July 2024 - Page 6 of 7 - Ramblin' with Roger

#1 hits in 1964: yeah, yeah, yeah; baby, baby!

Jeff Barry/Ellie Greenwich

To no one’s surprise, the #1 hits in 1964 featured the most famous pop band in the world, even today. Indeed, I wrote about the Liverpudlian dominance of the US charts on February 9, so I won’t link to either the Beatles’ hits or the Peter and Gordon song attributed to Lennon-McCartney.

Because I have the book Across the Charts: the 1960s, I can quickly see if any of these songs appeared on other charts besides the pop charts. Interestingly, The Beatles never did until Something landed at #17 on the Adult Contemporary charts.

I Want To Hold Your Hand – The Beatles (Capitol), seven weeks at #1, gold record

Can’t Buy Me Love – The Beatles (Capitol), five weeks at #1, gold record

There! I Said It Again – Bobby Vinton (Epic), four weeks at #1, five weeks at #1 AC. This was the first #1 of 1964.

Baby Love – the Supremes (Motown), four weeks at #1, three weeks at #1 RB, gold record. It is one of three Supremes songs, all written by Holland-Dozier-Holland.

Oh, Pretty Woman – Roy Orbison (Monument), three weeks at #1, gold record. Orbison went to England in 1963 and toured with The Beatles. This is the last song on the soundtrack for some Julia Roberts/Richard Gere flick.

The House of the Rising Sun – the Animals (MGM), three weeks at #1

Chapel of Love – the Dixie Cups (Red Bird), three weeks at #1. Composed by Jeff Barry, Ellie Greenwich, and Phil Spector

I Feel Fine – The Beatles (Capitol), three weeks at #1, gold record

She Loves You – The Beatles (Swan), two weeks at #1. As noted, its original failure in 1963 helped propel it when Beatlemania struck in 1964.

My favorite compilation album

I Get Around – the Beach Boys (Capitol), two weeks at #1; a gold record. The first song of theirs I owned is from a bizarre album called Big Hits From England & U.S.A., which I picked up from the Capitol Record Club. It was also when I first owned Can’t Buy Me Love; I had not yet purchased the A Hard Day’s Night soundtrack (United Artists) because it was too similar to the Capitol album Something New. It’s also how I got Peter and Gordon’s World Without Love.

Come See About Me – the Supremes (Motown), two weeks at #1, two weeks at #2 RB.

Where Did Our Love Go – the Supremes (Motown), two weeks at #1, ditto on the RB charts. Their first #1.

Do Wah Diddy Diddy – Manfred Mann (Ascot), two weeks at #1. Written by the legendary Barry and Greenwich

My Guy – Mary Wells (Motown), two weeks at #1, seven weeks at #1 RB. Smokey Robinson wrote this and the Temptations’ 1965 #1, My Girl.

A Hard Day’s Night – The Beatles (Capitol), two weeks at #1, gold record. I never saw this movie until after Let It Be came out, and I saw all four films, including Help and Yellow Submarine, in one sitting.

Rag Doll – the 4 Seasons (Phillips), two weeks at #1, gold record.

A single week at #1

Hello, Dolly – Louis Armstrong (Kapp), nine weeks at #1 AC. The artist that broke The Beatles’ stranglehold on #1 in the charts. Written by Jerry Herman.

Mr. Lonely – Bobby Vinton (Epic). Also #3 AC. He had a #1 in January and this in December; I do not recall either.

Everybody Loves Somebody – Dean Martin (Reprise), eight weeks at #1 AC, gold record. Every time I hear this song, I feel a little inebriated.

A World Without Love – Peter and Gordon (Capitol)

Ringo – Lorne Greene (RCA Victor), six weeks at #1 AC. A spoken word piece by the star of the NBC western series Bonanza that apparently had nothing to do with Richard Starkey.

Love Me Do – The Beatles (Tollie)

Leader Of The Pack – the Shangra-las (Red Bird), #8 RB. It was written by Barry, Greenwich, and Shadow Morton.

Midnight Green (1/22/2013-6/29/2024)

my cat, I suppose

Here are the last weeks of Midnight Green. After I posted that Midnight wasn’t eating very well, some folks suggested we take him to the veterinarian. Easier said… We had taken him to the vet in September 2023, and they determined that he was “Screw-loose crazy,” which we already knew, and he resisted treatment, let’s say.

Still, we kept changing his diet giving him sundry food items that we had never given him before in hopes that something would strike his fancy.

Midnight liked to go into the bathtub and hang out there. Occasionally one of us would turn on the spigot and he seemed to enjoy getting himself wet, which was very unusual for him from his past. He liked drinking the water from there, even though he had full bowls of water downstairs.

