Ramblin' with Roger

Cyndi Lauper and Colin Hay turn 70

Who Can It Be Now

Cyndi Lauper (b June 22nd) received the Grammy for Best New Artist in 1984. Her debut album She’s So Unusual (1983) got to #4 on the Billboard charts and spawned five Top 30 hits, four in the Top Five. I own this album.

Her follow-up album True Colors (1986) generated three Top 12 songs, two of which were Top 3. I never got this one.

In fact, I essentially lost track of her career until my wife bought me her 2003 CD, At Last, a decent covers album.

Cyndi composed music and lyrics for the Broadway musical Kinky Boots, based on the 2006 film; Harvey Fierstein wrote the book. It opened on Broadway in April 2013. The musical received 13 nominations, winning six, including Best Musical and Best Actor. She won the award for Best Original Score, the first woman to win solo in this category. The show had a six-year run with 2,507 regular performances before ending its Broadway run in April 2019.

Activist

She was nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2023. She was #2 after George Michael in the fan vote but did not get in. When Billboard had a readers’ poll of who was snubbed among those on the ballot, more than half picked her. (I checked Warren Zevon.)

Here’s her website. In October 2022, she noted that she had started her “‘Girls Just Want To Have Fundamental Rights’ Fund, which was formed to financially support women’s issues in an inclusive way.”

She appeared in an episode of Finding Your Roots this season. Here’s a segment about her ancestors playing a part in a Swiss peasant rebellion

The photograph was from 2014 when “LGBT youth advocate Cyndi Lauper traveled to Washington, D.C., on Oct. 22 to commemorate the 40th Anniversary of the Runaway and Homeless Youth Act.”

I often see her in TV commercials plugging a product to treat her psoriasis.

Here is a 2023 THR interview. “Cyndi Lauper on New Documentary, LGBTQ Fans and Not Loving Her First Recording of ‘Girls Just Want to Have Fun’: ‘It Was Like Yawn and Boring'”

Her hits

Girls Just Want To Have Fun, #2 pop for two weeks in 1984

Time After Time, #1 for two weeks pop, #1 for three weeks adult contemporary in 1984

She Bop, #3 pop for three weeks in 1984

All Through The Night, #5 pop, #4 AC in 1984

Money Changes Everything, #27 pop in 1985

The Goonies ‘R’ Good Enough, #10 pop in 1985

True Colors, #1 for two weeks pop, #5 AC in 1986

Change of Heart, #3 in 1987

At Last

Everybody Say Yeah from the Broadway Cast Album of Kinky Boots

Men At Work

I have two albums by the Australian group Men at Work, the quintet featuring Colin Hay (b. June 29th) on vocals and guitar. Business as Usual (1982) was #1 on the Billboard album charts for fifteen weeks. Cargo (1983) reached #3 for five weeks. The group won the Best New Artist Grammy in 1983.

They broke up between 1986 and 1996, then split again in 2002, though Hay and Greg Ham played as MaW with guest musicians.

As I noted back in 2012 and Arthur mentioned more recently, “In June 2009, the band was sued for copyright infringement, the allegation being that the flute part was lifted from a 1932 Australian song called ‘Kookaburra.'”

(This is sad: “Ham took the verdict particularly hard, feeling responsible for having performed the flute riff at the centre of the lawsuit and worried that he would only be remembered for copying someone else’s music, resulting in depression and anxiety. Ham’s body was found in his home on 19 April 2012 after he suffered a fatal heart attack at age 58.” Here’s a brief video showing the comparisons. )

But Men at Work founder Hay has continued as a solo musician, putting on albums and tracks on movie soundtracks and television programs. I know him best from his three appearances on the sitcom Scrubs. Hay has been a member of Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band.

Their hits

Who Can It Be Now, #1 pop in 1982

Down Under, #1 pop for four weeks, #13 AC in 1982

Overkill, #3 pop, #6 AC in 1983

It’s A Mistake, #6 pop, #10 AC in 1983

Overkill – Colin Hay on Scrubs (2002)

Juluka

One other notable musician was born in June 1953. Johnny Clegg (b. June 7th) was a “South African musician, singer-songwriter, dancer, anthropologist, and anti-apartheid activist. ” His Wikipedia page notes that he kept forming interracial bands in apartheid South Africa, including Juluka and Savuka.

He had two albums with Savuka to reach the lower rungs of the Billboard charts, Shadow Man (#155 in 1988) and Cruel, Crazy Beautiful World (#123 in 1990).

Johnny Clegg was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2015, ultimately leading to his death on 16 July 2019.

