NATURE TIME

The Downy Woodpecker: Nature's Little Alarm Clock

Shown: A downy woodpecker in its natural habitat; some nature website.
Not Shown: The little feller who decided to go to work on the top corner eaves this morning. He flew off when I opened the kitchen window. He hopped around on a branch nearby all indignant and went back to work while I went for the camera.

We made eye contact when I leaned out the open window. He gave a disgruntled cheep then flew off, and has not been back since which is a shame since now I have my camera all ready. If he does come back though maybe I ought to let the cat make eye contact next. Not that the cat can reach him or anything. But someone apparently needs to know who's boss around here. RECOGNIZE THIS, LIL FELLA? IT'S A PREDATORY SHAPE! (Meanwhile, Mr. 20 Pound Throw Rug will squirm uncomfortably in my arms and decide he wants to be doing anything else at the moment.)

It might be a hairy woodpecker. It could be. I didn't get a good beak-to-head ratio which is one of the differences between the two that Mr. Nature Website told me about. It's just as well, because I ain't about to go typing "hairy woodpecker" into GIS all willy-nilly.

in which Maggie, Suzzy and Terre save grace and find beauty in a toxic wasteland

Hi thar! Been a while, hasn't it? Sure has. What's new with you? I went to the hospital! It was fun and I got to stay overnight and wear a gown and a bracelet and everything! I'm okay now and while the circumstances surrounding the trip weren't very pleasant, I got better and my worst worries were quelled at least. Maybe sometime I'll write about it.

Also, my live radio show at the Somerville Theatre is almost here! Boy are we busy getting the show ready for you. We're so busy I can't believe I have the time to write this, but there you go! We've got musicians and sound effects geniuses and some really funny stuff and some really scary and thrilling stuff and we won't keep you for too long. Rest assured you will have lots of fun if you come on down to the Somerville over Halloween weekend. You'll have even more fun if you see our show instead of a movie. I'm sure "Life as We Know It" will be around later. Or you can just get the DVD.

Okay, now this is the part where I talk a lot about the early days of Saturday Night Live. I watched an episode from the fifth season last night which was truly godawful. Completely dreadful. Probably the worst I've seen, even though I haven't seen the Burt Reynolds episode yet which includes the Vomitorium sketch. But I don't think it's presumptuous to say that the Bea Arthur episode is one of the worst of the entire series, and it's so not Bea's fault. To be honest, it's Al Franken's fault and I can see why the end of the 70s is a time he doesn't care to discuss all that much.

I'm going to write a heck of a lot underneath the cut but then I'm gonna come back and embed a video for you to see which is actually good. I want to make sure you get a crack at it even if you don't want to read about how terrible the show was, and I don't blame you.

( OKAY! LOTSA WRITING GOES HERE! )

But there came a bright spot to the episode, in spite of all the tasteless, hateful and just plain unfunny material. And it in came in the form of the Roches, who were the musical guests that week.

The one great thing about early Saturday Night Live was that it took risks not just with the conventional sketch format, but with its musical guests as well. Nowadays the musical guest is typically whatever pop star has a new album coming out, but back then the guests were, well, almost anyone... who, um, had a new album coming out. DEVO made one of their first TV appearances on the show. Leon Redbone showed up to do his thang. Gregory Hines and Eubie Blake, 92 years old at the time, did several songs together, and it was glorious. I oughta tell you about that one someday. Sure, there were still rock and pop stars on the show (ABBA came on so O'Donoghue stuck 'em on the sinking Titanic) but they were tempered with the likes of Sun Ra. Holy cow, Sun Ra performing Space Is The Place on live television? Nobody knew what to do with that!

So on come the Roches, a trio of sisters who have incredibly tight harmonies, idiosyncratic folk songs that blend all kindsa styles together (and makes you desperately wish the word "quirky" didn't exist so that you could describe them better) and, as Carolyn noted when I showed her the musical clips, honesty in their voices. They sing beautifully together, but they didn't sound classically trained. They were natural. And Suzzy had to slouch down a bit in front of her mic so that she was level with Maggie and Terre. Their first number had their vocal parts intertwining and separating off and counterpointing each other's counterpoint and it was interesting. But then came their 12:50 number.

12:50 is the typical time on Saturday Night Live, ten minutes before the end of the show, where they shove in anything. Sketches that don't quite fit, pieces that someone just had to get on no matter what or something, and in this case, the Roches' second number of the evening. They appear on stage after Andy Kaufman had gone into his Misogynistic Woman's Wrestler character, challenging all comers to a match (Bea Arthur then gets the best applause all evening when she remarks "I sure hope someone beats him. And beats him HARD.") Not exactly the best lead-in. But there they are. Terre puts down her guitar, they check their first chord, then approach the mics.

And sing the Hallelujah Chorus a cappella.

It's not a joke, it's not performed tongue-in-cheek, it's not interrupted by a cast member. It's their own arrangement, arranged for three voices instead of four, and it is absolutely beautiful. I was transfixed. I couldn't believe they were singing a lovely non-secular song on network television. I remembered back to Patti Smith's appearance in the first season performing Gloria on Easter Sunday. That's the version which famously begins with "Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine." The Roches weren't making any ironic statement with this song. They were simply singing a beautiful classical piece. That's what I believe, anyway, and I'm sticking to it.

I'm including a live performance they did in 1982 at the Improv. I wish I could share the SNL performance with you, but those clips disappear from YouTube faster than you can say "National Broadcasting Company lawyers". This version is almost as good musically. They've recorded the piece as well and I sought it out after the episode, but it's studio enhanced with some reverb and almost sounds like it was overdubbed, but that might be a testament to its quality. The live performances, however, are organic and honest.

On the one hand (and I sure do have a lot of hands today) I feel bad for the Roches, appearing as they did in what was otherwise a dismal episode marred by sexist writing and overall ugliness. Not one you'd want to keep on video and show it, in its entirety, to your pals. But on the other hand, I instantly admired them for what they accomplished that night. They managed to lift the show up, however briefly, with three voices and some help from Handel. They found beauty in -- or provided beauty for -- a wasteland of dead humor and bad vibes. Like Al Franken, they too didn't give a care. They sang what they wanted to sing, even if it was classical music on a by-now mainstream comedy show. Only unlike Franken, their product was one of grace and harmony.

They got away with more that night than any nihilistic writer could have hoped for. And they triumphed. The Roches singing the Hallelujah Chorus is now one of my most favorite moments on Saturday Night Live, if only because they did the right thing at the right time. They couldn't save the episode, not by a long shot, but they made sure it ended positively and beautifully. Well done.