February 2018 - Page 4 of 6 - Ramblin' with Roger

F is for the Fresh Beat Band

Yvette Gonzalez-Nacer played Cha Cha on the live Grease production.

One of the kids’ shows the Daughter watched when she was five and for two or three years therafter was The Fresh Beat Band. Before the show ever aired on Nick, they were referred to as the Jumparounds because, in the previews, they jumped around a lot.

The group consisted of
Shout (Thomas Hobson) – keyboards, vocals
Marina (Shayna Rose, replaced by Tara Perry – pictured) – drums, vocals, piano
Kiki (Yvette Gonzalez-Nacer) – guitar, violin, vocals
Twist (Jon Beavers) – turntables, beatbox, vocals

So the guys were Twist and Shout, which made me laugh. Marina was easily replaced like a soap opera actress, played by one person for a while then another.

The “Fresh Beats” are “described as four best friends in a band who go to music school and graduate together as musicians who are determined to follow their dreams…

“In 2015, an animated television series Fresh Beat Band of Spies premiered on Nickelodeon. All four members of the band lend their voices to their respective characters in the spin-off.”

Listen to the Fresh Beat Band
Theme
Go Bananas
A Friend Like You

Most of them seem to be still working actors, though Shayna Rose has no IMDB credits since the original series.

Jon Beavers is appearing as a soldier in National Geographic’s 2017 miniseries The Long Road Home, based on ABC News’ Martha Raddatz’s book, which “chronicles the events of April 4th, 2004, when a platoon was ambushed in Sadr City, Baghdad, in an attack that came to be known as ‘Black Sunday.'”

Thomas Hobson was in four episodes of the 2016 version of The Chadwick Journals, a “chronicle of stories about men of color who lead double lives,” plus a couple upcoming films.

Tara Perry played Louisa May Alcott in the 2016 TV miniseries Edgar Allan Poe’s Murder Mystery Dinner Party, among other things.

Yvette Gonzalez-Nacer, who rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange as Kiki in 2011, has had guest appearances on Madam Secretary and Criminal Minds, plus playing Cha Cha on the live Grease production. She’s also a recording and performing artist who performs under the name Ava Gold.

Listen to Ava Gold:
I Wish You Would
Havana

For ABC Wednesday

The problem with black history month

People who have served their time, “paid their debt to society,” STILL can’t vote in some states

The problem with black history month is that one can slip into the mindset that it’s all about what happened way back when – RIGHT? – but it isn’t. For instance, The Eight Box Law of 1882. It was a nastily clever way to disenfranchise black people in the late 19th century, not dissimilar to activities designed to do the same thing even 80 years later.

Then you recall there are all sorts of ways the system is trying to disenfranchise certain people in the first part of the 21st century, with voting rolls purged in certain neighborhoods; required IDs that are increasingly difficult to acquire; and fewer polling places, so that voters, facing long lines, will be discouraged.

And I’m not even going to get into gerrymandered redistricting.

From Think Progress (2016): “In 2013, North Carolina — led by the GOP — approved a law that eliminated same-day voter registration, cut a full week of early voting, barred voters from casting a ballot outside their home precincts, scrapped straight-ticket voting, and got rid of a program to pre-register high school students who would turn 18 by Election Day. That law also included one of the nation’s strictest voter ID requirements.

“Federal courts struck down most of the law after finding that it was passed with the intention to suppress African-American voters ‘with almost surgical precision.'”

You read that Sentencing Commission Finds Black Men Receive Longer Sentences Than White Men For Same Crime. You may have instinctively known that, but it’s good to have it verified.

And then you remember that, in most states, people that are in the prison system can’t vote, so that’s another method of disenfranchisement. And people who have served their time, “paid their debt to society,” STILL can’t vote in some states, in a few jurisdictions, FOREVER.

So you latch on to the notion that “progress” has been made. and surely there has been. But in a system of two steps forward and two steps back, it can feel a lot like standing still.

