Ramblin' with Roger

1991: twenty-seven (!) #1 songs

Janet, PM Dawn, Madonna

There were 27 songs that reached #1 on the Billboard pop charts in 1991. I wasn’t listening much to pop radio, apparently. Some of the songs I never heard of. Then there are those, such as the most popular song of the year, that I must have heard, but my mind and my ear wouldn’t accept it.

(Everything I Do) I Do For You – Bryan Adams, #1 for seven weeks, triple-platinum single. I knew this was from the movie Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. But it didn’t imprint.
Black Or White – Michael Jackson, #1 for seven weeks, platinum single. I MIGHT have heard it on the radio. But I surely saw the video several times.

Rush, Rush – Paula Abdul, #1 for five weeks, gold single. I actually own the Spellbound album on which this appears. (There’s a story about that.) But I don’t recall hearing the tune on the radio.

Emotions – Mariah Carey, #1 for three weeks, gold single. I have her #1s album, but I otherwise don’t recognize it.

Two weeks at #1

Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now) – C+C Music Factory, platinum single. The song in toto, I don’t recall. But the parenthetical part of the title I heard EVERYWHERE. The First Time – Surface, gold single. IDK.
I Don’t Wanna Cry – Mariah Carey. I own this on her Number #1’s album, but I don’t listen to it much.
Justify My Love – Madonna, platinum single. Maybe I heard it on the radio? But I know it from her The Immaculate Collection greatest hits album, my only Madonna album.
Baby Baby – Amy Grant. I know the song and the video, to my surprise.
Cream – Prince and the N.P.G., gold single. Know this from his The Hits/The B-Sides compilation
All The Man That I Need – Whitney Houston, gold single. I have I’m Your Baby Tonight on CD, where this appears. I do also have a cassette of her first album.
Someday– Mariah Carey, gold single. This is on the international version of her #1s, but not the version I own
I Adore Mi Amor – Color Me Badd, gold single. I’ve vaguely heard of the group but IDK the song.

A single week at #1

More Than Words – Extreme, gold single. Somehow, may have actually heard this, possibly on an oldies station.
I Like The Way (The Kissing Game) – Hi-Five, gold single. IDK
One More Try – Timmy-T-platinum single. IDK, but doesn’t it sound like a whole lot of other songs?
Unbelievable – EMF, gold single. The hook I’ve heard endlessly.
When A Man Loves A Woman – Michael Bolton. This I heard. Not my favorite version of this song.
Set Adrift On Memory Bliss – PM Dawn, gold single. This I actually own on a CD.
Romantic – Karyn White. I couldn’t have identified it, but it sounds vaguely familiar
Love Will Never Do (Without You) – Janet Jackson, gold single. Now, the Rhythm Nation 1814 album I played quite often.
Good Vibrations -Marky Mark and Funky Bunch. Not only do I not remember the song, but I also couldn’t find it on YouTube, though it is on Spotify.
You’re In Love – Wilson Phillips. Somehow, I have heard this, though I couldn’t have identified the artist.
Joyride – Roxette. Vague recollection.
I’ve Been Thinking About You – Londonbeat, gold single. I own the album on which appears, though I don’t recall buying it.
The Promise Of A New Day – Paula Abdul. Also from Spellbound. Never heard it on the radio.

It’s weird; I knew so many songs from only a decade earlier. I hadn’t stopped listening to music. From the top albums of 1991, I own collections from R.E.M., Paul Simon (who I saw live that year), Travelling Wilburys, and the Vaughan Brothers, plus the aforementioned Madonna and Janet.

From the first Boyz II Men album, which I own, a song that “only” made it to #3, Motownphilly.

The research trip: Les Green, Agatha Walker, Raymond Cone

Family Court privacy

Les Green.montage — Les Green (X3); the woman in the lower right is Agatha

Back in February 2020, I had planned a research trip to the Broome County Clerk’s office to look at a particular law case. But the March sojourn was postponed for some reason.

The story of the trial appeared in the Binghamton Press, starting on 27 Oct, p. 5. “Negro minister to go on trial.” “The Reverend Raymond Cone, negro minister, charged with being the father of a child born out of wedlock of Miss Agatha Walker, 25 years old*, of 14 East street, a teacher in this Sunday school**, will go on trial in Children’s Court tomorrow before County Judge Benjamin Baker.”

In late September, my friend Cee and I went to the clerk’s office, and I was assured that the information I sought would NOT be there. This is contrary to what I was told 19 months earlier on the phone. In any case, we could not find it. We were directed to the Family Court office.

