(Personal reflections inspired by Who songs)
Song: “Success Story”
Album: The Who by Numbers
Release Date: June,
1975
Thus far all of my Big Top entries have been centered on
music composed by one man; Mr. Pete Townshend.
This week I’m taking a temporary detour to focus on the Who’s number two
songwriter, John Entwistle. The Ox wrote
a fair number of songs for the Who, and had a pretty successful solo career too
(for a hint of Enty’s independent identity, YouTube his hilarious cover of “Mr.
Bass Man” off of Rigor Mortis Set In. He’s the bass vocal…. what else would you
expect?). Entwistle’s Who compositions include
such classics as “My Wife”, “Medac”, “Boris the Spider”, “Cousin Kevin”, “905”,
“The Quiet One”, “Dangerous”, and my favorite “Had Enough” (off of Who Are You). Each of these songs gives a unique angle into
the mind of the Who’s anchor man.
“Success Story” is another of John Entwistle’s top-tier
songs, and the focus of this blog entry.
I can relate to this Who By
Numbers cut, not only because of the meaning, which I will get to shortly,
but the general notion of piling everything you’ve got into one basket. Much like George Harrison with the Beatles,
Entwistle typically had very little wiggle room to add personally-penned music
to his band’s albums (in the case of Quadrophenia,
the Who record that preceded The Who By
Numbers, Enty had no wiggle room,
with every song on that double album a Pete Townshend composition). I found myself relating to this quandary after
my earliest entries to this Big Top series:
Many were album-oriented, with significant details about individual
songs, and it has taken a while to find my legs again now that I am circling
back to these albums for other highlights after such a heaving-out of insights
the first time around.
Yes, Success Story
is an all-eggs-in-one-basket song, which is why I discuss it here. There are so many easy-to-grasp lyrical
twists and turns in this tune, which overall is about the trappings of Rock and
Roll stardom. In honor of this multi-angled
song-story, I’ve decided that I can’t leave any of the lines out of this
review. And so, what I will attempt to
do from here on is add each and every line to my talking points (bolded and in
italics). To follow along, put yourself
somewhere in the late 80’s, heading to a nightclub to see John Entwistle with a
group of good friends. I’ve combined a
handful of Enty shows from over a ~ ten year span into this one all-encompassing,
slightly stylized (but based on true stories) account. I hope you enjoy.
Friday night, I'm on my way home, they ought to make work
a crime. I'm home for the weekend, I'm
gonna make the most of my time. Man, what a great time to be alive. I’m heading out to see John Entwistle tomorrow
night at the Channel in Boston with my fiancée Nancy, Cousin Becca, Brother Fred,
and great friends Dave, Bouv, Kurt and Mac.
This is goose-bump territory. The
Who are a Big Stage Band, each and
every member a formidable presence, and here I am about to see one of them in
an intimate setting. How can you contain
that bass sound into such a small environment as a night club? I guess I am about to find out! I am going to try to savor this moment and
maybe write about it someday. ;)
There’s a Rock and Roll singer on the television. Giving up his music gonna take up religion. I crack a beer at my home (and Fred’s) on Lake
Street in Waltham and pop The Kids Are
Alright into the VCR player. This favorite-band-of-mine
is so refreshing in their soul searching.
As I watch, the intensity of the music has me reflecting on the Who’s
spiritual output in songs like “Bargain”, “Don’t Let Go the Coat”, “Drowned” and
virtually the entirety of Tommy, and I
think of Al Green, Bob Dylan and Cat Stevens who abandoned secular life for a
time for a Reborn religious path. This
could have been what happened to the Who by the early 70’s, seeing as Pete
Townshend was definitely in search of a deeper meaning to life, but they persevered
with their mass-appeal talents. It would
take an essay to explain how I feel about this, but in short I am grateful for
his choice.
Deserted
Rock and Roll
To try
to save his soul
Saturday night, gotta gig with the band, playing the
electric guitar. Someday I’m gonna make
it, gonna be a super-duper star. It’s Saturday evening. We gather together in Boston for the seminal
event. John Entwistle made it BIG a long
time ago, which makes it pretty cool that he is doing this club tour. How many musicians can you name who have been
on such a big stage on a regular basis and are happy to go back to their
roots? David Bowie (with Tin Machine),
and The Band (post Robbie Robertson) come to mind, but the list is not long. The Channel is hot as hell, but I love it here. The place radiates a rich history of amazing
musical events (an exceptional regret of mine was missing one of Roy Orbison’s
last night’s alive here in 1988, a consequence of a miserable income at the time
on my part. The show was later reviewed
in spectacular fashion by Rolling Stone Magazine). Will this venue still be around 10-20 years
from now? For that matter, will TT the Bears, Zanzibar, Nightstage, Johnny D’s, The Rat, Jonathan
Swifts, Bunratty’s and other great venues survive? (None of these did). I take in the moment as a time capsule to
relish…. just in case.
Get a flashy car and a house for my Mom. The big break
better happen soon, ‘Cause I’m pushing twenty-one. Due to equipment smashing and some bad
contract decisions, the Who took a long time to strike it rich. If Tommy
did not become such a huge success, the debt they were under could have crushed
them before they took their spot on Rock’s Mount Rushmore. I look around me, my crew and the crowd. There’s a sense of solidarity here, of a
common purpose. When you see the Who at
a big stadium the true fans are thinned out significantly. But in a club to see John Entwistle,
everything gets condensed. It’s like
maple syrup thickening in a kettle. The
crowd crams together on the open floor in front of the stage. The guy to my left waxes poetic on what the
Who means to him. The middle-aged gal at
the bar had a great Woodstock story of how she stayed awake to see the Who in
the wee hours of the second night.
Just like Cinderella when she couldn’t go to the ball a
voice said “I’m you’re fairy manager, you shall play the Carnegie Hall”. When the Who did strike it rich with Tommy, Kit Lambert, their manager, saw
what a grand spectacle this “Rock Opera” was when performed live and began
promoting his boys as the best live act around.
Word soon spread and not soon after the Who found themselves playing
(and selling out) in the classic grand old theatre houses of Europe and North
America. Does the Ox think about this
storied past as he saunters on stage with his band, the Rat Race Choir? There is a definite star presence about him. Of course his larger-than life shimmering
bass guitar doesn’t hurt this image. The
band rips right into “Real Me”. What a
rich sound, especially the bass! This is
going to be fun.
I gotta give up my day job, to become a heartthrob. I may go far, if I smash my guitar. John Entwistle only
smashed his guitar once or twice I believe, but on this night we do get to see
his angry side when the electricity surges through his microphone and zaps
him: Not once, but three times (this
actually did happen, but at another event at Sir Morgan’s Cove in Worcester a
number of years later). The Ox swings
his guitar at the stand and refuses to sing for a stretch, leaving the lead
vocals to his bandmates until the stage hands can figure out the problem. That’s ok for now, as one bandmate, Godfrey
Townsend (no relation) does a darn good (and uniquely his own) cover of Roger
Daltrey’s vocals and the band launches into the Daltrey-sung Entwistle song
“Had Enough”. Wow!
Away
for the weekend, I've gotta play some one-night stands. Six for the tax man, and one for the band. I’ve only had to travel for
work a few times at this stage in my life and I already have a sense of what it
must be like to live life on the road.
The lack of stability and being away from loved ones is not easy to get
used to and I can see why some musicians go off the deep end. I keep this perspective through the middle
part of the show, knowing this is but one pit stop in a multi-city tour for
John Entwistle and his band. After so
many years performing you would think him a bit jaded. Maybe he is.
Maybe he’s just working on talent alone.
But he looks to be having fun with his bandmates, something you just
don’t see much of in his interaction on stage with Pete Townshend and Roger
Daltrey (they all suffered from losing Keith Moon in this respect). The set list rolls through “Boris the
Spider”, “My Wife” and a tremendous rendition of “Success Story”, which is so
perfect a selection for this evening. I
look over at Dave. He nods as if reading
my mind.
