Cap'n Meryl's Musical Debut
FROM CAP’N MERYL
Link to this week’s column at USAToday.com/travel:
http://www.usatoday.com/travel/columnist/getline/2005-03-21-ask-the-captain_x.htm
Cap’n Meryl’s Musical Debut
For some reason, the past couple of weeks in
particular, I’ve had a few dozen people write to
me, telling me they had finally listened to the
audio clip on my book page and as a result ordered
“The World At My Feet.”
Whether or not you’ve read my book, this clip is
worth listening to. It’s about 7 ½ minutes long
and is a REALLY funny excerpt from a radio
interview I did in 1983, before I was with my
current airline. It has to do with a run-in I once
had with the Goodyear Blimp when I was a military
air traffic controller.
There were four hours of interviews (two two-hour
shows) which I have now edited down to about 2 1/2
hours, cleaned up with all the commercials
deleted. Here is a link to the page with the
audio excerpt:
http://www.fromthecockpit.com/book.htm
I’ve unexpectedly had several requests by readers
wanting to buy the entire interview, so Al, the
Web Guy and in-house Technical Specialist, has
been busy transferring all my old cassette tapes
to CD’s.
I was thrilled that the first request for these
interviews came from a gentleman in Vienna—one of
my favorite cities in the world. I added a CD of
music—-some commercials and songs I wrote and
performed—-as a bonus, although I suppose that’s a
matter of opinion; I can think of another word,
such as “punishment,” but I’ll let listeners
decide for themselves.
So it’s a total of four CD’s including the edited
radio interviews plus three commercials and three
songs I recorded while living in Anchorage in the
early 80’s. I’m not much of a singer but I can
certainly carry a tune and the point of the three
songs is that each was written based upon actual
life experiences (as many songs presumably are).
All the musical numbers, including two of the
commercials, were played by a group known as “The
Me, Myself & I Orchestra and Choir.” Clever,
don’t you think? Every track is my voice or a
guitar, keyboard or mandolin part.
I’m not actually in one of the commercials, but
Al, the Web Guy and Senior Executive
Vice-President in Charge of Absolutely Everything,
insisted I include it as I wrote and directed it,
and it won a writer’s award. All three
commercials are only 30 seconds long.
The first song is called “The Boat Song” and is a
sort of lullaby or folk tune with one guitar part
(all guitar parts in these songs was on my twelve
string) and a three part harmony. There are two
mandolin parts as well, using a really cheap,
never completely in-tune one I bought in Russia.
The radio talk-show host who did these interviews
became a close friend and I went out on his
houseboat many times on the Prince William Sound
in Alaska. The song was written with him and his
love affair with his boat in mind. In the early
eighties, when I wrote this song, I had to record
it several times over, each time adding a track:
There are three voice parts, a guitar and two
mandolin parts for this song.
The second song is called “Far Away From Home,”
partly written in the early seventies on a Russian
train ride after all the drunken Red Army soldiers
finally passed out (if you haven’t read my book,
see what you’re missing?) It’s a solo voice part
plus guitar and a duet played on the same REALLY
cheap mandolin which, incidentally, I bought in a
Russian “Beriozhka Shop” which basically means
“Dollar Store.” That should tell you something
right there. Not quite in tune, but just all part
of the “charm.” (“Charm” is the word I’ve decided
to use.) On the train itself, as I was writing the
song, I used one of the balalaikas I had just
bought, the ones I referred to in the book as
“dead bodies” to the humorless East German Border
Boys as I was crossing from East to West Berlin on
foot in the middle of a winter night. The
balalaikas were “dressed” in my clothes to save
room in my suitcase.
By the way, this seems like as good a time as any
to put in this interesting note: When I moved a
year or so ago, I was going through some old boxes
of stuff and came across the Russian red star
emblem that was given to my by the young Russian
soldier in this chapter (“A Very Red Army”).
Picture the drab Red Army uniform complete with
the red star in the middle of the winter hat.
That’s the star I’m talking about. It now sits on
the fireplace mantle in my living room.