Scatterlings of Africa – Juluka, #106 in 1983, which also appeared on the Rain Man soundtrack (1988)

Dela – used in the film George of the Jungle

Life Is A Magic Thing – used in the film FernGully: The Last Rainforest

Great Heart

Asimbonanga (live), dedicated to Nelson Mandela

Deborah and Cyrille get married!

a chateau

May 19: Deborah and Cyrille are getting married today! After my wife and I eat breakfast, we check out of our second hotel on this trip. We drive from Auray to Erdeven and park in the lot of Cyrille’s company.

Walking to the town hall and church, the fact that we had been there before was helpful to other guests. We were told to be there at 10 a.m. for the 10:30 civil ceremony. Unsurprisingly, given how late she must have gone to bed and the congestion around her apartment, she was about ten minutes late.

The ceremony, officiated by a woman wearing a tricolor sash, was all in French, but I got the gist.

Then we walked a short distance to the church. And by short, I’ve walked farther from a parking space to a supermarket.

The service was in French and English and laid out in a 40-page booklet—the marriage celebration, followed by readings, including Psalm 67 and John 15:9-12. I discovered a typo in the version I had seen on May 8, which I noted to Deborah, but I doubt anyone else noticed. Then more blessings of the marriage, the prayers, and the peace.

Rendered redundant

Then a German couple, my wife and I got up and went to the rear of the church to bring up the Holy Communion elements. They weren’t there. In retrospect, I think the priests brought them forward beforehand because the church service started late. As the German woman put it, “We are unemployed.”

One of Deborah’s surprises for Cyrille was getting a gospel group from Rennes to sing. They performed Amazing Grace at the beginning, Let Us Break Bread before communion, Down To The River To Pray before the distribution of the elements, and Oh, Happy Day at the end, with one of the priests dancing in the aisles.

Parade

After the service, two Breton sonneurs – traditional music players – led us in a procession through the village. There was a reception where I engaged in wonderful conversations, including with Deborah’s two adult children and their significant others.

We were all directed to a castle, le Château de Trédion, about 45 minutes away. My wife and I realized we had time to check into the nearby B&B where we stayed that night.

We returned at 16:30 and listened to Jérémy Simon and his accordion/keyboards/horn jazz trio. They were surprisingly good.

There were cocktails at 18:00 while photos were taken. Dinner was supposed to be at 20:00, though it was late; I wasn’t terribly hungry with all the hors d’oeuvres. We had a magician that came from table to table doing card tricks or something involving fire; we got the tamer offering, involving the fake card shuffle, which Mark Evanier subsequently linked to here.

Talk

Dancing “til dawn” was supposed to start at 22:00; not even close. Speechifying was still going on at 22:45, including by the groom’s 87-year-old father, in French and translated by a woman from Ireland I had met.

. Later, we learned the dancing didn’t begin until one in the morning. We had to go. Specifically, my wife, who was driving, had to depart before she got too tired to move. We said our goodbyes to Deborah’s kids; the folks at our table, including Ruth and Vernita, whom I had met in the 1970s; and finally, the bride and groom.

However, we did stay for the address by Deborah’s friend Igor in English and translated by Deborah’s son. It was very accurate. I will say cryptically that we would not have come if Deborah hadn’t asked.

We would miss the wedding cake and the next day’s crepes event because we needed to return to Paris to take a plane home. Our time was too short. Still, it was worth the effort.

We went to the B&B and crashed.

22 gallons, and bad air

SCOTUS surprises

blood Here’s a day in the life, in this case, Wednesday, June 7, 2023. Among other things, it was the second day of bad air.

My computer has been wonky. I would click on Google Chrome. Then, unexpectedly, it would shut down. I used Microsoft Bing; the same thing. My computer’s too full. I have no photos or music. I don’t know what to change, except I could offload some downloads. So I did, a tedious process that I attacked throughout the day.

I had signed up to donate blood at Albany High School. According to the American Red Cross, this would be my 176th donation, making it 22 gallons.

I walked to the school. Donations are now collected in the new library, which is much better than getting lost leaving the gymnasium. Something I don’t think I admitted to in this blog: I’m a competitive donor.

When it took me 14 minutes to donate the time before last, I was unsurprised because I had a relatively novice phlebotomist who likely hit the scar tissue. The last time, it was about seven minutes. This time, five minutes and thirteen seconds, which was in my usual range, was a sign of a quality technician. I beat a teacher and a high school student who started before I did.

The opposite of buenos aires

While the 1.2 km walk to the school was fine, the return trip was arduous. I heard the air quality would be better than the previous day; not so. It was bad enough for the New York Yankees to postpone a game, some Broadway shows to be affected, and Governor Hochul recommended school children avoid outdoor activities. Orange skies at noon, indeed.

