Delicious Salads, Plaid Shirts, Brian Wilsons, and Bison

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The first music I ever connected with, consciously, in my life, was The Beach Boys. I was in Elementary School at the time—perhaps 4th grade? Regardless, their music moved me in a way that I can’t quite capture in words. So, I showed my appreciation by making an arrangement of one of their songs.

As an adult, I can only marvel at the wonderment of Brian Wilson, and how marvelous it feels to sing something so gorgeous and perfectly crafted from top to bottom. Like nature: balanced and beautiful.

Last year, while I was on tour in Idaho/Wisconsin, I filmed a bison, as I was eating a salad by my car, in the Old Faithful parking lot of Yellowstone National Park. I posted it later that night to my Mike Vitale music page, and forgot about it.

I logged on a few days later, and was shocked to see that this silly bison video went viral. I received nearly one million views in the course of a few days. Comments. Lots of comments. Pretty wild. It seemed that most the activity around that video was fueled by vitriol… people telling me how stupid I was or how dumb the person in front of me was. You know. That sort of thing.

This video I shared with you now, doesn’t have any bison in it, as far as I can gather. It does feature me wearing a plaid shirt I regret buying.

However, I might be mistaken. Perhaps I could proclaim with some small amount of pride, that this video is in fact very much like a bison walking through a parking lot, towards a forest, only to be lost from the eyes and ears of human spectators once again, on its way to who knows where, for who knows what.

That would be whimsical—and perhaps that is the stuff that delicious salads, plaid shirts, Brian Wilsons, and bison even, are made of.

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"Which Way Are You Goin'" | Jim Croce (Mike Vitale Cover)

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One of my friends and Patrons, Susn, asked me to learn a Jim Croce cover called “Which Way Are You Goin’”. At the time, I was completely unfamiliar with this song. It is from his posthumous album released shortly after his death.

To me, it seemed relevant to many of the things happening around the world right now, as well as, within the United States. The year is 2020, and we are still finding ourselves confronted with a reality in which people refuse to hear each other when we speak. Yes, it would be easy for you the reader to laugh at me boiling things down to something so simple, but I ask that you entertain this idea for just a moment.

So many of us do not listen to one another. We wait for the other person to stop speaking so that we may in turn, talk. It is my speculation that this is because we value our own insight, thoughts, and ideals over those of the others around us.

When we truly respect others, we listen to what they have to say. We don’t just wait to talk. We observe and weigh what was said. We compare it against our own thoughts and ideals. In the year 2020, I hope that people may achieve this feat. In 2021, and the many years to come, I hope that we can become a species more open to ideas that are not our own—that we make an effort to expand our horizons in order to better fill the frame of our perceptions of one another—that we are capable of respecting each other as living creatures with our own unique thoughts and feelings, trying to share such in an open forum of communication.

Given our current circumstance world wide amongst a pandemic, may we all recognize each other as the same fragile creatures simply trying to express what we are feeling and observing, so that others around us may understand, and listen.

Pandemics aside, our issue with not understanding each other, starts at not listening. Once we successfully listen, it is then our duty to open our mind to as many possibilities as we are capable of. Hypocrisy is the mortar of our own bricks of belief, a burden we carry around for ages, before deciding they are far too heavy to carry any longer as a burden, so, we build a wall with them instead.

Like any piece of art, this song can be interpreted in a number of ways, however, by my own approximation—it seems to lean into the wind of hypocrisy as a subject matter—something that I feel is the mortar to many of our walls: as humans, as cultures, and creeds, and so forth. There is worth and intention to walls. However, there is equal virtue to an open field—the later however leaves itself open to so much, both positive and negative in nature and intent.

May we listen more and remain open, like a field. May we make no effort to incite the building of a wall. May we remain hopeful and positive. May we reach out to one another with olive branches, and not spears.

Thank you everyone on PATREON for helping me to make this happen.

Vocals, Electric Guitar, Synthesizers, Bass, and Drums - Mike Vitale

Mixing and Mastering - Mike Vitale

Video Footage and Editing - Mike Vitale

“Which Way Are You Goin’” - words and music by Jim Croce (lyrics available within the notes of the Youtube video).

Heart-Shaped Box | Nirvana (Mike Vitale Cover)

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Here is an arrangement that I came up with for Nirvana's "Heart-Shaped Box". It would be an understatement to say that Nirvana had a profound effect on me as a musician. As a band, they inspired me to play guitar when I was 13 or 14 years old.

As an adult, I not only admire the musicianship and creativity of the group, but the songwriting craftsmanship of Kurt Cobain, not to mention his work as a lyricist. I admire and love the music as much as I did when I was a young man in Jr. High. I cried the day that Kurt Cobain died—I imagine, this emotional reaction was from a profound connection with the music being made.

Humbly, as a 40 year-old who grew up with Nirvana, I offer my interpretation of a song I loved when I was a freshman in High School at 15 years-old: 25 years ago.