Back
in the studio to make our latest number one. Take two-hundred-and-seventy-six,
you know, this used to be fun. The
Ox has always come across to me as a man with amazing patience. His longtime band consisted of very strong
personalities, and I hear he kept a low profile when the internal debates got
heated. Pete Townshend would one day
speak of him like a big brother figure, even though they were the same
age: A sage-like presence who did not have
to say much. This is one of the
fascinating things about the Who to me; Entwistle’s quiet, somber
demeanor. I think it a major reason they
stuck together for as long as they did.
I reflect on my friendship with Pete Faenza; a man of few words, but whose
presence is felt just as strongly as the rest of us in the hometown gang. Just then, the band launches into “The Quiet
One” including the lyrics “It only takes
two words to blow you away”.
Monday morning, I just got home, six and the
birds are singing. I need a drink and my
clothes are wet, ooh, and my ears are still ringing. Pete
Townshend’s tinnitus has been well documented, but according to the man
himself, John Entwistle’s hearing was even worse. He never complained though. The Ox just kept turning up the volume. Roger Daltrey often complained, but to no
avail. He didn’t even have an ally in
Townshend who once told him that he would completely agree with Daltrey if this
were a regular band. But in somewhat muddled,
lamentable fashion he responded that the Who was not an ordinary band, and so
this was their reality (I love that story so much I had to tell it again). The volume on this night was certainly
powerful, and yet not overwhelmingly so (that would come later when Enty’s
hearing got worse). Anyhow, I can’t
think of a better crew to see this show with.
There is so much appreciation for the moment: If I
could save time in a bottle…..
There's a rock and roll singer boppin' on the
TV. He used to be a preacher, but now he
sings in a major key. The
band wraps up with “Shakin’ All Over” by Johnny Kidd and the Pirates (and often
covered stupendously by the Who). What a
show! On his way off stage, the Ox walks
right toward me. I reach out and he
follows suit; we shake hands and nod at one another. The Who know a fan when they see one. They’ve been at this for a while and I’m
thinking this is part of the skillset they pick up from experience. As for these near-concluding lines in
“Success Story”, it is funny that in all three cases mentioned earlier (Al
Green, Bob Dylan, Cat Stevens) they all came back to Rock and Roll. Wait, I take that back…. they all ended up
balancing their outlook, realizing what their God-given talents were, and
taking everything into account, including their spirituality, moving forward in
their lives.
Amended his decision to the new religion
The greatest testament to a musical event is if it sticks
with you through life. Those Entwistle
shows have been lasting. One of them at
the Mama Kin Club in Kenmore Square Boston in 1996 (since closed) has to be on
my top 10 list of concert events. I did
not know it at the time, but it turned out that show was being taped for a
soon-to-be released live album Left for
Live. “Success Story” was on that
album, and as I mentioned at the beginning of this entry, all the lyrics are
here in the heading of each paragraph, John Entwistle giving his views on
success (or lack thereof). What is
success though? Did he get it at least
partially right? The dictionary
describes success as “the favorable or prosperous termination
of attempts or endeavors; the accomplishment of one's goals”. I thought long and hard about this all week
and ended up with two takeaways. The
first is that John Entwistle was able to reveal success simply by scaling back
after such lofty achievement. When you
can continue doing something you love after all the fame and fortune has played
out, in any setting you desire, that to me is the epitome of
accomplishment. You slip back into your
own skin so to speak with all the wisdom of your experiences in tow. The second is more related to my life as I
reflect on the wonderful ties I have, including everyone who attended these
John Entwistle shows with me, and the experiences and challenges we have all
been through together, and knowing in my heart now that it is all so enduring. That to me is true success.
The links below are versions of “Success Story”. The first is of John Entwistle’s hilarious
contribution to the movie The Kids Are
Alright. The second is the full song
off of The Who By Numbers. The third is the live recording from that
Mama Kin Club show.
http://www.veoh.com/watch/v63975559KE78efJ/kayAbee
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K93hPSeVzrk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xp9NpHjcKq
This entry is dedicated to all those dingy nightclubs that are
closing by the score and the friends and family who have frequented them with
me.
- Pete
Wednesday, July 20, 2016
Wednesday, July 13, 2016
Under the Big Top # 28: “A Balancing Act”
(Personal reflections inspired by Who songs)
Song: “Don’t Let Go the Coat”
Album: Face Dances
Release Date: March, 1981
Music can have a funny way of revealing where your life is at any given time. Often, you don’t even realize it while it plays out. It’s only after a period of self-reflection, as has been the case with these blog entries, where you can begin to piece it all together.
So it was my senior year at North Adams State College, North Adams Massachusetts, 1983. Quite often during that year, my roommate Bob Bouvier (Bouv) and I would call the school’s radio station to request the Who’s “Don’t Let Go the Coat”. The question as to why we were fixated on this song instead of moving on to request any number of other far more popular Who songs, or great songs from other musicians, has crossed my mind on numerous occasions since. It may have been partly as a goof on the DJs: They rarely ever denied our signature request, and so we persisted to see how long we could keep it up. I don’t believe they ever got sick of it though. On the contrary, after several weeks of us doing this, I think they actually looked forward to these repeated inquiries. Perhaps these DJs started looking at “Don’t Let Go the Coat” as a radio-station theme song. Perhaps Bouv and I started a movement, with others eventually dialing in to make the same request (we did start hearing it independent of our calls). Then again, maybe these DJs were simply having fun with it too.
As for Bouv and myself however, I believe that the core reason we requested “Don’t Let Go the Coat” on a regular basis was that we thought this a fantastically underrated song, and we wanted the world to agree with us, or at least North Adams. There was something uniquely refreshing about it, and more importantly there were certain intangible qualities to the music and lyrics that we could identify with. Alas, the greatest of compositions are not easily interpreted; time, age, and ultimately the wisdom that can come with these unavoidable realities frequently needs to play out first. And yet, even then you may never really get the interpretation right. But you can reach a moment when you are satisfied with your own conclusions.
My senior year at North Adams was an interesting period in my life, which I have discussed before in these pages. Back from an unforgettable junior year on an exchange program at Carleton University in Ottawa, here I was trying to wrap up my undergraduate education on what I felt was a down note. Ottawa is the capital of Canada for goodness sake: Parliament buildings, the longest skating rink in the world (the Rideau Canal), embassies, and a multi-cultural setting, with French-speaking Hull, Quebec just over the Ottawa River. These factors along with the great friendships I had forged there made the entire experience unforgettable. North Adams seemed utterly dreary in comparison. It was not long into my return that I felt stuck in a rut, or even worse it seemed as if I were going backwards. Many of my old friendships and connections were gone or had dispersed across campus. It just did not feel right…. at first.
Through a series of snubs, delayed reactions and blunders, I found myself in an unanticipated scramble for a place to live and ended up with two new roommates who I knew somewhat from seeing them on campus my freshman and sophomore years, but who I’d never really connected much with. One of them, Bouv, turned out to be a breath of fresh air. Bouv was an open book, full of a youthful abandon and wonder that I was soon captivated by. It was not long before he brought this out in me. In life’s journey, we all meet people who alter our perceptions of what it means to be real. Love can do this for sure, but so can unique friendships.
Bouv came from a low-income background in relation to everyone I had befriended to that point in my young life, and at that time I could relate to his plight. We lived in a rundown off-campus apartment and struggled to make ends meet in regards to rent and basic necessities. During the winter months, the heat would often go on the fritz. There was one stretch where we found ourselves qualifying for some form of regional subsistence welfare (the details are sketchy) and so we would head downtown to pick up our weekly block of cheese. I must say, this was no fault of Mom and Dad. They would have immediately reacted to the situation and helped me out. But by the time we are seniors in college, many of us tend to try and cover up our living status from our parents, trying to work things out on our own (I see this in my daughter Charlotte). In hindsight, this is character-development phase we all should to go through.
