Ramblin' with Roger

Reasons To Be Cheerful, Part 2

Here’s the second part of that rambling roster of songs that I end up playing more than once at a time. This list is hardly exhaustive, as I probably played some singles to death in my youth. Or later (Ian Dury and the Blockheads’ Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick comes to mind in the “later” category.) Also, I should note that there are some albums I almost never parsed, because they are of a piece: What’s Going On by Marvin Gaye immediately comes to mind. Also, I’ve been picking one per artist, though this doesn’t prevent me from picking a group and a solo artist from that group.

Drinkin’ Wine Spodee-O-Dee-Stick McGhee. Atlantic Rhythm and Blues: 1947-1974 was a seven double-LP set. This song is from 1949. (Incidentally, the box set is now eight CDs.)

White Lines (Don’t Do It)-Melle Mel and Grandmaster Flash. I still have that 12″ from 1983. Love the vocal, love the horns.

Words-the Monkees. When I got a greatest hits album from someone, I had forgotten about this tune with an insistent rhythm.

Cars-Gary Numan. One of the last 45s I ever bought. It’s that wowowowowowo synth before the drum.

For the Love of Money-the O’Jays. Long before Donald Trump co-opted it, I loved this tune. On greatest hits CD.

Love in Them There Hills-the Pointer Sisters. The last song on the eclectic That’s A-Plenty LP, it’s Philly soul. Used to listen to it in the dark.

Do What You Want To-Billy Preston. Starts off a bit slowly but builds up speed. From the That’s the Way God Planned It LP, produced by George Harrison, first song on the album. This does exist digitally, but, unfortunately, not in my collection.

Let’s Go Crazy-Prince. Sometimes, it’s the first song on the Purple Rain LP, other times it’s the seven-minute EP, but from the preaching in the beginning to the guitar solo near the end, one of my favorite songs ever.

A Salty Dog-Procol Harum. The vocal, the sparse instrumentation in the beginning, the drums. From a greatest hits LP.

Crazy Little Thing Called Love-Queen. Rockabilly Queen? From the greatest hits LP.

It’s the End of the World As We Know It-R.E.M. And I feel fine. From the Document CD.

Kicks-Paul Revere & the Raiders. The first anti-drug song. From a greatest hits LP.

I Am Waiting-the Rolling Stones. From the Aftermath LP, near the end. Beautiful chorus, rocking bridge. I like how they change up the vocal near the end.

Anyone Who Had A Heart-Linda Ronstadt. Written by Bacharach and David, and originally done by Dionne Warwick, I think it’s just quite beautiful. From the Winter Light CD.

Jerks on the Loose-the Roches. The last song on the Robert Fripp-produced Keep On Doing LP, it contains a message I repeat when a car tries to beat an ambulance through an intersection, or I witness some other foolishness: “Be on your guard; jerks on the loose.”

At the Zoo-Simon & Garfunkel. The last song on Bookends, another song that I know all the lyrics to. I have a friend in Austin, TX named Carol, who I’ve know most of my life, as we met in kindergarten. I specifically recall that in high school, she HATED this song. Also, Strawberry Fields Forever. (The things the mind recalls.)

Boy In the Bubble-Paul Simon. The first song on the Graceland album. There is also a six-minute version of this that starts with nothing but percussion that I’ve heard, but have never seen in digitized form that I covet.

Rubberband Man-Spinners. OK, a silly song, and even sillier at seven minutes, which I have on some LP, but I like it anyway.

I’ve Got a Line On You-Spirit. Rockin’, doubled guitar, first song on some LP.

East St. Louis Toodle-O-Steely Dan. From some LP, it’s Duke Ellington. As some comics guy put it, ’nuff said.

The Ostrich-Steppenwolf. Talked about this here.

Hot Fun In the Summertime-Sly & the Family Stone. With all the uptempo songs Sly did, it’s this stroll that I kept coming back to. From the Greatest Hits LP.

The Logical Song-Supertramp-Starts with a good bottom, then has great lyrics: “radical, liberal, fanatical, criminal”. The sax puts it over the top. Second song on the LP. The song that actually inspired the posts.

Love Is Like An Itchin’ in My Heart-the Supremes. Like many Motown tunes, lives on the bottom. A greatest hits CD I own has an extra 20 glorious seconds.

Take Me To the River-Talking Heads. I can’t sing like my cousin, Al Green. But if I ever did karaoke, and I never plan to, it would likely be this version I’d try to emulate.

Shower the People-James Taylor. It was the bass vocal harmonization in the latter stages of the song I liked to sing along with. First on some Warner Brothers Loss Leaders LP.

