Roger O Green

Musical Throwback Saturday: Count the Days

There are a LOT of songs with counting in them, from Len Berry’s 1-2-3 and Feist’s 1234 to the Jackson Five’s ABC (“easy as 1, 2, 3”) and the Beatles’All Together Now or the end of You Never Give Me Your Money (“1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, All good children go to heaven”). Here’s a Reddit post on the topic, and there are plenty more.

By odd coincidence, I played a couple songs in the category on the same day recently.

13 Question Method by Ry Cooder is a fairly obscure Chuck Berry song. The YouTube description says it was a Berry bootleg in 1957, then released as a legitimate track in 1961.

Count the Days (1-2-3-4-5-6-7), recorded by Gene Pitney, was written by Y. Williams, C. Fox, and B. O’Dell. Pitney’s take, released at the end of 1968, does not appear to have charted. However, a version from about a year earlier, by the brother-and-sister group Charlie and Inez Foxx, went to #17 R&B and #76 pop on the Billboard charts. The duo’s big hit was Mockingbird, later covered by James Taylor and Carly Simon.

I must admit being a sucker for a Beach Boys song in the genre, When I Grow Up (To Be A Man), that starts with age 14 and fades out at 31. It got to #9 in 1964.

Listen to:

13 Question Method (live) – Ry Cooder, with David Lindley
13 Question Method – Chuck Berry (1957)
13 Question Method – Chuck Berry (1961)

Count the Days (1-2-3-4-5-6-7) – Gene Pitney
(1-2-3-4-5-6-7) Count The Days – Charlie and Inez Foxx

When I Grow Up (To Be A Man) – Beach Boys

1-2-3 – Len Berry

1234 – Feist
1234 – Feist, Sesame Street version

All Together Now – Paul McCartney (live in 2013 in Tokyo)

ABC – Jackson Five

1,2,3 Red Light – 1910 Fruitgum Company

Self-monitoring toilets and other modern conveniences

I think of HAL in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, or the characters in the movie Westworld.

There is this article that Dan Lewis of Now I Know pointed to: Why Nothing Works Anymore, with the subtitle “Technology has its own purposes.”

“The contemporary public restroom offers an example. Infrared-sensor flush toilets, fixtures, and towel dispensers are sometimes endorsed on ecological grounds—they are said to save resources by regulating them. But thanks to their overzealous sensors, these toilets increase water or paper consumption substantially. Toilets flush three times instead of one. Faucets open at full-blast. Towel dispensers mete out papers so miserly that people take more than they need.

“Instead of saving resources, these apparatuses mostly save labor and management costs. When a toilet flushes incessantly, or when a faucet shuts off on its own, or when a towel dispenser discharges only six inches of paper when a hand waves under it, it reduces the need for human workers to oversee, clean, and supply the restroom.”

Surely I have experienced this. In the previous building I worked in, the toilet flushed an average of 2.5 times every time. Not only would the faucets only turn on with proper distance wave, they would often fail to turn off even ten minutes later. And there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.

I’m not the handiest person in the world, but I have opened the back of a standard toilet to get it to work again. I think this is the same frustration car owners have with everything so calibrated that they can’t fix what’s under the hood. It gives me an uneasy feeling.

I went to this home show maybe decade or so ago, and we marveled how wonderful a “smart” house would be, knowing how efficient it would be. Likewise the driverless car. These would be particular wonders to the elderly and the disabled. But can they be hacked?

Or go rogue? I think of HAL in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, or the characters in the movie Westworld. I don’t think I’m just being a Luddite when I get wary that technology will always make our lives easier. Maybe paranoid, though.

Music: There Will Never Be Another You

The painting in the background with the guitar was by our father.

Marcia, the younger sister, in very many ways, has become the keeper of the flame, not only for the history of the nuclear family in which we grew up back in Binghamton, NY in the 1950s and ’60s, but for the extended tribe as well.

It’s logical. She was the only one who moved to Charlotte, NC with the parents. Leslie and I were already ensconced in college, though of us lived down there for brief periods in the late 1970s.

After my father died in 2000, Mom and Marcia took care of Marcia’s daughter Alex and each other, though as time marched on, Marcia and her daughter were tending more to Mom until she died in 2011.

She still is tending to our parents’ memory, as she has access to decades worth of photos and other material.

