Hugh Blumenfeld's Rocket Science

CONTENTS
SONG LYRICS/MUSICIAN CREDITS
PRODUCTION CREDITS
REVIEWS
ORDER ROCKET SCIENCE

ROCKET SCIENCE

LYRICS/CREDITS

Rocket Science (click on individual song titles to see lyrics/credits below, or scroll down)

Shoot the Moon 3:59
The Snail 2:43
Saxton's River 3:05
Wormwood Hill 3:36
Hands & Feet 3:30
Is This Enough (J. Mercik) 4:37
Longhaired Radical Socialist Jew 3:32
(The Gospel Song)
Zhang Jingsheng 5:59
Mighty Quiet (instr.) 3:09
Why Am I Awake 3:35
No Secret Castle (A. Calhoun) 3:03
I Only Sing About Love 2:53

Produced by Mark Dann & Hugh Blumenfeld

SHOOT THE MOON

When I was young all I wanted was the moon
Hung that National Geographic map in my room
In seventh grade, Mythology 101
They called me Little Endymion
- You remember me now

Space was the object of all my country's desire
And the skies of my childhood were laced with launching pad fire
And I was the boy who stood under streetlamps at night
Waiting for those strange blue lights
To take me away

- Shoot the moon
Set me down in the Sea of Tranquillity
Just the stars and me
- Shoot the moon
Give me a home in the 21st century
A little less gravity
I could fall free
Shoot the moon

If I'd been ten years older, I might have been tripping on Yasgur's farm
But I probably would have been a Phantom flying over Viet Nam
In a dream of altitudes where the blue turns black
And never looking back
At the pieces on the ground

But I saw the choppers rise out of Saigon's fall
And my fingers traced the writing on the long black wall
And I knew there'd be no spaceships in my future
I guess I was born a little too late, or way too soon...

- Shoot the moon.... we could fall free

Well, a quarter of a million miles isn't really that far
It took me two Chevy's, but I've done it in a car
Driving from town to town with this old guitar
Made in 1969
One small step for mankind

- Shoot the moon.... it is my destiny

Hugh - Vocals, acoustic guitar
Mark Dann - electric guitars, bass, drums, vocals
Shane Shanahan - percussion

THE SNAIL (top)

I am the snail
I don't move fast
But if you look again
I won't be where you found me last

I am the snail
pale as a memory
I am the roaring in the labyrinth
beside the sea

I am a helmet on a shoe
I am the secret smell of you
I am the voices in your ear
that call your name year after year

I am patience
I am proportion
I am progress without fortune...

And if I love,
who would know
Even for a slow lover I am slow

And if I dream
how could you dream it
All your flash of inspiration
only chars the spirit

In a world of salt
in a world of glass
I have spent a whole night
climbing up a blade of grass

I am the snail
I will get where I'm going
I am the speed your hair
and nails are growing

I am the snail
Because I move, all of creation's moving
I know that it's a minor point
but it's still worth proving

Hugh - guitar & vocal
Mark - string bass
Carol Sharar - violin
Jim Mercik - slide guitar

SAXTON'S RIVER (top)

Mockingbird kept me up all night,
Working on his repertoire for spring;
And the river breaks free
To make its way to the sea again;
The frost gives one last heave
And it's easy to believe that winter's over,
But it's just mudtime in Saxton's River

When the snow melts you better watch your step
Walking on the shoulder of the road
And the smell fills the air
Of whatever the dogs did there months ago
Even old couples brawl
And the house feels as small as a child with a fever
And it's mudtime in Saxton's River

Beware the Ides of March they say
And that's advice I take to heart
Even kings have been undone
And it was all for letting down their guard
So baby don't let go
The cold wind's got to blow a little longer
It's mudtime in Saxton's River

Hugh - vocal & guitar
Mark - string & electric bass
Carol Sharar - violin

WORMWOOD HILL (top)

I've got friends on Wormwood Hill
Baudelaire and Wild Bill
A big old cat named Burn The Still
Up on Wormwood Hill

