Assuming you've actually spent time in Kinderland, you don't need me to tell you that the Tolland scene is rife with incongruities (look no further than the fact that we refer to eleven-year-olds as "seniors"). Quirkiness in camp is a given, but the quirks themselves have become so institutionalized that it usually takes a moment to spot them. Or in some cases, hear them. Which brings me to my burning question of the moment: why do we have a standard in the canon for saying "goodnight," but not a single tune for saying "goodbye?" Allow me to expound a few thoughts. . .
1. We say goodnight to each other a lot more than we say goodbye.
Makes sense, no? Over a seven-week summer, we regularly have cause to wish each other goodnight. It's both a pleasant way to close the evening and a formality, given that we'll almost certainly reconvene mere hours from having made the gesture. That makes a round of Goodnight Irene perfect for the occasion: modest, topical, and can be hammed up just enough without descending into abject schmaltz. By contrast, there are really only two formal occasions for saying goodbye to each other with any sense of finality. (It really wouldn't pay to sing off a group leaving on an overnight, or even a quick run to Scoops.) (Although if someone found a way to make that happen, it would be undeniably awesome.) (Bonus points for writing an original song to be sung exclusively for Scoops runs.)
All that may be true, but it still rings a bit hollow given that the end of a Kinderland session is a rather momentous occasion. It's the kind of experience that's all things to all people, but since camp is so decidedly personal, I think we generally expend the last of our energy seeing to our more intimate friendships, which subsequently causes any campwide sayonara to feel lacking, or at the very least, a scattershot affair. Hey. . . I love standing on ceremony. I was there when the seven-weekers first started ritually tossing the four-weekers as they pulled out on the bus. I still can't eat a Tootsie Pop without getting a warm fuzzy feeling. But that final campwide share – with everyone distracted with crying and hugs and crying and signing pillowcases and crying – just doesn't cut it. Something more definitively ceremonial would go a long way towards generating a coalescing moment, and a "Goodbye Irene" song might just be the best way to make that happen.
2. It gets the job done.
One of my all-time fave bands – the early-90s pop-punk outfit Too Much Joy – wrote themselves a theme song (appropriately titled Theme Song) to close out their third album. It's an immensely catchy tune with a sing-along chorus that even the most inebriated fan couldn't possibly forget, and it quickly became their standard for closing out all their shows. The brilliance of this was twofold: it guaranteed that every show wrapped with wildly spirited mass audience participation, and it conclusively marked the end of the show. No lingering around for a possible second encore, no idiot fans calling out requests even after the lights came up, no ambiguity whatsoever.
That kind of rock-steady certainty isn't required for saying goodbye (the implied threat of missing the bus takes care of that). But try getting a group of kids up from a campfire or out of Robeson to face the prospect of lights out. It's like herding sheep, if the sheep were mules. Or G8 Summit protesters. So. . . cue up Goodnight Irene. No one can argue with the unequivocal power of a universally recognized finale. I guarantee that if you've ever heard Ira play this, it was the last song on his set list that evening.
3. It's how The Weavers did it.
I won’t claim to be an expert on this, but I'm willing to bet that of all the pre-1960 songs in the slices, over half were Weavers standards (three-quarters, if you don't count the Yiddishkeit songs). Especially the more obscure stuff, where authorship is unclear or not well known: Miner's Lifeguard, Drinking Gourd, Midnight Special, Eddystone Light, Banks of Marble, etc., etc. Goodnight Irene, released on Decca in 1950, was their debut single.
Look, I get it. They were the vanguard of the folk-revival movement, and almost everybody took cues from them. It's not an uncommon thing in music – think about how Bob Marley dominates people's understanding of reggae, or how Dylan has become the gold standard against which all other 60s folk acts get measured. Besides, what else was the Hopewell Junction crowd supposed to sing 'round the campfire? Louis Jordan? Gene Pitney? The Andrews Sisters? And above all else, Pete, Fred, Ronnie and Lee made some great music. Really. Still, a pretty justifiable knock on the old left is that they routinely let political-minded groupthink determine their artistic preferences, and fealty to The Weavers as the alpha and omega of recorded music is no exception. (Before anyone commences to tear me a new one in the comments, answer me this: how many Ralph Fasanella prints do you own? I rest my case.)
