A few weeks ago, I wrote an intro here about a dawn chorus of birds I heard while camping. I titled that column “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn” after a famous chapter from The Wind in the Willows, in which the pagan god Pan appears as a benevolent shepherd of animals to help the novel’s companions Mole and Rat find Otter’s lost child, Portly. The exhausted Portly is found safe and snoozing at the feet of the woodland god, who plays a melody on his pipes to welcome the dawn and erase the furry friends of their memory of his presence. This is a depiction of a benevolent administrator to the vulnerable, a magical being more concerned with caring for the innocent than his own majesty. Sometime later, I was in my back yard listening to the superb Miles Davis and Gil Evans record Sketches of Spain, and I came upon the track “The Pan Piper.” Some light research led me to a possible origin for the tune. It supposedly came from a field recording made in Spain by the renowned musical ethnographer Alan Lomax of an alborada, or “dawn song,” played on a fife by an itinerant knife grinder and capador — a castrator of pigs and other farm animals. The tune was meant to herald the man’s arrival to a village and advertise his services. He is a much different administrator of animals than Pan, but an essential piper, nonetheless.
I was contrasting these figures in my head over the Fourth of July weekend with the people firing off screaming fireworks and thunderous mortars around my neighborhood and beyond while I did my best to keep my kitties from losing their little minds in sheer terror. My memory took me back to that morning chorus outside my tent last month when I first began thinking of the beauty and power of a gentle and protective deity for the many innocent creatures lost and scared in the violent clamor of our human world. The horrors of poor administration or even malevolent expressions of power over the vulnerable have been particularly stark to anyone reading the news lately — Humboldt County rarely makes the international news for good reasons, unfortunately. And because I tend to see things holistically, rather than as a series of discrete events, I suspect there are a lot of career bureaucrats and enforcers who should have to “pay the piper” for the negligence — or worse — malevolent corruption that allowed so much suffering. And that’s all I’ll say at the moment about that.
There’s a character in Leonard Cohen’s “The Master Song” who is described as “An ape with angel glands.” This has always served me as a good description of the scope of primal brutality and divine gentleness embedded in the moral compass of the human mind. We are a species full of both fascists and pacifists, and while violence has a physical weight to it, hypocrisy does not, so many of our leaders can infuriatingly maintain their corrupt positions without being crippled by the crooked weight of their contradictions.
This is a problem in general, but it becomes an abominable stench when mass graves start opening their unholy blossoms to the sky. Just as the pipes of majestic Pan sang a sweet tune of safety for the lost otter and his worried seekers, the rotting whimpers from the pits of discarded and violated innocents sing a song, too. But it isn’t a song of vengeance and justice that might exonerate the crimes of our greater society through legal recourse. No, it’s just heartbroken: a howl of unrequited love from that final moment when the complete trust and obedience to the goodness of our species was met with a pointless and cruel extinction. An execution carried out by a conspiracy of indifference which we call civilization.
Our society is often a criminal one, and it’s good to remember that feeling like an outsider in a criminal land isn’t such a bad thing. There’s a reason why outlaws are enduring romantic figures in our ballads. Think about the songs you want to sing and hear sung, and the pipers you’d like to follow. Perhaps you’d care to join me in defying the order of the Man and redefining the laws of human nature a little bit. Let’s howl our heads off at the darkness of the new moon in anticipation of a sweeter chorus with our lost little friends when searching hearts finally meet up in joy and relief at the gates of dawn.
Thursday
Francis Vanek is an exceptional tenor sax player who is likely familiar to many of you in the jazz community, having played around these parts quite a few times over the years with local jazz studs RLA along with other various groups. Whether you are a returning audience member or uninitiated fan-to-be, you should roll through the Basement after 7:30 p.m. to check the fella out along with his quartet. The price is quite nice at a mere $5.
Friday
Regular readers of this space should be familiar with The Pine Hill Haints, Alabama’s best group of country hill stompers and cemetery creepers in this or any other century. Hell, they even have a stick and bucket slap bass and know how to use it. I’m happy to announce they’ll be haunting the Swan Room at the Shanty tonight at 9 p.m. for a free gig along with associated act The Invisible Teardrops, whose songs sound like the tune selection from the jukebox in a roadside diner that burned down in 1960, if memory serves. Perfect midsummer night sounds.
Saturday
While Reggae on the River might be a month away, Humbrews is hosting the official pre-party tonight at 9 p.m. If you need your fix, come through for the rhythms of Green Lion Crew and Nobel Tobal Sound System to hold you over until August. Tickets are $15 in advance and $20 at the door. Blessings.
Sunday
There’s a circus tent over at 2515 Wyatt Lane in Arcata near Ennis Park where some summer fun will be going down over the next few weeks. One such event happens today at 6 p.m., when local roots and punk collectives The Cowtown Sound and Vegan Slaughterhouse will be joining forces for an event they are calling The Vegan Cow Slaughter Circus. I have read on the flyers there will also be a puppet and drag element, and the cost is $10 for this all-ages event, although you will not be turned away for having less cash, especially in this economy.
Monday
It’s a dark night in more ways than one during this doorway period to the new moon, so enjoy the silence.
Tuesday
Los Angeles noise rock and freak-out folk act The Clog will be playing at Moss Oak Commons this evening at 7 p.m. for a very negotiable $10. The local acts are going to be hot, too, with sun and fun synthetic jazz funk greats Fek and the Future Friends of Sound joining up the enigmatic Otolith.
Wednesday
One good way to beat back the summertime blues is to enjoy some hot and sparkly vintage country, courtesy of returning Portland road dogs Jenny Don’t & the Spurs. This time through, the group will be kicking it up at Humbrews, where tickets will run you $25 at the door, and $20 in advance. That door should be opening up around 8:30 p.m., for those of you who don’t want to be out too late in the midweek.
Collin Yeo (he/him) has, in the words of Pogo, “met the enemy, and he is us.” He lives in Arcata.
This article appears in Humbuggery in Humboldt, Part 1.