Tuesday, April 07, 2015

Tuesday 7th Aril 2015…..she is a star in my eyes!!!

Had my breakfast outside on the patio and it was  a beautiful warm sunny day already…..Ashley’s game was at 11am and I was there ready to watch

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Got to love a kid who warms up with a soccer ball!!!!

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Her opponent

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The girl Ashley was playing obviously ranked  number one is very good and she was……Ashley got down early and never recovered and lost the first set 6 – 2….she seemed to be a little bit off her game and the second set did not go well and she found herself down 5 – 0 before she started to change her game plan a little and got the next 4 games to make it 5 –4 but could not get that next game and lost 6 – 4…she battled right to the end and I am so proud of her and I have so enjoyed watching her and I do need to say that because she is only 15 years of age she could come back to this big tournament for the next three years and just remember you heard it here first she will win it!!!!!

There was a break in the afternoon before her doubles game at 4.30pm and again this was not the best tennis I  have seen her play and they lost 2 sets to one……..

I said goodbye to Ashley and she was so sweet thanking me again for being there for her and I told her every time she plays this tournament I shall be there…said goodbye to her Mum and Dad and came back to the condo and what is the only thing better than a good long soak in the tub…….

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yes  a good soak here!!!!!

I have really enjoyed my stay here thanks to Caron and John for letting me stay in the condo, thanks to Stella for coming and having some time together and to Pauline and Corning for their friendship and to Ashley for just being Ashley!!!!!

Tomorrow I leave for Tucson I have an apartment through airbnb website and I am about about 10 minutes away from where Linda is staying and I shall see her tomorrow afternoon unload the stuff I have for her and spend 5 days with her helping her with her new condo and visiting with Guy…….

 

This is one of my favorite songs!!!

What do American Pie's lyrics mean?

By James Morgan BBC News, Washington DC

Don McLean manuscript A long, long time ago... Don McLean says his original lyrics reveal "everything there is to know"

 

As the original manuscript for Don McLean's 1971 classic is sold at auction, fans may finally discover what his "Song of the Century" is really about. So what are the popular theories?

When people ask Don McLean what does American Pie really mean, he likes to reply: "It means I never have to work again."

His eight-minute-long "rock and roll American dream" became an anthem for an entire generation - who memorised every line.

Their children in turn grew up singing it - fascinated by the mysterious lyrics with their cryptic references to 50s innocence, the turbulent 60s, and 70s disillusion.

Who broke the church bells? Who was the jester who sang for the king and queen? And what really was revealed "the day the music died"?

Don McLean American Pie is the longest song ever to top the Billboard Hot 100, at eight minutes and 36 seconds

There are fan websites entirely dedicated to solving these mysteries, where literary detectives pore over the clues, line by line.

The song's 69-year-old architect has always remained tight-lipped.

But now at long last, the inspirations behind his Song of the Century are to be revealed after McLean put his original manuscript up for auction.

These 16 pages of handwritten notes, which have lain hidden away in a box in his home for 43 years, were sold for $1.2m (£800,000) at Christie's in New York, to an anonymous bidder.

 

Media caption Could these scribbles solve the riddle of American Pie? Colin Paterson reports

But for McLean aficionados there is a greater prize.

The drafts, unedited, reveal the creative process behind American Pie "from beginning to end", according to Tom Lecky of Christie's.

"You see great moments of inspiration, you see him attempting things that then didn't work out. The direction that he was going in that he then didn't want to follow.

"Those words that we all know so well weren't fixed in the beginning."

American Pie manuscript McLean's original notes, unedited, are 16 pages long and give clues to his thought process

As the singer himself said recently: "The writing and the lyrics will divulge everything there is to divulge."

For McLean scholars with pet theories, there could be bad news on the doorstep. This could be the day that they die.

But before we sing bye bye, and in honour of the American Pie fans everywhere, the BBC News Magazine takes a nostalgic trip back through the song's six enigmatic verses, and the popular theories that have grown up around them.

"So bye-bye, Miss American Pie..."

Buddy Holly Buddy Holly's death was a "personal tragedy" for the 12-year-old McLean

Contrary to popular rumour, "American Pie" was not the name of the plane that rock and roll legend Buddy Holly died in, says Jim Fann, author of Understanding American Pie.

Miss American Pie is "as American as apple pie, so the saying goes," he argues.

"She could also be a synthesis of this symbol and the beauty queen Miss America."

Either way, her name evokes a simpler, optimistic age and McLean bids her farewell.

"The day the music died" refers - of course - to Holly's untimely death on 3 February 1959, which McLean mourns as the end of the entire 50s era.

But if you think this is "what American Pie is about", you would greatly disappoint McLean, who is on record that his song has so much more to say in the verses that follow next.

Buddy Holly

"Do you believe in rock and roll? Can music save your mortal soul?"

Into verse two and the swinging 60s have arrived. "Faith in the music now replaces faith in God," Fann observes.

The religious imagery that emerges in the second verse becomes a powerful and recurring symbol of loss throughout the song.

