Tag: Mamas and the Papas

August rambling: America’s wombmate

NEW Rebecca Jade!

Credit: DNY59/gettyimages

Big Brother Moves to Become America’s Wombmate -government access to medical data threatens patient rights.

Here’s a Map of What FOTUS-GOP Destruction of US Hospitals Looks Like

America First is America alone. Power-crazed he may be, but he fails to grasp soft power.

This is what extreme heat is doing to us: Policies to Make the Planet Hotter

The North Rim of the Grand Canyon Burned: The NPS Burns Too

The Founders of This New Arkansas Development Say You Must Be White to Live There

How Ireland’s ‘Mediocre’ Milk Powder Made it Big in West Africa

U.S. Drinking Drops to New Low, Poll Finds

How to champion libraries in Congress: a free virtual event on Tuesday, September 9 at 5 PM ET / 4 PM CT / 2 PM PT, where ALA policy experts and special guests will share updates, inspiring stories, and how you can pitch in at the start of this school year.

Mike Lindell & MyStore: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

Kelly’s 2X4

Matt Damon & Ken Jennings on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire

Marvel v. DC: The 25-Cent War from Tales From My Spinner Rack! by Gary Sassaman

Now I Know: The Dancing Plague and The Baseball Player With The Special ID, and He Bought His Freedom With Fake Money, and Why Some Movies Can’t Give it a Rest, and His Hometown Went to Pot? and Excel Has Bad Genes

ICE Raids and DC Occupation

Make democracy work part of ordinary life, not an add-on (ht/Paul Tonko). Lauren DesRosiers quoted Audre Lorde: “Every day of your lives is practice in becoming the person you want to be. No instantaneous miracle is suddenly going to occur and make you brave and courageous and true. And every day that you sit back silent, refusing to use your power, terrible things are being done in our name.”

DHS is using the Bible to promote ICE, claiming ‘righteous’ fight against immigrants. The agency refers to Scripture, including Micah 6:8, as it seeks to recruit agents.

 

New York State has seen a surge in ICE arrests, with totals four times the number seen during the same June-July period last year.

 

Don’t Let ICE’s Legal Abuses Stop You From Asserting Your Rights

 

‘Go Home, Fascists’: Protesters Jeer Federal Agents in Streets of DC

Federal agents face protests after Trump orders unprecedented takeover of DC police

Five Ways to Fight FOTUS Fascism by Robert Reich

Tonko and Fahy

My Congressperson, US Rep. Paul Tonko: “I traveled to the Buffalo Federal Detention Facility in Batavia… This visit was even more urgent given the results of a report from ICE’s Office of the Inspector General from an unannounced facility inspection earlier this summer. The report found the facility and ICE staff were not in compliance with federal law and used excessive, inappropriate force, including striking detainees and spraying them with pepper spray.

“Despite the pressing need for oversight and in violation of federal law that grants me and all Members of Congress access to these facilities, I was denied at the gate. The facility guards blocking my entry went so far as to confirm that they knew they were in violation of the law. If they are fine ignoring the legal rights of a Member of Congress, what does that mean for our own communities and individuals who are detained?”

You may or may not be able to read my state senator, Pat Fahy’s, newest op-ed in the Times Union, “about the paramilitary-type tactics taking over our streets. 

“No visible identification, no judicial warrants, no due process – these are setting a dangerous precedent for Americans and normalizing paramilitary secret police style tactics on our streets. That’s why I introduced legislation to prohibit ICE agents from wearing masks or face coverings during civil immigration enforcement in New York.

“Security and humanity can both exist, and instilling fear will not create the immigration reforms we need to enrich America and honor its legacy.”

Kudos to them both.

MUSIC

Not Me No Way – Rebecca Jade ℗ 2025 Ultimate Vibe Recordings, Released on: 2025-08-18

Join Ice – Jesse Welles

He Just Can’t Wait To Be King! – Randy Rainbow Song Parody

Coverville 1545: Cover Stories for Steve Martin and Modest Mouse and 1546: The Mamas & The Papas Cover Story

The Mamas & The Papas cover Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart songs: My Heart Stood Still (from One Dam’ Thing after Another, 1927); Glad To Be Unhappy (from On Your Toes, 1936); Sing For Your Supper (from The Boys from Syracuse, 1938). They sang those three songs and Here In My Heart (from Dearest Enemy, 1925) for Rodgers and Hart Today, a salute to the composers, which aired March 2, 1967, on ABC TV, then reworked it as  No Salt On Her Tail.