The air quality index in much of the Northeast surpassed official “hazardous” levels on that date; New York City’s reached 413, the highest in the world. This is nasty stuff for the human body.

If it’s this bad now, what will it be like after we breach 1.5°C?

We received a lovely thank-you note from newlyweds Deborah and Cyrille, not an email but an interactive message on their magical website.

That night on the news, NBC was plugging their coverage of the 2024 Olympics in Paris. Later, on a Law and Order: SVU rerun, which my daughter was watching, the villain escapes to Paris. We’ve been there!

Some links

Supreme Court unexpectedly upheld the provision prohibiting racial gerrymandering and voted not to make federal Medicaid law virtually unenforceable. Miraculous.

2022 edition of The Year in Hate and Extremism

Neglected political issues: Life expectancy

If the Police Can Decide Who Qualifies as a Journalist, There Is No Free Press

The sportswashing of professional golf

Construction of US manufacturing plants is undergoing an immense boom

djt Has Been Indicted Again

Nearly a Third Reporting Two or More Races Were Under 18 in 2020

State-to-State Migration Flows

‘Burn It Down’ Explores SNL and Its “Culture of Impunity”

Tony Awards: A Victory for Theater in America; Winners

TV Ratings 2022-23: Final Seven-Day Averages for Every Network Series

Amid Writers Strike, Hollywood’s Next Big Question May Be: Is SAG-AFTRA Next?

Treat Williams, Star of ‘Everwood’ and ‘Prince of the City,’ Dies in Motorcycle Accident in Southern Vermont at 71. He was airlifted to Albany Medical Center before passing away.

John Romita Sr., Legendary Marvel Artist, Dies at 93. He was the Marvel art director when I first started reading comics in 1972.

Pat Cooper, Stand-Up Comedian, Dies at 93

Barry Newman, Star of ‘Petrocelli,’ Dies at 92

The Artichoke Parm, the Most Mysterious Sandwich in Brooklyn

14-year-old got to animate a scene in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Now I Know: Why a Pair of British Officials Watched Paint Dry and Why Bermuda’s Roofs All Look The Same and Cookie Monster and The Hand with the Mind of Its Own

MUSIC

Hekla by Jón Leifs

Coverville 1445: Prince Cover Story VI

Capriccio Italien by Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Better Together Song Around The World, featuring Jack Johnson, Paula Fuga, Lee Oskar

In The Steppes of Central Asia by Borodin

Loan Me A Dime – Boz Scaggs

Pique Dame by Franz Von Suppe.

The Angel City Choir medley of memorable TV theme songs

Better – Shannon Dooks

Paul McCartney says AI tools helped rescue John Lennon vocals for ‘last Beatles record’

Reclaiming the American flag

More personal context

I’m working on a project, and that project is me. I’m working on reclaiming the American flag.

It isn’t easy, though. My family, to my recollection, never hung the flag outside the house. And there was never one outside of my grandmother’s house either.

Though I don’t recall ever discussing it with my parents when I grew up, I got the clear message from my father that the overt signs of patriotism were not his thing. I’m convinced that it was a function of bigotry he experienced in the military in 1945 and 1946 and dealing with racism subsequently.

By the time I was in high school, there was an “America, love it or leave it” mentality, which I associated with literal flag waving.

The BCHS incident

When I was in eleventh grade, there was about a week when we didn’t have the Pledge of Allegiance over the loudspeaker. So one day, my homeroom teacher, Harvey, decided our class should do so. I refused to stand. That “liberty and justice for all” stuff, I felt, was a lie. The face of the homeroom teacher grew increasingly red as he repeated the request, and I remained seated.

During the first period, trigonometry, this burly adult sat a couple of seats behind me. I figured he was evaluating the newish math teacher. In fact, it was the new principal, Dr. K.

I met with him and my father, who he had called, either during lunch or after school. Dr. K asked if I were an adherent of the Jehovah’s Witnesses since the Supreme Court ruled in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette that “expelling a student who doesn’t recite the Pledge of Allegiance … violates the Constitution’s guarantee of freedom of speech and religion.” That ruling, coincidentally, was eighty years ago on this very date. (It reversed a SCOTUS ruling in Minersville School District v. Gobitis only three years earlier.)

No, I said. We worked out a compromise that I would stand for the Pledge but didn’t have to say it. Oddly, in twelfth grade, as president of the student, I recited it over the loudspeaker. By then, I had decided the words were aspirational rather than factual.

I like red, white, and blue.

