Roger O Green

Louder Than Words: Rock * Power * Politics

If you miss Louder Than Words in Cleveland, it opens January 6, 2017, at the Newseum in Washington, DC.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Cleveland, OH, Thursday and Friday, July 14 and 15, 2016

In the Belkin Gallery on Levels 5 and 6 of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, was Louder Than Words, a “special exhibit created in partnership with the Newseum in Washington, DC, exploring rock music’s power to change attitudes about peace, equality, patriotism, and hope.”

It was magnificent.

On the wall Up the stairway are some lyrics from Patti Smith’s People Have the Power: “And the people have the power To redeem the work of fools From the meek the graces shower It’s decreed the people rule.”

There were kiosks about all the Presidents, from Truman to Obama, describing the music they used in their campaigns. But mostly it was music, graphics, and artifacts about how the country dealt with a variety of conflicts.

Mississippi Goddam by Nina Simone was one of the songs representing the civil rights movement.

In the Vietnam War period, you heard Waist Deep in the Big Muddy by Pete Seeger and Ohio by CSN&Y, but also The Ballad of the Green Berets, a 1966 hit by Staff Sgt. Barry Sadler.

There was a display about the Parents Music Resource Center versus Rock, with Tipper Gore, Al’s wife leading the charge against the “pornography” of Prince’s Darlin’ Nikki and other songs, and succeeding in getting parental advisory labels on CDs.

Pro- and anti-Iraq war songs were represented, as were anthems from Helen Reddy’s I Am Woman to Lady Gaga’s Born This Way and Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’ Same Love.

The song that played constantly: a Michael Jackson song, They Don’t Care About Us. More recent struggles, such as songs associated with Black Lives Matter were described.

If you miss Louder Than Words in Cleveland, it opens January 6, 2017, at the Newseum in Washington, DC.

Did I mention that the Hall would be closing early on that Saturday, and closed all day on Sunday so that delegates from the Republican National Convention could tour the facilities? I would be VERY interested to get their reaction.

In fact, the first day we were there, we could tell security was tightening. But the second day, it was much worse, with a tent making it much more difficult to enter the facilities.

A couple more highlights of the Hall: a 13-minute movie called Artist Unite about the rock benefit concert, from Bangladesh to Live Aid, tied to Louder THan Words.

There was a walkway with displays of recently deceased musicians, including Prince, Percy Sledge, Gerry Goffin, Bobby Womack, Tommy Ramone, Maurice White, George Martin, Jack Bruce, B.B. King, David Bowie, Glenn Frey, Allen Toussaint, Paul Kantner, and William Guest of the Pips.

Possibly the best thing: Because we are Supporters of the Albany Institute of History & Art, and we also got an annual membership to the North American Reciprocal Museum Program, we received “free admission and other benefits at more than 500 museums throughout the United States and Canada.” This included the three of us going to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, twice.

G is for grass

While mowing, I was getting conked the head.

When we bought our house in 2000, while about 2/3 of the backyard was grass, perhaps 1/3, maybe a bit more, was actually brick. There had been an above-ground swimming pool once upon a time, long before we moved in, but the indentation, framed by railroad ties, was still there.

Our yard had a unique design, and we liked it, for a time. That is until the bricks started to wear down, the railroad ties no longer walkable due to deterioration. We decided two summers ago to have the brick area torn up – with said bricks filling in part of the hole – and putting in more grass instead.

Though I had agreed to it, this was not thrilling to me, since I was the one who mows the lawn. After all, lawns are a soul-crushing timesuck and most of us would be better off without them.

As I’ve noted, I’d been using a reel push mower. But my parents-in-law got us an electric mower last season. I did not use it because the new grass wasn’t coming in very well, but was mostly a swampy marsh.

Now, though, we have a full lawn, and I have capitulated to using the new machine. It IS especially helpful in the dandelion season when the only way to keep up with them would be to reel mow twice a week; THAT wasn’t going to happen.

Ouch! While mowing, I was getting conked the head by some low-hanging branches in our yard. And the manual hedge trimmer we have wasn’t going to be able to cut through them. But what I COULD cut were some of the ancillary branches, which would raise the predator branches an inch here, a couple of centimeters there, until I could walk beneath without being attacked by flora.

Thus armed with my implement of destruction, and inspired by the city workers who had trimmed branches away from the power lines on our street that very day, I also walked up the street, pruning branches of trees that would otherwise have slapped me in the face.

You’re welcome, neighbors.

ABC Wednesday – Round 19

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

There was a special section on Graham Nash: Touching the Flame, featuring the photos and drawings he and his friends created during his time with the Hollies and CSNY

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Cleveland, OH, July 14-15, 2016

Since it’s only about an hour away from the Ashtabula reunion, the family was unanimous in agreeing that we would HAVE to visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.

I had been there before, in 1998. They had special displays for the Carls Perkins and Wilson, who had recently died. But much has changed in the intervening 18 years.

They recommend that you start your tour on the lower level, and this is appropriate. It has a film about the 2016 induction ceremony. I spent a LOT of time, and could have spent more, in the Stewart Gallery, reading about and listening to “The Roots of Rock: Blues, Gospel, R&B, Country, Bluegrass, and Folk.”

The Elvis Presley exhibit featured a 14-minute film about him, which was worth watching. Then “The Legends of Rock and Roll” were portrayed in various ways. Each of the Beatles’ albums was described in short films. There was a film on the Rolling Stones, which I did not have time to watch. Lots of outfits of artists from Hendrix, Bowie, the Who, the Supremes, Michael Jackson, and others.

