Random People with Birthdays on March 7

1953 Roger Green, librarian, blogger

Pictured: Franco Harris and Lynn Swann (with Terry Bradshaw), Hall of Famers all, from the 1970s Pittsburgh Steelers

1980 Laura Prepon, actress
1974 Jenna Fisher, actress
1970 Rachel Weisz, actress
1968 Jeff Kent, baseball infielder
1968 Ricky Proehl, NFL wide receiver
1967 Zheng Haixia, WNBA center (Los Angeles Sparks)
1966 Jeff Feagles, NFL punter
1966 Mel Rojas, baseball pitcher
1965 Steve Beuerlein, NFL quarterback
1964 Wanda Sykes, comedian
1962 Taylor Dayne, singer
1961 Mary Beth Evans, actress
1960 Ivan Lendl, tennis pro
1960 Joe Carter, baseball outfielder
1954 Matt Frenette, rock drummer ( Loverboy)
1953 Roger Green, librarian, blogger
1952 Ernie Isley, vocalist and guitarist
1952 Lynn Swann, NFL receiver
1950 Franco Harris, NFL fullback
1946 Matthew Fisher, rock keyboardist (Procol Harum)
1946 Peter Wolf, rock singer (J Geils Band)
1945 John Heard, actor
1944 Townes Van Zandt, musician
1943 Chris White, rock bassist (Zombies)
1942 Michael Eisner, former Disney honcho
1942 Tammy Faye Bakker, television personality
1940 Daniel J. Travanti, actor (Hill St. Blues)
1934 King Curtis, rocker
1934 Willard Scott, weather forecaster
1930 James Broderick, actor
1930 Lord Snowdon, Anthony Armstrong-Jones, photographer
1908 Anna Magnani, actress,
1875 Maurice Joseph Ravel, composer (Bolero)
1849 Luther Burbank, horticulturist
1659 Henry Purcell, organist/composer

H is for Help!, the Beatles albums

In the United States, Help! really was a SOUNDTRACK album. So the songs on the first side of the UK LP were spread onto the two sides, augmented by movie instruments written or arranged by Ken Thorne.

Help! was the second Beatles movie, after A Hard Day’s Night, but the first one I saw. When I watched it in a movie theater, back in 1965, I loved it! Viewing it again in 2009 on TV, with the Daughter, it really didn’t hold up, but it was nevertheless enjoyable for the music if nothing else. Here is the trailer to the 2007 video release. And here or here or here is the 90-minute film, in its entirety, or it was there, as of this posting.

But what I really wanted to talk about is the album. Or to be more precise the albums. In Great Britain, and other civilised places in the world, when the LP came out in 1965, the playlist was based on the wishes of the group, and looked like this:

Side one

1. Help!
2. The Night Before
3. You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away
4. I Need You
5. Another Girl
6. You’re Going to Lose That Girl
7. Ticket to Ride

Side two

1. Act Naturally
2. It’s Only Love
3. You Like Me Too Much
4. Tell Me What You See
5. I’ve Just Seen a Face
6. Yesterday
7. Dizzy Miss Lizzy

You can find the individual songs, I’m sure, on YouTube. Here is the whole album.

But in the United States, Help! really was a SOUNDTRACK album. So the songs on the first side of the UK LP were spread onto the two sides, augmented by movie instruments written or arranged by Ken Thorne.

Side one

1. Help! (preceded by a James Bondian instrumental intro)
2. The Night Before
3. From Me to You Fantasy (Lennon–McCartney; arranged by Thorne)
4. You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away
5. I Need You
6. In the Tyrol

Side two

1. Another Girl
2. Another Hard Day’s Night (Lennon–McCartney; arranged by Thorne)
3. Ticket to Ride
4. Medley: The Bitter End/You Can’t Do That (Thorne/Lennon–McCartney; arranged by Thorne)
5. You’re Going to Lose That Girl
6. The Chase

American ears, at least those of a certain age, had gotten used to a particular order of their songs, and while, for most albums, one could take the CDs (based on the British order) and rearrange the songs to suit our aural needs, there were those five instrumentals on the US Help! album that for a long time weren’t digitally available elsewhere. It was ALMOST reason enough to buy The Capitol Albums, Volume 2, which contains The Early Beatles, Beatles VI, the US version of Help! (with the instrumentals) and the US version of Rubber Soul.

What happened to the seven songs on Side 2 of the UK album? You Like Me Too Much and Tell Me What You See, rejected for the movie, ended up on Beatles VI, as did Dizzy Miss Lizzie. I’ve Just Seen a Face and It’s Only Love start Sides 1 and 2, respectively of the US Rubber Soul album; the US and UK Rubber Soul album have 10 common songs, with the other four UK songs ending up on the US Yesterday and Today. Yesterday and Act Naturally from UK Help also ended up on Y&T, which didn’t exist in the UK.

From Wikipedia: A few songs that were intended for the film were not used… because of The Beatles’ suggestions. Lennon and McCartney wrote If You’ve Got Trouble for Ringo Starr to sing, but the song was rejected…That Means a Lot was written for the film, but The Beatles were not satisfied with their performance of the song and they gave it to P.J. Proby, who released it as a single [The linked versions are from Beatles Anthology 2.]…Yes, It Is ended up being released as the B-side of Ticket to Ride and was also on Beatles VI.

ABC Wednesday – Round 10

40 Years Ago: March 5, 1972 – did not see that coming

It was a surprise birthday party for me!