The person I talked with said that the boss was away, but that I could provide a narrative. So I wrote a request for the trial transcript. I was told back at the county clerk that I might well be denied because Family Court records are sealed for reasons of privacy.

Thank God it was Thursday

But we were given a glimmer of hope by a lawyer who gives advice once a week in the county courthouse. He pointed to 22 NYCRR 205.5, Privacy of Family Court records.

Frankly, I’m not seeing it in the text, but he had researched a similar case in June 2021. He explained that my request could be denied because Family Court records are sealed. But I could appeal to a state appellate judge. I might note, for instance:

1. All of the parties – Raymond Cone, Agatha Walker Green, and the child, my father, Les Green, are all deceased.
2. I am directly related to the participants.
3. Many of the details, including the conclusion by Judge Baker in January 1927 that Rev. Cone was acquitted, was widely known because it was published in the Binghamton newspapers.

* She was actually 24, and 23 when the event occurred on January 6, 1926
** I understand she headed the Sunday school

October rambling: doing an impression

old blogger, newish home

**From https://wronghands1.com/2021/09/21/blue-whale/**

The ivory-billed woodpecker, 22 other species extinct.

Pandora Papers: The largest investigation in journalism history exposes a shadow financial system that benefits the world’s most rich and powerful.

How decades of security blunders led to the formation of the TSA and forever changed the way we fly.

Texas’ Sweeping Abortion Ban Gives New Meaning to Oft-Misused Handmaid’s Tale Comparisons.

The Big Lie Refuses to Die.

Your gas stove, your health, and climate change.

The American West is running out of water—and Big Oil, of all things, can help fix it.

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: PFAS and Voting Rights.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuf1m1VGu8Y Call Your Senator to Support the Equality Act

I saw the stories about the Facebook outage but kept reading it as the Facebook outrage. How Facebook’s Response To Whistleblower Could Make Their Crisis Worse. Incidentally, when Facebook was down, I went to Is It Down Right Now but it TOO was down. I ended up using Down For Everyone or Just Me and Is Your Website Down Down Right Now?

Why Is the U.S. Housing Market So Out of Whack?

Garbage odyssey: San Francisco’s bizarre, costly quest for the perfect trash can.

Inventions That Changed the World

Ted Koppel pays a visit to Mayberry (Mt. Airy, NC)

You’ve just been ‘ghosted’ after a job interview. Here’s how you should respond.

New York Public Library is ending fines on overdue materials forever. Albany Public Library did that a couple of years back.

Butt-dialing 911 is a challenge for police dispatchers

Why Seinfeld is the Worst Sitcom of All Time

The Peace of Wild Things – Wendell Berry (born 1934)

The medical ward

Pandemics are beaten by communities, not individuals. This describes my risk/reward calculations pretty well.

How Jared And Ivanka Botched Trump’s Pandemic Response.

Combating Anti-Vaxxers and Vaccine Hesitation.

Why Mandates Make Us Feel Threatened.

Albany Med prize winners: Coronavirus vaccine was years in the making.

Cognitive Bias Is Influencing Forensic Pathology Decisions

I had gone to the dentist this month to get a tooth uncapped because a cavity developed. It is one of those things that might have been prevented but for COVID. Anyway, they said, “We’re going to do an impression.” I knew what they meant, but my mind wandered to Rich Little doing John Wayne or Richard Nixon.

More Empathy Means Better Care, Less Medical Liability.

A Gene-Editing Experiment Let These Patients With Vision Loss See Color Again.

People with vitiligo debate whether to treat or embrace their condition

Race in America

Calls to Ban Books by Black Authors Are Increasing Amid Critical Race Theory Debates

Origin and Meaning of Critical Race Theory.

How Do We Dismantle Structural Racism in Medicine?

Manhattan Street Names Tied to Slavery Listed from A to Z.

Meet The First 2 Black Women To Be Inducted Into The National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Bruice’s Beach in California can return to descendants of a Black family in a landmark move.

Byzantium Shores, no. ForgottenStars, si!

I’ve been following Jaquandor at Byzantium Shores for well over a decade. He’s another upstater from the other end of the Erie Canal. His birthday is 45 years to the day after my late father’s.

He started blogging in 2002, over three years before I did. Eventually, he’s let the pseudonym go. Now Kelly Sedinger is blogging at ForgottenStars.net, where he promotes his books, two of which I have. He knows a ton about classical music, many of which I have linked to. I don’t quite get the pie in the face thing, but that’s OK.

Now I Know

The Problem with Space Pirates

Why the Ace of Spades is So Darn Big

The Worst Way to Get People to Watch a Movie?

