Author: Roger

I'm a librarian. I hear music, even when it's not being played. I used to work at a comic book store, and it still informs my life. I won once on JEOPARDY! - ditto.

Pie, and the love thereof

Apple pie in the sky as dreamer.

apple pieI am on the record, stating my great preference for pie over cake. Pie, as a form, is more flexible than cake, as it can be savory (chicken pot pie, e.g.) or sweet.

Picking this totally random day, here are some of my favorite songs about pie.

American Pie- Don McLean. Also the name of a series of movies about libidinous teenagers.

Apples Peaches Pumpkin Pie – Jay & The Techniques. I remember that game. This 1966 song I’m fairly sure one of my sisters owned, perhaps on the album. “Marry you so you don’t roam.” What a controlling guy.

Custard Pie -Led Zeppelin. I was shocked, SHOCKED to find out that this song from Physical Graffiti might be about…something else. Would Zeppelin actually use food items as metaphors for sex?

Flaming Pie – Paul McCartney. The album’s title track about how John Lennon named the Beatles.

Honey Pie – the Beatles. This doesn’t talk about food at all, but is rather a term of endearment. What IS it with Macca and pie?

I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch) – Four Tops. More affectionate use of the term.

Sweet Potato Pie – Ray Charles. From the Genius Loves Company album (2004), this track features James Taylor, who had written and performed the song for his Never Die Young album (1988).

High Hopes – Frank Sinatra. Specifically: “He’s got high, apple-pie-in-the-sky hopes.” Apple pie in the sky as dreamer.

Lots of pie songs out there in a simple Google search. Here’s one list .

Movie review- Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Some guy I follow on Facebook gave out a big reveal from The Force Awakens in late January. Ticked me off,

I said it’d be a cold day in February before I’d bother to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Well, the Saturday of Presidents Day weekend started out at 10 degrees F (-12C) and DROPPED during the day. Then there was the wind, which made it considerably worse.
star wars 7
This was the opportunity for the Daughter to see her first Star Wars film, at the nearby Madison Theatre. She’s actually a better gauge of this film than I, although she seemed to know plot points and background better than her mother, who had seen the original trilogy. I too saw the first three, which is now the middle three, though not in many years. I may have seen the original film on video once subsequently, but probably not the others.

I also saw the first prequel, which bored me silly, a greater sin to me than whether Jar Jar Binks was a stereotype. It kept me from seeing #2 or #3, and I’m unfamiliar with the various items in the interregnum, such as Clone Wars.

Some guy I follow on Facebook gave out a big reveal from The Force Awakens in late January, assuming, incorrectly, that anyone who was going to see this film had already done so. Ticked me off, and ruined some of the suspense.

For me, the fact that the leads, Daisy Ridley as Rey and John Boyega as Finn, with the help of Oscar Isaac as Poe, held my interest until Han Solo and Chewbacca show up; that’s not much of a spoiler, as they appear in the trailer, and the poster. And they were well-developed characters in their own right.

The geek controversy over the black stormtrooper – aren’t they all replicants, or something, blah, blah – I found…[yawn]…sorry, what was I about to say? Oh, that those folks stressed about a female lead are just…hmm. Anyway, whatever. I did like Oscar Issac, whose character was SO depressing in Inside Llewyn Davis.

How do I feel about the politics of J.J. Abrams’ essentially a variation on the original theme, designed to make lots of money for Disney, especially with the next episode nicely set up? At some level, I suppose I’m a tad bothered by it. But it’s a tsunami. In its ninth week, it’s still the seventh leading film for the weekend. It cost $200 million but grossed $900 million domestically, and over $1.1 BILLION in the foreign market.

More to the point, I got sufficiently sucked up in the story to want to see the next chapter.

Mom and dad’s anniversary – would’ve been #66

They look SO young. And happy.

Les and Trudy. Marcia Green - Mobile Uploads
As usual, the youngest of the three Green children, the one who lives in the parents’ home, is pouring through old pictures, uncovering ones that, if I had ever seen, are lost to my memory.

An astonishingly large number of the photos in her possession was taken in the backyard of 13 Maple Street, Binghamton, NY, the home of my maternal grandmother, Gertrude Williams, and her sister, Adenia Yates. My mom grew up there, and my sisters and I went there every lunchtime during the school year.

