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.

P is for People songs

Plastic Jim by Sly & the Family Stone borrows from Eleanor Rigby by the Beatles.

peopleI had all these posts for Round 15 lined up, either odd words or 70th birthdays, except for a few. After I mucked it over a good while, I said, to no one in particular, “I’ve got nothing, people.” Then suddenly, I did. Songs starting with the word People in the title that I own.

One must start, naturally, with People by Barbra Streisand, her signature song from Funny Girl that went to #5 in 1964 on the US Billboard singles charts. “People who need people are the luckiest people in the world.” Is that true? I was rather fond of the cover version by Nat King Cole) that only went to #100 that same year.

A lot of People songs are inspirational. People Get Ready by The Impressions, featuring Curtis Mayfield, went to #14 in 1965, but was an anthem of the civil rights movement.

People Are Strange by The Doors, #12 in 1967, is a simple song, with a single verse and chorus; I tended to relate to it.

Back to the inspiration mode is People Got to be Free by The Rascals, #1 in 1968.

People Make The World Go Round is a melancholy tune by the Stylistics, #25 in 1972, with a long instrumental outro. I also have a Jackson Five cover of this.

Violent images show up in the odd People Who Died by The Jim Carroll Band, #103 in 1981. The lyrics are serious – and he repeats TWO verses – but the music is pretty straight-ahead rock and roll. I heard this a lot on WQBK-FM, my favorite radio station, at the time.

A more hopeful tune is People Are People by Depeche Mode, #13 in 1985.

The N-word is used in context in People Everyday by Arrested Development, #8 in 1992. I found it unfortunate that it’s so much less hopeful than the song it borrows heavily from, Everyday People by Sly & The Family Stone, #1 in 1969.

I see that Kelly Clarkson had a song called People Like Us, #65 in 2013, on her greatest hits album. I didn’t have that but I DID have a totally different song with the same title, in fact, the title track of an album by The Mamas and the Papas.

Finally, I was pondering the sad tune Eleanor Rigby by the Beatles – “all the lonely people” – #11 in 1966, from which Plastic Jim by Sly & the Family Stone borrowed.

abc15

ABC Wednesday, Round 15

40 years ago: the Student Government held hostage

As the only ethnic minority on the Financial Council, I was one of the folks selected to negotiate.

SUNY_New_Paltz_main_quadI got elected to the Financial Council at the State University of New York at New Paltz in the spring of 1974 but didn’t take office until the fall. We passed a budget, which was, I’m guessing, only incrementally different from the previous year’s.

This displeased two student groups, the Black Student Union and Hermanos Latinos. So much so, that one night while we were meeting, they sat in our offices, refusing to leave until the groups got in their allocations the percentage of funds equivalent to the percentage of blacks and Hispanics on campus.

Don’t know what that was then; the school is now 5% black, and that was probably about the same then, but it’s 12% Hispanic now, far more than then.

In any case, a committee was formed to negotiate. As the only ethnic minority on the Council, I was one of the folks selected. The FC tried to note that there were lots of things that we paid for that benefited everyone, such as the Oracle newspaper, radio station WNPC, and ombudsman; this was largely an unsuccessful line of discussion.

Ultimately, the FC agreed to the demands, and the groups left. Almost immediately, the FC head froze EVERYONE’S budget, and a day or two later reinstated a budget that was fairly close to our original budget, with perhaps token increases to the two groups. Oddly enough, they didn’t come back to complain, for which I was extremely grateful.

This experience oddly soured me on me running for elective office. Nothing that has happened since has negated that thought, and in fact has only strengthened it.

The Lydster, Part 127: Watching the news

I was the kid who was watching Huntley-Brinkley on NBC News or Walter Cronkite on CBS News by the time *I* was ten.

NEWSFor her first nine years, I sheltered the Daughter from watching the evening news, viewing it after she went to bed, or before she got up in the morning. Sometimes, I’d watch it while she was in the other room.

Turns out that she is preternaturally interested in these things. Moreover, she develops opinions about them that did not necessarily come from us. Ferguson, MO made her aware that it’s a little scarier being a black child in America than she previously thought. The death of Palestinian children during the conflict with Israel made her angry. And she has great antipathy for Russia’s Putin.

Sometimes, she shows off her knowledge. Last summer, she said to a friend, “Do you know what happened in Mali?” Her friend didn’t know who Molly was; it was a reference to a plane crash. During a manhunt for a cop killer in Pennsylvania, she was surprised that her friend from Pennsylvania was unaware of it.

It’s my fault. I was the kid who was watching Huntley-Brinkley on NBC News or Walter Cronkite on CBS News by the time I was ten. But the news seemed tamer when I was her age. Our involvement in Vietnam was still minimal. There was racial strife, but it seemed to be focused in the far-away South.