The third song is called “Alaska Nights” and is
included in the radio interview itself toward the
very end, but I’ve added a slightly better quality
version on the music CD. It’ my voice in a
three-part harmony accompanied by a two-part
guitar part played on a twelve-string guitar. The
song is about the Northern Lights, written on a
flight between the North Slope (northern coast) of
Alaska and Anchorage after I had witnessed a
gorgeous display of lights for the first time
since moving to Alaska. I knelt beneath the
Arctic sky on the snow-covered tundra during a
short layover at Deadhorse, Alaska, which is an
oil camp. With nothing but the vast expanse of
snow as far as I could see, I witnessed my first
Alaskan “light-show” and the song easily came to
me on the flight home. That’s one advantage of
being a hopeless romantic—lyrics and music just
write themselves.
I would have liked to re-record all these songs
but at present I don’t have the equipment to do
it, and besides, devastatingly, both my six and
twelve string guitars were stolen from a storage
facility just before I moved about a year ago. I
haven’t yet replaced them.
If you have any interest in ordering this CD set
click here:
www.fromthecockpit.com/CD_Order.html
There is a money-back guarantee so if you receive
it and want to return it—you may do so.
The radio interviews received the highest ratings
in the history of that talk-show, which was in
existence for many, many years. I am still in
contact with the now-retired talk-show host, Herb
Shaindlin, and in fact just spoke with him by
phone about getting the necessary copyright
release to produce these CD’s. Herb, a New
Yorker, is in my book, too, with reference to his
“I gotta have a Nathan’s Hot Dog or I’m gonna die”
phase. I wound up hopping a ride on a cargo B-747
from Anchorage to New York to go get him his hot
dogs to shut him up. It was well worth the trip,
I must say.
And that’s my news. No flights this week as I’m on
assigned vacation days again, but I never work
harder than when I have “time off.” Taking a
flight somewhere—-now THAT sounds like fun! By
the time my next Weekly Update rolls around, I’ll
have taken some flights almost for sure. But
where?
Until Next Time,
Maintain Airpseed!
Cap’n Meryl
Link to this week’s column at USAToday.com/travel:
http://www.usatoday.com/travel/columnist/getline/2005-03-21-ask-the-captain_x.htm
Cap’n Meryl’s Musical Debut
For some reason, the past couple of weeks in
particular, I’ve had a few dozen people write to
me, telling me they had finally listened to the
audio clip on my book page and as a result ordered
“The World At My Feet.”
Whether or not you’ve read my book, this clip is
worth listening to. It’s about 7 ½ minutes long
and is a REALLY funny excerpt from a radio
interview I did in 1983, before I was with my
current airline. It has to do with a run-in I once
had with the Goodyear Blimp when I was a military
air traffic controller.
There were four hours of interviews (two two-hour
shows) which I have now edited down to about 2 1/2
hours, cleaned up with all the commercials
deleted. Here is a link to the page with the
audio excerpt:
http://www.fromthecockpit.com/book.htm
I’ve unexpectedly had several requests by readers
wanting to buy the entire interview, so Al, the
Web Guy and in-house Technical Specialist, has
been busy transferring all my old cassette tapes
to CD’s.
I was thrilled that the first request for these
interviews came from a gentleman in Vienna—one of
my favorite cities in the world. I added a CD of
music—-some commercials and songs I wrote and
performed—-as a bonus, although I suppose that’s a
matter of opinion; I can think of another word,
such as “punishment,” but I’ll let listeners
decide for themselves.
So it’s a total of four CD’s including the edited
radio interviews plus three commercials and three
songs I recorded while living in Anchorage in the
early 80’s. I’m not much of a singer but I can
certainly carry a tune and the point of the three
songs is that each was written based upon actual
life experiences (as many songs presumably are).
All the musical numbers, including two of the
commercials, were played by a group known as “The
Me, Myself & I Orchestra and Choir.” Clever,
don’t you think? Every track is my voice or a
guitar, keyboard or mandolin part.