Obviously, Bob Bouvier had dealt with this lower-income status far longer than I. He was a natural at it. This was his turf (he got us qualified for those chunks of cheese). The experience surprisingly grounded me; more so than I had been in quite some time. And was it ever funny to live with Bouv in such circumstances. Rarely a day went by without us laughing ourselves silly about one or another aspect of our then reality: The off-kilter neighbor in the duplex next door screaming for her cat at night; our landlord’s inability to remember his promises to fix things; our joking of a need to leave a nightly sacrificial lamb for the giant rat in the house; the barren refrigerator; the lack of a backdoor staircase into the backyard; the hole in the wall we could crawl through to greet our apartment neighbors. Bouv had a way of making it all downright farcical. I believe humor was the safety mechanism that kept his world sane (later when I read an interview in Rolling Stone about Jim Carey’s meager and yet hilarious upbringing it all made more sense). ** Side Note: A little more insight into the humor of Bob Bouvier: Years after school, Bouv had told me about an Alumni Survey he got from North Adams which included a question asking what he was doing for current employment. He entered “Sasquatch Searcher”. I don’t believe he ever heard from the school again.
Bouv was also open to discussing faith more than any other of my friends since high school. We attended on-campus Mass together on Sunday evenings, and I am confident that faith factored into our soul-searching approach to music. We dug deep into very specific bands; the Who and Neil Young in particular (I talked about Bouv in a ‘Forever Young’ blog entry too). Not necessarily in trying to interpret, but truly listening, appreciating and reveling in it. Music and religion intertwined in those days (come to think of it they still do). I’m not saying we were angels…. far from it I must admit. But we did channel something innocent within ourselves that year which I have not tapped to such a degree since.
When you’re as free-spirited as Bouv and I were in those days, you are a little closer to the flame of truth than at other times in life when you tend to put up barriers of one kind or another. Whether we know it or not, we are all searching for that right balance of who we are in order to maximize on the positive effect we can have on those around us. It can be tricky. Yes there is the spiritual emphasis, but take that to the extreme and you’re a monk. Yes there is the philosophical emphasis, but take that to the extreme and you’re a bore. Yes there is the carefree emphasis, but take that to the extreme and you’re homeless. Yes there is a breadwinner emphasis, but take that to the extreme and you’re a workaholic. Yes there is a ‘life of the party’ emphasis, but take that to an extreme and you’re self-destructive. Mix it together however into the right blend of a personal concoction and you can find your soul.
This to me is the message in “Don’t Let Go the Coat” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvWwtfKiGUk). Pete Townshend is a soul searcher, more so than any other musician I listen to other than Bob Dylan. The early 80’s (when Face Dances was released, on which “Don’t Let Go the Coat” is the 2nd track) was a difficult period for Townshend, as he had then recently lost several close friends (Keith Moon and manager/producer Kit Lambert) to drug abuse and was struggling in this regard himself. I recently watched a YouTube video of a Pete Townshend interview during this period where he was talking about Moon’s last years (when he was off-and-on trying to turn his life around), reflecting on how much more accessible he was as a human being during that time compared to the world renowned “Moon the Loon” showman of days gone by. Townshend’s conclusion: Losing the showman meant losing some of the extraordinary talent Moon had behind the drum kit. He could not have it both ways. Townshend did not say this was good or bad. He was simply stating a fact in his mind.
But maybe Pete Townshend had it a little bit wrong, and it goes back to that message in “Don’t Let Go the Coat” (I say this partly because Townshend has contradicted himself on this issue, at one time emphasizing that Keith Moon was playing very good drums near the end of his life). There’s a balance in all of us. Recalling when I got married, and all these parts of my life came together for this one time to attend, there was a moment where I got a bit overwhelmed, thinking “I was this Pete with my family, that Pete with cousins, another Pete with colleagues, another with childhood friends, another with North Adams Part 1 friends, another with Canada friends, another with North Adams Part 2 friends, and so on. How am I going to reconcile all of that? I overcame the anxiety however, when I seized the moment. The lesson: We don’t necessarily have to choose one persona or another. We just have to blend the best of those personas together; find where that soft spot is, that sweet zone in our own unique journey. I was close to that balance in 1983. I continue to look at it as one of a handful of bell-weather periods that I can try to emulate today.
And so, I’ll continue to hang on to that coat…. for as long as it takes to get there.
- Pete
Song: “Don’t Let Go the Coat”
Album: Face Dances
Release Date: March, 1981
Music can have a funny way of revealing where your life is at any given time. Often, you don’t even realize it while it plays out. It’s only after a period of self-reflection, as has been the case with these blog entries, where you can begin to piece it all together.
So it was my senior year at North Adams State College, North Adams Massachusetts, 1983. Quite often during that year, my roommate Bob Bouvier (Bouv) and I would call the school’s radio station to request the Who’s “Don’t Let Go the Coat”. The question as to why we were fixated on this song instead of moving on to request any number of other far more popular Who songs, or great songs from other musicians, has crossed my mind on numerous occasions since. It may have been partly as a goof on the DJs: They rarely ever denied our signature request, and so we persisted to see how long we could keep it up. I don’t believe they ever got sick of it though. On the contrary, after several weeks of us doing this, I think they actually looked forward to these repeated inquiries. Perhaps these DJs started looking at “Don’t Let Go the Coat” as a radio-station theme song. Perhaps Bouv and I started a movement, with others eventually dialing in to make the same request (we did start hearing it independent of our calls). Then again, maybe these DJs were simply having fun with it too.
As for Bouv and myself however, I believe that the core reason we requested “Don’t Let Go the Coat” on a regular basis was that we thought this a fantastically underrated song, and we wanted the world to agree with us, or at least North Adams. There was something uniquely refreshing about it, and more importantly there were certain intangible qualities to the music and lyrics that we could identify with. Alas, the greatest of compositions are not easily interpreted; time, age, and ultimately the wisdom that can come with these unavoidable realities frequently needs to play out first. And yet, even then you may never really get the interpretation right. But you can reach a moment when you are satisfied with your own conclusions.
My senior year at North Adams was an interesting period in my life, which I have discussed before in these pages. Back from an unforgettable junior year on an exchange program at Carleton University in Ottawa, here I was trying to wrap up my undergraduate education on what I felt was a down note. Ottawa is the capital of Canada for goodness sake: Parliament buildings, the longest skating rink in the world (the Rideau Canal), embassies, and a multi-cultural setting, with French-speaking Hull, Quebec just over the Ottawa River. These factors along with the great friendships I had forged there made the entire experience unforgettable. North Adams seemed utterly dreary in comparison. It was not long into my return that I felt stuck in a rut, or even worse it seemed as if I were going backwards. Many of my old friendships and connections were gone or had dispersed across campus. It just did not feel right…. at first.
Through a series of snubs, delayed reactions and blunders, I found myself in an unanticipated scramble for a place to live and ended up with two new roommates who I knew somewhat from seeing them on campus my freshman and sophomore years, but who I’d never really connected much with. One of them, Bouv, turned out to be a breath of fresh air. Bouv was an open book, full of a youthful abandon and wonder that I was soon captivated by. It was not long before he brought this out in me. In life’s journey, we all meet people who alter our perceptions of what it means to be real. Love can do this for sure, but so can unique friendships.
Bouv came from a low-income background in relation to everyone I had befriended to that point in my young life, and at that time I could relate to his plight. We lived in a rundown off-campus apartment and struggled to make ends meet in regards to rent and basic necessities. During the winter months, the heat would often go on the fritz. There was one stretch where we found ourselves qualifying for some form of regional subsistence welfare (the details are sketchy) and so we would head downtown to pick up our weekly block of cheese. I must say, this was no fault of Mom and Dad. They would have immediately reacted to the situation and helped me out. But by the time we are seniors in college, many of us tend to try and cover up our living status from our parents, trying to work things out on our own (I see this in my daughter Charlotte). In hindsight, this is character-development phase we all should to go through.
