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.

T is for Talking Heads

The album Speaking in Tongues had come out only a couple months before the SPAC concert, featuring their only American Top 10 hit, Burning Down the House.

Frantz, Weymouth, Harrison, Byrne
Frantz, Weymouth, Harrison, Byrne

One of the two greatest concerts I ever saw was the August 1983 performance of Talking Heads at the Saratoga Performance Arts Center, which someone put online; actually, here’s another recording. It starts with David Byrne by himself on guitar and percussion. He’s joined by Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth, who were married in 1977, on drums and bass, respectively, for a song or two, before Jerry Harrison joins on guitar. That was the core band, but then the additional players are added in; the process was so organic.

This is the same tour from which the classic Jonathan Demme film Stop Making Sense was taken, but this is the complete concert, not just a truncated show.

The album Speaking in Tongues had come out only a couple of months earlier, featuring their only American Top 10 hit, Burning Down the House. LISTEN to the whole album. I always associated that album, along with a few others of that period, as forerunners of the compact disc, for the versions of several songs on the CD, which I got a number of years later, were longer than the versions on the LP, which I had purchased soon after it came out.

The new wave band Tom Tom Club was founded in 1981 by Frantz and Weymouth as a side project. Their big hit Genius of Love [LISTEN], which is in the Talking Heads concert, has been sampled by several artists , including Mariah Carey on her hit single Fantasy.

LISTEN to Psycho Killer from Talking Heads ’77, and the parody Psycho Chicken by The Fools.

 

ABC Wednesday – Round 14

The Lydster, Part 122: The Games People Play

I decided to play Lydia in Yatzhee, and she she beat me the first time out.

I’ve noted that I like to play various games with The Daughter, especially at the point she can play competitively with me. She can play the board game SORRY and Connect Four (VIDEO) straight up, meaning she can beat me as often as I can defeat her.

I had always beaten her in Chinese checkers, and even when I played her recently, she was playing in what I thought was a haphazard way, moving sideways when she could have jumped forward. But then she set up multiple jumps and actually beat me, by a single move.

Didn’t enjoy playing checkers with me, because she didn’t seem to grasp it. Then one day she beat me. No, she CRUSHED me. She still had 10 pieces to my two when I conceded.

I decided to play her in Yatzhee, and she she beat me the first time out. I won the next five games, but then she’s been winning half the time, so it’s worth it for both of us to play.

Memorial Day: revisionist history

Jesus taught us to give comfort to people with dying loved ones. He also gave comfort to the Centurion (Matthew 8).

Almost a year ago, Demeur sent me an article about the history of Memorial Day.

[Historian David] Blight’s award-winning Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (2001) explained how three “overall visions of Civil War memory collided” in the decades after the war.

The first was the emancipationist vision, embodied in African Americans’ remembrances and the politics of Radical Reconstruction, in which the Civil War was understood principally as a war for the destruction of slavery and the liberation of African Americans to achieve full citizenship.

The second was the reconciliationist vision, ostensibly less political, which focused on honoring the dead on both sides, respecting their sacrifice, and the reunion of the country.

The third was the white supremacist vision, which was either openly pro-Confederate or at least despising of Reconstruction as “Black rule” in the South.

Over the late 1800s and the early 1900s, in the context of Jim Crow and the complete subordination of Black political participation, the second and third visions largely combined. The emancipationist version of the Civil War, and the heroic participation of African Americans in their own liberation, was erased from popular culture, the history books and official commemoration.

Interesting. Not surprising, but interesting to read about revisionist history.
***
Last year, when I bewailed what I consider the theological justification for war as anti-Christian, anti-Jesus, and utterly false glorification of war, Chris Honeycutt noted:

I’d say that Memorial Day is 100% a holiday in the real Christian spirit, just like Jesus would want.
Other people make it about celebrating the wars. But it’s really about remembering the soldiers who died.
Everyone who served lost people and had no time to stop and grieve. The war kept coming.
Jesus taught us to give comfort to people with dying loved ones. He also gave comfort to the Centurion (Matthew 8).
So… yeah. Jesus was pretty clear about the war issue. Still think he’d think Memorial Day was a great idea.

I think she might very well be right. Jesus cared for those whose hearts were heavy-laden.

So let us remember our lost ones, even as we redouble our efforts for peace.

Do you know who does really nice Memorial Day posts? Jaquandor. Here’s his post from last year. And here’s a post he did during the last Advent which feels applicable today.
***
The Gun Jumpers.

Frank Oz is 70, tomorrow

Frank Oz directed films such as The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984), Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988), What About Bob? (1991), Housesitter (1992), and In & Out (1997).

Also O for Oz with ABC Wednesday, Round 15:

frank_ozMiss Piggy and Fozzie Bear on The Muppet Show. Cookie Monster, Bert, and Grover in Sesame Street. These were all creatures performed and co-created by Frank Oz, born Frank Richard Oznowicz. He has also performed Sam Eagle and Animal on the Muppet Show, and Yoda in the Star Wars movies.

Sesame Street, which I was too old to watch, but I did anyway; the various Muppet TV shows and movies; and the original Star Wars trilogy have brought me hours of joy.

I’ve indicated my favorite Muppets recently, all originally voiced by the late Jim Henson. But what would Ernie be without Bert? The Pig has added new dimensions to Kermit’s personality. Henson and Oz were almost each other’s alter egos.

Oz directed a few films that I’ve watched and mostly enjoyed, including The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984), Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988), What About Bob? (1991), Housesitter (1992), and In & Out (1997).

Yoda-speak is so distinctive that there is a Yoda-Speak Generator. Actually, more than one. People actually study Yoda’s peculiar subject-verb-object order that Oz captured so well.

There are tons of videos of Frank Oz doing these characters. I picked these two:
Frank Oz at work with Miss Piggy, Roger Moore, and Jim Henson
Peter Gzowski sits down with Frank Oz and Cookie Monster

I also liked hearing from the real Frank Oz.
A Conversation with Frank Oz Pt. 1, which starts with a video montage
Frank Oz speaks at the Jim Henson Memorial

Patti LaBelle is 70

Also used for ABC Wednesday, Round 15. B is for Blue Belles.

pattilabelle_fullPatti LaBelle was born Patricia Holt, in Philadelphia. She formed a group the Blue-Belles, with Nona Hendryx, Sarah Dash, and Cindy Birdsong. The group had a Top Twenty single, “I Sold My Heart to the Junkman”, but it was actually sung by another group. (Most confusing.)

The redubbed Patti LaBelle and her Blue Belles had some minor hits, such as Down the Aisle (The Wedding Song) and You’ll Never Walk Alone. But then Cindy Birdsong left the group to replace Florence Ballard in The Supremes. They ended up musically adrift and got dropped by their record label.

The trio got a new record label, and changed its name to Labelle, with songs that “mixed harder-edged soul music with rock music elements”, to limited success. They had more luck singing with the late Laura Nyro. LISTEN to The Bells, and I Met Him on a Sunday, and You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me and It’s Gonna Take A Miracle.

Their big hit was Lady Marmalade, #1 in 1975. But within two years, the group broke up, and Patti went solo.

While she had a couple hits, notably New Attitude (#17 in 1985) and On My Own (with Michael McDonald, #1 in 1986), she continues to be a working artist, touring regularly, and putting out albums, with some success, especially on the R&B charts inspiring a whole generation, or two, with her voice. She put out a decent Christmas collection that is apparently out of print. She can even sing the alphabet.

Diagnosed with diabetes in 1995, she has been a spokesperson for awareness of the disease. Recently, she commented on the notion of the diva.

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