ben patton blog

Many thanks to all of you, for the many warm, multimedia birthday greetings I received yesterday. This one I found particularly amusing:

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Dear Uncle Sam,

This week’s song I wish I’d written comes directly from my old haunt, Burlington Vermont. There is a remarkable teenage artist there named Henry Jamisson Root, who goes by the moniker “Milkman’s Union”.

He and I are friends, but don’t think that I’m plugging one of Henry’s songs as a favor, to help promote a fellow Vermont solo artist. On the contrary, it is with great reluctance that I share this piece with you. You see, I find the Milkman’s Union’s talent and creativity more than a little threatening… and every time he does something brilliant, which, I hate to admit, is quite often, I feel that I must hurry up and do something brilliant-er, before I become a footnote in his biography, like Gerry and the Pacemakers to the Beatles.

I once shared a bill with young Mr. Jamisson-Root, before he was granted his Milkman’s Union membership card, back when he was fronting a band called “My Gray Radio”. I was jet lagged that night, having just flown in from London, where I was recording the first Muller and Patton collaboration. I gave one of the worst performances I can recall, forgetting lyrics, rearranging the set list on the spot to avoid songs I didn’t feel up to, –even wrestling with technical difficulties that tried the patience of the friendly audience. The soon-to-be-Milkman, however was spot on.

Opening Milkman’s Union’s second album, “Oh Boy”, is a gem that I really wish I’d gotten to first. It’s called “Leaves”. “Leaves” is a post modern pop song lead by a mournful piano, and an emotive, vulnerable voice. The song oozes with romantic melancholy, despite the fact that, as far as I can tell, it seems to center around two ne’er-do-well kids goofing off at a costume party. Some unspoken poignance permeates the simple little song, almost hinting that the title “Leaves” is not a plural noun, but a present tense verb.

The chorus, instead of bringing our attention to the central theme, as pop song choruses are supposed to, shares with us a charming little dialouge, out of context. “I kept calling you Captain, and you asked me to stop, but I kept calling you Captain.”

Anyway, it’s hard to do it justice with words. As Woody Allen once said, “writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” Just listen to it yourself, it’s on his myspace. http://www.myspace.com/themilkmansunion

But…. ….try not to like him better than me….. ok?

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Dear Uncle Sam,

Someone sent me this video clip of a gig I did outside Berlin, in 2005, with the pop-folk-fusion band Der Wilde Garten.

The footage sent me down memory lane, and I started reviewing journal entries I’d written during my time in Berlin that year. I made some dear friends in Berlin, but I ended up spending much of my time there alone, and feeling a bit lost. Below are a few (somewhat edited) passages from my journal.

*** It’s astonishing that the internet, something that, in my childhood, totally didn’t exist, has become such a key figure in my life that a month without a stable source of it turns me into a raving junkie, stalking the cobblestone streets of Prenz Laurberg in the dead of the night, holding up my glowing laptop, looking for a wireless fix. Right now I’m broadcasting from a very moist bench in Helmholtz platz, a nearby park full of drunks and leashless dogs. Yesterday was my birthday. I went to an international calls shop to call my sister from a booth that resembled a porta-potty. We spoke until the porta-potty ran out of oxygen. I happened to have some little inexpensive chocolates. I lit a match and stuck it upside down into one of the chocolates like a candle, made a wish, and blew it out. Alas, this morning, I woke up in Berlin anyway.

*** I always loved Halloween. They don’t seem to really do Halloween here in the former East Berlin. But I did see a pumpkin for sale, and I couldn’t help myself. When I was a kid my Mom and sister did all the pumpkin carving work. I was just the “idea-man”. So when I got my misshapen vegetable home I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. I’m a guy who hates to put his fingers into anything moist and gooey. Let’s just carry on like that sentence never happened. I drew upon courage I didn’t know I had, and I carved and gutted that pumpkin good, listening to Paul Simon. I stuck a candle in it and placed it on my window sill. Instead of a face, I had carved the word “HELP” into the pumpkin, very skillfully I might add. It expresses my overall feeling lately.

*** It is my lunch break, at a rehearsal with Der Wilde Garten. I wish I spoke more German. What the hell are the members of Der Wilde Garten talking about during our rehearsals? Sometimes they all laugh at once. Why? Now and then, after a long German discussion, someone counts “1 2 3 4″, and I have no idea what song they’d prefer I start playing. Bulgarian accordianist / singer Ivana has arrived to join our show. She is a character, I like her, and she likes me, although I think I’m the first thing to come from America that she’s ever liked. She’s wonderfully frank. She intimated to me that, to her, my songs are mere “Coca-Cola Music”. The other Der Wilde Gartens didn’t get off any easier. She said that their part of the set is “for grandmothers”. The first show is Saturday. Tell your grandmother. I gotta go. Ivana just called to me: “Hey, America…. we start now please.”

*** It’s so freezing in Berlin. When I go for a walk to grab as much of the fleeing sunshine as I can (I wake up just as it’s beginning to descend) I must wear a scarf over my face like a ski mask, and even then I can feel my nostrils freezing shut. Last night’s show with Der Kindergarten was our best yet. Afterward, I left the dressing room and there was a line of young German girls waiting for me to autograph the Good News Albums they’d just purchased. Ivana was unimpressed. She told me that in Germany the young people would worship a homeless bum if he had an American accent.

*** This morning I went to have breakfast with Joro on Schiemann Strausser. Leaving the apartment, I grabbed what I believed to be my keys, and shut the door. I had grabbed my watch. Somehow I mistook my wristwatch for my keys. I tried to communicate my problem to my neighbors. I can’t shake the feeling that, to them, I am like Manuel, the addle brained Spaniard from the sitcom “Faulty Towers”, who’s weak English supplies the show’s funniest moments. I managed to call a locksmith, and make an appointment for this evening. In the meantime, I was homeless. I killed time at a cafe. (Incidentally, it was at this very cafe that I had fallen into a pattern of ordering “heisse schokolade mit samen”, almost every day, until eventually learning that it meant “hot chocolate with semen”, and that “sahne” (cream) was the word I was looking for. This was a mistake even more embarrassing than mistaking your watch for your keys.) I was told the locksmith’s rescue would cost 100 Euros, so I imagined him to be a sophisticated and skilled specialist, using very precise tools. Actually, he merely broke into my apartment, violently, and at some expense to my door, ripping the handle clean off. Then he tried to charge me 320 Euro to replace the handle. Now it’s late and I’m tired. What time is it? Hang on, I’ll check my keys.

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