Beatles Island Songs, 203-194

Unfortunately, I never heard this song much, since I didn’t have Introducing the Beatles on Vee-Jay until much later and it never showed up on an American Capitol album until nearly a decade after the group broke up.


The rules of engagement

203 Across the Universe from Let It Be. One of the Beatles songs performed much better by other people, but I never warmed up to the Lennon version.
202 Sie Liebt Dich, the German version of “She Loves You”. Quaint, but I’ll opt for the English version.
201 Till There Was You. My antipathy toward this song is not the Beatles’ fault. This is from With the Beatles (UK) and Meet the Beatles (US). WITH has six cover versions, including five rhythm and blues tunes, but MEET has only one, this tune from The Music Man. I was really annoyed with Capitol Records by this choice, and the song became the flashpoint of my disdain.
200 Everybody’s Trying to Be My Baby Beatles for Sale (UK), Beatles ’65 (US). Never thought much of George’s vocals on this Carl Perkins song.
199 You Know My Name (Look Up the Number), the B-side of the Let It Be single. This is a comedy song, funny in parts, but ultimately unsustainable.
198 Mean Mr. Mustard from Abbey Road. It’s from the medley, and I like it, but it’s 48 seconds.
197 Boys from Please Please Me (US), Introducing the Beatles/The Early Beatles (US). this is a Shirelles’ tune and Ringo sounds uncomfortable with the gender switch; it just doesn’t work for me.
196 Maxwell’s Silver Hammer from Abbey Road. Too silly. And Steve Martin’s version in my head doesn’t help.
195 There’s a Place Please Please Me (UK), Introducing the Beatles (US). Unfortunately, I never heard this song much, since I didn’t have Introducing the Beatles on Vee-Jay until much later and it never showed up on an American Capitol album until nearly a decade after the group broke up. Besides, it sounds a little out of tune.
194 Long, Long, Long from the white album. An underrecorded, seemingly unfocused Harrison tune.
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The Beatles are on iTunes. This is great for the proliferation of the music, but having purchased it several times already, it affects me personally not a whit. Well, unless they release NEW music…
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HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MOM!

R is for Redskins

I also puzzled over the Major League baseball team, the Cleveland Indians, less over the name, and more over what I consider the bizarre caricature of Chief Wahoo.



It’s football season in America – I mean, using the ball to the left, NOT the ball to the right.
When I was growing up, my father and I would watch, on our local CBS-TV affiliate, all the games of the New York Giants of the National Football League, who actually played in New York, not New Jersey, at the time. Their main rivals were, and are, the Philadelphia Eagles, the (hated) Dallas Cowboys, and the Washington Redskins. Even then, I found the nickname of the Washington team peculiar. Most teams were named for animals – Lions (Detroit NFL) and Tigers (Detroit baseball) and Bears (Chicago NFL), e.g. The ones that were named for people tended to be about geography (New York Yankees-baseball) or occupations (Pittsburgh’s baseball Pirates and NFL Steelers). “Redskins” seemed somehow unseemly, and this was long before I’d ever heard the pejorative term “politically correct.”

So, I was a little surprised to read here and elsewhere that the team’s owner had meant it as an honorific. This writer talks about the term’s historical usage, going back to the writings of American novelist James Fenimore Cooper, whose “use of redskin as a Native American in-group term was entirely authentic, reflecting both the accurate perception of the Indian self-image and the evolving respect among whites for the Indians’ distinct cultural perspective, whatever its prospects. The descent of this word into obloquy is a phenomenon of more recent times.”

Nevertheless, for some time, it has been the source of controversy, as American Indian Sports Team Mascots notes. In fact, only last year, the US Supreme Court ruled that the Washington Redskins can keep the team name. “Seven native Americans had sued to force the Washington Redskins to change the team name,” but the Court “let stand a ruling that their challenge came too late.” still, this article explains the issue well.

I also puzzled over the Major League baseball team, the Cleveland Indians, less over the name, and more over what I consider the bizarre caricature of Chief Wahoo. Here’s an article about the Indians’ mascot.

I suppose the Atlanta Braves baseball team name bugs me less than the incessant use of the tomahawk chop, more obnoxious when I heard it in Fulton County Stadium in 1995 than the video suggests.

And what of the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame? This does not seem to be an issue. Then again, everyone’s Irish in America, especially in March.

What thinkest thou?