4. There's a dearth of iconic goodbye songs.
At least not that many that fit our criteria. Remember that it's got to be a song that can be played on acoustic guitar and sung (the chorus, anyway) by a large crowd. It'd help if an artist about whom Ira retains some archaic trivial knowledge had performed it (trust me – it just would). It also needs some general relevance. Most goodbye songs are written from a personal perspective, with the singer's farewells going out to a particular somebody with a particular backstory. A song like Every Time We Say Goodbye is a true classic, but it completely fails on every count. (Although it'd be pretty damn cool if Ira turned out to be a closet Cole Porter fan.)
(While I'm on the subject, something needs to be said about the miscasting of In My Life as an appropriate goodbye song. I'll admit to having some very mixed feelings about The Beatles, and I apologize to anyone whose sacred cows I'm about to grind to hamburger, but c’mon. . . It’s a song that's specifically about not getting bogged down in sentiment at the expense of real present-tense emotional attachment. Singing it as a Kinderland sendoff is as fitting as performing Draft Dodger Rag at a USO benefit. Plus it's maudlin, in the way that all pop songs with harpsichords are maudlin. Maybe it's actually only sung sporadically in camp, but it's got the staying power of a recurring abscess. I suspect that someone's taken a stab at this every year since it's release in 1965, and I suspect that there are still people for whom no summer is complete without another mawkish rendition. Further proof that The Beatles will never leave us alone. Ever.)
Anyway, lucky for y'all, you can count on the KassaNostra to come through for you once again: I Don't Want to Go Home, by Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes (title track from their 1976 debut album). I don't like to brag, and I don't believe in making definitive statements (at least ones that aren't intended to stir up trouble), but really, this song is ideal. Listen to it, and then close your eyes and imagine all of camp singing it together. . . maybe at a slightly slower tempo, maybe with even more gusto on that recurring maxim than even poor Johnny himself can muster. Perfect, is it not?
Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes:
I Don't Want to Go Home
Toldja so.
And yet somewhere between my caustic harping and my unrealized musical utopian fantasies, there's a warm place in my heart for all you purists out there. So to you, I offer a summer's worth of forlorn lullaby melancholia: ten takes on what truly is one of the sweetest and saddest songs ever written. Use them wisely.
Have a wonderful summer – your assignment is to fall in love with at least one new song by the end of August and tell me about it.
Peace & Vinyl,
The KassaNostra
CODA: Just when I thought I was out. . . I was all set to put a wrap on this post and send it out over the intertubes. And then Michael Jackson died (maybe you heard something about that). I was never a big MJ fan – grew up without MTV but with two (count 'em) classic rock radio stations, so I never had a fighting chance to be mesmerized by that famous Jackson charm. But I got no problem with the "troubled genius" epitaph that everyone else seems to have settled on. Frankly, one mark of a true genius is when their body of work is adaptable to any given situation. As it turns out, Jackson and his brothers recorded an excellent goodbye song of their very own: 1971's Never Can Say Goodbye. So long, Mike. And remember kids. . . We are here to change the world!
If you were born anytime after 1968, chances are that Bob Dorough was one of your favorite performers before you were ten years old, without your ever knowing his name. That's because Dorough (pronounced like The Explorer) was the artistic director behind ABC's Schoolhouse Rock! cartoon shorts that've been running on Saturday morning TV since the early 70s – think Three Is a Magic Number, among other classics. When not edu-taining millions of children, Dorough is better known as one of the most eclectic jazz singers of the last fifty years, having released close to two dozen albums, and holding the distinction of being the only vocalist to ever record with Miles Davis (on Davis' 1962 Sorcerer LP). Among his many accomplishments is a quickie collaboration with jazz bassist Steve Swallow: The 44th Street Portable Flower Factory was one of two EPs recorded as promotional giveaways for Scholastic Books. It's unbelievable where great music turns up sometimes. There very well may be better versions of Blackbird floating around, but there is only one Bob Dorough, and getting him into this blog gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling. Also, there aren't any better versions of Blackbird floating around, 'cause Dorough's that amazing. 
