Roger O Green

Music cover and re-cover

Sinatra

I’ve often mused on musical covers by the same artist. This would be a re-cover in the parlance of the Coverville podcast, which I listen to regularly.

The post was initiated by a 2021 video of a lawyer talking about Taylor Swift rerecording her early albums issued under her original contract. The attorney wondered if the public would purchase the songs again; from the last time I checked the Billboard album charts, three of the ten albums were “Taylor’s version.”

I should compare the old songs with the new ones, but I’m not a Swifty and would feel inadequate to point out the differences in the recordings. (However, I’m quite amused and bemused by the MAGA disdain for her.)

Conversely, I could discuss some of the variations among the records of Frank Sinatra on different labels long before Taylor. A good example would be Snatra’s Sinatra.

“Ten of the album’s twelve tracks are re-recorded versions of songs that Sinatra had previously released, with ‘Pocketful of Miracles’ and ‘Call Me Irresponsible’ being first-time recordings for Sinatra.

“Sinatra’s two previous record labels, Columbia Records and Capitol Records had both successfully issued collections of Sinatra’s hits; this album was the attempt of his new label, Reprise Records, to duplicate this success by offering some earlier songs in stereophonic sound, which by 1963 was an exploding recording technology.” You should be able to hear that album in its entirety here; then, you can tool around and find earlier iterations.

Fab

The Beatles had different versions of Get Back and Let It Be, from the single to the album version. Both Get Back and Medicated Goo by Traffic have singles that come to a dead stop – I still own the 45s – while the album cuts do not. Get Back: LP and single. Medicated Goo album cut; I can’t find the single.

I also considered remakes such as Fame and Fame ’90 by David Bowie, Think and Think ’89 by Aretha Franklin, and a supposedly improved version of John Hiatt’s Have A Little Faith In Me. In each case, I prefer the original. However, I have an odd affection for the Trans version by Neil Young of Mr. Soul compared with the Buffalo Springfield take.

In Paul Simon’s In The Blue Light, he re-covers ten of his songs that he thought were previously overlooked. One Man’s Ceiling Is Another Man’s Floor: original (There Goes Rhymin’ Simon) and remake.

My favorite: Crying – the original is by Roy Orbison, the re-cover by Orbison and k.d. lang.

Egregious sins exist on remakes of some compilation albums. I have a Herman’s Hermans greatest hits collection that is all redos; Peter Noone is singing them, but it ain’t the same. Likewise, I have a 4-CD set of soul songs, with the only originals by deceased artists. These are very disappointing.

Licensing rights are often the issue. Rhino put out The Ray Charles Anthology, with 17 songs from his ABC/Paramount period and three live versions of songs he first recorded when he was on Atlantic Records.

Live versions versus studio albums? A whole ‘nother conversation. I tend to like the studio versions, though the live performance of I’m So Glad on Goodbye Cream shreds the studio track from Fresh Cream.

That said, I needed to do much more compare and contrast, scouring YouTube to do the topic justice; frankly, it was too daunting.

A Sedingerian ARA post

the rules of curling

Kelly Sedinger asked a slew of questions for Ask Roger Anything. And he’s not even from New Jersey. (An old SNL reference.) This makes this a Sedingerian post. Or a Sedingeresque post. You decide.

What do you think of Spam? The actual food product! (I’m still stunned at how beloved it is in Hawaii; you can get Spam at McDonald’s there!)

When my then-girlfriend/now wife went there in 1995 with her parents, she reported the same phenomenon. By the way, I ended up going to New Orleans for work at the same time.

I’m sure I used to eat Spam when I was a kid, maybe in my twenties. As I recall, I liked it. But I’m not sure I’ve had it in the past four decades. I’ll have to try it again.

BTW, from the SPAM FAQ: The true root of the island’s love for SPAM® products goes back to World War II, when the luncheon meat was served to GIs. By the end of the war, SPAM® products were adopted into local culture, with Fried SPAM® Classic and rice becoming a popular meal. The unique flavor quickly found its way into other Hawaiian cuisine, from SPAM® Fried Wontons to SPAM® Musubi, and SPAM® products became a fixture for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Today you’ll find SPAM® dishes served everywhere from convenience stores to restaurants, reflecting a demand that is unmatched by any place in the world.”

Timeshare

For whatever reason, you are required to spend one week someplace that’s no more than an hour away from home. Where are you going?