Obviously, Bob Bouvier had dealt with this lower-income status far longer than I. He was a natural at it. This was his turf (he got us qualified for those chunks of cheese). The experience surprisingly grounded me; more so than I had been in quite some time. And was it ever funny to live with Bouv in such circumstances. Rarely a day went by without us laughing ourselves silly about one or another aspect of our then reality: The off-kilter neighbor in the duplex next door screaming for her cat at night; our landlord’s inability to remember his promises to fix things; our joking of a need to leave a nightly sacrificial lamb for the giant rat in the house; the barren refrigerator; the lack of a backdoor staircase into the backyard; the hole in the wall we could crawl through to greet our apartment neighbors. Bouv had a way of making it all downright farcical. I believe humor was the safety mechanism that kept his world sane (later when I read an interview in Rolling Stone about Jim Carey’s meager and yet hilarious upbringing it all made more sense). ** Side Note: A little more insight into the humor of Bob Bouvier: Years after school, Bouv had told me about an Alumni Survey he got from North Adams which included a question asking what he was doing for current employment. He entered “Sasquatch Searcher”. I don’t believe he ever heard from the school again.
Bouv was also open to discussing faith more than any other of my friends since high school. We attended on-campus Mass together on Sunday evenings, and I am confident that faith factored into our soul-searching approach to music. We dug deep into very specific bands; the Who and Neil Young in particular (I talked about Bouv in a ‘Forever Young’ blog entry too). Not necessarily in trying to interpret, but truly listening, appreciating and reveling in it. Music and religion intertwined in those days (come to think of it they still do). I’m not saying we were angels…. far from it I must admit. But we did channel something innocent within ourselves that year which I have not tapped to such a degree since.
When you’re as free-spirited as Bouv and I were in those days, you are a little closer to the flame of truth than at other times in life when you tend to put up barriers of one kind or another. Whether we know it or not, we are all searching for that right balance of who we are in order to maximize on the positive effect we can have on those around us. It can be tricky. Yes there is the spiritual emphasis, but take that to the extreme and you’re a monk. Yes there is the philosophical emphasis, but take that to the extreme and you’re a bore. Yes there is the carefree emphasis, but take that to the extreme and you’re homeless. Yes there is a breadwinner emphasis, but take that to the extreme and you’re a workaholic. Yes there is a ‘life of the party’ emphasis, but take that to an extreme and you’re self-destructive. Mix it together however into the right blend of a personal concoction and you can find your soul.
This to me is the message in “Don’t Let Go the Coat” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvWwtfKiGUk). Pete Townshend is a soul searcher, more so than any other musician I listen to other than Bob Dylan. The early 80’s (when Face Dances was released, on which “Don’t Let Go the Coat” is the 2nd track) was a difficult period for Townshend, as he had then recently lost several close friends (Keith Moon and manager/producer Kit Lambert) to drug abuse and was struggling in this regard himself. I recently watched a YouTube video of a Pete Townshend interview during this period where he was talking about Moon’s last years (when he was off-and-on trying to turn his life around), reflecting on how much more accessible he was as a human being during that time compared to the world renowned “Moon the Loon” showman of days gone by. Townshend’s conclusion: Losing the showman meant losing some of the extraordinary talent Moon had behind the drum kit. He could not have it both ways. Townshend did not say this was good or bad. He was simply stating a fact in his mind.
But maybe Pete Townshend had it a little bit wrong, and it goes back to that message in “Don’t Let Go the Coat” (I say this partly because Townshend has contradicted himself on this issue, at one time emphasizing that Keith Moon was playing very good drums near the end of his life). There’s a balance in all of us. Recalling when I got married, and all these parts of my life came together for this one time to attend, there was a moment where I got a bit overwhelmed, thinking “I was this Pete with my family, that Pete with cousins, another Pete with colleagues, another with childhood friends, another with North Adams Part 1 friends, another with Canada friends, another with North Adams Part 2 friends, and so on. How am I going to reconcile all of that? I overcame the anxiety however, when I seized the moment. The lesson: We don’t necessarily have to choose one persona or another. We just have to blend the best of those personas together; find where that soft spot is, that sweet zone in our own unique journey. I was close to that balance in 1983. I continue to look at it as one of a handful of bell-weather periods that I can try to emulate today.
And so, I’ll continue to hang on to that coat…. for as long as it takes to get there.
- Pete
Monday, July 4, 2016
Under the Big Top # 27: “Friendship”
(Personal reflections inspired by Who songs)
Song: “A Friend Is a Friend”
Album: The Iron Man
Release Date: June, 1989
Of all the Who shows I have seen, the closest to a Who-fan dream-set-list was probably the ’89 Reunion/Anniversary Tour, which I witnessed at the old Foxboro Stadium that summer. Among the deeper, not oft-played cuts that evening were “Amazing Journey”, “My Wife”, “Sister Disco”, “Rough Boys”, “Mary Ann With the Shaky Hand”, “I Can See For Miles”, “A Little Is Enough”, “Join Together”, “Trick of the Light”, “I’m One”, and “Too Much of Anything”. It was a treat for those of us who long for a shakeup of the standard fare from time to time.
Also performed that evening were two new songs, “Dig” and “A Friend Is a Friend”, both from the then-just-released Pete Townsend musical The Iron Man. The Who, whom had not recorded together in the studio for seven years, were ‘special guests’ on the album for two songs: “Fire” (a radically-adapted cover of The Crazy World of Arthur Brown song of the same name) and the Townshend-penned “Dig” (prompting this nugget of trivia in Who history: What is the only original Who recording that Simon Phillips plays drums on?). Both “Dig” and “A Friend Is a Friend” were highlights for me that evening. On the studio version of “Dig”, Roger Daltrey sounded like a man who yearned for the magic of the Who, and he did not take the moment for granted. His heart and soul went into that song, which I could feel when it was performed live in Foxboro.
As for “A Friend Is a Friend”, a wonderfully upbeat Pete Townshend tune, I wrote a story inspired by this song back in 2009. Seeing as my son Peter reconnected with an ‘old’ middle-school chum over the weekend, who similar to my friend in the story below, also flew up from his current home in Florida, and with the coincidence of my listening to The Iron Man all week, I’d like to resurrect it here.
Blog entry, August 27, 2009: I’ve heard it stated often and also experienced it: You make connections with an old friend who you have not seen in a while, and it’s like no time has passed. Whatever bond you had way back when kicks in again, almost immediately. Old memories are brought back from the dead and new ones take form. This rekindling has never failed me, but if there was ever a time it would be put to the test it was two weeks ago. Because two weeks ago, I reconnected with a friend I had not seen in twenty eight years.
Jeff Dangelo was a neighborhood friend all through grade school. He moved to Alaska with his family after high school and later ended up in Miami, Florida after joining the Air Force. I made a few comments about him for Entry # 67 (the original “Gem-Video” write-ups which are available for your viewing pleasure on this Blog site) while lamenting the fact that we had lost touch. Before two weeks ago, most of the old gang would have likely admitted that the chances of seeing Jeff again were slim at best, and I was beginning to believe it myself. Too many opportunities to reconnect had fallen by the wayside: There was a last minute cancellation to attend my wedding, and a few other aborted reunions. Also, for whatever reason, I’ve never been to Florida, never mind Miami. Ten years had gone by since Jeff had touched base with any of us. Fate seemed to weigh heavily against us ever seeing him again and it appeared we had all moved on.
Twenty Eight years is a long time and a lot of water can pass under the bridge in that span, particularly if it’s that period of your life that covers your 20’s, 30’s and 40’s. For me, there was college and road trips, double dates, bachelor parties, weddings, home purchases and children, along with concerts, sporting events, weekend gatherings, parties, new friends, and, unfortunately/inevitably, funerals. Even if there was a reunion, the idea of reconnecting at any meaningful level seemed farfetched. We are all after all very different people in our middle age than when we graduate from high school…. aren’t we?
Two weeks ago today, I was about to find out. A series of events over the previous month or so had led up to that point. There was the initial suggestion by my Sister Amy that I get on Facebook (something I was very reluctant to do) and the virtual guarantee by Cousin Jack that it would one day pay off (Jack also made a noble but futile attempt to track down Jeff after reading the email for Entry # 67). There was the surprise Facebook ‘visit’ from Jeff’s wife, Ivonne, asking if I was indeed who I appeared to be. There was a follow up two hour phone conversation with Jeff, during which I half-jokingly suggested he join the old gang in Humarock at Mac’s cottage that very weekend. Finally, there was the email from Jeff, stating he had a ticket and was ready to board a plane the very next day. I spread the word to a shocked gang and we began to piece together what was to turn out to be a classic weekend itinerary.
