Roger O Green

Sausage making done right – Gay marriage will be legal in NYS

“Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.” – apparently misattributed to Otto von Bismarck. But every once in a while, you fry some sausage in the pan and it tastes great.

I was home watching YNN, the Time Warner cable news station, during an extended session of Capital Tonight Friday evening, when Steve Saland, a Republican state senator from the Mid-Hudson, started speaking about an amendment to the marriage equality bill. There’s an overlay on the screen indicating that Saland had not yet indicated which way he would vote on the bill.

But minutes later, it was obvious that he would be the 32nd vote necessary for the passage of the legislation. It was, among other things, a great television moment.

And after he spoke, I set the DVR and went to bed, satisfied that there would be a rainbow over New York; the state legislature would pass marriage equality, and the governor would sure sign it.

Then I woke up very early in the morning, and it was so. Yay.
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Arthur’s observation.

Roger Answers Your Questions, Eclipse and Uthaclena

My long-standing rejection of polygamy has largely based on the sense that it is much more likely to have aspects of exploitation that is even greater than a relationship between two people.

Eclipse, who I have visited through ABC Wednesday, asks:
Regarding the “music playing in the head” I’ve just thought….Have you ever try to write poetry?
Would you?

Before I answer that question, I’ll answer a question you didn’t ask.

When I was roughly 15 to about 23, I had made some effort to try to write songs. I should rephrase; I wasn’t TRYING so much as tunes and lyrics came to me. I kept them in a notebook, which, unfortunately, I’ve since lost.

But as I think back on them, most of them weren’t very good. Oh, a couple of them might have potential in the right setting. And one, in particular, isn’t bad at all but expresses values I no longer have: David Lee Roth should have recorded it. But most of them, I recognize, are cribbed in the way George Harrison unintentionally purloined He’s So Fine for My Sweet Lord. Because I literally grew up with music, I feel I can clear-mindedly evaluate them.

I had a girlfriend in the late 1970s who was a published poet. I would attend some of the poetry workshops she helped organize. Naturally, I decided to try to write some poems myself. But I just never got a feel for it, what was good, what was schlock, what was “honest”. When I go to the poetry sites, such as yours, I can only comment on what resonates with me. But writing poetry again would be like blogging in Ukrainian; it’s too foreign. So commenting on poetry tends to fall into the “I don’t know if it’s good, but I know when it resonates” philosophy. And even when it does, I don’t always have the language to comment. “Good” or “nice” seems lackluster.
***
Uthaclena, who I’ve only known for 39 3/4 years, so I can say, “Dude, it’s been seven months since you blogged; WRITE something!”, poses this:
Anything? Okay, how about a sociopolitical-philosophical question. You’ve supported marriage equality (“Gay Marriage”), how do you feel about alternative marital arrangements like polygamy, polyandry, or group marriages? Should they be considered for legal legitimacy? The former, of course, was tried by the Mormons and is by no means unusual or “untraditional” in many international cultures. Just curious.

My long-standing rejection of polygamy has largely based on the sense that it is much more likely to have aspects of exploitation that are even greater than in a relationship between two people. The few modern examples in this country seem to bear that out. I assume, but frankly don’t know, that it’s true re polyandry as well.

This means, by logical extension, that I should favor group marriage since it would seem to be more equitable. That I don’t probably has something to do with my basic conventionality. Or maybe it’s because I think it’s just too messy societally when dealing with children, property, and the like. Guess I’m just an old-fashioned guy.
***
I’m still taking your questions here, so have at it.

A Perfunctory Defense of ‘Glee’

To me, the interesting thing about Kurt, the “flamboyant gay character” is that, in some ways, his character is about the most real person on the show.

My online buddy Jaquandor wrote an evisceration of the TV show Glee recently:

I hate Glee. Hate it. Absolutely hate it. But I’ll say this: Glee sure is a fun show to hate. It’s total crap.

Virtually everything he says is absolutely, positively true. And (most of) it doesn’t matter to me one whit.

What do I hate about it? Well, the characters, for one. This is one of those shows that makes me constantly say to myself, “Nobody would ever act this way in real life!”

Well, no, but see, I see Glee as a musical. Musical theater, or movie musical, operetta, or even a Bollywood video. “Real life” isn’t the point.

In one episode, the Jane Lynch character played a sex tape or something like that made by the glee-club director over the school’s PA system. I don’t know if that was supposed to be funny, but someone does that in real life, and they’re almost certainly suspended from their job by the end of the day. Ugh.

Well, yes, but the Sue Sylvester character often gets her way, at least in the short run, by her bullying and intimidation.
That said, the schtick IS getting tired. Her character worked for me in Season 1, so the writers ramped it up, with the supervillains’ clique that included Will’s ex-wife?

I also hate how the show’s musical numbers are all the same: a person starts singing while everyone else sits around, staring at them in rapt amazement.

That is true, and that’s the show’s conceit. It’s the same kind of thing one saw in this scene in the movie 500 Days of Summer.

In any case, I’m happy that it isn’t always Finn and Rachel, with an occasional solo by Mercedes, but they’ve opened up to the rest of the cast.

