Roger O Green

Gary Brooker of Procol Harum is 70

My friends would muse about whether there really WERE 16 Vestal virgins.

Gary Brooker, the guy with the mustache, is the founder, keyboard player, and lead singer of the progressive rock group Procol Harum through its entire run (1967–1977, 1991–present).

I have three LPs by the group, all from 1972 or earlier. But I had a cassette greatest hits, which I absolutely loved before it wore out.

I now own a greatest hits album on CD which is a different collection. And it was on that disc I heard the song called Boredom, the B-side of the 1969 single The Devil Came From Kansas, for the very first time

It contains the lyrics:

Some say they will and some say they won’t
Some say they do and some say they don’t
Some say they shall and some say they shan’t
And some say they can and some say they can’t

This made me do a double-take, because I had written, many years ago, a song called Inconsistency, which rhymed “shan’t” and “can’t”.

“Brooker also toured with Ringo Starr’s All-Starr Band in 1997 and 1999.”

My favorite Procol Harum songs:

8. Whiskey Train (1969). This is just a hard-rocking tune that is different from what I associate with the group.

7. In the Wee Small Hours of Sixpence (1968, B-side of Quite Rightly So). Love the syncopation of the organ line.

6. Homburg (1967, #34 US, #6 UK).

5. Quite Rightly So (1968, #50 UK).

4. A Whiter Shade of Pale (1967, #5 US, #1 UK). The first big single. Vestal was a suburb of Binghamton, NY, my hometown. When I was 14, my friends would muse about whether there really WERE 16 Vestal virgins.

“In July 2009, [original Procol Harum organist] Matthew Fisher won a British court judgment awarding him 40% of the music royalties from 2005 onwards for 1967’s ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’, which had previously gone 50% to Brooker for the music and 50% to [Keith] Reid for the lyrics.” Coincidentally, Fisher and I share a birthday.

3. Shine On Brightly (1968) Love this from the very first notes. Surprised it wasn’t a single.

2. Conquistador (1972, #16 US, #22 UK, with different B-sides). From Live In Concert with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. WAY better than the studio version.

1. A Salty Dog (1969, #44 UK). Maybe it’s a Pisces thing, but this song has viscerally affected me from the first hearing.
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Coverville 1080: Creedence Clearwater Revival and Procol Harum Cover Stories

John Fogerty is 70

Just last year, I wrote a lengthy piece about Creedence Clearwater Revival, a fine band. In it, I mentioned the continuing strife between lead singer/songwriter John Fogerty and the other living members of the group, plus his brother’s widow. As of December 2014, the lawsuits continue.

So I’m just going to link to some solo John Fogerty for his birthday number three score and ten:

With the Blue Ridge Rangers: Jambalaya (On The Bayou), #16 in 1973. This was #1 country hit in 1952 for Hank Williams.

Rockin’ All Over The World, #27 in 1975.

Almost Saturday Night, #78 in 1975.

The Old Man Down The Road, #10 in 1985.

Rock And Roll Girls, #20 in 1985. Its B-side,
Centerfield, #44 in 1985, was
honored by the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2010.

(All chart citations refer to the US Billboard pop listings.)
***
John Fogerty and Sawyer Fredericks on The Voice finale, May 2015, singing a CCR medley. BTW, Sawyer is the area kid who won the competition.

40 years ago: cleaning up after the cops

In light of all of the recent incidents involving young black men and the police in America, it got me wondering how I managed to luck out and largely avoid confrontations with them. Growing up, I have no specific recollection of dealing with police much at all. Of course, I was a “good” kid, but that didn’t always inoculate one from confrontation.

There a Facebook friend of mine, who’s about a decade older than I, who went to my church when I was a youth, who tells an ugly tale about him and cop, a doughnut on the ground not dropped by him, and the abusive language from the cop. And he was surely a “good” kid.

During some antiwar demonstrations, I do recall moving quickly to avoid teargas, or police on horses, or the like, but those were in mass demonstrations.

As an adult, most of my dealings with the police have been as a victim of crime: bicycles stolen, boom box stolen from work, my credit card compromised. Then there was that time when I found someone’s checkbook, called the guy, and had police at my door; didn’t like that.

The only police officer I knew personally, albeit peripherally, was a guy from my former church; I knew his parents far better. He seemed to be a nice guy.

But I spent the most time with police officers was when I was a janitor at Binghamton (NY) City Hall from about April to August 1975, after I had temporarily dropped out of college. I was pretty much invisible to the detectives, although there were a few snarky remarks, which I attributed less to race than my lowly position. And I swear some of them missed tossing things into the garbage cans, so they could make more work for me.

