1. Buskers on the Blue Line
2. The Sermon on the Crawl
3. Quay
4. Heimweh
5. Oswego
6. A Silvertone Serenade
7. Flecks of Heaven
8. Coffee Cup/Ash Tray
9. Maybe We’ll Fly
10. A Nation in Decline
11. The Zoe Elevator
12. Ricercar

 

Heimweh was completed in 2013. Except where specifically noted, all material was written, performed and produced by Frederick Moore. "Buskers on the Blue Line" features a Phil Calvert urban field recording. "Maybe We'll Fly" was written by Laura Marks and Frederick Moore. All tracks were remastered in early 2023 and this version of the album is now available on both iTunes and Spotify.

 

The term chamber music brings to mind a small number of musicians (1-8?) playing conventional classical instruments (cello, oboe, etc.) in a traditional recital venue. Sort of a theme-and-variations kind of thing with a few canons thrown in, “Buskers on the Blue Line” ( 2011) is scored for seven players (2 guitars-acoustic and electric, 1 electric piano, 2 electric bassists, and 2 percussionists) who in this case perform in a subway car. Imagine entering, the doors close, the piece begins, and your next stop is four minutes away.

We’d done our best; we’d seen and done it all, 
Like guitars left untuned for silhouettes of ourselves.      
But it was there; it was there as it had always been there. 
Still, we might have hoped for something bigger than ourselves. 
He was tiny, he was hungry, he was drifting like a spore.
His mother and her boyfriend lying passed out on the floor. 
“It’s a lovely day.”

I did what I did; now what about you?
How had we become so unfamiliar with ourselves.  
Like feralized children who can never look back,     
Till in time their black ball of bland, objective truth implodes.
The big guy’s words are from his Sermon on the Crawl:
“It’s not the time to line our swine against the wall.
On such a lovely day.”

We’ve never looked back; we’ve thrust ahead,
We’ve been groping through one slow-moving cloud, 
    cold but beautiful.
Now we’re going dark where the patterns can’t lie.
Even now I’d have to say there’s goodness all around us.
Losers and their losses, 
Explain to me in one voice how all of these things
     can be true at the same time.
It’s all around us, there’s goodness all around us.
So let’s just fuck it all, there’s goodness all around us.

QUAY

In the bay
Could be seen a hint of something floating. 
From the quay
An iridescent patch of shifting ocean.
The sun and smog had found their way
To turn to sepia a fading day in time.

In the breeze
A dozen pelicans went warm and gliding. 
On the waves
A tide of consequence had sent them climbing.
In a form of perigee, 
Like spheres aligned in syzygy in time. 

In the bay
The eddies spun away in soundless motion. 
Breaking waves  
Struck the jetty’s side but stilled an ocean.
The smog and sun had found a way
To turn the water to a purple shade in time.

Having spent quite a few years as a high school teacher, I often find myself referencing my own school memories in my work. “Slut shaming” was a daily thing in my Catholic high school, and very public, so for the young women targeted for little more than being attractive, it had to be a traumatic time. This is the subject of “Oswego”.

Three Rented rooms upstairs from a pawnshop,
Two Plastic bowls filled with plastic fruit.
Her stay-home dad obsessing on Watergate,
Her night-shift, stay-out mom sleeps until noon.
In tenth grade she sleeps with her boyfriend.
He likes to talk, and when he breaks it off,
She becomes the village lewd dream.
Strange calls from passing windows,
Whistling and laughing shadows,
Older girls openly mock her,
Condoms taped onto her locker.
Humiliation humor,
Her name the standard punch line.
Prudish acquiescing teachers
Tolerate the grotesque rumors. 

 
For two full years she moves to a zombie song,
She learns to walk as if she doesn’t hear.
The other girls go out with their boyfriends,
With whom they do what normal girlfriends do.
Graduation day, a bunch of them puke on her.
She’s had enough of this cold town.  
She steps onto that gorgeous greyhound.
Ride west out to Chicago,
Southwest to Colorado,
Start a life where no one knows you,
Live in periodic motion.
Tend bar just north of Ogden.
Phone bank out west in Stockton.
Move down south to San Diego,
Just don’t think back to hard Oswego.