I hate how the show constantly implies that only singers are musicians of any worth — no lip service at all is paid to the incredibly talented instrumentalists who are never seen rehearsing or practicing, and yet who provide perfect — and anonymous — accompaniments each week.

At least they’re on screen. Usually, movie musicians are invisible, some orchestra dubbed in later; the opening street scene in West Side Story immediately comes to mind. I’m happy these instrumentalists get any screen time at all. And given the fact that the school budget is often in peril, it’s amazing how many instrumentalists there can be, when necessary.

I hate the show’s reliance on cliche, from the flamboyant gay character to the way the season finale, set in New York City, opened with glittering shots of Times Square while the opening bars of Rhapsody in Blue played.

To me, the interesting thing about Kurt, the “flamboyant gay character” is that, in some ways, his character is about the most real person on the show, from dealing with school bullying to his father’s struggle with accepting his son’s sexual orientation. Last season, I said that Mike O’Malley deserved an Emmy for his portrayal as Kurt’s dad Burt.

I mentioned that there were a couple of gay college teens speaking at our Adult Education hour at church on June 5. They seemed to feel, and I tend to agree, that, in the main, Kurt’s portrayal by Chris Colfer, who, at 21, is closer to high school age than most of the cast, has been a net positive for other gay and questioning teens.

Ah, nuts. Haven’t seen the last episode this season yet. Good thing I LOVE Gershwin.

Glee is ghastly garbage!

It’s inconsistent, for sure.

(Why do we watch it? The Kid likes it.)

And I watch it, in part, because it is currently the ONLY show the Wife and I watch together. (We’ve recorded 30 Rock, but we haven’t seen an episode all season.) And that counts for something.

Oh, and my wife has several albums from Glee which she plays in the car. So my daughter knows Bust Your Windows and You Can’t Always Get What You Want from the Gleekified versions, not the originals, which I suppose is a problem in the short term.

Still, Glee has to be better than any number of reality shows that, just from their commercials, rot my brain.

A Solstice Sensation: ASK ROGER ANYTHING

I know this is a tremendous responsibility, but you CAN do it. I have faith.

Because I have no idea what I should be writing about that I’m not writing about – my psychic powers have been gravely diminished by global warming – periodically, I request that you fine folks Ask Roger Anything. That’s A-N-Y-T-H-I-N-G. And I have to answer. Honestly.

Now, I might try to obfuscate, but as anyone who lived through Watergate knows, “It isn’t the crime that’ll get you, it’s the coverup.” Now what that has to do with the price of caviar, I do not know. Maybe I don’t want to know. Maybe the fatigue has made me goofy – or there really IS music playing in my head – and only your questions can put me back on the straight and/or narrow.

I know this is a tremendous responsibility, but you CAN do it. I have faith.

W is for Warner Brothers Loss Leaders

Someone gave me this album after someone else died, saying he would have wanted me to have it.

Back in the 1970s, when I was a poor college student, I would occasionally indulge my desire to purchase a new record album. When I’d buy one of James Taylor or Bonnie Raitt or the Doobie Brothers or Seals and Crofts – yes, Seals and Crofts – the record would come with an inner sleeve that would promise an eclectic set of music, a double LP, for only $2, postpaid, from the Warner Brothers roster of artists; the single albums were just $1. Eventually, I was so intrigued that I bought one, liked it, then bought another, and another…so that, to this day, I still possess most of them.

Rather than describe all three dozen of them, 31 of which I own, I’ll refer you to this essay by Charles Hill and his roster of albums. Chaz also links to The 30 Days Out blog’s history of these discs.

I will make brief mention of some of the albums, highlighting my personal history or a notable track. The ones I do not own are in italics.

1969
THE 1969 WARNER/REPRISE SONGBOOK (Warner Bros. PRO 331)
Like several of the early albums, at least one side was dominated by Frank Zappa and his musical allies. But also featured the Everly Brothers. Eclectic.
THE 1969 WARNER/REPRISE RECORD SHOW (PRO 336)
Subtitled “Son of Songbook”, it has one EXTRAORDINARY soul ballad by Lorraine Ellison called Stay with Me. Read about it here and listen to it here.
OCTOBER 10, 1969 (PRO 351)
Chaz wrote: “A single-disc slipped into the mix while Warners was trying to decide if the doubles would sell.” By the time I was buying these albums, this disc was no longer listed.
1970

THE BIG BALL (PRO 358)
SCHLAGERS! (PRO 359)
Chaz: “Showcasing some Warners tracks that might conceivably get MOR airplay.” (MOR means Middle of the Road,” the title of a future package.)
ZAPPÉD (PRO 368)
“A single disc featuring acts on Frank Zappa’s Bizarre/Straight labels,” that I actually tried to order, but it must have been sold out.
LOONEY TUNES & MERRIE MELODIES (PRO 423)
The only triple-disc set in the series, which cost $3 in the day, but I never bought it. Someone gave me this album after someone else died, saying he would have wanted me to have it. Subsequently, I’ve lost the middle record, which contained Side 2 and Side 5. But I still have Side 6, which is an unusually spiritual, even religious platter. The last song: Turley Richards: I Heard the Voice of Jesus.

