Ramblin' with Roger

Music Throwback Saturday: the Righteous Brothers

(You’re My) Soul was one of the relatively few 45s I ever bought.

Usually, I pick a specific song for these Saturday outings. But I also like to note 70th birthdays of certain notable folks. Well, I missed the 70th birthdays of both Bill Medley and the late Bobby Hatfield, the Righteous Brothers.

And I wasn’t aware of the 75th birthday of Hatfield (August 10, 1940 – November 5, 2003) until Brian Ibbott did a Righteous Brothers-driven Coverville 1088, also featuring Joe Jackson.

Bill Medley’s 75th is coming up on September 19. So I’ll honor them between the two birth dates. Links to all songs mentioned, and to Coverville.

In 1963, Little Latin Lupe Lu was their first charting single, getting to #49 in the US, followed by a bunch of less successful songs on the Moonglow label.

You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’ was their first major hit single and their first release on the Philles label in late 1964. It went to #1 in the UK, #1 in the US pop charts for two weeks, and #2 on the US Rhythm & Blues charts in 1965. “Produced by Phil Spector, the record is often cited as one of the peak expressions of Spector’s Wall of Sound production techniques. It was one of the most successful pop singles of its time, despite exceeding the then standard length for radio play. Indeed, according to BMI, it was the most played song on American radio and television in the 20th century, estimated to have been broadcast more than eight million times.”

The follow-up single was the Spector-produced Just Once in My Life, #9 US pop, #26 US R&B.

If you’re DJing a wedding reception, and you decide to be creative by playing songs people should like, but they aren’t dancing very much, put on Unchained Melody; I speak from personal experience. The song went to #4 US pop, #6 US R&B, #14 UK in 1965. Then, as a result of being featured in the movie Ghost, with Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore, and Whoopi Goldberg, it was reissued and went to #13 in the US, and #1 in the UK, in 1990. “Medley has consistently said that he produced Unchained Melody, intended only as an album track, but copies of the original 45 release credited Spector as producer.”

The B-side of Unchained Melody, Hung on You, only went to #47 US originally, but separately went to #2 on the US adult contemporary charts in 1990.

Ebb Tide was the last of the big hits on Philles in the US, reaching #5 US pop, #13 US R&B, and #48 UK in 1966; Hatfield singing the title at the end gives me chills. You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin'” b/w Ebb Tide was re-issued and went to #3 in UK in 1990.

White Cliffs of Dover, while a stiff in the US (#118 in 1966, after they had left the label), it got up to a respectable #21 in the UK. Ebb Tide and Dover appear on the only Righteous Brothers LP I owned, Back to Back.

“The singers did not get along well with Spector personally and their contract was sold to Verve/MGM Records in 1965. Their next release in 1966, (You’re My) Soul and Inspiration was a Phil Spector sound-alike song, produced by Bill Medley, who was able to fully simulate the Spector style of production.” It was one of the relatively few 45s I ever bought. It was #1 US pop for three weeks, #13 US R&B, #15 UK.

“After a few more top 40 hits… their popularity began to decline. They eventually split up in 1968, which lasted more than six years.”

“In 1974, they signed with Haven Records…distributed by Capitol Records. They scored another hit with Alan O’Day’s Rock and Roll Heaven, a paean to several deceased rock singers: Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Otis Redding, Jim Croce, and Bobby Darin are among the mentioned.” It went to #3 in the UK, but failed to chart in the UK.

Bill Medley had the greater commercial success as a solo artist, including 1987’s (I’ve Had) The Time of My Life, with Jennifer Warnes, #1 in the US, #6 in the UK. It was used as the love theme from Dirty Dancing, starring Patrick Swayze (him, again) and Jennifer Gray. He “continues to perform including in Branson, Missouri.

“Bobby Hatfield was found dead in his hotel room in Kalamazoo, Michigan… shortly before he was due to perform at a concert with Medley at Western Michigan University’s Miller Auditorium. According to the autopsy report, the cause of his death was attributed to cocaine leading to heart failure.

“The Righteous Brothers were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on March 10, 2003.

Extend the James Zadroga Act permanently

“The terror attacks left in their wake a trail of financial ruin affecting many brave men and women who responded to the attacks and others who had the misfortune of living or working on the tiny piece of the United States that happened to be the target of an attack on our country.”

The “remember 9/11” crowd in Congress who stalled for nearly a decade to provide compensation for individuals who suffered physical injury or death as a result of debris removal efforts in the immediate aftermath of the attacks irritate me greatly.

The James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act was passed by Congress at the end of 2010 and signed into law by President Obama, in no small part because of the advocacy of Jon Stewart on the December 16, 2010 episode of The Daily Show.

But the provisions of the bill are due to expire, and needs to be renewed this fall:

Much has been written in recent years about the serious physical illnesses that have befallen over 33,000 rescue and recovery workers, survivors and residents who breathed in the poisonous dust that blanketed lower Manhattan after the September 11 terror attack and the collapse of the World Trade Center Towers. More than 3,900 cases of cancer have been diagnosed among the participants in the World Trade Center Health Program Nearly 200 FDNY and NYPD members have reportedly died of 9/11 related injuries and conditions, and these numbers are growing.