ABC Wednesday – Round 7

The Meme with the Red Tattoo

Beatles, Joni Mitchell, Johnny Cash, Beach Boys, Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder


This is a music meme – I LOVE music memes, stolen from SamuraiFrog:

First album you bought – Beatles VI.
Last album you bought – Laura Nyro and Labelle – Gonna Take a Miracle.
Favourite debut album – Boston. Or America.
First album you listened to all the way through – the movie soundtrack to West Side Story, probably.
Last album you listened to – Lyle Lovett – It’s Not Big, It’s Large.
Favourite album of 60s – Beatles – Revolver. Or Beach Boys – Pet Sounds.
Favourite album artwork – Beatles – Sgt. Pepper. Or Beatles – With the Beatles, which has that same iconic picture as Meet the Beatles in the US
Most underrated album – Beach Boys – Sunflower.
Worst album you own – The Beatles at the Star Club in Hamburg. A really lousy recording.
Best album to dance to – a compilation called Sun Splashin’.
Favourite album of 70s – Paul Simon – Still Crazy After All These Years.
Album you like, but you never thought you would – there are two that stick out because friends hated them: Emmylou Harris – Wrecking Ball, and Joni Mitchell – The Hissing of Summer Lawns.
Most overrated album – I can go with Radiohead – OK Computer.
Best album to cheer you up – – any of the early 1970s Stevie Wonder.
Most disappointing follow-up album – Chicago at Carnegie Hall, bloated four-album set.
Favourite album of 80s – Talking Heads – Speaking in Tongues, largely because I saw the group on that tour at SPAC.
Best album to relax you – Beach Boys – Pet Sounds.
Favourite second album – Meet the Beatles, assuming that Introducing the Beatles was first.
Most listened to album – This is difficult because of the different US and British iterations of Beatles albums. Possibly Sgt. Pepper. Or Pet Sounds. Or Still Crazy.
Favourite album of 90s – Johnny Cash – Unchained.
Last album you recommended to somebody – Johnny Cash’s third American album.
Last album you downloaded – I don’t remember, but it was an artist I had never heard of.
Most pleasing follow-up album – Paul Simon – There Goes Rhymin’ Simon.
Favourite album of 00s – Johnny Cash’s fourth American album.
Favourite third album – The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Electric Ladyland.
Favourite fourth album – Joni Mitchell – Blue.
Favourite album of 10s* (so far) – Bettye Lavette – Interpretations: The British Rock Songbook
Favourite album of all time – probably Revolver, UK version.

* I take the possibly unpopular position that while 2000 was (obviously) the last year of the 20th century, it was also the first year of the 00s; no rule that the decade markers and the century markers need to coincide, which I explained here. So the 10s begin in 2010 (or 1910), the 20s in 2020 (or 1920), etc.

 

30 Day Challenge – Day 29: Somewhere You Want To Visit

Now the Girlfriend said, if I’m not going to New Orleans, which I had pitched and was rejected, why not try to go to Hawai’i with her?

I always wanted to go to Paris, and after seeing these pictures from Luxembourg daily, I’m practically packed. Ah, but what am I to make of the travel alert to Europe over terrorism? At least it’s not a travel warning, such as what exists in Mexico.

Domestically, the place I most want to go is Hawai’i. There’s a story about that. Back in 1995, when I was going out with The Girlfriend, who eventually became The Wife, she was working for an insurance company. She had achieved some significant designation in the industry and had won a free trip for two to the 50th state. Did I want to go? Well, of course, I did, except…

At the very same time, there was a work trip to New Orleans. Now my job in the organization at the time was to do liaison work with other SBDCs and going to the ASBDC conference fit in with that. I SHOULD be going on this trip. Unfortunately, we had gotten a new boss about a year earlier, and she was prone to pick her favorites to travel. I was not one of her favorites; none of the three men were, and only about half the women she liked. So she decided that only she and her most favorite would go to New Orleans because the office would otherwise be short-staffed.

Now the Girlfriend said, if I’m not going to New Orleans, which I had pitched and was rejected, why not try to go to Hawai’i with her? Because I knew she’d reject that too since the office would still be shorthanded.

Then, at the last minute, the boss decided that I COULD go to New Orleans. This was not her being magnanimous. It was her realizing that they had heavy equipment to schlep on and off the plane and that they needed someone strong to do that, and I was elected.

Knowing that boss as I did, I firmly believed that if I had pitched going to Hawai’i, I would have likely have gone neither there OR to New Orleans.

I don’t think The Girlfriend truly understood this as not a rejection of her, but a realization of what was possible. I believe this incident played into us breaking up about six months later. Obviously, we’ve overcome it, but going to Hawai’i with her now would be splendid.

Name Brand QUESTION

I do tend to by the name brand because of an unfortunate incident of buying an oat ceral that approximated the taste of cardboard.


I try hard to periodically test my notions about things that I believe, even those that are experientially based. So a couple of weeks ago, I had a scoop of store-brand vanilla ice cream; it was awful. It was so bad, in fact, that I used some chocolate sauce to drown the flavor. Now there is a number of brands that I find acceptable, but most store brands just don’t taste that good to me.

A few years ago, I had a bad cold, and I bought the generic equivalent version of Vicks NyQuil. It was the most vile-tasting thing I had ever consumed. Not that Nyquil is exactly yummy, but it isn’t bitter. (And I hate using NyQuil; I feel as though I were stoned for about four hours after I get up.)

There are generic equivalents to Cheerios cereal that are acceptable, but I do tend to buy the name brand because of an unfortunate incident of buying an oat cereal that approximated the taste of cardboard.

My wife is totally off the generics for dishwashing.

What items do YOU buy where only the brand name, not the generic equivalent, will do?
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Oh, and, off-topic, as I’m wont to be: What album cover does this remind you of?

 

Ramblin' with Roger
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