Now, there are ISIS/ISIL video executions; she didn’t see them – heck, I didn’t see them, but she was still aware of them, though not the first one until after the second one had taken place. Hundreds of girls are kidnapped in Nigeria. Several NFL players are involved with domestic violence.

She always DOES have the option of going away from the set, but she seems to have the peculiar notion that she should be an informed citizen. Where she got THAT idea, I have no idea.

One wants to protect one’s child, but I guess keeping her blissfully unaware is not an option anymore.

The Sound of Philadelphia

Gamble and Huff were inducted into the Rock and Roll of Fame in 2008, three years after their biggest stars, the O’Jays.

Gamble & Huff, with former PIR artist Patti Labelle
Gamble & Huff, with former PIR artist Patti Labelle

That soulful dude Arthur from down south (hemisphere) asked me: “Are you planning a post on the end of Philadelphia International Records “The Sound of Philadelphia” (TSOP)? I’d be really curious to hear your take.” I hadn’t heard the news. As you may know, I do take requests, and any excuse to fill a post with music links is welcome.

Even before the official Philadelphia International Records label, you had the songwriting/production team of Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff, who produced one of the very few singles I actually bought in the 1960s, Expressway To Your Heart by the Soul Survivors, a US Top 4 hit in 1967. I love songs that lived on the bottom.

I just recently played that classic album Gonna Take A Miracle by Laura Nyro, with Labelle, and never knew that this was a Gamble-Huff production, prior to their PIR days. LISTEN to the title track.

It’s possible that I didn’t notice Gamble-Huff on records as songwriters until The Pointer Sisters’ Love In Them There Hills [LISTEN] in 1974.

It took me a while to recognize TSOP as a “sound.” I was familiar with Motown, whose move west in 1972 seemed to correspond with its lesser output, at least to my ears. Stax Records, out of Memphis, was in commercial decline around that same time. Philadelphia International filled that “soul” gap.

In fact, as it turns out when I hooked into that sound corresponds with that very year. LISTEN to these PIR songs:
Me And Mrs Jones – Billy Paul (#1 for three weeks in 1972).
If You Don’t Know Me by Now – Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes (#3 in 1972)
When Will I See You Again – The Three Degrees (#2 in 1974)
TSOP (The Sound Of Philadelphia)- MFSB (#1 for two weeks in 1974). This was the theme to the long-running television show Soul Train.
Enjoy Yourself – The Jacksons (#6 in 1977). This was the first hit after Michael and his brothers left Motown.

Still, in spite of a great roster of musicians, I most closely associate the O’Jays with the sound of Philadelphia. LISTEN TO:
Back Stabbers (#3 in 1972)
Love Train (#1 in 1973)
For the Love of Money (#9 in 1974)
I Love Music (#5 in 1976)

Gamble and Huff were inducted into the Rock and Roll of Fame in 2008, three years after their biggest stars, the O’Jays.

It’s All About the Books

I’m always fascinated when a song becomes so popular that groups of people feel the need to emulate it.

little-girl-reading-bookI came across this song All About That [Upright] Bass by Postmodern Jukebox, featuring Kate Davis. Probably found it on a Facebook page for the podcast Coverville. The goal of Postmodern Jukebox, according to pianist/bandleader Scott Bradley, is to get the “audience to think of songs not as rigid, ephemeral objects, but like malleable globs of silly putty. Songs can be twisted, shaped, and altered without losing their identities–just as we grow, age, and expire without losing ours–and it is through this exploration that the gap between ‘high’ and ‘low’ art can be bridged most readily.”

Oddly, I had somehow missed the original All About That Bass by American singer Meghan Trainor, her debut single released in June 2014, which was co-written by Ms. Trainor and Kevin Kadish, until it had already reached #1 on the Billboard Top 100 chart; it’s been six weeks at the top and counting. It is considered “a pop and doo-wop song that contains lyrics of body-positive themes.”

Shortly afterward, I come across Jimmy Fallon, Meghan Trainor & The Roots singing “All About That Bass” (w/ Classroom Instruments) from September, then a PARODY of the Fallon/Trainor/Roots performance, “All About the Books, No Trouble” from the Nashville Library, plus a few other like takes.

I’m always fascinated when a song becomes so popular that groups of people feel the need to emulate it; see Happy by Pharrell Williams, Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen, and others. Even if I’m slow to the party. To that end, Siren’s Crush covers Meghan Trainor’s “All About that Bass”; yes, that’s the niece, Rebecca Jade on the right.

Ramblin' with Roger
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