1971
NON-DAIRY CREAMER (PRO 443)
Another single disc, and one I never actually ordered. I may have requested Zapped and gotten this.
HOT PLATTERS (PRO 474)
TOGETHER (PRO 486)
The last of the single-disc samplers, and I have no idea how WB sent it to me since I never specifically ordered it.

1972
THE WHOLE BURBANK CATALOG (PRO 512)
“First set to credit Barry Hansen (Dr. Demento) for assemblage and annotation.” Not every subsequent album was annotated by him, but he was singularly entertaining when he did. Now, this was the point where the albums really became fun. There were radio spots for Sgt Preston of the Yukon or Inner Scantum inserted. Just before Arlo Guthrie’s Ukulele Lady, there’d be a snippet of a version recorded a half-century earlier.
MIDDLE OF THE ROAD (PRO 525)
“Just like it sounds.” Even features Frank Sinatra.
BURBANK (PRO 529)
Features the 57-second Voter Registration Rag by Arlo Guthrie, which I cannot find.
THE DAYS OF WINE AND VINYL (PRO 540)

1973
APPETIZERS (PRO 569)
Included Martin Mull: Licks off of Records.
ALL SINGING, ALL TALKING, ALL ROCKING (PRO 573)
“Features sound bites from Warner Bros. movies,” which made it probably my favorite album of the bunch.

1974

HARD GOODS (PRO 583)
This collection has at least two rarities: War Song by Neil Young and Graham Nash, which was on a B-side of a Young single, but then “unreleased in any other format until June 2009, when it was finally released…on a box set by Neil Young called The Archives Vol. 1 1963–1972.”
Immediately after that is The ’68 Nixon by Denver, Boise, and Johnson, which you can hear and read about here. Yes, the Denver is John Denver, who went on to some commercial success.
PEACHES (PRO 588)
“A compilation of tracks from the Georgia-based Capricorn label, then distributed by Warners,” which I don’t have and never saw offered until years later.
DEEP EAR (PRO 591, 1974)

1975
THE FORCE (PRO 596)
By this time, I was buying them as soon as I saw them advertised.
ALL MEAT (PRO 604)
“‘Not a speck of cereal,’ insists Frank Zappa.
PEACHES, VOL. 2 (PRO 605)
“A second collection from Capricorn Records, which I haven’t seen.”
I DIDN’T KNOW THEY STILL MADE RECORDS LIKE THIS (PRO 608)
“Back to the middle of the road.”
THE WORKS (PRO 610)
The rarity here was The Beach Boys: Child of Winter, which was a single that showed up in a Beach Boys collection more than two decades later.

1976
SUPERGROUP (PRO 630)
THE PEOPLE’S RECORD (PRO 645)

1977
COOK BOOK (PRO 660)
“Focusing on Warners’ black acts.” I have no idea how I got this album. I may have sent WB money and said “Anything else in the vaults?”
WB in the 1960s was not a label with lots of black artists. Someone quipped that their only soul artist was comedian Bill Cosby. But by the 1970s, the label made a concerted effort to change that. I must admit that I loved the fact that the album had a trio of Beatles covers in a row: Randy Crawford- Don’t Let Me Down; Roy Redmond- Good Day Sunshine, and New Birth- The Long and Winding Road.
LIMO (PRO 691)

1978
COLLECTUS INTERRUPTUS (PRO A-726)
“Twenty-Six Earbinding Songs of Unique Delight, Derring-Do, Heartbreak, Scandal, and Lurid Sensation”.
With Soft and Wet, probably the first Prince I owned.
PUMPING VINYL (PRO A-773)
As a musical eclectic, I tend to eschew labels. That’s why my favorite song in this collection is Funkadelic: Who Says a Funk Band Can’t Play Rock?

1979
A LA CARTE (PRO A-794)
The song I tended to overplay here was Gibson Brothers: Cuba
MONSTERS (PRO A-796)

1980

ECLIPSE (PRO 828)
“A new price: 2 LPs for $3.” Still a bargain.
MUSIC WITH 58 MUSICIANS, VOLUME 1 (PRO 850)
“Issued to mark the German jazz label ECM’s distribution deal with Warner Bros., this set, billed as ‘An International Array of Innovative Jazz Music and Performers,’… Roger Green found this one for me.”
Well, yeah, I did, actually. And Charles added me to his “beyond the call of duty” list. As far as I know, there was never a Volume 2.
TROUBLEMAKERS (PRO A-857)
“This is as punk as Burbank would get.”
Marianne Faithfull: Broken English.

1995
LOSS LEADERS REVISITED (PRO-CD-7955
“A limited-edition CD (3500 copies) with retro-cool; not properly a Loss Leader, since it was given away, but it caps the series with panache.”
I’d never heard of this until I read about it.

These are more underplayed vinyl, records I listened to a LOT in the day, but less since I got the first CD player. Still, I now have a turntable, so they can provide me with additional hours of pleasure.

ABC Wednesday – Round 8