In the Scudder Hall dorm, at the State University College of New Paltz, my room was B-2. I had a roommate named Ron, who was a graduate student; an odd pairing, a freshman and someone doing post-graduate work. But he was a pretty easy-going guy, and I guess I didn’t drive him too crazy.

It was surprising, though, that one day, Ron decided that we really needed to thoroughly clean the room. I didn’t think it looked that bad, but surely I would not have been the gold standard for that kind of thing.

A couple of days later, which was a Sunday, my friend Uthaclena was over at one of the dining halls playing billiards. I must admit here that 1) I love playing pool, but in spite of that, 2) I’ve never gotten very good at it.

After a time, he and I went back to my dorm room. If you have had glasses, you know how it was when it’s a bit cool out, then you walk into a room that’s a bit warmer? Right – the glasses steam up. So I walk into my room, and there are my girlfriend, the Okie (I think – I’m having trouble seeing), and our friend Alice, Ron of course, but wait? Is that my father, mother, and sisters? And who is THAT guy? (It turned out to be the quasi-boyfriend of one of my sisters.) And possibly others, though it was a small room.

It was a surprise birthday party for me! My birthday wasn’t for a couple of days, and so it caught me unawares. But it was great. I was feeling a bit melancholy, my first birthday away from home. And, more than that, they brought a lot of Kentucky Fried Chicken ((back when they called it that), and there was enough left over for me to have for a couple more meals.

The event had a profound impact on me. I have subsequently helped pull off a number of surprise birthday parties over the years. Of course, I can still be surprised myself; the very next year, my parents, coordinating with the Okie, puled off another event; I think we went out to dinner. And much more recently, Uthaclena and his wife plotted with my wife to surprise me.

One last thing about the plan two score ago: my father called our dorm room one morning at 7 a.m. Ron answered the phone, and my father revealed the plan. But even as I lay on my bed half-awake, Ron never let on who he was talking to. But it DID lead to a clean dorm room.

Requiem of the Week: John Rutter

Go to The John Rutter YouTube channel.

 

The Requiem by British composer John Rutter (b. 1945) was completed and first performed in 1985. An orchestra, including a harp, accompanies the choir. My church choir at the time performed this perhaps a decade after its premiere, so it was still a rather new piece.

1. Requiem aeternam. Includes the Introit from the Tridentine Requiem Mass and the Kyrie. It starts off so slowly that you may not realize it has begun. But it moves from minor key to major, making it hopeful.

2. Out of the deep. Based on Psalm 130, it may be my favorite piece in the requiem. “It contains a prominent cello solo written in C minor.” Moreover, I think, if it were rearranged, it could almost be a blues piece.

3. Pie Jesu. A motet, primarily a soprano solo, “with only slight involvement of the chorus echoing the words ‘Dona eis requiem, Dona eis sempiternam requiem'”.

4. Sanctus – Benedictus. A “bright, lively, and exclamatory movement which is brightly orchestrated with bells, flute, and oboe and occasional timpani recalling the passage in Old Testament scripture in Isaiah chapter 6, and the worship of the six-winged seraphim in the heavenly throne-room of God.” Sonically, it almost sounds Christmasy.

5. Agnus Dei – as often in requiems, a pleading. Quite stirring musically, especially as it crescendoes.

6. The Lord is my shepherd. A moving rendition of Psalm 23. This “was originally written in 1976 as a separate anthem,” and does stand alone. Our choir performed it as such a couple of times.

7. Lux aeterna. Includes “words from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer Burial Service…and the communion chant from the Tridentine Requiem Mass.” A suitable ending.

The work lasts about 40 minutes.

I know the rap on the composer: “Rutter… is…hard to take seriously, because of the way in which his sheer technical facility or versatility leads to a superficial, unstable crossover style which is neither quite classical not pop, and which tends towards mawkish sentimentality in his sugarily-harmonised and orchestrated melodies.” That may be true of some of his other pieces, but I think this one works well.

Here is a recording of Requiem with Orchestra by St. Matthew’s Choir of Ealing. Nope, scratch that: with the Cambridge Singers and Aurora Orchestra.

Go to The John Rutter YouTube channel – search for Requiem for Rutter’s take on this piece.

QUESTION: What is your Third Place?

For budgetary reasons, the main library now closes at 6 p.m. on Thursday nights, and none of the branches are open either.

Since this is 3/3, no matter whether you’re a 3 March person or a March 3 individual, I thought I’d ask what your third place is. The third place is a term used in the concept of community building to refer to social surroundings separate from the two usual social environments of home and the workplace.

My third place – shockingly! -is the Albany Public Library. That’s where I tend to go when I’m waiting. If I’m finished with my dentist appointment downtown, but the next bus out to Corporate Woods doesn’t come for a half-hour, I’ll go to the library, e.g.

But my third place schedule has been severely disrupted. My favorite time to go to the library was on Thursday nights, after work and before 7:30 choir rehearsal; I would get quite a bit of blogging done there on the computers, maybe a couple of pieces. But, for budgetary reasons, the main library now closes at 6 p.m. on Thursday nights, and none of the branches are open that evening either. I’ve stolenborrowed my daughter’s little pink laptop and gone to a Starbucks one Thursday evening and another coffee shop on Lark Street in Albany another, but it’s just not the same.

Do you have a third place?

Graphic from MCHABIB.com.

Ramblin' with Roger
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