AUTUMN LEAVES

When this time of year arrives and the leaves start to fall it means that the end of the year is just around the corner. Go down to the end of that corner and turn left on Christmas Tree Lane, and like the Twilight Zone, it‘s straight up ahead. (Insert weird music here)

Instead of focusing on the holiday tunes that will dominate the airwaves for the next couple of months my thoughts instead turn to Autumn. It’s an overlooked season if there ever was one. It plays host to an unofficial holiday with Halloween, and a legal one with Thanksgiving.

Very few songs deal directly with the season, but that doesn’t mean there’s not music that was made for it. Face it, some songs, movies and activities just go better with those swirling leaves and hollow pumpkins than others. After Labor Day those Beach Boys albums must be relegated to the back of the stack until spring. You get the idea.

Below is a short list of some music that goes better with the shorter days. It’s just a random list, by no means complete. I’m just going with the ones that come back like the leaves from year to year. Also, these are the ones that I listen to late in the evening, not during the day while chopping wood or cleaning gutters.

Leonard Cohen - Anything from his first few albums on Columbia will do the trick here. His voice enters the room like the ghost of Autumn past and lingers like the smell of smoke from a neighbor’s burning leaves. When he speaks time doesn’t so much stand still, as it seems irrelevant. He wears his heart on his sleeve, but knows the attraction that can be to women. His unconditional love of them is both his endearing strength and eternal weakness.

Bob Dylan - “Blood On The Tracks” This one takes the prize. You only need a chilly autumn night that lets your frozen breath announce your arrival at a local pub to set the mood for these tales. You slip off your jacket and nod to a few of the regulars that make eye contact. “Poor Side Of Town” drifts from the jukebox. She’s gone and as far as you’re concerned your whole life hinged on what was and wasn’t said in the heat of that one moment. That moment was some time ago. “Beauty walks a razor’s edge” indeed. If she ever returns that night will be a line of demarcation for both of you. Right now though you’re alone and the well drink special and the off work cashier drinking alone in the tattered corner booth look like the best bet. Tomorrow, it will be two more bad decisions made in the heat of the moment.

Billie Holiday - Everyone has their favorite sides from her numerous sessions. For me though nothing beats her end of the line sessions for Verve Records in the fifties. Every song and take feels like it is her last performance. When you hear what she could bring to a song and then think about some of today’s singers and what they bring it’s really sad. She gave her life to sing these songs. If pain were measured in quarter notes then she would be a symphony. A sad, but sweet one.

Van Morrison - “Astral Weeks” No one had ever made an album like this before. Since then almost everyone has tried to make it. They never come close. It is without a doubt one of the most timeless pieces of music ever conceived. Where these songs came from is anyone’s guess and I’m sure we’d be wrong. Only Dylan could understand where music like this begins. There is very little that’s conventional about the songs or the instrumentation, but they come together like a dream that you drift in and out of over the course of an autumn night. I can still conjure up the night I was listening to the radio and heard “Madame George” for the first time. I bought the album the next day. I’d give anything to relive that experience again.

Simon & Garfunkel - A no brainer if there ever was one. Pretty much anything of theirs conjures up scenes of steam from manhole covers, fireplaces, staring from frosting windows, drinking wine alone, brisk Sunday walks downtown and hot chocolate from street venders. If you need to narrow it down to one album go for “Parsley, Sage, Rosemary And Thyme.” It works the upper side of Manhattan like a veteran cabbie. We have very little in common with these people and their tangled lives, but at the core they are all looking for love just like the rest of us.

Frank Sinatra - Most of his Capitol sides and some of the mid-sixties Reprise recordings will yield a seasoned oak woodpile of essential songs. You’ll need to wait until really late in the evening to play these though. They work best in the dead of the night when it’s all been decided and the bottle in your hand is half full. The ones on the counter are empty though.

Happy raking!