Less has been written about the effect that the terrible illnesses have had on the lives of these men and women. Many have become disabled from work and are unable to support their families on meager monthly disability payments. Family homes have fallen into foreclosure. The terror attacks left in their wake a trail of financial ruin affecting many brave men and women who responded to the attacks and others who had the misfortune of living or working on the tiny piece of the United States that happened to be the target of an attack on our country.

A renewal bill has been languishing in Congress. At least as of last May, The Speaker of the House seemed to be disinclined to support extending the coverage. This may be Jon Stewart’s next activity: supporting the new bill.

I’ve read the information, and am pleased to note that my member of the House of Representatives, and both of my US Senators are co-sponsoring the renewal bill. See where your representatives stand. Bug those who are not sponsors, and laud those who are.

Drama: waiting for the bus

At that point, I’d stopped thinking about her until she rapped on the glass of her porch.

1) This happened a few months ago: Getting out of church, I had just missed the previous bus home by seconds, and I had a 20-minute wait, so I sat to read a newspaper in the bus kiosk. There’s a young woman sitting nearby, 20ish, reasonably attractive, and either Hispanic, light-skinned black or maybe Italian.

This young white guy comes over to her, detailing some mournful story of woe, noting how he “needed” someone to talk with. “Could I talk with you?”

“My boyfriend wouldn’t like that.” “We’d just be talking.” But she shut him down, harshly, and he walked to the other end of the kiosk.

Then the boyfriend arrives, and she tells him, in great deal, what had just transpired. Pointing to the guy, “You mean that white n***** over there?”

After she confirms, he goes at it verbally with the other guy, whose apology goes unheeded, until his bus finally arrives.

Wow. An unnecessary escalation of the situation, AND a totally different understanding of the N-word from mine.

2) This happened a couple of weeks ago.

Going to work, I rode my bike from my house to a place I catch a bus. As I approach the stop, I see a bus go by. Is it my bus to Corporate Woods, or the other bus that goes in a different direction?

My ride leaves downtown at 8:03, but takes a few minutes to get to where I am. I ride onto the sidewalk and straddle my bike while getting my cellphone from my backpack. It’s off – it’s almost always off unless I’m using it – so it takes a few seconds to warm up.

The woman from the doorway of the front enclosed porch, who is black, yells to me, “Get off my sidewalk with that bike.” “I’m just checking the time.” “Get that bike off my walk, b****!” I repeat my response, but she escalates hers.

So now I know I haven’t missed the bus – it’s only 8:05, so I get off my bike and start walking, maybe 0.3 mph, to just past the property line, where the bus stop is, and I stop and wait, while she’s busy screaming at her two kids, a girl maybe 10 and a boy perhaps seven.

At that point, I’d stopped thinking about her until she rapped on the glass of her porch and gave me the middle finger salute, which I ignored, as my bus pulled up. She watched me as I put my bike on the bus before it took off.

I’d been to the stop before and never encountered that person. I went back the next day but didn’t see her. Did she even live there, or was she some crazy relative who was just visiting?

Was she really upset that I had the bike nowhere near either the walkway or the driveway, or was something else was afoot? Maybe she thought I was a drug dealer (the gray-haired guy on a bike) or she didn’t like my red and white striped shirt, which looks pink at a distance. I’m just spitballing.

The unfortunate case of Kim Davis

The attacks on Kim Davis because of her hair or clothing are just sexist, classist, and mean-spirited .

Fame is a fascinating thing to me. In August 2015, three Americans received France’s top honor for stopping an armed attacker on a train. In September 2015, Alek Skarlatos, one of those three men, is slated to be a contestant on ABC-TV’s Dancing with the Stars.

In June 2015, Kimberly Jean Bailey Davis was an obscure elected county clerk for little Rowan County, Kentucky, population of less than 24,000. Now she’s a lightning rod in the culture wars. She “defied a U.S. Federal Court order requiring that she issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples following the Obergefell v. Hodges U.S. Supreme Court case that legalized same-sex marriage in the United States.”

Kim Davis has been criticized for not doing her job.

From Snopes:

Four couples [have] sued Rowan County and its clerk, Kim Davis, for refusing to issue marriage licenses because of Davis’ religious objections to the U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage.

Davis is obligated by law to issue a marriage license to all qualified applicants, which now includes same-sex couples, the plaintiffs said. By “promoting a particular religious belief” at the Rowan County courthouse, Davis has “acted maliciously, with callous disregard for, or with reckless indifference to, the clearly established rights” of the plaintiffs, they said.

The argument that an elected official could not be allowed to ban the registration of a gun because weapons are against his or her religion, or keep women from driving on the same grounds, is a compelling point. This great West Wing clip frames the argument well. That she’s been married four times – she remarried husband #2 – and therefore is a hypocrite, is true – as the evil Westboro Baptist church has pointed out – though it is rather beside the point, as a matter of law.

