Customer Reviews

Five & Twenty Questions

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have often wondered what became of Mark. Buying this recently released reissue of the old LP I had in the 60's reminds me - as it will you - of an era and a sound; of a man who was a close friend of Richard Farina and was much admired by Bob Dylan. His voice and 12-string playing are hypnotic, the lyrics significant and the overall impact of the music is - well - to cause us to miss him and all that he had to offer. "White Wing Dove" has been a favorite tune of mine for over 40 years - so nice to hear it again from Mark's own voice!

A SAD ADDENDUM: Mark died on or just prior to 2/26/07 at his home of pancreatic cancer.

I didn't write this obit myself. I recently discovered that he had died, and am posting the touching obit written by his son, Joshua, here. Those of you who recall Mark and his smooth 12-string style will feel perhaps a moment of loss. An early boyfriend of Joan Baez, a contemporary of Bob Dylan in NYC and a friend to both Mimi and Richard Farina. It is followed by a note sent by Joshua to family and friends explaining what happened.

Mark has written his final lyric. Heaven's gain - our loss.

Here it is:

Date: 26 Feb 07 - 01:29 PM

From Mark Spoelstra's son Joshua:

Dear Friends,

Today my father passed away here in his lovely but modest home in the Sierra Foothills of California. There was snow on the ground and we could see the trees which surround the house like sentinels sway with the force of another approaching storm. We held him as he left us and I know he had no fear and felt no pain, and even though his life was cut short he found the strength to remind each of us that he loved us. I will miss him greatly.

Regretfully,

Joshua Spoelstra

I apologize to any and all who would have liked to know but were not notified as to the worsening state of my fathers health, I was only able to notify a few of you last week with the following note:

I am writing to you on my father's behalf he has become gravely ill and because of this he has been admitted to the Hospital. Soon we will be ringing him home for Hospice care. What we thought was back pain from years of guitar playing and driving was misdiagnosed and the cancer spread from his pancreas to his liver and lungs, it has moved very rapidly.

This disease has affected so many people that we have known and loved over the years and we are humbled by their shared pain and suffering. As our family comes together over our father's illness we find him constantly in our hearts, remembrances and prayers just as we hope Mark will be in yours in the coming days.

Warmest Regards,

Joshua Spoelstra

Here is Mark at his "Moment on the Road to Damascus". I was in Fresno, CA when he pulled this music from his "Socially-conscious Well" and time has shown that this core sample of musically -invested poetry does indeed still "float" !

Never-mind that he is a friend...and that I still can sing some of these creations today w/o apologies...

all of us who love Mark & his music agree: this a definitive album, from the heart of the era, and essentially fresher than a Starbucks' drive-thru. Honest to a fault, and probably improved by the digital re-mastering.

If you like 12-string guitar, and want to know what the world looked like to a veteran "Folkie" of that day, hold this effort up to the sky, where Mark's co-horts, Dylan, Ochs & Farina flew their kites... the glitter is all about where it hits yore inner-ear. Pure 1965, by the guy who later found himself on the soundtrack of "Electroglide in Blue", inspired by country radio, playing in his Fresno home.

(Mark anticipated America's roots in county music via these "Electroglide" tunes on a Columbia album, titled "Grizzly Flat) Those "Five & Twenty Questions" got asked recently by America's Voting Public, and "That's US, folks !"

Know that Mark is still alive & well, making even more music at this moment ! A Pioneer of Honesty & Style.

Over the past year or so I have been reviewing many of the male folksingers who proliferated in the early 1960's folk revival and who threw their hats in the ring to be "king of the hill" of the burgeoning folk scene (the women singers of the period are to be looked at separately later). Names such as Tom Rush, Tom Paxton, Jesse Colin Young and Jesse Winchester have already been reviewed. These are performers, for the most part, who still work the small concert and coffee house circuit but whose names are probably very unfamiliar to today's musical audience, folk or otherwise. I approached my theme initially under the sign of this question; what qualities, personal and musical, make some singers succeed and others fall by the wayside?

We know that Bob Dylan, without a doubt, wanted to win that contest for supremacy, and did so. I think that Dylan answered the why of that question himself in one of the snippets of interviews in the Martin Scorsese documentary of his early career, "No Direction Home". There he noted, when asked why audiences gravitated to his songs, that while there was plenty of talent around most singers sang their message over the audience (I think that he meant in the literal performing sense, as well as intellectually) but that it was necessary to "speak" to the audience. To our sense of longing for identity, for some knowledge of life's mystery, and for that some one who could express in our own tribal youth language the words that we needed to push on with. Well, Dylan certainly did that to a generation, my generation, that saw "the answer blowing in the wind" and desperately hoped that "the times were a-changin'''.

The folk artist under review, Mark Spoestra is one of the male singers that I have not mentioned previously, although he was certainly in the mix of things in the early 1960's. In fact, his "resurrection" here is due to my having seen his "talking head" commentary on that "No Direction Home" Scorsese production. I do not know the particulars of his later story but the work here on this CD is a case in point about the Dylan comment. (I note that after this review was written I found out that Mark Spoelstra had died in 2007.)

Certainly his lyrics are strong and are right in the Woody Guthrie (and later, Dylan himself) troubadour tradition of spreading the news of the day. "Five & Twenty Questions" and, more so, the tragic story outlined in "Ballad Of 12th Avenue", about the desperation of a used up man in the bowels of modern American society that has left him with no resources but the gun to work out his problems, are in that mode. "On The Road Again" and "The Leaves" speak to the need to ramble and find oneself or to find love or find something that we hungered for then (and not just then either). That said, this album still leaves me with the feeling that old Mark was speaking to himself and for himself and not to me. That is the difference. A big difference. Still, if you have time listen in to someone who was struggling to find the meaning of his times and, at least on "Ballad Of 12th Street", hit pay dirt.

This is Mark's finest recording. A great balance between up-tempo and slower numbers; a nice mixture of traditional sounding things and more contemporary material, and some fine 12 string guitar playing. I've always loved Mark's singing; too many of his contemporaries were singing in pseudo-black voices. Mark always sounds very natural. Great stuff!

For those who are just checking out Mark's work because they caught a reference to his recent death, this is the album to get. It's got strong message songs, stellar 12-string work, and better production values than on most of his albums. The original liner notes by Richard Farina Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me (Twentieth-Century Classics) Celebrations for a Grey Day have been faithfully reproduced and are an historical treasure in themselves. A fave: "Just A Hand to Hold." Also interesting is "My Love is Like a Dewdrop," which was covered by Harry Belafonte, among others.