

Here’s the Song: Trouble and Turmoil, the Featherly Faction

Credits: Bruce Featherly, vocals; Scott Maida, drums; Kevin Feathery, all other instruments, production and mixing; words and music by Howard Owens.

It’s such a damn kick to write a song and hear somebody with far more talent than I have record it. I have other songs. One of them, “This Town,” is actually about Bakersfield. You can hear it on my Bakotopia profile page.

Thanks to Kevin for putting a band behind this song and giving it his own interpretation. That’s very cool.

His whole self-released CD (Plastic on the Fire) is pretty darn impressive. Kevin is a helluv a songwriter. Being a writer by trade, it’s not surprising that he writes penetrating, thoughtful lyrics, but he can also turn out soulful, interesting melodies.

It’s interesting to reflect on writing Trouble and Turmoil. A lot has changed in my life in the past four years or so. Since then I’ve been through trouble and turmoil like I never expected, and I’ve also had some of the best times of my life. Sometimes you have to pass through a valley to reach the mountain. Thanks to all of my friends for their support, encouragement and outright big-hearted friendship. Happy New Year to all.

Recommended:  How to Write Songs on Guitar: A Guitar-Playing and Songwriting Course

Here’s some hot rock and roll for ya … the Collins Kids on Steve Allen.

YouTube Direkt

For more Collins Kids video, click here.

You can buy some great Collins Kids music, too: Rockin’est