But the attacks on Kim Davis because of her hair or clothing or weight or looking marginally like Dick Cheney are just sexist, classist, and mean-spirited, and lowers the tenor of the conversation. We need to be able to call out her bigotry without slut-shaming or hillbilly-shaming.

She has been held up as some sort of martyr for “oppressed” Christians, more so since she was temporarily sent to jail. Judge David Bunning, son of baseball Hall of Fame pitcher and former US Senator Jim Bunning, explained why he rejected her argument. “The [marriage license] form does not require the county clerk to condone or endorse same-sex marriage on religious or moral grounds. It simply asks the county clerk to certify that the information provided is accurate and that the couple is qualified to marry under Kentucky law. Davis’ religious convictions have no bearing on this purely legal inquiry.”

(Yeesh, Kim Davis supporters gather outside the judge’s home to hold him ‘in contempt of God’s court’. Whatever THAT means.)

Moreover, “While religious institutions are guaranteed protections against any government regulation or involvement in their religious life, the government is also protected from religious institutions attempt to garner political power over the nation. What this means is that anyone who functions as an agent of the state must remain religiously neutral, providing equal service, treatment, and rights to all people of all religious, ethical, social, and cultural backgrounds.”

Kim Davis and others have compared her stance to that of black civil rights icon Rosa Parks. I would argue she is the bus driver who refused to restart the bus until Rosa gave up her seat to a white man. Many gay rights advocates believe Davis has done the gay rights movement a huge favor by laying “bare the prejudiced, discriminatory beliefs that fuel the ‘religious liberty’ fire.”

Theoretically, there should be a compromise. Under Title VII of the federal Civil Rights Act, “both public and private employers have a duty to exempt religious employees from generally applicable work rules, so long as this won’t create an ‘undue hardship’.”

This is a very important principle, which would allow a Muslim woman to wear a hijab or a Sikh man to wear a dastaar, if it didn’t interfere with the task. As an elected official, it wouldn’t apply to Kim Davis, though Kentucky’s religious freedom law might come into play.

If she is objecting to “issuing licenses with her name on them, because she believes (rightly or wrongly) that having her name on them is an endorsement of same-sex marriage,” there may be a mechanism “modifying the prescribed Kentucky marriage license form to remove the multiple references to Davis’ name,” – assuming it hasn’t already been done – “and thus to remove the personal nature of the authorization that Davis must provide on the current form.”

Just yesterday, her lawyer repeated the assertion that those licenses issued by her deputy clerks were invalid, and “those responsible for issuing the licenses without authorization could face ‘criminal penalties.'” After giving her every scintilla of the benefit of the doubt, this position proves to me, without question, that the issue is not really about the religious freedom of Kim Davis, but rather the religious tyranny of her and her followers.

The larger point is that the system, as it has, must continue to allow couples in Rowan County, KY the opportunity to marry, which the Supreme Court declared is a fundamental right as early as 1888.

Related: this pictured quote attributed to Donald Trump about Kim Davis is untrue. HE DIDN’T SAY IT, and in fact, was largely unaware of the issue until very recently. The Donald makes many inflammatory statements but does not need to be defamed by Facebook pranks.

I is for illusory superiority

“Conversely, highly skilled individuals tend to underestimate their relative competence.”

You may have noticed this: most people think THEY are smarter, more often correct, more honest, better drivers, et al. than the “average” person. This is called illusory superiority, “a cognitive bias whereby individuals overestimate their own qualities and abilities, relative to others… Other terms include superiority bias, leniency error… and the Lake Wobegon effect (named after Garrison Keillor’s fictional town where ‘all the children are above average’). The phrase ‘illusory superiority’ was first used by Van Yperen and Buunk in 1991.”

But why is it that on a scale of one to 10, you probably think you’re a seven?
According to “David Dunning, a psychologist at Cornell who has studied the effect for decades:
“We realize the external traits and circumstances that guide other people’s actions, ‘but when it comes to us, we think it’s all about our intention, our effort, our desire, our agency — we think we sort of float above all these kinds of constraints'”

From here: “A closely related bias is the Dunning-Kruger effect, where incompetent or unskilled people fail to recognise their own incompetency (of course, I’m sure you’re not incompetent or unskilled, so this one doesn’t apply to you…)”

It may be best summarized in this one-minute video by John Cleese about being stupid.

Dunning-Kruger has another aspect, however. “Conversely, highly skilled individuals tend to underestimate their relative competence, erroneously assuming that tasks which are easy for them are also easy for others.” This, actually, was the phenomenon I am most fascinated by.

I shared an office with this library colleague when I first started working as a librarian, and when I had a question I could not figure out, I’d ask for help. She would say, a lot, “Oh, that’s EASY.” It drove me crazy on two levels: 1) obviously, it wasn’t EASY for me, because I needed help, and 2) she was constantly diminishing her own expertise in this manner.

So, some of us aren’t as smart as we think we are. Others of us are actually smarter, but pshaw it off.
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TED talk – Kathryn Schulz: On being wrong

ABC Wednesday – Round 17