Gabor Szabo is Hungary's all-time greatest jazz guitarist, bar none. (Which lends a little something extra to the "he's world famous in Poland" gag.)
How the hell did Come Together ever become a song to rock out to? A few power chords in the chorus notwithstanding, it's one of the Beatles' smoothest numbers. (There's no way that's really the Paul/Ringo rhythm section driving this tune. Don't care what George Martin says. I'm gonna need to see the birth certificate.) I'd really like to blame this on Aerosmith, whose crappy 1978 version turned it into a hard rock anthem. But that doesn't explain swagger-happy pre-'78 versions by Gladys Knight & The Pips, Ike & Tina Turner, and. . . Count Basie?!? (Yeah. . . the less said about that last one, the better.) So I really appreciate The Brothers Johnson for going against the grain on this one with a cover that taps into the original's inherent grooviness. The dual lead vocal effect is an especially nice touch. 
There are at least a few artists you could accuse of injecting death into a cover version, but James Taylor would probably not top your list. And yet here he is, referencing his own demise at the end of With a Little Help from My Friends. Nu? Not sure what he's up to. Maybe it's the ultimate extension of the sensitive folksinger persona? This song - revised last line and all - was his standard opening number for early 70s live gigs (this particular recording is a 1970 concert at Harvard's Sanders Theatre). Whatever his reasons, kudos to Taylor for steering clear of the clichéd suicide/drug OD approach, in favor of a scenario where his friends bear the responsibility for having done him in. Maybe they finally got sick of the sensitive folksinger persona.
First thing I got for ya'll is gonna make the purists howl. But the way I see it, this is way more than just a cover. Back in the day, DJ Jazzy Jeff was definitely Ringo to the johnpaulgeorge supernova that was his partner, Will Smith. I mean, you didn't even know he had a solo career, right? And yet years after the fact, he's still laying down beats (and frankly, proving just who had the superior musical chops in his old duo). His guest MC on this particular piece of sublimity is the indefatigable Biz Markie. That's right. . . it's an old school throwdown, and the Biz is most definitely up to the challenge. Which should come as no surprise – the Biz has that same manic energy that the Beatles did back when they were so cool they only wore black. If he showed up as a mad scientist in Help! or a train conductor in A Hard Day's Night, it wouldn't surprise you for a second.
Speaking of Ringo's best-known malapropism, any Kinderland/Beatles tribute/extravaganza has got to include Gerry Tenney's homage to Liverpool's finest: Schvereh Togedike Nakht. During his stint as camp's music specialist, I remember Gerry explaining that in order to secure permission to record the song, he had to go through the reps of the guy who owned the rights to the Beatles' catalog at that time. My friends, let me go on record right here and now and declare that any song with a backstory that includes Gerry, the Beatles and Michael Jackson is an automatic fave of the KassaNostra. Performed with his then-band The Lost Tribe, with Gerry singing the lead himself (which I guess makes him the smart one). Definitely check out his blogsite to see which song gets the yiddisher treatment next.
One thing I find when listening to non-Beatles play Beatles songs is that it never pays to try and sound like the Beatles. Everybody in the world already knows what every Beatles song sounds like. There are Yanamamo tribesmen in the Amazon that mimic John's Scouser twang when they sing Eight Days a Week. It sounds painfully obvious, but the trick, I think, is to make the sound your own – to feel comfortable working in the material (this goes doubly when considering the iconic nature of the Beatles' catalog). I think that's what I like so much about David Porter's take on Help! Porter was Isaac Hayes' longtime writing partner at Stax Records before he tried his hand at a solo recording career in the early 70s. With Help!, he strips the song clean of the urgency that runs through the original. When John Lennon sings it, it's a young man crying out for support; when Porter sings it, it's with the self-assurance that comes with maturity. He's not asking for help, he's celebrating the fact that he already knows and trusts them that got his back.