Why Teams Wear Gray When Not At Home

How South Korea Massages Its Workforce

The Road Where Seat Belts are Banned

The Oldest PhD.

MUSIC

You’re Not Alone album by Roy Buchanan.

Feeling Good – Nina Simone.

Eine Alpensinfonie by Richard Strauss.

Coverville 1374: Cover Stories for John Mellencamp, Bob Geldof, and Chrissie Hynde.

The First Moonwalk? Bill Bailey tapping to an instrumental version of the Larks’ hit “The World is Waiting for Sunrise” performed by the Paul Williams Quartet

Autumn Leaves – Ebene Quartet.

Stuck in the Middle with You -MonaLisa Twins

Capriccio Italien by Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Robert Russell Bennett’s Selections from Camelot. (Lerner and Loewe)

I Am Waiting – Ollabelle, a cover of The Rolling Stones song

The Final Act. 60 Minutes story on Tony Bennett.

Dave Koz and Friends Christmas Tour 2021 will be on the road, maybe in a town near you, between Nov 26 and Dec 23 with Richard Elliot, Rick Braun, Jonathan Butler, and… Rebecca Jade!

Rhymin’ Paul Simon turns 80

Simon covering Simon

Paul Simon turns 80, and I needed to find an angle. Ten years ago, on this date, I wrote about my favorite Paul Simon solo cuts. And ten years ago on November 5, on Art Garfunkel’s birthday, I noted my preferred Simon and Garfunkel tracks.

There are some artists whose music I tend to continue to buy because I’ve enjoyed their body of work. Not necessarily every album but most: Paul McCartney and Bruce Springsteen come to mind.

I continue to buy Paul Simon-related albums. Paul Simon Songbook is the 1965 album of solo Paul, most of which ended up on early S+G albums. It didn’t come out on CD until 2006.

Two Teenagers – The Singles 1957-1961. This includes many of the recordings of the duo BEFORE they were Simon and Garfunkel, both as a duo (Tom and Jerry, e.g.) and solo artists, (Jerry Landis, Artie Garr, et al.) Worthwhile.

In 2012 (I think), I sent my copy of Graceland (1986) to a friend of mine Who Had Never Heard It. Then I bought another copy with a few remixes of songs, though NOT the 12″ inch version of Boy In The Bubble, alas.

I got Stranger to Stranger in 2016, when it came out. It took a few plays for it to “take” in my ear, but I like it.

Do it again

The most interesting concept is 2018’s In The Blue Light , a “fresh perspectives on 10 of the artist’s favorite (though perhaps less-familiar) compositions drawn from the five-decade span of his illustrious solo career.” Four songs are from You’re The One (2000), but none are from Graceland.

“Jesse Hassenger of The A.V. Club gave the album a B- and wrote, ‘It would be easy to get bogged down in treating Blue Light as a compare/contrast exercise, but what’s most impressive about is the way that it sounds more or less of a piece as its own record.'”

Nevertheless, here are a couple of examples:

One Man’s Ceiling Is Another Man’s Floor from There Goes Rhymin’ Simon (1973), In The Blue Light

Some Folks’ Lives Roll Easy from Still Crazy After All These Years (1975), In The Blue Light

Indian Citizenship Act centennial: 2024

What it means to be an Indian Nation today

The status of the Native American or American Indian in the United States is most peculiar. This article reminded me that the centennial of the Indian Citizenship Act is coming up in 2024.

As you may know, Article I, Section 2 reads: “Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other Persons.”

Article I, Section 8: “The Congress shall have Power To… regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.”

Even the Fourteenth Amendment notes: “Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed.”

Silent Cal

From the article: “The Indian Citizenship Act [was] signed into law on June 2, 1924, by President Calvin Coolidge. As the very title of the legislation states, the act made all Indians in the United States citizens of the United States.”

According to the act, … all noncitizen Indians born within the territorial limits of the United States be, and they are hereby, declared to be citizens of the United States: Provided that the granting of such citizenship shall not in any manner impair or otherwise affect the right of any Indian to tribal or other property.

“The debate [following the 14th Amendment] was so pronounced that the Senate Judiciary Committee pondered the issue. In 1870 it rendered its verdict:

… the 14th amendment to the Constitution has no effect whatever upon the status of the Indian tribes within the limits of the United States…

“Strangely enough in the infamous Dred Scott decision in 1857, the frequently reviled Chief Justice Roger Taney had argued that American Indians could, in fact, become citizens. The caveat was that it had to be under congressional and legal supervision. In 1924, that is exactly what Congress did.”

This leads to some interesting arguments about how “to address what it means to be an Indian Nation today in the 21st century.” Read some more about the implications of the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924.