That Friday afternoon heading into Logan Airport, it all felt a bit bizarre. I was reassured, however, thinking back on the prior 24 hours and the reaction I was getting from everyone about seeing our old friend again. And so, after Jeff and I spotted one another in the baggage area, and sized each other up for a moment, that old truism kicked in yet again. And though this time it was a twenty eight year challenge, it mattered not. We were back on a track we left behind many years earlier. There was no shortage of laughter and conversation on the drive back to Franklin. On the contrary, we did a LOT of catching up on that ride, tumbling over one memory after another as well as catching up with each other’s lives to the present. This carried through for the remainder of Jeff’s visit, not just between him and me, but everyone else as well. In some ways, Jeff’s visit even bridged a few gaps between the seven of us he left behind: A much needed missing puzzle piece, I suppose.
Friendship can be a funny thing, playing out in all sorts of ways. Two weeks ago, I saw it as a whole of eight; in a one on one moment; and all permutations in between of 3 or 4 of us, and so on. I’ve seen it on entirely different planes with other friends from college, work and extended family, and certainly have seen it play out with Nancy’s long-time and extremely loyal friends (including Madeline, who is on the receiving end of these emails) and the friends of Fred, Jen, Joe, Amy, Pat, and their spouses, as well as Mom and Dad.
This week’s Gem ‘A Friend is a Friend’ is live concert footage of Pete Townshend performing this song and it touches on much of what friendship is all about. Sorry for the back-to-back Townshend-centric videos, but this I realized would happen sooner or later during the compilation of these Gems: There’s too much in Pete Townshend’s catalog (with and without the Who) that passes for Gem material to continue to avoid this inevitability. As for this particular Gem, after what transpired two weeks ago, I’m more believing of Townshend’s lyrics now than ever before. Below the Gem link is a second url link of the same song from the animation movie ‘The Iron Giant’. Below that are the lyrics to ‘A Friend is a Friend’.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfns3-__zrM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpiYXRt5MyM
I searched a bit for other definitions of friendship on the Web. Here’s one from a 19th century writer that stuck: “Friendship is the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring all right out just as they are, chaff and grain together, certain that a faithful friendly hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth and, with a breath of comfort, blow the rest away.”
Ok, perhaps a line is needed in this definition regarding tossing some friendly abuse out on occasion, but not bad. Not bad at all.
And this feedback from Jeff after reading my post: “Pete, old friend/new friend. As if my reunion with you guys couldn't have been any better, you top it off with your Gem e-mail. It brought tears to my eyes, as well as Ivonne's. You truly may not know how healing it was for me to see you all, and to know that I'm still, after all this time, thought of as a friend. I know now more than ever I won't waste this re-connection, and will consider going "home" every year a new tradition. Sorry I don't check my e-mail as much as I should, I really don't spend time on the computer that much, but I'll try harder. Keep those Gems coming, that's pretty cool that you write stuff like that all the time.”
Keep those friendships alive, everyone. That advice includes me.
- Pete
Song: “A Friend Is a Friend”
Album: The Iron Man
Release Date: June, 1989
Of all the Who shows I have seen, the closest to a Who-fan dream-set-list was probably the ’89 Reunion/Anniversary Tour, which I witnessed at the old Foxboro Stadium that summer. Among the deeper, not oft-played cuts that evening were “Amazing Journey”, “My Wife”, “Sister Disco”, “Rough Boys”, “Mary Ann With the Shaky Hand”, “I Can See For Miles”, “A Little Is Enough”, “Join Together”, “Trick of the Light”, “I’m One”, and “Too Much of Anything”. It was a treat for those of us who long for a shakeup of the standard fare from time to time.
Also performed that evening were two new songs, “Dig” and “A Friend Is a Friend”, both from the then-just-released Pete Townsend musical The Iron Man. The Who, whom had not recorded together in the studio for seven years, were ‘special guests’ on the album for two songs: “Fire” (a radically-adapted cover of The Crazy World of Arthur Brown song of the same name) and the Townshend-penned “Dig” (prompting this nugget of trivia in Who history: What is the only original Who recording that Simon Phillips plays drums on?). Both “Dig” and “A Friend Is a Friend” were highlights for me that evening. On the studio version of “Dig”, Roger Daltrey sounded like a man who yearned for the magic of the Who, and he did not take the moment for granted. His heart and soul went into that song, which I could feel when it was performed live in Foxboro.
As for “A Friend Is a Friend”, a wonderfully upbeat Pete Townshend tune, I wrote a story inspired by this song back in 2009. Seeing as my son Peter reconnected with an ‘old’ middle-school chum over the weekend, who similar to my friend in the story below, also flew up from his current home in Florida, and with the coincidence of my listening to The Iron Man all week, I’d like to resurrect it here.
Blog entry, August 27, 2009: I’ve heard it stated often and also experienced it: You make connections with an old friend who you have not seen in a while, and it’s like no time has passed. Whatever bond you had way back when kicks in again, almost immediately. Old memories are brought back from the dead and new ones take form. This rekindling has never failed me, but if there was ever a time it would be put to the test it was two weeks ago. Because two weeks ago, I reconnected with a friend I had not seen in twenty eight years.
Jeff Dangelo was a neighborhood friend all through grade school. He moved to Alaska with his family after high school and later ended up in Miami, Florida after joining the Air Force. I made a few comments about him for Entry # 67 (the original “Gem-Video” write-ups which are available for your viewing pleasure on this Blog site) while lamenting the fact that we had lost touch. Before two weeks ago, most of the old gang would have likely admitted that the chances of seeing Jeff again were slim at best, and I was beginning to believe it myself. Too many opportunities to reconnect had fallen by the wayside: There was a last minute cancellation to attend my wedding, and a few other aborted reunions. Also, for whatever reason, I’ve never been to Florida, never mind Miami. Ten years had gone by since Jeff had touched base with any of us. Fate seemed to weigh heavily against us ever seeing him again and it appeared we had all moved on.
Twenty Eight years is a long time and a lot of water can pass under the bridge in that span, particularly if it’s that period of your life that covers your 20’s, 30’s and 40’s. For me, there was college and road trips, double dates, bachelor parties, weddings, home purchases and children, along with concerts, sporting events, weekend gatherings, parties, new friends, and, unfortunately/inevitably, funerals. Even if there was a reunion, the idea of reconnecting at any meaningful level seemed farfetched. We are all after all very different people in our middle age than when we graduate from high school…. aren’t we?
Two weeks ago today, I was about to find out. A series of events over the previous month or so had led up to that point. There was the initial suggestion by my Sister Amy that I get on Facebook (something I was very reluctant to do) and the virtual guarantee by Cousin Jack that it would one day pay off (Jack also made a noble but futile attempt to track down Jeff after reading the email for Entry # 67). There was the surprise Facebook ‘visit’ from Jeff’s wife, Ivonne, asking if I was indeed who I appeared to be. There was a follow up two hour phone conversation with Jeff, during which I half-jokingly suggested he join the old gang in Humarock at Mac’s cottage that very weekend. Finally, there was the email from Jeff, stating he had a ticket and was ready to board a plane the very next day. I spread the word to a shocked gang and we began to piece together what was to turn out to be a classic weekend itinerary.
That Friday afternoon heading into Logan Airport, it all felt a bit bizarre. I was reassured, however, thinking back on the prior 24 hours and the reaction I was getting from everyone about seeing our old friend again. And so, after Jeff and I spotted one another in the baggage area, and sized each other up for a moment, that old truism kicked in yet again. And though this time it was a twenty eight year challenge, it mattered not. We were back on a track we left behind many years earlier. There was no shortage of laughter and conversation on the drive back to Franklin. On the contrary, we did a LOT of catching up on that ride, tumbling over one memory after another as well as catching up with each other’s lives to the present. This carried through for the remainder of Jeff’s visit, not just between him and me, but everyone else as well. In some ways, Jeff’s visit even bridged a few gaps between the seven of us he left behind: A much needed missing puzzle piece, I suppose.