He had this weird tendency to stick his paws into the bowl and knock them over. Moreover, his paws were almost always caked with cat litter which would get into the bowl, so we had to change his water three or four times a day.

Testing

Ultimately, my wife and daughter took him to the veterinarian again in late June 2023. They noted that he still had that personality, though now physically weaker. After a series of tests – expensive ones, I might add -they relayed that he had three major problems. One was that he was anemic. Another was that he was diabetic, with a glucose level twice what the maximum ought to have been. The third was that he had pancreatitis, possibly cancerous. The family talked and determined that there was no need to pursue any further treatments and would probably have him go to the vet to be put to sleep.

On Friday night, my daughter and I talked about death and experiences that I had had dealing with the passing of cats and family members. We discussed the fact that people can say really stupid things when people or animals die which are not particularly useful, such as “It’s all for the best.” We’re not feeling that at the moment. The talk seemed to make her feel a little bit better.

Decline

It was painful to watch him get weaker and weaker. On Saturday, I put him on the base of the fireplace. He slipped off and he couldn’t find his way back up. A couple of hours later, I was lying down in bed around noon and my daughter screamed “ROGER!!” with a curdling cry. I knew either she was in grave physical harm or that Midnight had died; it was the latter.

She was crying and she wanted her mother, who was off shopping. When her mother returned, I got a box for him to be in, using up unmatched socks to line the bottom. She and her mother cleaned the cat because his paws and tail were filthy. My daughter petted the cat for a good while she cried. My wife cried and then my daughter said she wanted me to read a blog post I had written about Midnight in 2021, which I did.

We started a playlist for Midnight, which of course included Midnight At The Oasis by Maria Muldaur and Midnight Train To Georgia by Gladys Knight and The Pips, the latter a song that she has recently purchased. Also, Green Tambourine by the Lemon Pipers, tied to the fact that when Midnight would get crazy and decide to attack me periodically, I had a tambourine on the kitchen counter to fend him off. He did not like the sound of the tambourine or the vacuum cleaner, for that matter.

Aftermath

That night, I fell asleep in the chair in my office. When I woke up, I was really tired but also very sad and I cried about Midnight when I really hadn’t done so before.

We tried to get Stormy to have her bowl where Midnight’s bowl used to be but she wouldn’t have anything to do with that. She kept looking over her shoulder, expecting him to pounce on her or push her out of the way. His place was in the back of the kitchen, while hers was in the front. Moreover, she’s now eating the pate we fed him in the latter months, so her diet may be changing, too.

We’ll miss Midnight, of course. Conversely, guests in our house won’t be terrorized by him. And someone else can feed her when we’re away.

It’s a weird thing. Despite all his strangeness, he seemed to be my cat. He would sit on my lap or he would sit next to me and put his paws on my lap. That was comforting and fine when he liked me, which was about 95% of the time. Until the last week or so, he remained an aggressive food eater. He would invariably get under foot, even running between my legs when I was trying to feed him and I would almost trip over him, occasionally stepping on him despite my attempts not to do so. It was a very challenging thing to try to give him food; he was obsessed with food until he wasn’t.

I’ll miss you, Midnight Green, Middy, That Darn Screw-Loose Cat.

The Ten Commandments

make no law respecting an establishment of religion

A random dude on Facebook – I didn’t know him – wrote that he read on Facebook that the state of Louisiana is mandating that The Ten Commandments be displayed in classrooms. But he didn’t necessarily believe it because it was on Facebook.

Back in my working librarian days, I would fairly often have conversations about media literacy. I’d ask someone for the source of information. They’d say Facebook or Twitter. My follow-up would be, “But what was the source, the reference?”

In any case, when I read the information on Facebook, I already knew about it in newsfeeds from the New York Times, Boston Globe, Wall Street Journal, and Newsmax, among others.

The general conversation on that Facebook stream then turned to: “Well, with all of the problems in our schools, this isn’t really that much of a big deal.”

I developed a low-grade headache.

Then I was reminded about something that a couple of people I know IRL have been bugging me about. They believe that civics is not being taught in our schools. What IS civics anyway? It is “a social science dealing with the rights and duties of citizens.”

Amendment 1

So, citizens, there’s a thing called the Constitution of the United States! It replaced something called the Articles of Confederation, the nation’s first framework, effective March 4, 1789.

But the critics of the Constitution wanted more guardrails. Constitutional supporters agreed to create a Bill of Rights “which consists of 10 amendments that were added to the Constitution in 1791.”

The First Amendment reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Ah, but you note that it was a Louisiana STATE law that imposed the Ten Commandments. However, the Supreme Court has “interpreted the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as protecting the rights in the First Amendment from interference by state governments.”