Me and Bill we're pretty tight
I am black and he is white
Only trust your second sight, he says,
Up on Wormwood Hill

Bo he likes to play the dandy
Nehru suit and a box of candy
A bit of snuff and a sprig of tansy
Up on Wormwood Hill

I will take you there, I will take you there
I will take you there

Wormwood Hill's on the Ashford line
Where the John Deere roar and the Caterpillars whine
It's as green as a copper mine
Up on Wormwood Hill

Sitting on the porch with a straight vermouth
Passing round the witch's tooth
No one ever tells the truth
Up on Wormwood Hill

And when I feel a little dry
Fill me up two fingers high
Yellow clouds roll through the sky
Up on Wormwood Hill

I will take you there, I will take you there
I will take you there

Bill went off to Des Moines to think
Bo caught 40,000 winks
The old cat drowned in a well of ink
And he's down in Wormwood Hill

Hugh - vocal & guitar
Mark - bass
Gideon - cello

HANDS & FEET (top)

The Great Wall of China's the one man-made object you can see from the moon
Besides the great sand dunes
and the hotels of Cancun
From the Great Pyramids to the lights of the Northeast Corridor
The all-night video store
He built them all and more
Rope, tackle and cleat
His name is Hands & Feet

He's always hearing the lonesome lodestone highway blues
keeps iron filings in his shoes
with receipts from his union dues
He's got 50 versions of "Heart and Soul" on an old jukebox
drinks cases of rolling rock
wears condoms big as socks
And whose tongue's in his cheek
Hands & Feet

His wife Christine is a child-machine with a Detroit bod
She believes in God
And the Marquis de Sade
She studies philosophy off of the cover of Cosmo and Elle
She hides her age so well
The boss calls her Mademoiselle
She's bound up nice and neat
Hands & Feet

The Hammer and Spanner, the Pick and the Drill
The Cash Register with the Microchip Till
The Loom and the Ladle, the Mop and the Plow
Hands & Feet's sweating, but he just wipes his brow

John Dos Passos bet dos pesos on him in Madrid
Like the Lincoln Boys did
And then the streets ran red
From the Bastille in Paris to the Great Squares of Moscow & Beijing
It's always been the same damn thing
Every anthem has the same dumb ring
And who's that dancing in the street?
You know it's Hands & Feet

The Great Wall of China's the one man-made object you can see from the moon....

Hugh - vocal & guitar
Mark - electric guitars, bass, shaker

IS THIS ENOUGH (J. Mercik) (top)

I've done my share of highway driving
You might say I've been a driving fool
I just never could get far enough from you

She always told me it would come to this
She reads the writing on the wall
I just never knew how far there was to fall

CHORUS:
I heard a voice in the still of the morning
The night was blue and the light was dawning
I knew the voice and the words kept calling:
Is this enough for you, boy
Is this enough for you?
Do you know what you say?
Do you see what you do?

I walk along these crowded street
Alone with thoughts of someone new
It's this hope of love that frees me to feel these blues

I get confused at every crossroad
I've told a million outright lies
My heart is a golden needle stuck deep inside

CHORUS

The wind and rain can be so vicious
But they don't hurt me like you do
I could spend my whole life waiting for you to be through

I get no shame from bare survival
Sometimes it's all that I can do
But it never seems like enough just to make it through

CHORUS

Jim Mercik - lead guitar
Hugh - vocal & second guitar
Mark - high hat & kick drum

LONGHAIRED RADICAL SOCIALIST JEW (top)
(THE GOSPEL SONG)

Well, Jesus was a homeless lad
With an unwed mother and an absent dad
And I really don't think he would have gotten that far
If Newt, Pat and Jesse had followed that star
So let's all sing out praises to
That longhaired radical socialist Jew

When Jesus taught the people he
Would never charge a tuition fee
He just took some fishes and some bread
And made up free school lunches instead
So let's all sing out praises to
That long-haired radical socialist Jew