Friendship can be a funny thing, playing out in all sorts of ways. Two weeks ago, I saw it as a whole of eight; in a one on one moment; and all permutations in between of 3 or 4 of us, and so on. I’ve seen it on entirely different planes with other friends from college, work and extended family, and certainly have seen it play out with Nancy’s long-time and extremely loyal friends (including Madeline, who is on the receiving end of these emails) and the friends of Fred, Jen, Joe, Amy, Pat, and their spouses, as well as Mom and Dad.
This week’s Gem ‘A Friend is a Friend’ is live concert footage of Pete Townshend performing this song and it touches on much of what friendship is all about. Sorry for the back-to-back Townshend-centric videos, but this I realized would happen sooner or later during the compilation of these Gems: There’s too much in Pete Townshend’s catalog (with and without the Who) that passes for Gem material to continue to avoid this inevitability. As for this particular Gem, after what transpired two weeks ago, I’m more believing of Townshend’s lyrics now than ever before. Below the Gem link is a second url link of the same song from the animation movie ‘The Iron Giant’. Below that are the lyrics to ‘A Friend is a Friend’.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfns3-__zrM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpiYXRt5MyM
I searched a bit for other definitions of friendship on the Web. Here’s one from a 19th century writer that stuck: “Friendship is the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring all right out just as they are, chaff and grain together, certain that a faithful friendly hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth and, with a breath of comfort, blow the rest away.”
Ok, perhaps a line is needed in this definition regarding tossing some friendly abuse out on occasion, but not bad. Not bad at all.
And this feedback from Jeff after reading my post: “Pete, old friend/new friend. As if my reunion with you guys couldn't have been any better, you top it off with your Gem e-mail. It brought tears to my eyes, as well as Ivonne's. You truly may not know how healing it was for me to see you all, and to know that I'm still, after all this time, thought of as a friend. I know now more than ever I won't waste this re-connection, and will consider going "home" every year a new tradition. Sorry I don't check my e-mail as much as I should, I really don't spend time on the computer that much, but I'll try harder. Keep those Gems coming, that's pretty cool that you write stuff like that all the time.”
Keep those friendships alive, everyone. That advice includes me.
- Pete
Tuesday, June 28, 2016
Under the Big Top # 26: “A Watershed Moment”
(Personal reflections inspired by Who songs)
Song: “Guitar and Pen”
Album: Who Are You
Release Date: August, 1978
What’s the most complex thing you have ever done? I’m not talking difficult per se, à la hiking the Appalachian Trail or running a marathon or dealing with an illness or a family crisis. I’m talking about something that was complicated and took deep thought and innovation; something out of the box, cutting edge, multi-tiered, hard to mentally tackle. This entry is centered on this concept because this week’s Big Top entry, “Guitar and Pen”, off of the transcendent Who Are You album, is for me one of the most complex songs Pete Townshend ever wrote and up there with the most complex the Who has ever performed.
Ok, well obviously I’m not going to get any responses to enter into this write up (although I would love to hear your stories) so I’ll proceed with one of my own complicated endeavors. I kicked the tires on a few thoughts, including a model ship I built when I was a teenager; a handful of essays in college; and designing and erecting a unique tree house in our back yard here in Pepperell. I finally settled on a program I wrote way back in 1991 while in my early years with the US Geological Survey (USGS). This will take some effort to explain in layman terms, but here goes….
One of the scientists in the Massachusetts office I worked in at the time, Kernell Ries, a longstanding colleague and friend, who I continue to collaborate with to this day, came to me with a request for my services. Kernell is a surface-water hydrologist who excels at developing regression equations that predict flows in rivers and streams using long-term records from fixed USGS gaging-station locations, along with landscape and atmospheric characteristics of the region of interest. The resulting flow statistics are used for a plethora of reasons, from designing bridges and culverts, to regulating development, to water consumption, to constituent time-of-travel predictions (think hazardous spills) to habitat studies. The list goes on.
I had been hired by the USGS several years earlier for my GIS skills. Whenever I am asked what GIS is, my short definition is ‘computerized smart maps’ which I hope to explain more through further describing my role in the project I am writing about here. In the late 80s and early 90s, GIS technology was still in its formative years, nowhere near the vision that later played out with GPS and Google Maps and a myriad of other geographic-centered analysis and use cases. However, it was a time of rapid innovative discovery, with new cutting-edge ideas being explored and hatched on a daily basis by those who knew the software. Such is the environment for any technology when it begins to flourish.
A vast majority of GIS map data comes in either vector or raster format. Vector data is often brought into the computer world through digitization as points, lines, and polygons. Examples include dams and sampling locations as points; rivers and roads as lines; and lakes and land parcels as polygons. Linear data can additionally be built as geometric networks in order to trace routes, distances and other information from one point to another such as from home to work on a road network, or up/downstream on a river network.
Raster data comes in the form of a grid lattice with every square pixel storing a data value. Examples include 3-dimensional terrain maps of land-surface elevation values and landscape maps of forested, agricultural and urban land. Digital raster maps can be overlain with one another to perform complex map-algebraic computations that help detect natural and manmade patterns and trends.
Most GIS specialists excel in either the vector world or the raster world, but rarely both. I was fortunate enough to be in a position to have to work with each of these environments for a handful of projects leading up to 1991. This combination skillset would prove to be a complimentary and powerful one for Kernell’s needs and ultimately for the rest of my professional career to date.
The most important characteristic that needs to be computed for regression-based flow equations is drainage area. This is the area of land that contributes riverine and overland flow to a user-specified point location on a river or stream. It is also referred to as a watershed or basin. In the days before GIS, this characteristic needed to be measured using an instrument called a planimeter by tracing along the pre-sketched ridge line (basin boundary) of interest on a topographic map. In the mid-80s several bright minds at USGS’s Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Data Center figured out a masterful way to automate this process using derivate raster data from terrain maps called Digital Elevation Models (DEMs). In a nutshell, a grid of flow direction values can be derived from a DEM, which can then be used to compute the ridge line of a watershed.
One big problem however was that the DEMs in the early 90s were pretty course, often producing sketchy results, particularly in flat areas. One consequence was that ‘synthetic’ streams in these areas, which could also be derived from the DEM, would often plot hundreds of feet from their true location, and/or merge and meander together incorrectly. The erratic results did not give Kernell a lot of confidence, he being a meticulous planimeter delineator back in the day. At one point Kernell pulled out a handful of USGS topographic quadrangles from our map drawers, each of which included a Mylar overlay of delineated sub-basin boundaries, adding up to several thousand across the State of Massachusetts (which was the study area for his project). Kernell wanted to see if I could figure out a way for these boundaries to be used in place of the DEM derived boundaries in all locations where the two were hypothetically coincident along the ridge lines. I was aware that these boundaries had been digitized into a GIS datalayer by a colleague at the State’s GIS clearinghouse (now called MassGIS, which was formed as a result of a three-year cooperative program between the State and our office: I was initially hired by USGS to play a role in the last year of that co-op) and I had knowledge of and access to this data, having worked with it some for several projects already. Yet, seeing those overlays, worthy of display in an art gallery, and in their original hand-delineated state, was both impressive and inspiring.
I also had access to digital stream-line data and other vector hydrography, digitized by the USGS mapping centers at around this time as Digital Line Graphs (DLGs). In the two years prior, I had been involved in fleshing out this data, creating ‘centerlines’ through lakes and wide polygonal rivers by devising Euclidean distance formulas in the raster world to complete the connectivity of dendritic river networks in the vector world, from the multitude of small headwater streams all the way down to the major tributaries and ultimately the ocean (think the silhouette of a tree from twig to branch to limb to trunk to ground).
Around the same time I started messing around with an Australian-source GIS program called ANUDEM (later renamed TopoGrid in the ArcGIS software and now called TopoToRaster), which enforces a DEM to recognize the spatial accuracy of digitized vector streams, thereby improving the spatial accuracy of the elevation values near the streams, and in turn getting the synthetic streams more in line with reality (though not quite getting to the even-more precise horizontal line up which would come later with a deep-trenching raster procedure called ‘burning’, developed by students at the University of Texas, albeit in a compromised fashion that rendered useless the output DEM, but got the desired spatial alignment with the vector DLG streams for derivatives like flow direction).