I’m not actually in one of the commercials, but
Al, the Web Guy and Senior Executive
Vice-President in Charge of Absolutely Everything,
insisted I include it as I wrote and directed it,
and it won a writer’s award. All three
commercials are only 30 seconds long.
The first song is called “The Boat Song” and is a
sort of lullaby or folk tune with one guitar part
(all guitar parts in these songs was on my twelve
string) and a three part harmony. There are two
mandolin parts as well, using a really cheap,
never completely in-tune one I bought in Russia.
The radio talk-show host who did these interviews
became a close friend and I went out on his
houseboat many times on the Prince William Sound
in Alaska. The song was written with him and his
love affair with his boat in mind. In the early
eighties, when I wrote this song, I had to record
it several times over, each time adding a track:
There are three voice parts, a guitar and two
mandolin parts for this song.
The second song is called “Far Away From Home,”
partly written in the early seventies on a Russian
train ride after all the drunken Red Army soldiers
finally passed out (if you haven’t read my book,
see what you’re missing?) It’s a solo voice part
plus guitar and a duet played on the same REALLY
cheap mandolin which, incidentally, I bought in a
Russian “Beriozhka Shop” which basically means
“Dollar Store.” That should tell you something
right there. Not quite in tune, but just all part
of the “charm.” (“Charm” is the word I’ve decided
to use.) On the train itself, as I was writing the
song, I used one of the balalaikas I had just
bought, the ones I referred to in the book as
“dead bodies” to the humorless East German Border
Boys as I was crossing from East to West Berlin on
foot in the middle of a winter night. The
balalaikas were “dressed” in my clothes to save
room in my suitcase.
By the way, this seems like as good a time as any
to put in this interesting note: When I moved a
year or so ago, I was going through some old boxes
of stuff and came across the Russian red star
emblem that was given to my by the young Russian
soldier in this chapter (“A Very Red Army”).
Picture the drab Red Army uniform complete with
the red star in the middle of the winter hat.
That’s the star I’m talking about. It now sits on
the fireplace mantle in my living room.
The third song is called “Alaska Nights” and is
included in the radio interview itself toward the
very end, but I’ve added a slightly better quality
version on the music CD. It’ my voice in a
three-part harmony accompanied by a two-part
guitar part played on a twelve-string guitar. The
song is about the Northern Lights, written on a
flight between the North Slope (northern coast) of
Alaska and Anchorage after I had witnessed a
gorgeous display of lights for the first time
since moving to Alaska. I knelt beneath the
Arctic sky on the snow-covered tundra during a
short layover at Deadhorse, Alaska, which is an
oil camp. With nothing but the vast expanse of
snow as far as I could see, I witnessed my first
Alaskan “light-show” and the song easily came to
me on the flight home. That’s one advantage of
being a hopeless romantic—lyrics and music just
write themselves.
I would have liked to re-record all these songs
but at present I don’t have the equipment to do
it, and besides, devastatingly, both my six and
twelve string guitars were stolen from a storage
facility just before I moved about a year ago. I
haven’t yet replaced them.
If you have any interest in ordering this CD set
click here:
www.fromthecockpit.com/CD_Order.html
There is a money-back guarantee so if you receive
it and want to return it—you may do so.
The radio interviews received the highest ratings
in the history of that talk-show, which was in
existence for many, many years. I am still in
contact with the now-retired talk-show host, Herb
Shaindlin, and in fact just spoke with him by
phone about getting the necessary copyright
release to produce these CD’s. Herb, a New
Yorker, is in my book, too, with reference to his
“I gotta have a Nathan’s Hot Dog or I’m gonna die”
phase. I wound up hopping a ride on a cargo B-747
from Anchorage to New York to go get him his hot
dogs to shut him up. It was well worth the trip,
I must say.
And that’s my news. No flights this week as I’m on
assigned vacation days again, but I never work
harder than when I have “time off.” Taking a
flight somewhere—-now THAT sounds like fun! By
the time my next Weekly Update rolls around, I’ll
have taken some flights almost for sure. But
where?
Until Next Time,
Maintain Airpseed!
Cap’n Meryl
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