He healed the blind and made them see
He brought the lame folks to their feet
Rich and poor, any time, anywhere
Just pioneering that free health care
So let's all sing out praises to
That longhaired radical socialist Jew

Jesus hung with a low-life crowd
But those working stiffs sure did him proud
Some were murderers, thieves and whores
But at least they didn't do it as legislators
So let's all sing out praises to
That longhaired radical socialist Jew

Jesus lived in troubled times
the religious right was on the rise
Oh what could have saved him from his terrible fate?
Separation of church and state.
So let's all sing out praises to
That longhaired radical socialist Jew

Sometimes I fall into deep despair
When I hear those hypocrites on the air
But every Sunday gives me hope
When pastor, deacon, priest, and pope
Are all singing out their praises to
Some longhaired radical socialist Jew.

They're all singing out their praises to....
Some longhaired radical socialist Jew.

Hugh - vocal & guitar
Atticus Finch - Hammond B-3
Witnesses: Andrea Gaines, Margo Hennebach, Donna Martin, Ed McKeon, Donna Martin, Aaron & Steven Nystrup, Mark Saunders

ZHANG JINGSHENG (top)

[Zhang, whose prison songs were spread across China by whispers and bootleg cassettes during the early '80's, was rearrested after the spring of '89 and remains a prisoner of conscience.]

In the evening, voices carry
and the prisoners sing.
They sing cell to cell, prison to prison, city to city:
the late edition everyone sifts the wind to hear
while the morning papers blow around in the street.

When Zhang Jingsheng spoke out too loudly and too long
the Chinese government shut him down
shut him up - four springs with no spring.
But when Zhang Jingsheng sang
and his songs were sung
from beneath the treads of tanks in Tienanmen Square
they locked him away into the next millennium.

Now, the bricks of prisons in China
and the bricks of the prisons here
are made from the same clay. It's the same clay
which forms each tongue.
And every voice that's lifted
sings in it.

I don't write these songs, it's the prison walls
The bricks are singing as they have forever

Zhang Jingsheng, just one among the millions
Clay and dung, baked hard in the sun, oh listen

I don't write these songs, it's the prison walls
The bricks are singing as they have forever

Bare lightbulbs down miles of halls keep on humming
Bars of steel clang and squeal, hear them ringing, ringing

I don't write these songs, it's the prison walls
The bricks are singing as they have forever

A ball of rice, a chain of days, oh my freedom
Thirteen years for singing, "I shall be released..."

Comrade, if you hear me
Carry these words to my loved ones
Oh this path I have taken-

I don't write these songs, it's the prison walls
The bricks are singing as they have forever
As they have forever
As they have forever
As they...

Hugh - vocal & guitar
Mark - electric guitar, bass
Gideon Freudmann - cello
Shane Shanahan - percussion

MIGHTY QUIET
(for Edward J. Smith)

Hugh - acoustic guitar
Mark - bass

WHY AM I AWAKE (top)

My lover lies asleep
succumbed in mid-caress
and the shadows on the wall
move in a dark tempest

I try but can't lie still
decide but do not rise
condemned to this my prison
by the thin lids of her eyes

Why am I awake
What in me is restless, what here is at stake
Why am I awake

And naked through the house
I play the thief of rest
with the window-slatted moonlight
throwing crosshairs on my chest

And I fight the nameless angel
who tears the sinew from the bone
crying mercy, mercy, mercy
on a silver saxophone

Why am I awake
Why must I bear witness, why and for whose sake
Why am I awake

And the morning will dawn quickly
when my vigilance is done
my love will kiss me softly
she'll leave and I'll sleep on

And I'll doze through tangled bedsheets
and I'll face the rising sun
and I'll walk into the daylight
with the one thing I have won

Why am I awake
Why must I bear witness, why and for whose sake
Why am I awake

Why am I awake
what does darkness fall on, what could morning break
Why am I awake