Finally I was getting fairly proficient at programming in a GIS macro language called AML, which opened up all sorts of mind-expanding concepts for me related to computation and automation; functions, directives and variable settings being the cornerstone to this fascinating new world. It was this combination of knowledge that got my brain spinning with ideas on how to help Kernell. My plan: Automate a way where I could get basins delineated from any click point on a river or stream by using both the raster DEM and the more accurate vector sub-basin boundary datalayer for Massachusetts.
Since just before the time I started working at USGS, the agency had initiated the first in a series of blanket purchase agreements with ESRI, one of the largest developers of GIS software in the world. Today, ESRI’s flagship product is ArcGIS. In the 80’s and 90’s it was better known as ArcInfo. The ‘Coverage’ was the vector product of that time, and there were some interesting features of that product which have unfortunately disappeared with the newer ‘geodatabase’ model (at least without considerable effort to replicate). One of them was the ability to build a single Coverage as both a line and polygon layer. This allowed for a relationship that could be utilized between the two feature types: Depending on which typically-random direction a line was facing, there was built-in coding that determined whether an adjacent polygon was to the left or right of that line using the related line attribute table. This coding was rarely applied in analysis, but now I had a good reason to use it. I added two additional integer attributes to the line attribute table: ‘LOpen’ and ‘ROpen’ (left and right open). If there was no flow relationship between the adjacent polygons I left these to the default zero values. However, if there was flow relationship up and downstream, I would give one or the other a code of 1 to ‘open up’ flow, depending on the line feature’s digitized direction, when it got ‘tapped’ in the iterative stair-step program procedure I had now begun devising in AML.
Ok, I had a coding scheme, now I had to figure out a way to automate it. I tracked down a great “DO UNTIL” looping piece of code from a USGS colleague and tinkered with it. This code would loop through a process over and over until it ran out of options, at which time it would move on. I modified this code to work with my line attribute coding scheme. Polygons would be collected systematically through this line-polygon relationship until all upstream polygons had been found.
At this point I turned my focus to the click point and its immediate contributing area upstream. This was the chunk of territory that had to rely on the DEM raster process devised by EROS and enhanced with ANUDEM, and since it almost always fell inside an existing vector basin polygon, I had to figure a way to only use the raster-derived watershed (by this time converted to vector) up to the points where it intersected the accurate existing vector basin boundary. I devised how to do this by narrowing the analysis window to the basin polygon that the click point fell within. After a few steps of finding a way to cut the new boundary at the first intersections (both sides) I had my final piece of real estate. Combining this sub-piece with the first upstream basin polygon (or polygons) was a fairly difficult concept to work through and took some trial and error, but once I got it with some proximity commands I had my raster/vector merger. From there I used the iterative DO UNTIL loop, until all upstream polygons had been collected, which I then proceeded to dissolve of internal boundaries to get the final basin boundary polygon from a click-point (hence my dubbing the program “ONEBASIN”).
Obviously this process needed a visual component for the user which I set up by first prompting the user for a latitude/longitude coordinate. The initial map view consisted of the vector stream and ANUDEM raster (synthetic) stream, as well as the lat/long point, with instruction to click a point on the synthetic steam that best represented the equivalent location of the vector stream and the point (for the entire procedure, see the attached jpeg files from my scanned slides). From there the program took off, showing the user the progress along the way. The attached selection of slides from the talk I gave that fall in Portland, Maine at the annual Northeast Arc Users Conference (NEARC) show how it all worked. Subsequent programs would take this boundary and use it as a cookie-cutter for other basin characteristics (i.e. forested area, urban area, precipitation, channel slope, mean basin elevation, soils, total length of streams, area of sand and gravel deposits, etc.). The most significant ones would be added to a final program to run Kernell’s regression equations to get flow statistics.
Over the ensuing years Kernell and I would collaborate to bring this automation to the web, first as a state-wide product and later, after USGS Headquarters got wind of it all, as a National product for other State offices to utilize (with a significant amount of training from us). That product is called StreamStats, and for many years, it stood head and shoulders above all other GIS web sites in terms of its advanced use of GIS functionality on the web. Thousands of users hit the site daily on a regular basis. StreamStats has been a tremendous success story for us. Some of what I did had to be modified for the newer software, but that early “ONEBASIN” code still stands; a proud moment as a trailblazing procedure where I took a complex and disparate set of data and ideas, and customized it all to work for a very specific and revolutionary purpose.
“Guitar and Pen” is one of my all-time favorite Who songs (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xp9EdWnSX-c) (for more on “Guitar and Pen” and the album it was recorded on, see Under the Big Top # 10 “A Who Album Review: Who Are You”). Thank goodness Keith Moon was still around for this one as for one last time Pete Townshend had all that brilliant one-of-a-kind potency of Who tools at his disposal (Moon, Entwistle, Daltrey and himself), making the complex, multi-textured structure of this tune possible. Like the program I wrote, I believe Townshend had to work at it one piece at a time. Complex ideas typically come together that way. I’m thankful for those clairvoyant handful of times where multi-tiered schemes came together for me in life, if for only to give me a tiny bit of insight into the world of a genius.
- Pete
Song: “Guitar and Pen”
Album: Who Are You
Release Date: August, 1978
What’s the most complex thing you have ever done? I’m not talking difficult per se, à la hiking the Appalachian Trail or running a marathon or dealing with an illness or a family crisis. I’m talking about something that was complicated and took deep thought and innovation; something out of the box, cutting edge, multi-tiered, hard to mentally tackle. This entry is centered on this concept because this week’s Big Top entry, “Guitar and Pen”, off of the transcendent Who Are You album, is for me one of the most complex songs Pete Townshend ever wrote and up there with the most complex the Who has ever performed.
Ok, well obviously I’m not going to get any responses to enter into this write up (although I would love to hear your stories) so I’ll proceed with one of my own complicated endeavors. I kicked the tires on a few thoughts, including a model ship I built when I was a teenager; a handful of essays in college; and designing and erecting a unique tree house in our back yard here in Pepperell. I finally settled on a program I wrote way back in 1991 while in my early years with the US Geological Survey (USGS). This will take some effort to explain in layman terms, but here goes….
One of the scientists in the Massachusetts office I worked in at the time, Kernell Ries, a longstanding colleague and friend, who I continue to collaborate with to this day, came to me with a request for my services. Kernell is a surface-water hydrologist who excels at developing regression equations that predict flows in rivers and streams using long-term records from fixed USGS gaging-station locations, along with landscape and atmospheric characteristics of the region of interest. The resulting flow statistics are used for a plethora of reasons, from designing bridges and culverts, to regulating development, to water consumption, to constituent time-of-travel predictions (think hazardous spills) to habitat studies. The list goes on.
I had been hired by the USGS several years earlier for my GIS skills. Whenever I am asked what GIS is, my short definition is ‘computerized smart maps’ which I hope to explain more through further describing my role in the project I am writing about here. In the late 80s and early 90s, GIS technology was still in its formative years, nowhere near the vision that later played out with GPS and Google Maps and a myriad of other geographic-centered analysis and use cases. However, it was a time of rapid innovative discovery, with new cutting-edge ideas being explored and hatched on a daily basis by those who knew the software. Such is the environment for any technology when it begins to flourish.
A vast majority of GIS map data comes in either vector or raster format. Vector data is often brought into the computer world through digitization as points, lines, and polygons. Examples include dams and sampling locations as points; rivers and roads as lines; and lakes and land parcels as polygons. Linear data can additionally be built as geometric networks in order to trace routes, distances and other information from one point to another such as from home to work on a road network, or up/downstream on a river network.
Raster data comes in the form of a grid lattice with every square pixel storing a data value. Examples include 3-dimensional terrain maps of land-surface elevation values and landscape maps of forested, agricultural and urban land. Digital raster maps can be overlain with one another to perform complex map-algebraic computations that help detect natural and manmade patterns and trends.
Most GIS specialists excel in either the vector world or the raster world, but rarely both. I was fortunate enough to be in a position to have to work with each of these environments for a handful of projects leading up to 1991. This combination skillset would prove to be a complimentary and powerful one for Kernell’s needs and ultimately for the rest of my professional career to date.