Requiring classrooms to display the Judeo-Christian Ten Commandments reeks of the state of Louisiana establishing religion, this old poli sci major and Christian will tell you. Gov. Jeff Landry (R-LA) makes this clear. “If you want to respect the rule of law, you’ve got to start from the original lawgiver, which was Moses.”

Of course

So naturally, the presumptive Republican nominee for President supports it. Per Newsmax: “‘Has anyone read the ‘Thou shalt not steal’? I mean, has anybody read this incredible stuff? It’s just incredible,’ Trump said at the gathering of the Faith & Freedom Coalition [on June 22]. ‘They don’t want it to go up. It’s a crazy world.'”’

Conversely, Austin, TX pastor Zach Lambert notes: “If your version of Christianity wants to put the Ten Commandments in schools but take free lunch out of them, you are worshipping something other than Jesus.”

Read the fuzzy argument that Oklahoma’s state superintendent of public education, Ryan Walters, makes in requiring all public schools to teach the Bible and the Ten Commandments.

Getting back to civics

I worry about how the “rights and duties of citizens” are being abridged. In recent years, being able to serve on a jury, serving as an election poll watcher, and even the very right to vote, have been threatened. When I wrote that I would have served on a particular jury, it wasn’t because I would have wanted to; it’s because a citizen has an obligation, so the external threats are unAmerican. Poll watcher intimidation is unAmerican. Wholesale purging of voter rolls: unAmerican.

As we celebrate the 4th of July, let us remember the preamble of the Constitution, a direct result of the Revolutionary War fervor. “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” Then we need to act as though it were true.

May Pang shares ‘her’ John Lennon

The Lost Weekend: A Love Story

The headline in the Times Union was intriguing: May Pang shares ‘her’ John Lennon at Guilderland, Hudson exhibit spaces.

The so-called Lost Weekend, “which was actually 18 months long, is the subject of Pang’s new traveling photography exhibition, coming to ArtForms in Guilderland on June 25 and 26 and The Park Theatre in Hudson on June 28 through 30. The show comes on the heels of the documentary ‘The Lost Weekend: A Love Story,’ which debuted at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival and stars Pang and Lennon’s son Julian.”

As Pang tells it in the story, “The 23-year-old Pang was approached by Ono, one of her bosses, to date Lennon when the two started having marital problems in 1973. By this point, Pang had been an assistant to the musical pair for three years, following her work on their film projects… and bluffing her way to a receptionist job at Apple Records. Pang refused. Ono asked again and again…

“Yet despite Pang’s resistance, she and Lennon found their own way together without Ono. Pang stopped working for the musicians, and she and Lennon, in a snap decision, flew across the country to Los Angeles without Ono knowing. There, Pang and Lennon built a life.”

Here’s a story from WNTY-TV.

Required

So my friend Mark and I had to go. First off, where is it? 2050 Western Avenue, as it turns out, is somewhere in the middle of the 20 Mall. It’s a fairly tiny location, certainly far less square footage than the first two floors of my house.

By the time we went in, shortly after the opening at 3 p.m., it was quite crowded and warm, and it would only get worse. There were some very nice photos, but it wasn’t easy to read the captions under the pictures without being in someone’s way.

“In addition to portraits of life with Lennon, Pang captured milestones in music. She shot the last known photograph of Lennon and McCartney together… When Lennon reunited with Julian [John’s first son, with Cynthia], Pang was there with her camera. When he added his signature below McCartney, Starr, and Harrison to officially dissolve the Beatles while in Disneyland, Pang was there, too.” There was a picture of John in Ellenville; I explained to someone where it was.

Ultimately, Mark succumbed and bought a poster, which May Pang signed. She encouraged everyone to see The Lost Weekend: A Love Story on Amazon. As she notes, it really was a love story. And as May Pang had said, the pictures she took may be the closest most people will get to John Lennon.

The tour continues on the East Coast in 2024.

Dean Phillips was right

the debate

I’m sure he’s not gloating, but Dean Phillips was right. You don’t remember him, do you? He’s the guy who engaged in a quixotic campaign to be the Democratic nomination for President in 2023/24.

In October 2023, he wrote: “I didn’t set out to enter this race. But it looks like on our current course, the Democrats will lose and Trump will be our President again. President Biden is a good man and someone I tremendously respect. I understand why other Democrats don’t want to run against him, and why we are here. This is a last-minute campaign, but desperate times call for desperate measures, and courage is an important value to me. If President Biden is the Democratic nominee, we face an unacceptable risk of Trump being back in the White House. I know this campaign is a long shot, but that is why I think it is important and worth doing.”