As all three of her kids knew, my mom LOVED Nat King Cole. She had a whole bunch of 78s of his, but I have no idea whatever became of them. There were some items in my maternal grandmother’s house, the house my grandma and mom grew up in, and where my sisters and I spent a lot of time. The stuff went into storage and ultimately disappeared long ago, including some photographs of mine.

Marcia was musing about my mother back in November, just before Mom’s birthday. Our mother particularly loved Nature Boy and other familiar tunes by Cole. But neither Marcia nor I had heard him perform There Will Never Be Another You. It’s become one of Marcia’s favorite Nat King Cole songs. And I can hear why.

BTW, neither she nor I ever really learned to play the guitar, though Dad and Leslie did. The painting in the background with the guitar was by our father.

LISTEN to There Will Never Be Another You

Arturo Sandoval

Nat Cole

Doris Day

Happy birthday, Marcia!

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Is Looking for a Librarian

The only cataloging of music material I’ve ever done was for my personal use.

About a half dozen people sent me, usually via Facebook, an article about a job ad: The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Is Looking for a Librarian. Now it is true that I am a librarian, and for nearly 25 years. It’s also correct that I am interested in rock and/or roll, based on the one or two articles I’ve written on the subject the past dozen years. I’ve even been to the place in Cleveland, OH the past year, as I indicated here and here.

So I just HAD to look at the job description: “The Librarian reports to the Senior Director of Library and Archives and performs descriptive cataloging of library resources; assists in providing instruction and reference service and engaging users through outreach activities; assists in the collection development of library resources; and supervises the work of the Library Assistant, interns, and volunteers.”

I have done instruction, engaged users online on a few webinars, supervised interns. I’ve had only passing opportunity to do collection development. But I really haven’t done cataloging at all.

Moreover, in looking at the full posting, I have NO “Experience cataloging using RDA, AACR2, Library of Congress-Program for Cooperative Cataloging Policy Statements (LC-PCC PS), Library of Congress Classification (LCC), Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), Library of Congress Genre-Form Terms (LCGFT), and MARC formats.”

In fact, the only cataloging of music material I’ve ever done was for my personal use. For instance, I have several LPs that are compilations with various artists, such as the Warner Brothers Loss Leaders, benefit concerts such as The Secret Policeman’s Ball, and some soundtracks. I created a 3X5 card for each artist, with song and album name, better to make mixed tapes; ah, Arlo Guthrie’s Voter Registration Rag is on Burbank.

And that was about a decade before I even went to library school, which SHOULD have told me something. Was that geeky or what?

So I shan’t be moving to Cleveland, alas. But I appreciate all the notices from the people who have been thinking about me.

S is for Sikhism (ABC Wednesday)

There are roughly 700,000 Sikhs in the U.S. today

Everyone at my place of employment received this email message this past winter:

Special Reports: Sikhism

The word Sikh (pronounced “sickh”) means ‘disciple’ or ‘learner.’ The Sikh religion was founded in Northern India in the fifteenth century by Guru Nanak Dev Ji and is distinct from Islam and Hinduism. Sikhism is monotheistic and stresses the equality of all men and women. Sikhs believe in three basic principles; meditating on the name of God (praying), earning a living by honest means, as well as sharing the fruits of one’s labor with others. Sikhism rejects caste and class systems and emphasizes service to humanity.

Sikhs at a Glance

Sikhs have been in the U.S. for over 100 years
There are roughly 700,000 Sikhs in the U.S. today
Sikhism is the world’s fifth largest religion with 25 million adherents worldwide
Sikhs believe in one God, equality, freedom of religion, community service and nonviolence
Sikhism is a distinct religion, separate from Hinduism and Islam
99% of people wearing turbans in the U.S. are Sikhs from India
The Sikh turban represents a commitment to equality and justice
Sikhs cover their uncut hair with a turban

For more information:

Who are Sikhs

About Sikhism

System Administration Police recently had the opportunity to engage in an open conversation about Sikhism with a fellow SUNY colleague. Anyone interested in discussing an important topic can email SUNY University Police to set up a meeting.
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This, of course, begs the question: what the heck happened to prompt the Special Report?

While not comparable on most terms, I had heard people compare how they felt after 9/11 to how they felt after November 8, 2016. Right after 9/11, a Sikh man was killed, and in subsequent years, other Sikhs have been victimized. In early 2017, Sikhs were again targeted.

Perhaps that’s why Valerie Kaur offered A Sikh Prayer for America on November 9th, 2016.

Sikh Americans
Sikhism