From "the sacred store" to the broken church bells, from this point forward, "whatever is couched in religious terms can be seen as referring back... to the happier innocence and faith of the 1950s," says Fann.

The fickle girl who McLean saw "dancing in the gym" no longer cares for his "pink carnation and pickup truck", leaving him "out of luck".

Bob Dylan Bob Dylan was McLean's "rolling stone" who ended up gathering moss

"When the jester sang for the King and Queen, In a coat he borrowed from James Dean"

Enter Bob Dylan, the court jester who becomes the revolutionary leader of the 60s generation, knocking Elvis, the king of the 50s, off his pedestal: "While the King was looking down, the jester stole his thorny crown."

The jacket Dylan "borrowed from James Dean" can be seen on the iconic cover sleeve of his 1963 album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan.

But by the end of the decade, we see that Dylan's "rolling stone" is gathering moss, in fat quantities.

"The old cliche is turned on its head, reflecting how the wholesale rejection of conventional values had become commonplace by 1970," as Fann interprets.

Bob Dylan

But if you think the case is closed on the true meanings in this third verse, think again - "no verdict" has been returned.

One alternative theory casts McLean's "King and Queen" as Pete Seeger and Joan Baez, the folk giants of the early '60's whose crown Dylan ultimately stole.

Another has the monarchs as President John F Kennedy and the First Lady Jackie Kennedy, with Lee Harvey Oswald as the "jester who stole his thorny crown".

Whichever way you peer at it, "the world [McLean] once knew is changing," concludes Fann.

JFK motorcade Dallas Was JFK the "king whose thorny crown was stolen"? The Beatles The Beatles surpassed Dylan as the icons of the 60s generation

"Now the half-time air was sweet perfume, While sergeants played a marching tune"

As the 60s reach their turbulent climax in verse four, and nuclear tensions rising, the Beatles have become the "sergeants" leading the march of counter-culture, leaving Dylan behind as "the jester on the sidelines in a cast" after his near-fatal motorbike crash.

But just at the peak of the sweetly marijuana-perfumed Summer of Love in 1967, the tension boils over into civil unrest. "We all got up to dance, but we never got the chance," sang McLean.

He looks on as the "players try to take the field; But the marching band refused to yield".

There are almost as many theories for this line as the single has sold copies (more than three million in its first year). One has the marching band as the police blocking civil rights protesters, another as the Beatles preaching non-violence with their 1967 hit "All You Need Is Love".

"Do you recall what was revealed the day the music died?"

Democratic Convention Chicago 1968 The Chicago police riot of 1968 saw violent clashes with demonstrators

This could be the song's most ambiguous line of all.

Some suggest it refers to a John Lennon and Yoko Ono album cover. Another popular theory is the Miss America contest of 1968 where feminist protesters had supposedly "burned their bras".

But the most likely reference, Fann believes, is the 1968 riot at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where police brutally cracked down on demonstrators.

What was revealed? "The dark underside of one of our most cherished institutions," he argues.

But perhaps "what was revealed" has nothing really to do with any of these events, and is really a harbinger for the tragedy that follows in the fifth verse...

Democratic Convention Chicago 1968

"And there we were all in one place, A generation Lost in Space"

A giant gathering of people, all high on drugs. It has to be Woodstock, right? Not so, say Pie connoisseurs.

The lyrics more closely match the tragic concert at Altamont Speedway in December 1969, where "Jack Flash sat on a candlestick".

Altamont Festival An estimated 300,000 revellers came to Altamont to see the Rolling Stones and Jefferson Airplane

"No angel born in hell could break that Satan's spell"

The Stones' frontman Mick Jagger really did appear on stage that night dressed in a flowing red cape, singing lyrics inciting fire and rebellion.

Meanwhile at the stage perimeter members of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang - hired as security - engaged in bloody clashes with the rioting audience.

Jagger was later accused of failing to halt the performance, infuriating McLean's narrator: "I saw Satan laughing with delight; The day the music died".

Mick Jagger looks on as the Hells Angels deal with a crowd member. The show continued

Just as Woodstock was heralded as the landmark of the counterculture movement, "Altamont was the event that signalled its demise. Reality steps in," says Fann.

The tragedy served to finally "burst the bubble of youth culture's illusions about itself," wrote Todd Gitlin, an eyewitness, in his book The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage.

And in the final verse of McLean's parable, when he "goes down to the sacred store, where I'd heard the music years before" he finds that sadly:

"The man there said the music wouldn't play"

And these words are not just symbolic. "Literally, the music stores that had once provided listening booths for their customers were by this time no longer offering this service," writes Fann.

But even more so, "the cynicism of this generation had annihilated the innocent world the narrator had grown up in."

That kind of music simply wouldn't play any more.

Forty-three years later, it would be nice to think that - whatever the revelations to come from McLean's original scribbled notes - they will not burst the bubble for the millions of fans who still dream of Chevys, whisky and rye.

 

Yashi Kochi!!!

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