There’s a timeshare in western Massachusetts that we’ve been to perhaps 25 times in the past quarter of a century. It was initially my parents-in-law’s place, but we’ve taken it over in the place few years.

Once, we were there when our then-baby daughter got a splinter, and we couldn’t get it out. So we took her to a doctor in Albany, then returned to the timeshare the same day.

Sports report

Do you understand the rules of curling? I do not. In fact, I’m not convinced the whole thing isn’t an elaborate prank.

I looked at the rules for the 2024 Olympics in Paris. And I STILL don’t understand them.

Favorite obscure sport?

Foot archery, of course. It is something that I could never do.

Food eating contests: your feelings? (I loathe them, but that’s just me.)

It’s fairly revolting, gluttony as sport; it’s on ESPN! And yet I know Joey Chestnut’s name.

What’s one lesson you learned from any one teacher you had as a kid?

My fifth-grade teacher, Miss Oberlik, taught us to count to 19 in Russian. I can still do that.

Milk as a beverage: Yes or no?

Yes and no. Yes, when served with cookies or, I suppose, pastries. No, when on cereal.

Why is my cat such a doofus? (I doubt you can answer this, but it’s been much on our minds of late)

One of my cats is a doofus. When I come in from outdoors, he runs to the door like he wants to go out. About four years ago, he did go out, and he was terrified when he finally returned over an hour later. Many felines are doofi.

Two more questions will be answered forthwith. Or with forth.

The Las Vegas strip and Fremont East

Meow Wolf

Sun, Sept 24: You’d think two old guys flying three time zones might at least nap before going out. You’d be wrong. We needed to check out the Las Vegas Strip.

After checking into our quite lovely Club Wyndham Desert Blue room- thanks to my mother-in-law, who had points that needed to be used up before the end of September – we took the hotel shuttle to the Paradise Hotel. It ran nearly every hour. M-Th until 9 pm going out and 9:30 coming back, but until 1/1:30 on Friday through Sunday.

We just walked a lot, stopping for a slice of pizza.

We spent a good deal of time in the Bellagio. It had many interesting and unusual features, such as this ceiling.

This room is fantastical.

This view of the Eiffel Tower, which included a water show in the front of the Bellagio, is wonderful Also, the place was so damn big, and it was difficult to leave without doubling back.

Working for a living

A lot of people were out there trying to make a buck, including so many buskers, their sounds blurred into each other. Instead of the costumed Muppets and Spider-Man at New York City’s Times Square, we see several young women wearing enough clothing not to be arrested, who asked us several times over the first two days if we wanted our pictures taken with them. I was in the “thanks but no thanks” school. MAK was more conversational with them, but ultimately answered in the negative as well.

The Las Vegas Sphere opened the day after we left town. This picture does not do it justice, but I was too tired to walk closer that night. Yes, it’s an abomination of wretched excess, it looks really cool, and apparently, the sound system inside is incredible. ( You could read how Darren Aronofsky Describes His Journey to Creating the First Movie for it.)

M, Sept 25: The resort offered a ride to a local grocery store affiliated with Kroger’s every Monday. It left at 10 a.m., took ten minutes to get there, and then returned to the hotel at 10:40. We had a half hour to get our food—milk, raisin bran, sandwich fixing, orange juice, etc.

There was a guy on the bus who looked astonishingly like Barack Obama, especially in profile. With his soft Texas cadence, he even sounded a bit like 44. MAK asked him if he ever… Faux BHO cut him off: “All of the time.”

Old LV

After lunch, we took a cab to East Fremont. It’s an older part of the city, a bit grittier. But a few blocks are covered by a dome that changes color. Below the roof, people periodically ride ziplines.

The most fascinating place had to be Circa, an adults-only hotel and casino. It had a bank of four dozen monitors and provided the ability to get information to bet on almost everything. We did not gamble at all, and I’m disinclined to. But it was an interesting anthropological observation. (Read more about the Circa and its Stadium Swim here.)

Omega Mart

Tu, Sept 26: We went to something called Meow Wolf. What is it? I don’t know, and I was there. “Meow Wolf opens portals of possibility. We redefine the paradigm of art and storytelling to make a positive difference in the world.

Yeah, that. “We have numerous full-time artists on staff, working in a huge range of media, including sculpture, painting, fabrication, digital art, writing, film, and many more. Additionally, we prioritize collaboration with many local artists in each exhibition location.”