Of course, his campaign went nowhere and was widely criticized among Democrats for running. I voted for him in the 2024 New York presidential primary, even though Biden had all but locked up the nomination. Heck, I voted for Elizabeth Warren in 2020 under similar circumstances. Warren, who is now 75, and Bernie Sanders, who will be 83 in September, and who I voted for in the 2016 primary, are too old in this political climate. I’ve never voted for Joe Biden in a primary, only in the 2020 general election.

JRB, Jr. v. djt

I hear there was a debate last week. The Democratic candidate didn’t fare so well. Frankly, I’m not convinced of the efficacy of debates in determining the worthiness of candidates for most political contests.

Still, it happened under rules approved by the Biden camp. Beyond the occasional lack of focus and volume, Truthout noted: Biden Offered No Alternative to Trump’s Pro-Policing Authoritarianism in Debate. “Biden did not put forth a progressive or convincing counterweight to Trump’s xenophobic and authoritarian tirades.”

djt didn’t win the debate. As is often the case, the Republican lied regularly, denying things he did and taking credit for things other presidents accomplished.

The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote: “Lost in the hand-wringing was Donald Trump’s usual bombastic litany of lies, hyperbole, bigotry, ignorance, and fear-mongering. His performance demonstrated once again that he is a danger to democracy and unfit for office. In fact, the debate about the debate is misplaced. The only person who should withdraw from the race is Trump.”

The Weekly Sift guy said, They Both Lost. Now What?

But Joe did “lose” the debate. Did cold medications affect Biden’s debate performance, as MedPage theorized? Maybe, but after a barrage of Sleepy Joe memes, it doesn’t much matter.

For some time, there have been calls for Biden to step aside for some other candidate. I don’t need to get into that discussion since so many entities including the New York Times, Joe Scarborough, Boston Globe opinion, Albany Times Union, Frank S. Robinson, and many others have stepped in.

Nearly half of registered voters who support Biden supporters wish someone else were the Democratic nominee. Gavin Newsom, governor of California said, “We gotta have the back of this president. You don’t turn your back because of one performance. What kind of party does that?”

Ezra Klein of the NYT replies: “Perhaps a party that wants to win? Or a party that wants to nominate a candidate that the American people believe is up to the job?”

Money

The donor class of the Democratic Party is particularly concerned. Newsmax writes:

“A sense of concern is growing inside the top ranks of the Democratic Party that leaders of Joe Biden’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee are not taking seriously enough the impact of the president’s troubling debate performance…

“Multiple committee members on the call… described feeling like they were being gaslighted — that they were being asked to ignore the dire nature of the party’s predicament. The call, they said, may have worsened a widespread sense of panic among elected officials, donors, and other stakeholders.”

But what I’m more interested in is how the Democrats could move from Biden/Harris. Unless Biden decides to drop out of the contest, he will be the Democratic nominee, and the wondering is moot.

If he does leave the race, Kamala Harris is the most logical person to succeed Joe. But she has nearly as many political negatives as Biden does despite the fact that I believe that they’ve done a reasonably good job in office.

She IS the White House’s lead voice as a defender of abortion rights, which may prove pivotal in November. And dumping the nation’s first Black, asian, and woman vice president from the ticket is problematic.

Michigan!

My favorite candidate, should there be an open Democratic convention, would be Gretchen Whitmer, governor of Michigan. The New York Times, in listing her as one of the likely choices:

She “has risen quickly as a national star of the Democratic Party, helped in part by Mr. Trump’s antagonizing her as “that woman from Michigan.” A two-term governor, Ms. Whitmer led a 2022 campaign that gave Democrats in the battleground state a trifecta — exercising full control of the legislature and state government — for the first time in 40 years.

“She has used that mandate to enact a laundry list of progressive policies. Her national profile also soared during the pandemic, when she was vilified by right-wing media and Republican officials for her lockdown measures. And Ms. Whitmer is a vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, a top leadership position in the national party.”

Moreover, she has dealt with the nut cases from the COVID era of crazies, particularly when they try to kidnap her, and she’s come back stronger than ever, getting reelected with more than 54% of the vote in 2022.

California?

In contrast, I’m not feeling a campaign from Newsom. From the same article, “But — California. For one thing, Mr. Newsom would be saddled with explaining the problems California has had over the past decade: homelessness, high taxes, escalating housing costs.”

Ted Cruz repeatedly suggests that Michelle Obama will be the candidate. I believe her when she said that eight years in the White House is enough.

My preference for vice-president for either Harris or Whitmer would be a white guy from the current administration, Pete Buttigieg, the current transportation secretary. I think he has done a very credible job being front-facing in dealing with Boeing, the FAA, etc. He has held the airlines accountable for the bad holiday scheduling of a couple of years ago.

I can’t imagine that Democrats are going to put a gay man on the national ticket in 2024 but I think it would be a lovely idea.