Hail, Daniel Dickinson, pride of our fair Binghamton

Was I an overly sensitive kid?

mom, in first row, near the center, white tights, black shoes

I began writing about how I had started kindergarten in early February 1958 at Daniel S. Dickinson school in the First Ward of Binghamton, NY, named after a 19th-century politician, located at the intersection of Dickinson Street and the curved Starr Avenue.

But then I came across, on one of those Binghamton-specific Facebook sites, this peculiar newspaper article, slamming the neighborhood that I grew up in, while holding up my school as an oasis from whatever scourge existed on the streets. And it wasn’t my experience, for the most part. What I ended up writing, will be in four parts, each titled from a line from my first alma mater.

If my mom didn’t work, at McLean’s department store downtown, first as an elevator operator and then as a bookkeeper, the trajectory of my life would have been quite different. Since we lived at 5 Gaines Street, between Front St and Oak St, I probably would have gone to Oak Street school for K-6.

Instead, the school district used my maternal grandma’s address at 13 Maple Street, between Prospect St and Cypress St, only a few short blocks away, as our address. That’s where my sisters and I went to lunch each day.

If I had gone to Oak Street, I might have met Karen and Carol and Bill, who I’ve in touch with in 2018, or Bernie or Lois, who I’ve seen in recent years, at some later date. Probably we would have been together in junior high, also at DSD, or certainly at Binghamton Central High School. As it is, February 2018 marks 60 years of friendship, which is very rare indeed.

Starting school in February, as well as September was, as I now understand, a peculiar system that almost no other district used. The kids who were turning five in the winter would begin school then. This is why I STILL remember some of their birth months.

I started kindergarten in Miss Cady’s class with Carol, Bill and David T. (December birthdays), Lois, Irene, and Bernie (February), Karen (like me, in March), and Diane (April) and some other kids, including Mary (April) and David D.

Roger singing, Trinity AME Zion Church, age 6

We had clocks that had Roman numerals; I recall the four was shown as IIII rather than IV. My rug for taking a nap on was yellow, which I passed on to my sister Leslie, a year and a half later. One time, I clearly remember waking up at 11:45 when everyone else had gone home for lunch one time.

I have no recollection of what I actually DID in kindergarten. When I went to Karen’s mother’s wake in 2012, Karen’s sister told me how I complained on a local kids’ TV show that Karen snapped my suspenders. I had no recollection.

We had eight teachers between first and fourth grade, in large part because some of teachers went on maternity leave. One in first grade, was Mrs. Goodrich, and one In fourth, was Miss Erickson, maybe? Mrs Waters, in third grade, I remember, came back and taught Leslie.

In second grade, we danced the Minuet in G. I think Karen danced with Bill, and Lois danced with Bernie. I know I danced with Carol.

Also in second grade, some sixth graders forced me to fight a kid named Danny, who was my sister Leslie’s classmates, so about a year and a half younger than I was. We were supposed to make it look good, lest they beat us both up. I inadvertently hit him in the nose and drew blood. I felt awful, but the older kids were thrilled.

I joined the Cub Scouts in third grade. Ray, who ended up in my class in second grade was, in the pack, as was David D. Ray’s mom was our den mother. When Ray married Pam in 1976, I got to escort Ray’s mom to her seat.

Was I an overly sensitive kid? One time, some kids on the playground were playing “keep away” with my hat. I got mad and went home. Legend has it, though I don’t specifically remember, that I hopped a ride on a Crowley’s milk truck. Did that really happen?

More soon.

Music throwback: Linger – The Cranberries

The Cranberries recorded the first version of Linger in 1990.

The Cranberries were an exception to my music collection. In earlier times, going back to the 1960s, I might have had several albums by a single performer, such as The Beatles, the Supremes, Joni Mitchell, or Talking Heads, to name just a few.

But by the 1990s, I was generally getting just one album for a given artist, maybe two, usually with the big hit. So it is significant that I actually bought and own the first three CDs by The Cranberries, a group out of Limerick, Ireland. There was something infectious in their sound.