I Can’t Get Next to You-the Temptations. Producer Barrett Strong swiped this multi-lead vocal model from Sly Stone (so did Prince, on 1999, e.g.), and it’s never better than on this.

It’s For You-Three Dog Night. This cover of a song Lennon & McCartney gave away (to Cilla Black, I think). It starts a cappella, then has an instrumental bridge, then back to vocals only. When the instruments return, one can tell that the vocals are ever so slightly flat. I kept playing it, hoping somehow that I could will the pitch up. From their first, and best, LP.

Wilbury Twist-Traveling Wilburys. I’ve almost hurt myself following the detailed instructions. The shared vocals give it a particularly goofy flavor.

When Love Comes To Town-U2. I’ve hit the replay button so often, I can tell it’s the 12th track on Rattle and Hum AND on the best of album, 1980-1990. Start with that insistent drum start, B.B. King’s guitar playing. And while Bono’s vocals are fine, it’s B.B.’s that nail this song for me.

As-Stevie Wonder. The penultimate tune on Songs In the Key of Life, I was particularly taken by the totally different vocal on the “preach” section: “We all know sometimes life’s hates and troubles…”

When You Dance, I Can Really Love-Neil Young. Unofficially, a theme song for a college romance. From the After the Gold Rush LP, second side somewhere.

ROG

Left-handed QUESTIONS

Communist, ’cause I’m left-handed.
That’s the hand I use, well, never mind!-Paul Simon.

Anyway, my wife is left-handed, my sister Leslie, whose birthday is next week, is left-handed, and it may be surprising to find out that Lefty Brown, whose birthday is today, is not only political left-of-center and from the left coast of the US, but also left-handed, as well. Since it’s the middle of summer, and since he’s stolen questions from me, I thought I’d return the favor:

1. (From March 10, 2006): What was your favorite fast food happy meal or movie tie-in product growing up? Bonus points if you still have the product. Extra bonus points if you didn’t purchase said product on eBay.

2. (From April 7, 2006): Who are your top five favorite dead rock stars/icons?

3. (From April 21, 2006): If there is intelligent life on other planets, do you think they would have similar social structures (i.e. governments, houses of worship, entertainment)? As a follow-up what do you think a popular alien name would be?

BONUS QUESTION: Apparently, something significant is happening today in Harry Potter land. Were you staked out at the bookstore at midnight or do you say, Hairy who? From About.com: “Seriously, I read an article yesterday about this couple that will be leaving their wedding reception and going straight to the bookstore to get their copy of Harry Potter. Now, I’m no expert or anything, but I’m pretty sure that this is not what you’re supposed to be doing on your wedding night.”

Which reminds me: last Saturday, these two young women, probably of South Asian ancestry (based on looks, dress, and language) were walking down my street. One had a T-shirt on with a man making a clay pot. The shirt read – and I swear to Rudy this is true – Hari Potter.
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Bush colonoscopy leaves Cheney in charge for a couple hours today. Anything I could add would be too obvious.
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If Barry Bonds hits his record-setting* homers this week, it’d be interesting if he hit #755 in Milwaukee this weekend, where Hank Aaron started (with the Braves) and ended (with the Brewers) his career, then hit #756 sometime between Monday and Thursday in San Francisco against the Atlanta Braves, Aaron’s team when he hit #715, breaking Babe Ruth’s record. Incidentally, Hank Aaron hit #755 and last on July 20, 1975.

Can Transformers do THIS?

ROG

Underplayed Vinyl: Santana

Although, like many folks , I first became aware of Santana from their stirring performance of their debut-album closer “Soul Sacrifice” at Woodstock, (a movie, BTW, I sat through twice in the movie theater)

(note: brief nudity)

it was the second album, Abraxas that really sold me on the group.
1. Singing Winds, Crying Beasts
2. Black Magic Woman/Gypsy Queen

3. Oye Como Va

4. Incident At Neshabur
5. Se A Cabo
6. Mother’s Daughter
7. Samba Pa Ti

8. Hope You’re Feeling Better
9. El Nicoya

I’ve picked up about a dozen albums by Santana, including Santana III, Caravanserai and Love Devotion Surrender in the 1970s, Zebop! and Havana Moon in the 1980s, and a couple during his commercial resurgence. But none have brought me the unbridled joy of this album.

A couple notes: there are several Santana greatest hits compilations. Do NOT get the 1974 Greatest Hits album, which contains Black Magic Woman WITHOUT the segued Gypsy Queen. It’s like playing the Beatles’ Abbey Road and stopping before “The End”.

