February 2011 - Page 3 of 6 - Ramblin' with Roger

Beatles Island Songs, 83-74

When I was in high school and attempted to write songs, I essentially ended up rewriting Fixing A Hole.

JEOPARDY! answers (questions at the end)-
SONGS $500: This Beatles song begins, “Close your eyes and I’ll kiss you, tomorrow I’ll miss you”
RECORD LABELS $100: On Jan. 30, 1969, the Beatles gave their last public performance on the roof of this record company’s London offices
BANDS OF THE ’80S $100: Icicle Works formed in this city more than 20 years after the Beatles

This month is the anniversary of the Beatles’ “invasion of America.”

Meet the Beatles — For Two College Credits

The top 5 Beatles highlights of 2010

Hembeck’s Beatles page

Rain visits Good Morning America and I just happened to catch it. A review of their show in Chicago.

When The Washington Post panned the Beatles

Beatles voted best overall by Goldmine readers.

Beatles remastered stereo box wins Grammy AND Paul McCartney wins first solo Grammy award in 39 years.

The rules of engagement

83 I’m Happy Just to Dance with You from A Hard Day’s Night (UK, US), Something New (US). A Lennon/McCartney song for Harrison, and I totally believe that he is.
82 Eight Days a Week from Beatles for Sale (UK), Beatles VI. Another of the lipsynch favorites, with Lennon, assisted by McCartney and Harrison.
81 Doctor Robert from Revolver (UK), Yesterday and Today (US). When I got the American version of Revolver, which I thought was the only version at the time, only had two Lennon songs, I wondered what was wrong with John. Turns out that three songs were purloined by Capitol Records for the previously released Yesterday and Today. I never remember what UK album this song belongs on. Annoys me.
80 Blackbird from the white album. Lovely McCartney song, even if Charles Manson thought it was somehow calling to him.
79 Any Time at All from A Hard Day’s Night (UK), Something New (US). Like it from the first note. Lennon, with McCartney.
78 With a Little Help from My Friends from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. That this Lennon/McCartney song was given to Starkey is unsurprising; that it appears in the second slot was astonishing; Ringo’s contribution is usually buried.
77 Money (That’s What I Want) from With the Beatles (US), The Beatles Second Album (US). This early Motown song, co-written by Berry Gordy, was originally performed by Barrett Strong. This Lennon cover is stronger.
76 You Can’t Do That from A Hard Day’s Night (UK), The Beatles’ Second Album (US). Among other attributes, it has the line, “everybody’s green”.
75 Fixing a Hole from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. When I was in high school and attempted to write songs, I essentially ended up rewriting this song; guess this McCartney tune got stuck deep in the brain.
74 Two of Us from Let It Be. As I’ve noted, I find the album a bit depressing. So McCartney and Lennon singing this made me feel that the two of THEM were getting along better than they actually were.

JEOPARDY! questions-
What is All My Loving?
What is Apple Records?
What is Liverpool?

Film Review-Oscar shorts, live action

It was Valentine’s Day. The wife and I had a long-standing commitment for a child sitter, and movie passes for The Spectrum Theatre in Albany. Obviously, my grandiose plan to see more Academy Award films had put aside in the past two weeks, so seeing a nominee was my preference. But what? She didn’t want to see True Grit. Watching Blue Valentine, a movie about a disintegrating romance, didn’t seem quite right. Nor did seeing separate movies – she wants to see The Social Network, I The Black Swan.

So we decided to see five movies instead, those Oscar-nominated for best live action short films. The descriptions are from Oscar.com.

The Confession – Tanel Toom (UK-25 minutes)
“A young boy preparing for his first confession worries that he has no sins to report, so he enlists a friend’s help in committing one.”
And it’s a pretty minor one, actually, but one that has consequences. Moody, with a bunch of pointed symbolism, well acted, especially the lead boy. I’m told it’s got the Oscar buzz. A brief clip.

Wish 143 – Ian Barnes and Samantha Waite (UK-24 minutes)
“When a terminally ill young boy is granted a wish by a charitable foundation, he makes a surprising request.”
Actually, he’s an older boy, though not an adult, and what he wants is not to die a virgin, which is a bit of a conumdrum to his priest friend. It has humor and pathos, and it was my favorite of the five. A clip.