On the other hand, I was very fond of the captain. Sometimes, when my work was done, he’d invite me to sit in his office and chat. We’d talk about current events, how the city had changed over time, my plans for the future, and even how the police were perceived in the community. He seemed to appreciate my POV, and recognize that I actually had a working brain. I wish I could remember his name.

I like talking to the police in the right environment. A few months ago, three other Albany school parents and I talked with one of the assistant chiefs about the problem with the crossing guards near the schools; it was a productive chat.

In a few months, I’ll write about riding with some police officers.
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When I think of the police, unfortunately, I always think of two not-so-affirming songs:

What Did You Learn In School? – Pete Seeger (written by Tom Paxton)
Police on my Back – The Clash (written by Eddy Grant)

The Lydster, Part 134: Opting out

Neither my wife or I want to have our daughter become a tool to our own sense of activism, ESPECIALLY when it affects her directly.

There has been a great deal of controversy in the state of New York about the school tests tied to something called Common Core. It is more complicated than I wish to get into here, but I wrote about it a bit in my Times Union blog.

There was a statewide movement to get students in grades 3 to 8 to opt-out of the test, which was somewhat successful in many districts, including in my area.

The movement has been around a few years, but I had not paid a great deal of attention. The Daughter took the tests the last couple of years.

This year, however, the framework and the rhetoric changed, with Governor Andrew Cuomo specifically tying education money to teacher performance, based on these tests, and practically ignoring their classroom effectiveness, in the budget passed at the end of March 2015.

Here’s the thing, though: neither my wife or I want to have our daughter become a tool to our own sense of activism, ESPECIALLY when it affects her directly. Moreover, she’s generally a compliant child, eager to please others.

The Sunday before the tests began, on a Tuesday, we FINALLY broached the topic, quite gingerly. I said something like, “You know there are those tests coming up this week. Some people are opting out. Whether you take them or not is entirely up to you.”

She said, rather quickly, “I’m opting out. They’re using the test to grade the teachers, not us.” This is largely correct and astute.

We hadn’t specifically talked about this, certainly not directly to her, although we’ve been watching news reports. Most parents would say they chose their kids to opt-out, but The Daughter made her own decision. I happen to agree with it, but I’m more pleased that she’s become this separate, thinking person.

For the periods of the test, a total of 18 hours over a few weeks (!), she was assigned to help the kindergarten teacher read to the kids, and the like. She liked it.
***
Here are some anecdotes about the English language test. There are many out there.

Memorial Day 2015: war is failure

“It turns out that the national security state hasn’t just been repeating things they’ve done unsuccessfully for the last 13 years, but for the last 60.”

There was a time when I thought there were bad guys and good guys, and they were very easily distinguishable.

But now I think war is failure. Even a “just war” may be, at very best, the least bad outcome. And usually, just a bad outcome, with war profiteers (Blackwater, or whatever they’re calling themselves now). Pope Francis got it right this month: “Many powerful people don’t want peace because they live off war.”

Any American born since 1984 has spent at least half of his or her life with the country at war. My life percentage is only about 40%.

We go to war in Iraq. Some of us thought it was a mistake at the time. Others discover it later, realizing we were lied to. Now, the calls by some to go war with Iran ring hollow.

Unintended consequences of war: My Lai in Vietnam, Abu Gharib in Iraq, to name just two during my lifetime. I highly recommend Graphic Novels About Consequences and Horrors of War by Meryl Jaffe.

On this Memorial Day, I also suggest Demobilized in the USA: Why There Is No Massive Antiwar Movement; I.F. Stone, the urge to serve, and remembrance of wars past:

Among the eeriest things about reading Stone’s Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia coverage, 14 years into the next century, is how resonantly familiar so much of what he wrote still seems, how twenty-first-century it all is. It turns out that the national security state hasn’t just been repeating things they’ve done unsuccessfully for the last 13 years, but for the last 60. [Compare, for instance, Laos and Iraq.]

But if much in the American way of war remains dismally familiar some five decades later, one thing of major significance has changed, something you can see regularly in I.F. Stone’s Weekly but not in our present world. Thirteen years after our set of disastrous wars started, where is the massive antiwar movement, including an army in near revolt and a Congress with significant critics in significant positions?

If, so many years into the disastrous war on terror, the Afghan War that never ends, and most recently Iraq War 3.0 and Syria War 1.0, there is no significant antiwar movement in this country, you can thank the only fit of brilliance the national security state has displayed. It successfully drummed us out of service. The sole task it left to Americans, 40 years after the Vietnam War ended, was the ludicrous one of repeatedly thanking the troops for their service, something that would have been inconceivable in the 1950s or 1960s because you would, in essence, have been thanking yourself.

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