Hugh - vocal & guitar
Mark - acoustic guitar, bass
Jack Bashkow - alto sax

NO SECRET CASTLE (A. Calhoun) (top)

Once we were so happy,
once we were so young
life just gets bigger and bigger
I feel I have no tongue
There's no burden I won't bear
no tear I will not cry
there's no box I will not open
no place I will not fly

There's a sailor on the ocean
who has stolen all the songs
the ones I used to write you
delirious and long
But there is no secret castle
and I have no magic key
there is nothing I can give you
without you loving me

And every time I feel the spirit
moving in my heart
I will bend myself to hear it
I will leave you in the dark
I'll forget about the morning
I'll forget to make the bed
In the evening there's a warning
and an oven full of bread

I've been searching for the fountain
while drinking at the dregs
I've been hiding on the mountain
where the eagle lays her eggs
And it's like I am struck dumb
and you are deaf and blind
there is nothing I can give you
that I have not been to find.

Hugh - vocal & guitar
Mark - bass
Gideon - cello

I ONLY SING ABOUT LOVE (top)

The best have fallen silent
And the rest have fallen sick
There's an icon seeking Nikon
Going click click click
Every devil has a dance card
Wants you to fill it out in blood
From now on baby, I only sing about love

They say the end is coming
They say the end is near
That's cause no one can imagine
Another thousand years
Every guilty heart is pumping
Like it's a week into the flood
But from now on baby, I only sing about love

I only sing about love, I only sing about love
The world can go to hell,
so I might as well sing about love

There always will be summer
And there always will be spring
There will always be the moon and the road
Red wine and whispering
And there always will be morning
Sunlight streaming on the bed
From now on baby, I only sing about love

I only sing about love, I only sing about love
The world can go to hell,
so I might as well sing about love

I only sing about love, I only sing about love
Well I may be right or wrong, but the song
is going to be about love.

Hugh - vocal & guitar
Mark - electric guitar, bass & drums

---------------------

PRODUCTION CREDITS & LINER NOTES (return to top of page)

Produced by Mark Dann & Hugh Blumenfeld

Recorded, mixed & mastered by Mark Dann at Mark Dann Recording Studios, NYC
(Violin parts engineered by Paul Jacobs)

"Gospel Song" guitar & vocals recorded by Jim Chapdelaine, Multimusic Services, W. Hartford CT
Essential pre-production work done by Jim Romanow at Balancing Hat Studio, Storrs CT, and Ed Smith.

Cover photo by Arthur Simoes; back photo by Peter Crowley
Art design by Hugh Blumenfeld and Cynthia Fetty

Mark Dann and I have been performing together since we met in 1982. Mark also engineered my earliest recordings - on Fast Folk and The Strong In Spirit - and plays on all of them. We've tried to capture that simple synergy here. Rocket Science is a return to basics: All my tracks are real, studio performances, played and sung live with Mark on bass, mostly first or second takes - all natural, no punches. Most of Mark's tracks are real too. Besides bass, he plays all the extra acoustic and electric guitars - even drums and a backup vocal. And he has engineered the works.
This is, from start to finish, a shared vision, a musical partnership.
Thanks, Mark.

Thanks also to everyone at Prime CD, especially David Seitz, who has guided me from the beginning of this journey and has stood behind my work in every way. To Andrew Calhoun for playing muse and making me an honorary member of his Waterbug family. To the musicians who have been so generous with their energy and talent, here and in concert. To everyone who has come to concerts, invited me to perform, taken me home and put me up, spun my CDs for friends or on the radio, and otherwise helped me to make music these last four years. And to my family, without whom nothing would be possible.

This album is dedicated to the memory of Ed Smith and to all my friends who risk everything every single day for love, for a vision, for a principle, for a song.

"Longhaired Radical Socialist Jew" has appeared on Fast Folk , At Home for the Holidays with the Folk Next Door and Sing Out! Magazine. Jim Mercik's "Is This Enough" first appeared on Fast Folk. Andrew Calhoun's "No Secret Castle" appears on his album Phoenix Envy on Waterbug.

