Tim Abdellah's Summer Triptych
Three views of summer, at intervals of 20 years. I wrote "Window" in ’87, inspired at some level by the Monkees’ "Door", from ’67. As summer ’07 approached, I realized I’d never recorded "Window" (it’s a mother, and the version here doesn’t do justice to the way it lives in my head), and thought it would be sweet to record a new view of summer from 20 years later. Time constraints and technological challenges (and a bad voice day) keep this a less-than-ideal realization of the highfalootin’ concept. Still I offer it as a summer gift with my best wishes and hopes that the magic moments of summers past and present continue to lift and inspire us in the future.
Love and Salaams
Tim Abdellah, July 2007
Or download the individual songs below...
(Chip Douglas/Bill Martin)
Originally released in 1967 by the Monkees.
Tim Abdellah - voice, acoustic guitar, electric bass, Zack’s casio keyboard, bendir, ta’rija, clapping.
Recorded at Rihla Sound, Albany, CA
July 24-25, 2007. At once the bounciest, most bubbly piece of the triptych and the most pessimistic. This is on the Monkees best album "Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones". I can remember spending a summer night in the churchyard across the street from my old apartment on Benvenue in Berkeley and singing the whole album with Greg Cline and a guitar.
Despite its bubblegum sheen and its colorful imagery of summer, the song places the summer and its dreams outside a door that is closing on a man who is confined in a castle that he built. Typical fare for the by-then anti-establishment Monkees, who recorded "Pleasant Valley Sunday" (about the numbness of pleasant suburban ennui) on the same album. Somehow, the joyful jangle of the song always seemed to me to imply that there is hope. It is in that spirit that I offer the song here, to reopen the door and chase the distant caravan.
(Tim Fuson)
Written in 1987
Tim Abdellah - voice, acoustic guitar, electric guitar.
Recorded at Rihla Sound, Albany, CA
July 24-25, 2007. This song is the triptych within the triptych. Its 3 verses are snapshots of an archetypal summer morning, day, and evening. Meant to present the limitless possibilities and promises of the summer day. It’s basically inspired by summers in high school in Novato, particulary the magical summer of 1981.
I wrote the song during my days with The Square Roots as a change of pace after growing tired of writing songs about my ex-girlfriend. We never worked it into the Roots’ repertoire, though I do remember performing it solo once on a sweaty summer night at the Golden Boy during a Roots marathon gig.
There is a hint of melancholy in the bridge, recalling the impermanence of our social webs. The song ends, however, surrounded by friends on a summer night, that all-encompassing, nurturing womb of possibility and connectedness.
3
Summer's Grace
(Tim Abdellah Fuson)
Written Summer 2007
Tim Abdellah - voice, acoustic guitar, bendir, ta’rija, clarinet.
Symphonic incursion excerpted from "Finale: London to thee I do present", from Benjamin Britten’s "Spring Symphony".
Recorded at Rihla Sound, Albany, CA
July 25, 2007.