Na Wewe– Ivan Goldschmidt (Belgium-19 minutes)
“In 1994, as the Rwandan genocide spills over into neighboring Burundi, a bus is attacked by a group of rebels.”
Very tense; I was awaiting the slaughter, yet imdb called it a comedy? Well, maybe a subtle comedy. Na Wewe means You Too in Kirundi. Looks like the kind of film the Academy would like. A clip.

The Crush -Michael Creagh (Ireland-15 minutes)
“Eight-year-old Ardal has a crush on his teacher and is devastated to learn she has a fiancé.”
And Ardal finds the fiancé unworthy and calls him out. My wife’s favorite film. A clip.

God of Love – Luke Matheny (US-18 minutes)
“A love triangle between two musicians and a young woman takes a surprising turn when one of them finds a collection of magical darts.”
Appropriate for Valentine’s day, though probably the most lightweight of the five. Feels Woody Allenesque somehow. The trailer.

Unsurprisingly, all of the filmmakers are first-time nominees. “The Academy’s entire active membership is eligible to select Oscar winners in all categories, although in five – Animated Short Film, Live Action Short Film, Documentary Feature, Documentary Short Subject, and Foreign Language Film – members can vote only after attesting they have seen all of the nominated films in those categories.”

Random Post-Funeral Thoughts

The week before my mother died, I had nothing on any credit cards, save for any recurring expenditures.

TIMING

My father died on a Thursday; we had the funeral on a Sunday, and he was buried on a Monday. My mother died on a Tuesday, and our first inclination was to have the funeral on the following Saturday. But, instead of working on the obituary or the program on that day, we sat around telling Trudy stories. I think, in some way, we died my father’s death the way he would have wanted his death to be handled, quickly and efficiently; it also helped that we knew my father was going to die at least the day beforehand. Whereas mom’s death took us, and indeed her long-time doctor, by surprise; her heart was still strong, even after the stroke, and we were having conversations about placing her in some medical facility after she got out of the hospital the very morning she died.

Once Saturday was off the table, we considered Sunday, but it was Super Bowl Sunday, on which my mother’s mother died; I remember getting the call during the 3rd quarter of the game in 1983. Besides, it was just different. My dad was the hare, my mother, the tortoise, and we all know that slow and steady win the race.

So, it was a Tuesday funeral, which had an enormous number of people outside of the family wanting to speak, and a Wednesday burial at the Salisbury National Cemetery in Salisbury, NC, about 40 miles from Charlotte, Section 8, Plot 358, next to my father. I read a few passages from the Proverbs reading my eldest niece read the day before, then sang a little, then I, then my sisters, in turn, shoveled some dirt on her cremains, then we sang some more. Then we went to Waffle House, which was one of my father’s favorite places. I believe I had only been to that gravesite once since his burial there.

FOOD

One of the traditions in the South, at least in my parents’ circle, is for people to come over, often bringing various food items, usually homemade. And by “come over”, I don’t mean that they call and ask, “Would this be a good time to come over?” I mean that they just show up. I became aware of this tradition ten and a half years ago; can’t say that I’ve gotten USED to it. But it was (mostly) nice.

MONEY

The week before my mother died, I had nothing on any credit cards, save for any recurring expenditures, such as the newspaper. Can’t say THAT right now. The next bill will be a whopper; it will include:
The funeral parlor. When my father died, the same funeral parlor accepted the promise of payment from his insurance; not so this time. So it went on my credit card. I’ll get reimbursed eventually. But it was the least amount of money we could spend, which would have pleased my mother, $840.
The obit. I totally miscalculated how much it was going to cost: $472.75. I’ll probably eat half of that.
The niece’s last-minute plane ride from California. Somewhere north of $600, which I hope to get back eventually.
The hotel. Once my wife and daughter arrived, the house would have been too crowded with my sisters, my nieces, and a family friend. Five nights, $330; not bad actually.
*Miscellaneous stuff, including a meal after our bizarre visit with the funeral home – was she high, merely incompetent, or uncaring because we weren’t spending enough? She couldn’t even spell Charlotte, and at one point, my sister threw her out of our meeting.
This doesn’t even count the train tickets or the rental car, which are on my WIFE’S credit card. BTW, 3 days out on Amtrak is a better rate than 2 days out, which is WAY better than one day out.

TECHNOLOGY

I had access to the home computer, but I didn’t have one of my own. My wife actually brought the daughter’s laptop, but it was uncharged, and she forgot the plug, so it didn’t work.

Of course, I had to focus on the funeral stuff and managed to write four blog posts in the 12 days I was down there. Viva the blogger’s reserve, which I was trying to create for our vacation this fall. C’est la vie.