Part of it, of course, was the voice of Dolores O’Riorden, who died unexpectedly in January 2018 at the age of 46. The group also included Fergal Lawler on drums, and brothers Noel Hogan on guitar and Mike Hogan on bass.

From Songfacts:

“Noel Hogan wrote the music for [‘Linger’] before Dolores O’Riordan joined the band. Originally, it had lyrics written by the group’s first singer, a bloke named Niall Quinn… After she was hired, she wrote her own set of lyrics, turning it into a song of regret based on a soldier she once fell in love with…

“The Cranberries recorded the first version… in 1990 at their manager’s studio in Limerick… which found [its] way to various record companies. Island Records signed the band, which released their first EP, Uncertain, in 1991. ‘Linger’ was not part of that EP, as they wanted to save the song for when they built a bigger fan base.

The song was included on their debut album Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?, and issued as their second UK single (after ‘Dreams’), it cracking the UK charts at #74 for a week in February 1993.

“The band didn’t make it to America until that summer when they toured as the opening act for The The. ‘Linger’ was issued as a single later that year… They were already working on their next album when the song caught on in the States.

“It wasn’t until February 12, 1994, that ‘Linger’ reached its peak position of #8 on the US chart. A week later, the reissued single topped out at #14 in the UK.”

Zombie is a notable track from No Need To Argue (1994).

The most disturbing cut from the appropriately labeled To The Faithfully Departed (1996) is I Just Shot John Lennon, a narrative of the events of the night of December 8, 1980. “What a sad and sorry and sickening sight,” the lyrics accurately proclaim.

Listen to (chart action from the US Billboard charts):

Linger, #8 in 1994

Dreams, #42 in 1994

Zombie, #22 in 1994

Ode to My Family, #39 in 1994, and the B-side to Zombie

Salvation, #21 in 1996

When You’re Gone, #22 in 1997

Free to Decide, #48 in 1996, and the B-side of When You’re Gone

I Just Shot John Lennon, 1996

Zombie – Bad Wolves; a cover Dolores O’Riordan was set to appear on before her death

Blogging blues: SSL, php, fatal error

The blog isn’t just the last item I wrote, it’s the body of work.

I’m a guy who likes to blog. I’m the guy who HATES having to deal with the technobabble that the task entails. I noticed that the backside of my blog was running slowly. Sometimes when I tried to schedule a post, I’d get an error message. My provider wrote:

“Our monitoring systems show that one (or some) of your user accounts may be making your web hosting account operate inefficiently. We noticed you’ve frequently hit the memory limits of your shared hosting plan over the last couple weeks. When this happens, our system automatically stops web processes which could be negatively impacting your server’s performance. This means your visitors may see errors or be unable to access your website at all for brief periods of time.”

I was given the option to leave everything as-is, optimize my website (for which I didn’t understand the instructions), or upgrade to Virtual Private Server and spend a bit more. I asked a fellow blogger what I should do. Among other things, he suggested that if I were still on an older PHP (5.x), jump to 7.0. If you don’t know what that means, well neither do I. As a website owner, you may do all that you can and some, but one thing you need to always bear in mind: Hiring the top web designing company to develop your website is the best thing that you could ever do to grow your business.

I did that. I also did the SSL free certification for https, though I’m not sure why. Immediately, I received a Fatal error on my page. I undid the SSL.

The technical support folks disabled the blog counter, which they identified as the problem. Blog working, but there’s no sidebar! No search bar or links or way to get to 12.5 years of my posts. This made me terribly… well, DEPRESSED. I mean, the blog isn’t just the last item I wrote, it’s the body of work. There were some back-and-forth written messages with suggestions that did not change anything.

Finally, a week later I called their support guy from https://blog.servermania.com/what-is-unmetered-bandwidth-and-when-do-you-need-it/. The solution? “It looks like the site ‘sidebar’ and counter plugin may have not been
working correctly due to them not being compatible with php 7. Once we switched your site back to run on php5.6 your counter and sidebar has
been restored.” Thanks, John!

But all of this work not only reminds me how weak I am in certain areas, it was a real drag on my finite time to actually write blog posts. At least it was fodder for one.