A couple of displays were geographically oriented Cities and Sounds, and The Music of Cleveland and the Midwest. There was an area about the radio personalities, such as Alan Freed, who delivered the music. Also, I watched the 30-minute film Dick Clark’s American Bandstand.

There was a special section on Graham Nash: Touching the Flame, featuring the photos and drawings he and his friends created during his time with the Hollies and Crosby, Stills & Nash (& Young). A sound booth allowed one to sing along with Bus Stop and Teach Your Children, and see how off-key we were, at which point, the recorded Graham would indicate that you shouldn’t quit your day job. (I wanted to try this solo, since I was more familiar with the songs, but never had the chance.)

Finally, on the Lower Level, was Right Here, Right Now, a display of videos of more recent songs, most of which I had never heard. I spent 20 minutes there but could have spent two hours.

The escalator skips Level 1 going up (but it lands IN the gift shop going down – no fools, them.) There were segments about the architects of rock and roll; watching Les Paul play was hypnotic.

A multimedia exhibit Video Killed the Radio Star was 11 minutes of very strange stuff, but I liked it. Peter Gabriel and others were represented.

The Daughter could have spent all day at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame listening to headphones listening to the “songs that shaped rock and roll and one-hit wonders,” and more the Hall of Fame Jukebox on the 4th Level, with a collection of songs by all the inductees.

I watched a short film, The Life and Music of Smokey Robinson. There were displays of the evolving technologies, “from Wax to .Wav.”

On Level 3, the Induction Ceremony highlight films from over the years that interested me greatly, but there was still so much to see, I watched only a couple of years’ worth, limited by time.

There’s also a cafe on this level, where we got some snacks and sat outdoors, with a nice view of Lake Erie. We were only bothered by the people who insisted on feeding the seagulls, despite signs prohibiting this.

I should note what on the wall on Level 4: Pink Floyd: The Wall, this giant paper mache-looking thing.

Hmm, I didn’t get to Levels 5 and 6. Seems like another post about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, soon…

Different take on the news

I need to get a different take on the news for a while.

You start writing a blog post, and sometimes, at some point, it just loses its joy.

Yeah, I was going to write about the lying Ryan Lochte and the other Olympic swimmers, and how he particularly was the Ugly American abroad. And Rio 2016 spokesman Mario Andrada downplaying their actions may be a case of white male privilege– OK, probably is, while the black girls’ hair is analyzed.

And I was going to write about the Louisiana flooding and whether there was enough media coverage – the New York Times acknowledged it was slow on the story, but I saw it daily on TV – and which politician should visit when, and whether Obama was responsible for Katrina.

And there’s this story about Donald Trump’s health report that was released in December of 2015, when most people thought it was bogus. So why is it a big news story only NOW? Because there are folks with a conspiracy theory about Hillary Clinton’s health, which Trump has helped spread, which the Democrats are contradicting.

Plus stuff about Paul Manifort and the Russians, and California fires, and explaining that this story about Obama banning the Pledge of Allegiance is bogus. I had thoughts on all of it. But then I realized something, that was just for a while, a little more important to me.

That is: a team from Maine-Endwell, NY is in the Little League World Series, after going 19-0. The hamlet of Endwell is in Broome County, where Binghamton, my hometown, is the county seat. “It’s the first time in over 35 years that a team from anywhere other than New York City has represented the Mid-Atlantic region in Williamsport.”

M-E won its first LLWS game on Thursday, 7-2, over a team from New England, Warwick North (Rhode Island). The team will play today in the double-elimination tournament, which means that, if they should lose today, they’re not yet eliminated.

I need to get a different take on the news for a while and may take a hiatus from the cares of the world, especially on Facebook. Instead, I will concern myself with fastballs and turning the double play, for a little while. Well, except for the stuff I’ve already written, and if something REALLY big happens…

Music Throwback Saturday: Shape of Things

This would be the iteration of the Yardbirds with Jeff Beck, after Eric Clapton left, and before Jimmy Page joined.

Blame Chuck Miller for getting The Shape of Things in my head. For his K-Chuck Radio: More Forgotten 70’s Hits, half of which I’d never heard, I wondered which version of the title song the Headboys played. As it turns out, it a different iteration altogether, and now that I heard it, it was vaguely familiar.

One of my few singles purchases in the 1960s was The Shape Of Things To Come by Max Frost And The Troopers, written by the prolific Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil. I remember it being a very short song, less than two minutes, and with a red label.

What I did not know until far later was that the attributed band was in fact “a fictional rock music group created for the exploitation film Wild in the Streets, released in 1968. The film featured Christopher Jones as the highly influential singer Max Frost.” It only got to #22 on the US charts, which surprised me; I thought it was a bigger hit. But it stayed two weeks at #2 in Canada.

It was only around then that I heard an earlier song with a similar name. The British invasion group the Yardbirds had recorded The Shape of Things, arguably “can justifiably be classified as the first psychedelic rock classic.”. This would be the iteration of the band with Jeff Beck, after Eric Clapton left, and before Jimmy Page joined. It was a #11 single in the spring of 1966 in the US, getting to #3 in the UK and #7 in Canada.

The Headboys was a Scottish group, and their Shape of Things to Come only got to #67 on the US pop charts, and #45 on the UK charts, in 1979, a classic one-hit-wonder.

The Shape of Things – the Yardbirds. Listen HERE or HERE.

The Shape Of Things To Come – Max Frost and the Troopers. Listen HERE or HERE.

The Shape of Things to Come – the Headboys. Listen HERE or HERE.