The hotel had one (count’em, ONE) computer in the “business center”, which was often occupied. Once I was on it – at 2:48 a.m. – and some young woman came down and said, “This is the ONLY computer here? I have to do my homework!” I ceded it to her at 3 a.m. after I’d spent an hour on it. BTW, it needs a new keyboard; the a, c, e, m, and n were unreadable.

The house printer didn’t work. The hotel printer was quirky, at best.

I used my cellphone more in that two-week period than I had in all the previous two years.

One Twitter tweet, one Facebook post. Just no time for it.
***
The train ride back from Charlotte to Albany last Friday.

E is for Ed and Edna

Gert requested/demanded that Trudy, who was an adult, to have nothing to do with Ed either, and she capitulated to that. I know that, except in passing – they lived only four blocks away – I never saw them.

Sometimes, I felt bad for my mom. She got stuck between a couple of dominating personalities and often sublimated her own.

But let’s go way back to the early part of the 20th century. My great-grandparents, Edward Yates and Lillian (nee Archer-pictured) had four children who lived past infancy: Gert, Ed, Ernie, and Deana. Edward died by 1920. Gert fell in love with a guy named Clarence Williams, got married, and had a child, Gertie (my mom, who I’ll refer to as Trudy because that’s what she later called herself.) Well, Lillian didn’t approve of Clarence, a baseball player in the Negro Leagues, for reasons not clear to me, and apparently drove him away. So my mother was raised by her grandmother, her mother, and Aunt Deana. The primary male role model for her was Ed since Ernie had gotten married and started raising a family. Lillian died c 1937, but by then the damage to Gert and Clarence’s relationship had been done, I gather.

Ed fought in World War II and everyone was proud of him. I remember seeing his picture in uniform on a mirror in the house Gert and Deana shared when I was growing up. But just as my grandmother stopped talking to another relative when he started having children with a woman without the benefit of matrimony, so too did she pretty much disown her brother Ed when he started living with this woman named Edna in the mid-1960s. And I suppose that was her right, though I found it sad. And peculiar too, since she wasn’t really that much of a religious person; I can tally on one hand the number of times she went to church while I was growing up.

What I found more painful, though, is that Gert requested/demanded that Trudy, who was an adult, have nothing to do with Ed either, and she capitulated to that. I know that except in passing – they lived only four blocks away – I never saw them.

Then, in 1970, we got a call to rush to the hospital; Ed was dying. We got there after he passed away; he was the first dead person I had ever seen not in a casket. My burning recollection is of Gert and Edna crying on each other’s shoulders at Ed’s funeral. Edna died within a couple of years of Ed.
***
Want to read an uplifting tale of an Ed and Edna? Go HERE.

Valentine’s Day

Both songs speak of yearning. I know, from vast past experience, that Valentine’s Day is not hearts and flowers for everyone.

At my core, Valentine’s Day is one of those mixed blessings days. Why, for instance, do I so connect with a song written by lyricist Hal David and composer Burt Bacharach, Anyone Who Had A Heart? It was performed originally by Dionne Warwick and covered by several others (Cilla Black, Luther Vandross, Wynonna Judd, Dusty Springfield, Shelby Lynne, among others).
Anyone who had a heart
Would take me in his arms and love me, too
You couldn’t really have a heart and hurt me,
Like you hurt me and be so untrue
What am I to do

Here’s Dionne’s version of Anyone Who Had a Heart.

I also relate to Don’t Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder). It’s a song from the legendary Beach Boys album Pet Sounds, written by Brian Wilson and Tony Asher
Being here with you feels so right
We could live forever tonight
Let’s not think about tomorrow
And don’t talk put your head on my shoulder
Come close, close your eyes and be still
Don’t talk, take my hand and listen to my heart beat
Listen, listen, listen.

Here’s a couple of Beach Boys versions:
a capella and traditional.

Both songs speak of yearning. I know, from vast past experience, that Valentine’s Day is not hearts and flowers for everyone. I guess that’s why I relate to the melancholy songs so much.

Not incidentally, these two songs are performed back to back on Linda Ronstadt’s Winter Light album, which appears to be out of print, AND I can’t find either track on the Intersnet. One can find them on her box set.
***
I should say that Scott, who noted my mom’s passing in his blog, and Jaquandor, who had mentioned it previously, are each requesting that you Ask Them Anything. Here’s Scott’s link, and Jaquandor’s.