While I don’t love the more recent music as I did the earlier stuff, I get the feeling that Carlos Santana, the man, is not only a talented musician but a really decent man, as this interview suggests.

If you happen to be in Austin, TX, tonight, there’s a tribute concert to note Carlos Santana’s 60th birthday.

ROG

Giving Credit Where Credit Isn’t Due

I canceled a credit card with a $25,000 line of credit this week. It was a card I didn’t use much anyway for which I failed to make a $11.25 payment on time, missing it by a couple days. I was charged a $15 late fee, which is actually LESS than some of the usurious charges on some cards: $25, $29, $35, even $39. The customer service rep was very helpful, but, surprisingly, she did not ask why I was canceling, trying to keep me as a customer, which is usually the case.

Now, my available credit on my cards is only twice my gross income, which is still absurd. (This does not count any credit cards involving my wife.)

I started collecting credit cards in the 1980s. For a while after college, I had none. Then I got one from Sears (first purchase: a clock-radio), which at the time was considered easy to get. Then I’d get any and every card they’d give me, as long as I didn’t have to pay an annual fee. It became a game. More than once, I’d get a card free for six months, then cancel it; as often as not, when I called, they agreed to waive the fee for another year; you can often negotiate with these folks.

But now that I care about things such as credit scores (my most current one was 751, whatever that means), I’ve taken the advice of pieces like this and this and this.

ROG

July Ramblin’

O.K., I’m finally convinced. I listened to a lengthy (50+ minute) segment of Bill Moyers’ Journal from July 13, with “Constitutional scholar Bruce Fein, who wrote the first article of impeachment against President Bill Clinton, and THE NATION’s John Nichols, author of THE GENIUS OF IMPEACHMENT.” The conservative and the liberal were practically tripping over each other making the case for impeachment of both President Bush and Vice-President Cheney. But it wasn’t to be punitive; it was so that whoever is President on January 20, 2009 won’t feel they have the “monarchist” authority this administration has. They chastise both Congress (the current one as well as the ones since 2001) and the press for not playing their proper roles in the balance of power. The thing that was most helpful for me was their counterpoint to the argument that the country can’t afford another impeachment proceeding after the Clinton one; it appears that the country cannot afford not to.

Interestingly, I read about it first, not in the Huffington Post or even the knowledgeable Mark Evanier. Rather, I saw it first in Steve Gerber’s blog. Gerber is a comic book writer of some note, probably best known by the general public for Howard the Duck, and he wrote the second blog I ever read, after Fred Hembeck’s, and was the final inspiration for me starting my blog less than a month after he started his.

Not so incidentally, Steve’s been having some medical issues; I wish him well.
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Jay Kinney unearths a 1952 T-Man comic that explains the Bush-Cheney policy in the Middle East. (Thanks, Dan.)
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You know how there are people around you, and you don’t even know their names, then they’re gone. Someone on the floor in which I worked died last week. I didn’t recognize the name of Jane Neale, but when I saw the pictures, I said, “Oh, her!” She was always quite pleasant to me. My condolences to her family, friends and colleagues.
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How racism hurts — literally. This was a story in the July 15, 2007 Boston Globe by Madeline Drexler that the Wall Street Journal found important enough to excerpt this week. Essentially, the premise is that dealing with discrimination makes one physically sick.
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Evanier wanted to know whether it was worth saving an L.A.-based Felix the Cat. I say yes; it could become iconic, like Albany’s RCA dog, Nipper.
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Bill Geist is getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame next year. I found that very funny because, back in January, he did a story for CBS Sunday Morning exploring what it would take to get on the Walk. He’ll be joining such pikers as actress Angela Bassett, Hemby’s friend Stan Lee[Dec. 28], and the late George Harrison.
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Just How Long Does the Average Baseball Career Last?
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I’m a movie star!
OK, I’m not.
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Every month in which there is a staff birthday, our group has a little party, and this week, we had strawberry shortcake. This led to a conversation about a product called Dream Whip Whipped Topping Mix. Long before Cool Whip, or that stuff in the aerosol can, there was this powdery stuff to which you added milk and whipped. I hadn’t seen it in a while and wondered if it was still being made, and it is, at least in Canada. But what I don’t understand is why it’s available on Amazon (5.2-Ounce Boxes-Pack of 6), “Better Together” with the Pixar movie Cars (Widescreen Edition) DVD.
I also opined that, even as a kid, SpaghettiOs were vile, and this led to a discussion of people defending them. Maybe they’ve changed the formulas, but when I was (trying not to be) eating them, the sauce tasted like watery tomato soup.

ROG