Dedication
This album dedicated to Gerard F. Yates, S.J.—our Coney Island Baby, a Curbstone Cutie Visiting Professor from Upper Peabody Tech Priest, confidant, friend—just “Yatsie.”
Chimes ’75
Production
Featuring
Left-to-right on album cover: Tim Naughton; Father Yates; Ken Quinn; John P. Dearie, Jr., ephus; Cliffe Laborde; Kevin O’Neill; Bob Kingsland; and Mark O’Connor.
Recorded Live
This record sung live February 5, 1975 in the heart of the Georgetown University community at 1789.
Le Figaro de Paris (September 1974) by Yann de L’Écotais
The bistro is called The Tombs, in Georgetown—the chic, artistic, intellectual neighborhood of Northwest Washington, and it is mainly patronized by students. From the stairway which leads to the basement. there rise the voices of a choral group and the fragrance of beer. Nothing of the boozy, wanton student scene that is dear to Europeans. Down below, a young waiter has his finger to his lips: you have to parley, in a whisper, in order to slip into the great, darkened, crowded room that hangs enthralled by fifteen young men sitting around a large table with three microphones. The Georgetown University Chimes are giving their monthly concert—the house is packed without any advance publicity. “No—there’s no service while they’re singing”—out of respect, so as not to disturb. Everyone has taken his precautions in advance: the beer mugs hold one liter. This choral group has existed for 28 years; it is almost an institution. Students who belong pass on but remain members for life. They present American folklore tunes to which they adapt improvised words and texts in the singing style of “barber shop songs,” after the manner of barber shop customers of a century ago. After each number the room explodes: Glasses are lifted and clinked together, and everyone sits down again. The Chimes would have an assured professional career if they wanted it. They rehearse about three times a week, but they are also students on the side, mostly in political science. There is a professor there, too, the Reverend Gerard F. Yates, S.J., 67 years old, clear-voiced and bright-eyed, and believe me, he doesn’t balk at a pint. Perhaps I began to understand, in that atmosphere which was at once good-natured, very free, and at the same time polite, what it is that makes Americans “tick,” what it is that gives them—all politics aside—that spirit which we so lack on the other side of the Atlantic: confidence confidence which comes from the certainty of not being the prisoner of a past, of being able to choose one’s future and prepare for it, of doing one day what one wants to do—it is that which allows one to laugh. It is midnight, and Washington’s weather is mild. Boys and girls flirt on the campus. Mad pop music floats out from a few wide-open student windows. A party is in progress. America as we don’t know it.
Transcribed from the Physical Liner Notes