Belated credit: Mozart's Money's stealth track, "When Hiroshima Comes to Disneyland" (Track #15) features Todd Goldstein on electric guitars.

"After all, rocket science ain't folk music." - Casey Stengel

REVIEWS (return to top)

DAR WILLIAMS:
"In one song, Hugh asks "Why am I awake?" To find the poetry in everyday living, to hear the extraordinary voices all around us."

"Hugh Blumenfeld sings contemporary folk on Rocket Science (Prime). The songs shift drastically from microscopic introspection to telescopic social commentary. I especially approve of Longhaired Radical Socialist Jew, a contemporary gospel tune tha reclaims Jesus as an advocate of free school lunches and socialized medicine. The left could use a new anthem and I, for one, will be singing along."
- Charles M. Young, PLAYBOY.

"a thinking man's songwriter." - Folk Roots (UK)

"Blumenfelds beautifully crafted songs are like musical poems, multi-layered and dense with metaphor and association, tracing connections between inner life and outer, personal and political, with grace and perception. Recommended."
- Richard Middleton, VICTORY MUSIC REVIEW

"a true folk classic. This disc is framed by biting satire, comic relief and haunting lyrics that meld intellect and guts."
- Aquarian Weekly

"Hugh returns to his New York City roots. A stark production, the emphasis here is on Hugh's masterful songwriting and disarming performances." - AFIM Music Mix

"...full of keen observations and just enough righteous indignation.... his words bite just enough and his melodies sting just enough to hit reality head on. Blumenfeld's guitar work is sharp, rhythmic, often moody.... his sense of melody and rhythm is solid.... lyrics with a poet's economy."
   - Music Reviews Quarterly

"Rocket Science is mostly stripped down acoustic rock...a powerful brilliant incarnation of one of acoustic music's sharpest minds and most passionate, poetic hearts - essential listening." - Dwight Thurston, WWUH

"...a keen and fiery intellect....songs that are subtle, graceful and beautiful. It may not be rocket science, but it's obviously something far more difficult, otherwise great albums like this would be made every day."
   - Ed McKeon, The New Britain Herald

"His songs continue to reflect the craftsmanship and clear vision that marked his scientific pursuits. [T]he album frames Blumenfeld's airy vocals and acoustic guitar playing in sparse, intimate arrangements, enhanced by bass and guitar player Mark Dann, cellist Gideon Freudmann, and violinist Carol Sharar... displays a sharp sense of satire with his tune "Longhaired Radical Socialist Jew" and shows his interpretive abilities with covers of Andrew Calhoun's 'No Secret Castle' and Jim Mercik's 'Is this Enough.'"
   - Craig Harris, Metrowest Daily News

"Strident folk on the edge of bitterness, but runs the edge masterfully.Lotsa listener calls."
   - Jim Foley KXCI

THE CANTON VOICE JULY 7, 1998

Rock, Blues, Alternative, Country...and Close Enough

By Dwight Thurston

Hugh Blumenfeld
Rocket Science
(Prime CD)

rating: *****

Hugh Blumenfeld has, in the words of his title song, "shot the moon," and Rocket Science is a direct hit. In an impressive melding of intellect and guts, Blumenfeld has attained what seems to have been his goal for years - a sort of lumpen-mind, complete with cosmology, theology, and politics. The opening lines of "Shoot the Moon" frame the world of Rocket Science:

When I was young all I wanted was the moon
I hung that National Geographic map in my room
In seventh grade, Mythology 101
They called me Little Endymion
- You remember me now

But back down on earth the boy whom the moon goddess loves finds a more mundane life waiting for him: "Well, a quarter of a million miles isn't really that far/ It took me two Chevy's, but I've done it in a car." Track two "The Snail" cuts the throttle from the incomprehensible speed of a moon shot to the imperceptible slowness of a snail: "I am the snail/ I don't move fast/ But if you look again/ I won't be where you found me last." Rocket Science remains determinedly earthbound from here on, even reversing the perspective of the title song's opening lines in "Hands & Feet":

The Great Wall of China's the one man-made object you can see from the moon
....