The most important characteristic that needs to be computed for regression-based flow equations is drainage area. This is the area of land that contributes riverine and overland flow to a user-specified point location on a river or stream. It is also referred to as a watershed or basin. In the days before GIS, this characteristic needed to be measured using an instrument called a planimeter by tracing along the pre-sketched ridge line (basin boundary) of interest on a topographic map. In the mid-80s several bright minds at USGS’s Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Data Center figured out a masterful way to automate this process using derivate raster data from terrain maps called Digital Elevation Models (DEMs). In a nutshell, a grid of flow direction values can be derived from a DEM, which can then be used to compute the ridge line of a watershed.
One big problem however was that the DEMs in the early 90s were pretty course, often producing sketchy results, particularly in flat areas. One consequence was that ‘synthetic’ streams in these areas, which could also be derived from the DEM, would often plot hundreds of feet from their true location, and/or merge and meander together incorrectly. The erratic results did not give Kernell a lot of confidence, he being a meticulous planimeter delineator back in the day. At one point Kernell pulled out a handful of USGS topographic quadrangles from our map drawers, each of which included a Mylar overlay of delineated sub-basin boundaries, adding up to several thousand across the State of Massachusetts (which was the study area for his project). Kernell wanted to see if I could figure out a way for these boundaries to be used in place of the DEM derived boundaries in all locations where the two were hypothetically coincident along the ridge lines. I was aware that these boundaries had been digitized into a GIS datalayer by a colleague at the State’s GIS clearinghouse (now called MassGIS, which was formed as a result of a three-year cooperative program between the State and our office: I was initially hired by USGS to play a role in the last year of that co-op) and I had knowledge of and access to this data, having worked with it some for several projects already. Yet, seeing those overlays, worthy of display in an art gallery, and in their original hand-delineated state, was both impressive and inspiring.
I also had access to digital stream-line data and other vector hydrography, digitized by the USGS mapping centers at around this time as Digital Line Graphs (DLGs). In the two years prior, I had been involved in fleshing out this data, creating ‘centerlines’ through lakes and wide polygonal rivers by devising Euclidean distance formulas in the raster world to complete the connectivity of dendritic river networks in the vector world, from the multitude of small headwater streams all the way down to the major tributaries and ultimately the ocean (think the silhouette of a tree from twig to branch to limb to trunk to ground).
Around the same time I started messing around with an Australian-source GIS program called ANUDEM (later renamed TopoGrid in the ArcGIS software and now called TopoToRaster), which enforces a DEM to recognize the spatial accuracy of digitized vector streams, thereby improving the spatial accuracy of the elevation values near the streams, and in turn getting the synthetic streams more in line with reality (though not quite getting to the even-more precise horizontal line up which would come later with a deep-trenching raster procedure called ‘burning’, developed by students at the University of Texas, albeit in a compromised fashion that rendered useless the output DEM, but got the desired spatial alignment with the vector DLG streams for derivatives like flow direction).
Finally I was getting fairly proficient at programming in a GIS macro language called AML, which opened up all sorts of mind-expanding concepts for me related to computation and automation; functions, directives and variable settings being the cornerstone to this fascinating new world. It was this combination of knowledge that got my brain spinning with ideas on how to help Kernell. My plan: Automate a way where I could get basins delineated from any click point on a river or stream by using both the raster DEM and the more accurate vector sub-basin boundary datalayer for Massachusetts.
Since just before the time I started working at USGS, the agency had initiated the first in a series of blanket purchase agreements with ESRI, one of the largest developers of GIS software in the world. Today, ESRI’s flagship product is ArcGIS. In the 80’s and 90’s it was better known as ArcInfo. The ‘Coverage’ was the vector product of that time, and there were some interesting features of that product which have unfortunately disappeared with the newer ‘geodatabase’ model (at least without considerable effort to replicate). One of them was the ability to build a single Coverage as both a line and polygon layer. This allowed for a relationship that could be utilized between the two feature types: Depending on which typically-random direction a line was facing, there was built-in coding that determined whether an adjacent polygon was to the left or right of that line using the related line attribute table. This coding was rarely applied in analysis, but now I had a good reason to use it. I added two additional integer attributes to the line attribute table: ‘LOpen’ and ‘ROpen’ (left and right open). If there was no flow relationship between the adjacent polygons I left these to the default zero values. However, if there was flow relationship up and downstream, I would give one or the other a code of 1 to ‘open up’ flow, depending on the line feature’s digitized direction, when it got ‘tapped’ in the iterative stair-step program procedure I had now begun devising in AML.
Ok, I had a coding scheme, now I had to figure out a way to automate it. I tracked down a great “DO UNTIL” looping piece of code from a USGS colleague and tinkered with it. This code would loop through a process over and over until it ran out of options, at which time it would move on. I modified this code to work with my line attribute coding scheme. Polygons would be collected systematically through this line-polygon relationship until all upstream polygons had been found.
At this point I turned my focus to the click point and its immediate contributing area upstream. This was the chunk of territory that had to rely on the DEM raster process devised by EROS and enhanced with ANUDEM, and since it almost always fell inside an existing vector basin polygon, I had to figure a way to only use the raster-derived watershed (by this time converted to vector) up to the points where it intersected the accurate existing vector basin boundary. I devised how to do this by narrowing the analysis window to the basin polygon that the click point fell within. After a few steps of finding a way to cut the new boundary at the first intersections (both sides) I had my final piece of real estate. Combining this sub-piece with the first upstream basin polygon (or polygons) was a fairly difficult concept to work through and took some trial and error, but once I got it with some proximity commands I had my raster/vector merger. From there I used the iterative DO UNTIL loop, until all upstream polygons had been collected, which I then proceeded to dissolve of internal boundaries to get the final basin boundary polygon from a click-point (hence my dubbing the program “ONEBASIN”).
Obviously this process needed a visual component for the user which I set up by first prompting the user for a latitude/longitude coordinate. The initial map view consisted of the vector stream and ANUDEM raster (synthetic) stream, as well as the lat/long point, with instruction to click a point on the synthetic steam that best represented the equivalent location of the vector stream and the point (for the entire procedure, see the attached jpeg files from my scanned slides). From there the program took off, showing the user the progress along the way. The attached selection of slides from the talk I gave that fall in Portland, Maine at the annual Northeast Arc Users Conference (NEARC) show how it all worked. Subsequent programs would take this boundary and use it as a cookie-cutter for other basin characteristics (i.e. forested area, urban area, precipitation, channel slope, mean basin elevation, soils, total length of streams, area of sand and gravel deposits, etc.). The most significant ones would be added to a final program to run Kernell’s regression equations to get flow statistics.
Over the ensuing years Kernell and I would collaborate to bring this automation to the web, first as a state-wide product and later, after USGS Headquarters got wind of it all, as a National product for other State offices to utilize (with a significant amount of training from us). That product is called StreamStats, and for many years, it stood head and shoulders above all other GIS web sites in terms of its advanced use of GIS functionality on the web. Thousands of users hit the site daily on a regular basis. StreamStats has been a tremendous success story for us. Some of what I did had to be modified for the newer software, but that early “ONEBASIN” code still stands; a proud moment as a trailblazing procedure where I took a complex and disparate set of data and ideas, and customized it all to work for a very specific and revolutionary purpose.
“Guitar and Pen” is one of my all-time favorite Who songs (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xp9EdWnSX-c) (for more on “Guitar and Pen” and the album it was recorded on, see Under the Big Top # 10 “A Who Album Review: Who Are You”). Thank goodness Keith Moon was still around for this one as for one last time Pete Townshend had all that brilliant one-of-a-kind potency of Who tools at his disposal (Moon, Entwistle, Daltrey and himself), making the complex, multi-textured structure of this tune possible. Like the program I wrote, I believe Townshend had to work at it one piece at a time. Complex ideas typically come together that way. I’m thankful for those clairvoyant handful of times where multi-tiered schemes came together for me in life, if for only to give me a tiny bit of insight into the world of a genius.
- Pete
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