I should be clear that I’ve always liked the actual flag. They were going to add a star and stripe for every state that joined the union. The fact that they pivoted back to thirteen stripes, I thought, was very clever.

I’ve been to Arlington National Cemetery and the military cemetery in North Carolina where my parents are buried, and I find the rows of flags quite moving.

SCOTUS has recognized flag burning as protected speech. While I agree with the concept philosophically, it bothers me when I see it, and I would not do so myself.

Indeed, I’m more aware of 4 U.S. Code § 8 – Respect for flag than most people who claim to revere it, for instance:

d) The flag should never be used as wearing apparel, bedding, or drapery. (i) The flag should never be used for advertising purposes in any manner whatsoever. I came across this pin of a flag with a cross on it; this Christo-Americanism I found highly unsettling.

And the literal embrace of the flag by djt I find utterly grotesque. (Does the fact that his birthday is June 14 somehow create a rationale in his mind?)

And yet

When the US was preparing to go to war in Iraq, and I actively opposed it in the six months before I began, the peaceniks were dubbed not “real” lovers of their country.

Still, if I Google “liberals reclaiming the flag” I find articles like this from USA Today (2018) and this from Politico (2020) and this from the New York Times (2022). I agree with most of the sentiments contained therein.

Maybe this would work for me. From NPR: “Many have chosen to fly the flag next to other symbols to give it more personal context. For some, that means raising the Stars and Stripes along with a ‘Make American Great Again’ banner. For others, the American flag is flying alongside a gay pride banner or Black Lives Matter sign.” OK, not the MAGA sign, but…

Morissette and the Temps

Otis Williams

In May 2023, my wife and I attended two musicals at Proctors Theatre in Schenectady. The first was Alanis Morisette’s Jagged Little Pill: the Musical, based on her 1995 album and more of her songs. The second was Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations.

The Morissette piece was interesting because it had a narrative not driven by the songs. Instead, Diablo Cody wrote the book and seemed to plug in the appropriate tune for that narrative arc.

The story revolves around a Connecticut woman named Mary Jane Healy. She’s writing the annual Christmas letter. She brags about her husband Steve’s work promotion and son Nick’s early admission to Harvard. And, oh yeah, her adopted daughter Frankie’s art. Things are not so perfect in suburbia, however.

The Hollywood Reporter wrote: “Electrifying, visceral and stunning. JAGGED LITTLE PILL takes a stand against complacency.”

The review headline in the Albany Times Union by Steve Barnes calls the show “pushy, overambitious, loud.” The last sentence and a half: “The show, in its own weird way, has the integrity of committed beliefs. Whether that’s your kind of theater is another matter.”

It is undoubtedly MY kind of theater, a narrative that hits on several hot-button topics, including prescription drug addiction and rape by a familiar. I accept “pushy” and even “loud.” But it was clear that the Thursday matinee audience, except for an older couple who walked out after the first song in the second act, You Oughta Know, was enthralled by the material and the actors performing it.

Jagged Little Pill played on Broadway from December 2019 to March 2020, then from October to December 2021. It’s been touring since August 31, 2022, and will be touring in Buffalo, Boston, KC, and elsewhere at least through September.

Motown

Ain’t Too Proud is a standard jukebox musical. It tells the story of Motown’s leading male singing group from the point of view of Otis Williams, the only remaining member from their heyday in the 1960s and 1970s.

Before the program began at our Saturday matinee, my wife asked if the group had stayed with its original members. Er, no. Indeed, the group’s evolution drove the narrative: Elbridge Bryant was replaced by David Ruffin, who was replaced by Dennis Edwards et al.

The music and the performances were top-notch. The TU’s Barnes calls it a “resplendent cavalcade of Temptations’ hits,” even as he questions the jukebox musical genre.

My issue was more prosaic. The show takes some liberties with the facts, probably to trim a full show. For instance, I would have concluded from Ain’t Too Proud that the Temptations reunion show took only a couple of years after Eddie Kendricks left the group in 1971.

Actually, it took place in 1982, and I attended it at the Colonie Colosseum in Albany County, NY. Glenn Leonard was one of the seven, not Damon Harris, who left the group in 1975.

I had to actively say to myself, “Self, these details don’t much matter to the audience.” And there were things the show got correct, such as Berry Gordy refusing to let the group release War as a single; it became a #1 hit for Edwin Starr.

Like JLP, Ain’t Too Proud’s run (Mar 21, 20190 -Jan 16, 2022) was interrupted by COVID. The show has been touring since December 2021. It’ll be touring the US Midwest, South, and Western Canada, among the locales, through February 2024.