Next up. . . I say "Dionne Warwick," you say "Psychic Friends." It's a sad, sad thing that Warwick's gonna be remembered for everything but her best work. Screw yer Beatles, man – the single best moment in 60s music might just be the breakdown in Walk On By. Her talent notwithstanding, Warwick benefited from an early relationship with the songwriting team of Hal David and Burt Bacharach. That in turn created a lot of access to top arrangers and sessions men. Plus her label, Scepter Records, recognized her as their showcase artist and completely feted her. It's the factory approach to hitmaking, but hey. . . when it works, it surely does deliver. There's so much to like about her cover of We Can Work It Out, starting with the maudlin intro that quickly surges into an effortless groove. I always thought the Beatles got this one wrong. It reads like a statement or an affirmation, but they run through it so tepidly – if dude ever actually sang it to you like that, you'd be giggling inside of a minute. Fortunately, Warwick gets it for what it is, and completely blows the doors off of it. For me, this take tops both the original and the better-known Stevie Wonder version.
Finally. . . it's Otis Redding. And he's singing Day Tripper. Do you really need to know anything else? Man, this is so unbelievably good, I can't believe the Stax/Volt guys didn't release this as a single.
Assuming you've actually spent time in Kinderland, you don't need me to tell you that the Tolland scene is rife with incongruities (look no further than the fact that we refer to eleven-year-olds as "seniors"). Quirkiness in camp is a given, but the quirks themselves have become so institutionalized that it usually takes a moment to spot them. Or in some cases, hear them. Which brings me to my burning question of the moment: why do we have a standard in the canon for saying "goodnight," but not a single tune for saying "goodbye?" Allow me to expound a few thoughts. . . 
One of my all-time fave bands – the early-90s pop-punk outfit Too Much Joy – wrote themselves a theme song (appropriately titled Theme Song) to close out their third album. It's an immensely catchy tune with a sing-along chorus that even the most inebriated fan couldn't possibly forget, and it quickly became their standard for closing out all their shows. The brilliance of this was twofold: it guaranteed that every show wrapped with wildly spirited mass audience participation, and it conclusively marked the end of the show. No lingering around for a possible second encore, no idiot fans calling out requests even after the lights came up, no ambiguity whatsoever. 
CODA: Just when I thought I was out. . . I was all set to put a wrap on this post and send it out over the intertubes. And then Michael Jackson died (maybe you heard something about that). I was never a big MJ fan – grew up without MTV but with two (count 'em) classic rock radio stations, so I never had a fighting chance to be mesmerized by that famous Jackson charm. But I got no problem with the "troubled genius" epitaph that everyone else seems to have settled on. Frankly, one mark of a true genius is when their body of work is adaptable to any given situation. As it turns out, Jackson and his brothers recorded an excellent goodbye song of their very own: 1971's Never Can Say Goodbye. So long, Mike. And remember kids. . . We are here to change the world!
Or "Snoopy," as we're fond of calling it 'round Colebrook River Road. And only us, apparently. Marathon research jags into the annals of recorded ethnomusicological history have produced nary a reference connecting the ubiquitous beagle to Tommy James. (Other potential correlations also didn't pan out.) (Although if one of my readers can make a plausible link between Love and Draggin' the Line, I'll dance the damn thing in my skivvies at share this summer, that's how blown away I'll be.) Suffice to say, I got bubkis on the secret origins of this rechristening. What I can tell you about the tune itself is that it was released twice on the Roulette label (as a b-side in 1970, then as it's own single the following year), so there's a decent chance that the Hopewell Junction crowd has no idea what I'm talking about. (Any old-time kinderlachen care to weigh in?) It was James' first solo hit after breaking with longtime backing combo The Shondells, climbing to #4 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in August of '71. 
• It's a weird song for the camp scene, given that it may be an overt paean to illicit drug use, or it may be an "I ❤ Jesus" anthem. (It was released on James' second solo LP, a religious-themed album called Christian of the World.) Possibly it's both. 
As a tune, it's almost impossible not to like. It's exactly the right blend of low-key psychedelia with a lazy-but-unswerving rhythmic beat. Dig that killer bass-riff opening, and the inspired trombone/trumpet call-and-response in the chorus. As a dance, it's also hard not to like: easy to learn, easy to remember, and maybe the only folkdance that improves the less energy you expend on it – perfect for those 90-degree afternoon dance sessions right before an hour of swim. And for the record, whoever came up with the opening count-off is a genius. 