In the times of the old they were bred and then offered,  
Anointed in oil, sacrificed to the meanness,
That brought them together, vindictive and focused;
They stood on the sideline and watched it happen.  
He could see from the side her intelligent eyes,  
They were open and wide with a need to confide.
Just a wan little girl with her face in the snow,
He stood on the sideline and let it happen.
We stood on the sideline and let it happen!

Two thousand one, she works for the home loan,
Her Portland home consisting of two rented rooms.
There’s an old cat, he follows her everywhere,
But the men go off–or she sends them off–too soon.
On her bad days an image can take her down:
A little girl, face in the snow,
She falls into that looping head dream.
Stray dogs and yellowed dentures
Hiss hate from dripping shadows.
Feral children strip and stalk you.
Feral mothers loathe and mock you.
Go west, out past Chicago.
Move on to Somewhere, Nowhere.
Make a home where no one knows you,
But don’t look back to cold Oswego.

A world was shown in the form of you,/ A world I never felt./ Sensing nothing but craving something,/ I never did pray as I knelt./ I placed all faith within my eyes,/ Believed only words I had said./ Wanting something but showing nothing,/ Confiding in only the dead.

When these silent stains fade/ And the stars blow away.

She came by and I grabbed it all,/ Mistaking her need for mine:/ Craving everything but keeping nothing,/ Leaving my real self behind./ Love fell through and I thought she knew,/ But she could never understand./ Wanting something and taking something/ Are phantomed in every man.

Your little flecks of heaven/ Are all in your mind.

For a time in the early 80’s I was very into writing miniature pieces that were perhaps a minute long but had clearly defined structures. “Coffee-Cup Ashtray” was written for a string quintet, but I soon realized that hiring five string players to record such a short piece wasn’t viable, so this version has electric basses playing the bass and cello parts, while the parts for violins and viola were played on acoustic guitar. It’s only a minute and 15 seconds long.

You say together we could make it work our way./ You say tonight that we could fly./ Maybe we’ll fly.
I feel the skyline reaching out to you and me./ It whispers low that we should try./ Maybe we’ll try.

In a one room on a third floor,/ Only one room above the drug store./ On the third floor, in a one room,/ Living a life of two.

The dawn’s approaching, through the smog I see the light./ The darkness fades behind the sky./ Look to the sky.

In a one room on a third floor,/ With the soft glow of neon rainbows./ On a third floor, in a one room/ Living a life of two.

You say together we can make it work our way./ You say today that we could fly./ Maybe we’ll fly.

One of the reasons I quit writing rock music in the early 80’s was that the culture had pretty much confined we musicians to producing “relationship songs”. But in time I could see that the virtue of such expectations was that you could write about pretty much anything if you could twist it into a metaphor involving a relationship. So a song that appears to be about infidelity can actually be a critique of contemporary capitalism.

You can shake him anytime,
He hasn’t spies to live inside your world.
Still you want him, stern and blind,
You never meant to slip so suddenly.
Someone else has been inside you
    and he knows it, but he can’t prove it.
Abating doubts as you define them
    and deny them till he just drops them.

It’s surprising, now you’re here
No one can see which room you’re walking through.
Though uncertain, life is fine;
No one will ever see the door you chose.
We’re a nation is decline, we’re the binge before the fall,
We’re the smog on the horizon, we’re the relic on the wall.
We cut ahead in line, the zeitgeist of the fall,
We had to have it all, we’re a nation in decline.

I had never before composed a piece without sitting at a piano or computer, or holding a guitar. For “The Zoe Elevator” it was just me, a few pencils, and some manuscript paper. I never actually heard a note until it was finished. The interesting thing is that the result was stylistically very different from anything else I’ve done. Who’d have thought? It’s written for two pianos.