Ramblin' with Roger

Posts Tagged ‘YouTube’

The rules of engagement

203 Across the Universe from Let It Be. One of the Beatles songs performed much better by other people, but I never warmed up to the Lennon version.
202 Sie Liebt Dich, the German version of “She Loves You”. Quaint, but I’ll opt for the English version.
201 Till There Was You. My antipathy toward this song is not the Beatles’ fault. This is from With the Beatles (UK) and Meet the Beatles (US). WITH has six cover versions, including five rhythm and blues tunes, but MEET has only one, this tune from The Music Man. I was really annoyed with Capitol Records by this choice, and the song became the flashpoint of my disdain.
200 Everybody’s Trying to Be My Baby Beatles for Sale (UK), Beatles ‘65 (US). Never thought much of George’s vocals on this Carl Perkins song.
199 You Know My Name (Look Up the Number), the B-side of the Let It Be single. This is a comedy song, funny in parts, but ultimately unsustainable.
198 Mean Mr. Mustard from Abbey Road. It’s from the medley, and I like it, but it’s 48 seconds.
197 Boys from Please Please Me (US), Introducing the Beatles/The Early Beatles (US). this is a Shirelles’ tune and Ringo sounds uncomfortable with the gender switch; it just doesn’t work for me.
196 Maxwell’s Silver Hammer from Abbey Road. Too silly. And Steve Martin’s version in my head doesn’t help.
195 There’s a Place Please Please Me (UK), Introducing the Beatles (US). Unfortunately, I never heard this song much, since I didn’t have Introducing the Beatles on Vee-Jay until much later and it never showed up on an American Capitol album until nearly a decade after the group broke up. Besides, it sounds a little out of tune.
194 Long, Long, Long from the white album. An underrecorded, seemingly unfocused Harrison tune.
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The Beatles are on iTunes. This is great for the proliferation of the music, but having purchased it several times already, it affects me personally not a whit. Well, unless they release NEW music…
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HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MOM!

The Beatles were my favorite group, and John Lennon was my favorite Beatle. As I stated on Ringo’s 70th, I decided I would list my 10 favorite songs of each Beatle on his 70th birthday, or what would be his 70th. Here’s my JL list, with YouTube links throughout.

10. Crippled Inside – Frankly, I have lots of #10 choices, but this one jumped out at me this month playing all my Lennon CDs. Maybe it’s because of the juxtaposition between the title and the jaunty melody.
9. Mind Games – “Love IS the answer.”
8. Happy Xmas (War Is Over) – I had a girlfriend who thought this was the silliest Christmas song ever. (Had she heard Macca’s Wonderful Christmastime?) But I’m very fond, though I tended to cry when I heard it in December 1980. “War is over, if you want it.” Idealist? Naive? Don’t care.
7. Cold Turkey – with its blistering guitar line, it FELT like drug withdrawal. Read the rest of this entry »

OK, I don’t know how to take a picture of me on this day. I gave my wife a digital camera for Christmas, 2007. She doesn’t know how to use it either. I have actually taken pictures accidentally with my cell phone but haven’t figured out: 1) how I did it or 2) how to retrieve them.

Now, to be fair, neither of us have put much effort into it; always something more pressing. I suppose I could have asked someone else, but I am disinclined. Read the rest of this entry »

After my wife and I had our almost weekly summer date and saw the movie The Kids Are All Right, she noted that it was, in many ways, a very conventional, slice-of-life, film about the travails of family life. And I realized, that, at the core, she was absolutely right.

The film is also blessed by the casting of Annette Bening, as a Type A doctor, and Julianne Moore, as her more bohemian partner. Their “unexotic, unglamorous and totally routine” lives are upended by the bio-dad (Mark Ruffalo); how (and why) he changes the family dynamic is an important part of the tale. A few critics carped that, in the end, conventionality, of a sort, is restored, but I think that’s the point.
Read the rest of this entry »

It’s very warm on the second floor of my house. It was hot for several days last week, then it cooled off somewhat, only to have the heat return. The only place it isn’t hot is in the daughter’s room; she has a room air conditioner. The bedrooms have ceiling fans, which circulate but do not cool, the warm air.

A relative sent me one of those forwarded Very Important!!!! notices:
My car book says to roll down the windows to let out all the hot air before turning on A/C. WHY ???????????
Please do NOT turn on A/C as soon as you enter the car. Read the rest of this entry »

…but it’s more that I’m just confounded.

In the “Gather Your Armies” piece, Barber complains to the “Founding Fathers” that IRS taxation and the health care bill are equivalent to ire they must have felt over the “tea tax” that led to the Boston Tea Party. The tiny difference? It was not the tax, per se, that was the source of the ultimate rebellion; it was that the tax, and other activities, were imposed by the British without colonists’ say-so. The rallying cry wasn’t “no taxation”; it was “no taxation without representation.” Representation such as from the very Congress for which Rick Barber, ironically, is running. Now, if he were living in Washington, DC, he might actually have a point, since the district has no voting member of Congress.

In the “Slavery” video, “Abraham Lincoln” confirms that taxes used to pay people welfare is the same thing as people taken from their homeland, often treated cruelly, and forced to work for no pay. Barber’s video is particularly mortifying because there is still REAL slavery in the world.
Read the rest of this entry »

I’m watching The Daily Show with Jon Stewart recently, miraculously only a couple days after the show aired. John C. Reilly, who I know best from the movie Chicago, was on, ostensibly to plug his new movie, Cyrus. But it is what he said about music, at about 4:20 of this clip, that really struck me. Seems that when he was a kid, when his mom or dad would say a word or a phrase, he would come up with a song to go along with it. I did/do the same damn thing!

If I ever had his sausage, I have no recollection.
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Crispian St. Peters died, best known for song called Pied Piper. But he also had a minor hit with Evanier gives details of the great artist’s life.