There are exhibits in Denver, CO; Grapevine, TX; and the original site in Sante Fe, NM, as well as Las Vegas, which has the Omega Mart, “America’s Most Exceptional Grocery Store.” Let’s see: “Every door or box of cereal at Omega Mart is a potential entryway into new worlds and artful revelations.”

You have to go with it. It is part weird, part scavenger hunt, and part meditative space.

Afterward, we ate at an excellent Vietnamese restaurant with a savvy server who said, “You don’t want” that item I was about to order. She told MAK what flavorings to add to his soup. This is someone who cared about her work.

(Note: the cereal box pic is from MeowWolf.com. MAK took the first three and the last two photos. The rest are mine; having seen the REAL Eiffel Tower fairly recently, I was obsessed with getting a good picture of the LV one; the sixth time was the charm.)

1973: the class trip to DC

New Paltz Democratic Club

I intend to finish my 1973 diary recollections by the end of 2023. Though I found nothing I wanted to share in the first two months, the class trip to DC was particularly noteworthy.

Wed, Mar 7: I was famished that evening and was going to eat. But the Okie said she was going to bring food. Then my parents and my sisters arrived, surprising me near or on my birthday for the second year in a row.

We were about to leave when a car with a little girl barreled down the street in reverse. Dad tried to stop it, but he couldn’t. It rammed into another vehicle. The girl was okay. She was trying to adjust the radio station and released the brake. My family went to a Chinese restaurant called Great Wall.

Tues, Apr 10: I attended, not for the first time, a New Paltz Democratic Club meeting. Ralph Kulseng nominated me to be the acting recording secretary. Someone whispered, “Who’s Roger Green?” I whispered, “I’m Roger Green!”

[I joined the Club after I was allowed to register to vote in the town. The law in New York State at the time was that no one would gain or lose the right to vote by attending college. The Republican registrar was going to deny me the chance to vote there. But the Democrat, noting that the Okie was already registered in Ulster County and that it would be silly for a married couple to have to be registered in different counties.]

I won the election and was given postcards, the membership list, etc.

Sat, Apr 14: I was back in Binghamton. I met a legislative assistant of my Congressman Howard Robison at the Federal Building about war, Watergate, and other issues.

District of Columbia

Sun, May 13: My classmates (Sid, Andi, Ivy, Gary, Jay, Mitch, Stu, Charles, Jerry, Tom, and Linda ) and I drove down to DC for a trip arranged by our professor, Ron Steinberg. We ate at the Mayflower Diner. Nixon arrived at the Washington Monument grounds by helicopter, causing chaos. We stayed at a hostel.

Mon, May 14: After breakfast at a greasy spoon, we take a bus to the Supreme Court. They ruled 8-1, Rehnquist dissenting, that a servicewoman could claim her husband for benefits as easily as a serviceman could claim his wife. (As I read the case now, it was a bit more nuanced than that.) We talked with chief clerk Rodak, a real PR man, about court caseloads.

At the Justice Department, we talked with Phil Locavara, deputy solicitor general, who was very candid, even about Watergate.

The last day in DC

Tues, May 15: We had a meeting at the EPA with a guy named Stuart, who was very interesting and informative. I got lost going to the Common Cause meeting, seeing an Ethiopian parade en route. Later, the FCC PR man gave us terse, frustratingly evasive answers.

Wed, May 16: Took a bus to the New Senate Office Building. I hated carrying around my duffel bag, which was searched every time I entered there or the Supreme Court. Ron, Sid, and I ate at the NSOB cafeteria. We got Senate passes from the office of Senator James Buckley (C-NY). I went to the Senate on the subway, but only four Senators were on the floor.

We went to the Old Senate Office Building for a meeting with a subcommittee of the Committee on the Judiciary with two of the staff on Senator Sam Ervin (D-NC).

Then we went to see former Chief Justice Earl Warren. Ron made only an introductory statement and asked the last question over an hour later. )I wrote about this here.)

We all drove back to New Paltz, very tired.

Vegas destiny

10 seconds of Rebecca Jade

I’m not big on “destiny.” Still, I called this Vegas destiny because it felt like my friend MAK and I were destined to go to that place on Sunday, September 24.

We had talked about a few dates. It had to be after the 16th when my wife and I had tickets for a play. And it had to be before the 29th when I had my annual physical. Meanwhile, he had to see an Electric Hot Tuna’s Last Waltz show on the 21st in Kingston, NY.