The Hammer and the Spanner, the Pick and the Drill
The Cash Register with the Microchip Till
The Loom and the Ladle, the Mop and the Plow
Hands & Feet's sweating, but he just wipes his brow

The faceless torso pictured on the cover of Rocket Science is the visual equivalent of the collective character
Hands & Feet - powerless and powerful, tool and divine fool, boorish and brilliant, "drinks cases of Rolling Rock/ wears condoms big as socks."

Guitarist Jim Mercik's "Is this Enough" and Blumenfeld's "Longhaired Radical Socialist Jew" occupy the midsection of Rocket Science. The chorus of Mercik's song asks the question "Is this enough for you, boy/ Is this enough for you?/ Do you know what you say?/Do you know what you do?" The haunting, persistent words of this chorus and its quietly insistent guitar strumming stick in the mind - as well as fitting thematically and musically into Blumenfeld's overall scheme. "Longhaired Radical Socialist Jew" has more comic relief than communism in its socialist themes, but it's what's needed at this point. With the sting of truth in its irony, the song shows Jesus as a pioneer in free health care, public education, free school lunches, and as a target of the "religious right" of his time.

Sentient, significant snails, and bricks that sing human songs populate the world of Rocket Science. "Zhang Jingsheng" is the story of a Chinese dissident "locked away into the next millenium" for his political songs. Its chorus goes: "I don't write these songs, it's the prison walls/ The bricks are singing as they have forever." An instrumental and two love songs intervene. The second of the two, Andrew Calhoun's "No Secret Castle," is a quietly delirious romantic struggle with the mundane "hands and feet" aspects of love in ordinary time. Blumenfeld's coda "I Only Sing About Love" is smart-assed and snappy, smiling through the apocalypse - even as it echoes W.B. Yeats' "The Second Coming" in the lines

The best have fallen silent
And the rest have fallen sick
There's an icon seeking Nikon
Going click click click

The sound of Rocket Science is mostly stripped down, "acoustic" sounding rock. Blumenfeld plays guitar. Blumenfeld's longtime, simpatico producer and collaborator Mark Dann plays bass, guitars, and some percussion. Dann's influence is, as usual, subtle, always appropriate, and powerful - his bass lines in the opening bars of track one help set the feeling for the entire production. Gideon Freudmann plays cello on several tracks, and Shane Shanahan plays percussion on several. Rocket Science is a powerful, brilliant incarnation of one of acoustic music's sharpest minds and most passionate, poetic hearts - essential listening.

ORDERING YOUR COPY OF ROCKET SCIENCE

Ordering from Hugh: send a check for $13 to Hugh Blumenfeld at POB 304, Coventry CT 06238. Postage and CT sales tax are included. Such a bargain!

Ordering from Fifty Fifty Music: go to their website (http://fiftyfiftymusic.com) or call them at 1-800-PRIME-CD and use plastic (MC/VISA).

You can get Rocket Science - and all Hugh's other albums - in about a bejillion ways. It all depends who you want your money to go to. If you buy from Hugh direct, he gets to keep the cash, pay for the recording and stay in business. If you buy from Fifty-Fifty Music directly, they get the cash, pay their staff and stay in business - my share goes toward their expenses until such time as they are recouped (ie. never). If you buy from your local independent record store, which always carries and recommends cool music, Fifty-Fifty and your local folks get the cash and stay in business, and perhaps Hugh gets invited to do an in-store concert. If you order through Amazon.com - new or used - your cash disappears into the ecommerce void, but everyone thinks it's cool that Hugh has his own pages on a national chain's website.... So take your pick.

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CONTENTS SONG LYRICS/MUSICIAN CREDITS PRODUCTION CREDITS REVIEWS ORDER ROCKET SCIENCE
	ROCKET SCIENCE