The house was tiny, the backyard puny. Yet there are several pictures of well over a dozen people in that postage stamp yard.

This is my mom-to-be, Gertrude Elizabeth Williams, who later went by Trudy because she hated her first name. My father-in-waiting, Leslie Harold Green, and Trudy met at that house, when he brought flowers to 13 Maple Street, in Binghamton’s more northerly First Ward, instead of 13 Maple Avenue, on the city’s South Side.

I’m just guessing they’re not married yet, because they look SO young. And happy.

And Les has this smug look that I’m told his future mother-in-law simply did not like. I think Trudy found it appealing after being under the thumb of her mother and aunt, and for much of her life, by her grandmother and uncle.

Music Throwback Saturday: I’ll Be Good To You

I was in a doctor’s office back in October 2015 which played surprisingly good, and eclectic, music.

Quincy_Jones_-_Back_On_The_Block-frontBack in 1989, I picked up this album produced by Quincy Jones, called Back on the Block. “The album features legendary musicians and singers from across three generations, including Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis, Joe Zawinul, Ice-T, Big Daddy Kane, Sarah Vaughan, Dizzy Gillespie, George Benson, Luther Vandross, Dionne Warwick, Barry White, Take 6, Bobby McFerrin, Al Jarreau, Al B. Sure!, James Ingram, and El DeBarge.”

The album went to #9 on the Billboard album charts and was so eclectic that it hit #1 on both the Top Contemporary Jazz Albums and Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums charts.

The first single of the collection was I’ll Be Good To You, featuring Ray Charles and Chaka Khan. It was a hit, #18 on the US pop charts, and #1 for two weeks on the rhythm and blues charts in 1990.

I was in a doctor’s office back in October 2015 which played surprisingly good, and eclectic music. I hear I’ll be Good To You, but it’s surely not the Quincy version. It turns out that it was by The Brothers Johnson, who I’ve mentioned on this blog before.

How did I miss this version, written by the Brothers Johnson (George and Louis) and Sonora Sam, and produced by Quincy? It got up to #3 for three weeks in 1976, as well as #1 on the r&b charts.

I’ll Be Good To You:
Quincy Jones, Ray Charles & Chaka Khan

The Brothers Johnson
The Brothers Johnson
The Brothers Johnson on Midnight Special

Quincy Jones turns 83 on March 14.

George Martin

George Martin got Paul to agree to put a string quartet on the song Yesterday.

george-martinBeatles producer George Martin, who died this week at the age of 90, had been on my mind recently. The family went to not one, but two programs of Deconstructing the Beatles at the end of February.

One show was about the making of the album Rubber Soul, and the other concerning just three songs: Strawberry Fields Forever, Penny Lane, and A Day in the Life. Re: the latter, Scott Freiman described, among other things, how Martin and engineer Geoff Emerick meshed two disparate versions of John Lennon’s song Strawberry Fields together, by “speeding up the first version and slowing down the second.”

It was one of 10 Great Beatles Moments We Owe to George Martin, though there were undoubtedly more. “Martin served as expert and conspirator, taskmaster and mad scientist, friend and father figure throughout the band’s studio life. He shaped their songs in ways that are seldom appreciated but impossible to forget.”

When I was watching CBS News This Morning, some “expert” from Rolling Stone told that Strawberry Fields story but identified the song in question as Penny Lane. Maybe it was an 8 a.m. brain freeze; Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields WERE on the same single. But then CBS played a snippet of Penny Lane, which suggested that they were told in advance by the said expert to cue the song actually written by Paul.

The expert also said it was their songwriting prowess that appealed to Martin, when in fact it was their personalities that first convinced him that they would be successful, long before they showed any evidence of musical brilliance.

Earlier that morning, I heard National Public Radio identify George Martin as the Beatles manager – arrgh.

Paul McCartney described how George Martin got Paul to agree to put a string quartet on the song Yesterday. Later, in his solo career, Paul brought in his proposed songs for the Tug of War album, and Martin’s reaction was something like “that’s nice…where are the real songs?”, which took McCartney aback, but prompted him to write better material.

George Martin: the man who changed pop forever (with a little help from his friends)

Top 10 George Martin Non-Beatles Records

Brian Wilson and George Martin in studio at Brian’s home in LA playing with God Only Knows.

Coverville 1116.

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