REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK
By John Tredrea
"Deliver me from the days of old" Chuck Berry.
Early Thursday morning or early Friday morning each week, I’ll go for a long ride around Hopewell Valley, and maybe some of the adjoining areas. It’s easy enough to do. This is a very picturesque place. Looking at it every week, you watch the changes unfold. There have been a lot of changes to the landscape, of course. Lot’s more coming, of course.
My mind-set on these jaunts is like a zombie. In an empty-headed daze, I gaze out the window while I keep changing stations on the radio. It is a relief not to have to think about what anything I’m seeing might mean to anybody, or about how important it is. It’s a relief to look at it like a picture in a museum. Through the Sourland Mountains, along Jacobs Creek, through Titusville village with an eye on the Delaware River, past Belle Mountain and Kuser Mountain.
I’ll ride most of the roads around here before any two or three of these rides are through. Woosamonsa Road is one of the best. How it looks is as good as how it sounds. Through the boroughs, too, seeing which stores have come and gone. Then back out of the boroughs, past the old neighborhoods and the hundreds and hundreds of enormous houses that have been built here during the past few decades. Talk about a world of haves and have-nots.
Yes, what a world. Talk doesn’t make it cohere. Ideas don’t make it cohere. Not for me. It’s still dominated by an undercurrent of chaos. But our music makes it cohere. Perhaps like some of you, I’ve long since trained myself not to believe too strongly in anything, because experience has shown that, before long, I’m probably not going to believe in it anymore and in fact am liable to wind up believing the reverse. Unless I want to brainwash myself, that is. And I don’t mind brainwashing myself unconsciously, but at doing it deliberately I draw the line.
It has long since seemed clear to me that the music that comes from, or is derived from music that comes from, the southeastern quarter of the United States is probably the main event in human history to date. I kid you not. It pushes us forward. It’s the sound of freedom, and it certainly holds up. What has come from down there, or developed from what comes down there? Jazz, blues, rhythm and blues, bluegrass, zydeco, country and western, gospel. And rock ‘n’ roll, of course. What else is there? What else have we got? Folk and classical, I guess. I have never liked the term folk music it seems utterly elitist; by whom is music that is not folk music made? And I don’t listen much to classical music. Except for Beethoven and a few other things, it doesn’t have a backbeat end of story. During a ride last week, I found a station that was just coming in, I don’t know from where. I kept changing directions to try to get better reception and had a nice tour of the Valley en route.
Most of the songs the station played were ones that came out when I was very young. They haven’t lost a thing, but plenty else has been lost while they remain inviolate. The first I heard was "Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On" by Jerry Lee Lewis. When this was followed immediately by "Rock Around The Clock" by Bill Haley and the Comets, the effect was overpowering. Then there was a string of about 30 others from the same era, all just killers, and Hopewell Valley never looked so good. There was "That’ll Be The Day" by Buddy Holly and "Shout" by the Isley Brothers and "Great Balls of Fire" with Jerry Lee Lewis. It was so good that it didn’t even matter that there was no Elvis or Little Richard. Amazing!
While I listened, what I saw made sense. It seemed good. It had a point and a direction. Interesting how a very Yankee place can cohere around Rebel music. I don’t know what that means and don’t care. They’re great songs that seem to have come out of the ground and the air, like trees, like a religious manifestation or message of central importance. Their time to be born came and has long since gone. But what could be more deathless?