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We lost Melanie Safka last week.<\/p>\n
Like many great musicians from the 1960s-1970s, she was an iconic musician whose work made an indelible mark on my consciousness. I loved her music, but it seemed like I\u2019d never have an opportunity to see her perform in person. From what I can tell, she was either semi-retired and\/or never did any shows on the West Coast*.<\/p>\n
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All of of this changed in August 2017. She came to Salinas, CA to play a fundraiser concert for \u201cDorothy\u2019s Place,\u201d which at the time was the only women\u2019s shelter in Monterey County. I immediately bought a ticket, and then reached out to Melanie\u2019s management to see if they would allow me to document this concert for posterity. Luckily, Melanie allowed me to do this and I was able to capture video of a rare concert performance of Melanie in Northern California. Melanie was able to see the assembled video of the full concert, but we never got around to sharing it publicly.<\/p>\n
When Richard Berry was still alive, I had fantasized him singing \u201cLook What They\u2019ve Done To My Song, Ma,\u201d a Melanie song that I thought would be perfect for him, considering the context and history of Richard\u2019s most famous song. In fact, I was hoping to make that idea and many other things happen when I moved closer to Richard in Los Angeles in 1997. Sadly, Richard passed away a few weeks before my scheduled plan to make the big move. (I lasted a year in L.A.)<\/p>\n
While I was not able to get Richard to sing the suggested Melanie song, I was able to sweet-talk Melanie into singing a little bit of the famous Richard Berry song.<\/p>\n