Early start

We stayed at a hotel near the airport on Saturday night because we had a 6:21 a.m. flight. The current conventional wisdom of people who travel far more than I was that we are at the airport 1.5 hours before the 5:58 boarding.

BTW, there are two Hilton hotels on the same short road. The first is Hilton Garden, which my wife and I visited the Friday before to double-check that the shuttle would work. And the second is Tru by Hilton, which we booked. We’re glad my wife stayed until we checked in.

It was a nice room. The most difficult things were two: the big-screen TV in the room had a remote control that we couldn’t control. I called the desk, and a guy came up very quickly. He tried the remote and got the same result, took the remote, and then brought back a remote that worked a few minutes later.

He also solved our second problem: we couldn’t find how to turn on the lights. There are these little black buttons about halfway down the metal trim. We might have seen it in the daylight, but since we checked in well after dark, there was no way we could have discerned them.

The logical strategy would have been to go to bed immediately before our 3:45 a.m. alarm went off. But no! We stayed up until well past midnight talking.

Early morning flight

I slept perhaps three hours, and MAK not all when we had to get up and ready; the shuttle did work. We got to the American Airlines check-in. There are a lot of people there at 4:30.

My friend didn’t mention that we weren’t checking our bags. Our economy status was such that everything, including checked baggage, was charged extra. Fortunately, the total outside dimensions of the piece, length + width + height, were less than 62 in / 158 cm.

We go through TSA without a hitch. You can bring water BOTTLE through, just not water.

We went to Burger King partly because the Starbucks line was longer. A tip: ordering a Croissan’wich without the egg confuses the staff.

On our way to our gate. I saw Steve Hartman. He’s the guy on CBS News who does the On The Road segments started by the late Charles Kuralt. They tend to appear on the CBS Evening News on Friday nights and CBS Sunday Morning.

He’s also on the CBS Mornings on Mondays with his son and daughter on a segment called Kindness 101, which I don’t see often. I wait for him to finish talking to someone; I say to him, “I really like your work,” and then I move on because I don’t like bothering public figures too much, especially at 5:30 a.m. at an airport.

Because American Airlines offered to check a bag to our final destination – for free – I liberated myself from my larger bag. We were each in the middle seats on both legs of our flight, about a row apart.

Seatmates (1)

I could see the woman on the aisle seat would be flying to XNA from her boarding pass. Where the heck is THAT? Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport, serving Fayetteville/Springdale, Arkansas. She goes to Walmart to instruct them in baking their cakes. It was great initially, she indicated, but her workload continues to increase.

She was watching something on her phone: The Chosen, “the first-ever multi-season TV show about the life of Jesus.” I heard of it, and maybe I’d watch it someday, but not on a cellphone.

We only had 45 minutes from landing in CLT at a B gate to taking off from a C gate at least 10 minutes away, and that’s just to the beginning of the C area. As we’re walking, I see coming toward me my niece Rebecca. She had performed in Charlotte on Friday night, then in Montgomery, AL, on Saturday night. She was flying back to San Diego via CLT (east to go west), and she was running from The C gates to wherever her flight was. Seeing her just long enough to hug her was a bit of kismet.

Seatmates (2)

On our CLT to LAS flight were several – at least two dozen – Pittsburgh Steelers fans. We knew this because they wore black and gold paraphernalia, primarily uniform tops and some T-shirts. Most were attending the NFL nationally-televised game that afternoon between the Steelers and the Las Vegas Raiders. Another bit of destiny, being in the presence of a temporary hejira from Steel City to Sin City.

The guy in the window seat beside me slept most of the trip, wearing a hoodie, so I could barely see his face. About 20 minutes before landing, however, Pat woke up. He, too, was going to the game, having nosebleed seats at a severe premium.

We then talked intensely about his interests in football and other sports, COVID-19, his work as a freelance cameraman, and other things. He was delightful.

We all picked up our luggage at the farthest carousel from the gate we deplaned – one must take a light rail to get there.

MAK and I took a cab to our timeshare, passing by Allegiant Stadium. We waited for our room to be ready by watching pieces of football games (Miami 70-20 over Denver, Swifties learn who Travis Kelce is.)

Then we checked in, went out, and did a whole bunch of stuff – more info anon – and ended up at a bar/restaurant, eating and watching the end of the football game less than two miles away.