Symphony No. 1 in F minor by Dmitri Shostakovich

Gospel Plough – Robert Plant and Saving Grace

Lida Rose/Will I Ever Tell You from the movie The Music Man

You’ll Be Back – Primer

On The Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe from the movie The Harvey Girls (1946),  with Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, and many others

Theme to the movie Emma by Rachel Portman

The Cast of Oliver with Davy Jones perform I’d Do Anything on The Ed Sullivan Show, Feb 9, 1964

Peter Sprague Plays Waters of March featuring Allison Adams Tucker

Run On -Elvis Presley

I Love You Period –  Dan Baird

Bernstein – Academic Festival Overture (Brahms)

Go Away, Little Girl – Donny Osmond

Beethoven “Moonlight Sonata” for Mongkol, the Old Bull Elephant (ht/aal)

The hairpin: The Most Misunderstood Symbol in Music (ft. Seymour Bernstein) by Ben Lade

Monday Monday; no, wrong Mamas & Papas song

I’m listening to the Coverville podcast a few months ago, as I usually do a couple of times a week. Brian was doing the Mondegreen episode, a term that, if I had heard it, I had forgotten. The definition, which I stole from somewhere: “Misheard lyrics (also called mondegreens) occur when people misunderstand the lyrics in a song. These are NOT intentional rephrasing of lyrics, which is called parody.” There are whole websites devoted to this issue.

The last song on the show, not only had I gotten wrong for years, but have SUNG it incorrectly when performing with my sister.

The correct lyric is:

stopped into a church
I passed along the way
well, I got down on my knees
and I pretend to pray

Yet all these years, I had been hearing:
and I began to pray

To be fair to me, many other people of my vintage heard it the same way. I know this because I asked a number of them. And it is noted as a common error in Kiss This Guy, named after a misheard line from Jimi Hendrix’s Purple Haze: “Excuse me while I kiss the sky.”

I never misheard that Hendrix lyric or this line from California Dreamin’ offered up by Am I Right?
Misheard Lyrics:
You know you’re preaching like the Pope.
Original Lyrics:
You know the preacher likes the cold.

But the one I DID mishear I’ve thought about a number of times since. Seems that the fact that the verse has three verbs in the past tense (stopped, passed, got) tunes the ear for a fourth (began) rather than a present tense verb such as pretend. They COULD have sung “pretended” and I don’t think it ruins the scansion. Here are the complete lyrics.

BTW, what linguistic tool is being used when you speak in the present tense about things that happened in the past? “So I go to the store. I see an item I want. I buy it.” Past action, but present tense verbs.


Anyway, HERE is a version of the hit song that only went to #4 in the US charts in 1966 by the Mamas and the Papas, and HERE is another. The song is attributed to John Phillips and Michelle Gilliam.

John eventually married and divorced Michelle. John performed this version on his album Phillips 66, which was released posthumously in 2001; he would have been 75 today. Michelle Phillips is the remaining survivor of the Mamas and the Papas.

What lyrics have YOU misheard, and how did you finally figure it out?

30-Day Challenge: Day 6 – Favorite Song

I own the vast majority of the music released in the 20th Century on the Rolling Stone magazine list, but did only so-so on this past decade.

If you had access to the soundtrack of my mind – my, that’d be VERY scary, and you don’t know how lucky you are – you would know that picking a favorite song is nigh unto impossible. I did select 100 songs that moved me, with my #1 pick here a couple of years back, but such a list is highly fungible.

Besides, that doesn’t mean any of them are my favorites. I’m always thinking, “How could I forget THAT one?” Experienced that phenomenon just recently when I was watching an episode of Glee and hear the song “A House Is Not A Home” and thought, “I’m very fond of the Dionne Warwick version of that song; should have made the list.”

So, I decided to pick a list of three of my favorite songs that namecheck other songs by that same performer:

3. Creeque Alley by The Mamas and the Papas, with the final line, “And California Dreamin’ is becomin’ a reality…

2. Glass Onion by the Beatles with references to Strawberry Fields Forever, I Am The Walrus, Lady Madonna, Fool on the Hill, and Fixing a Hole

1. Sly and the Family Stone – Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) that mentions, almost in a row, Dance to the music, Everyday people and Sing a simple song


Rolling Stone has updated its 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. Since none of them are from before 1940, I assume we’re talking popular, recorded songs, not of the classical or jazz genre. Still, I note that I own the vast majority of the music released in the 20th Century on the list, but only so-so on this past decade. I own the first 50, indeed, the first 99; #100 is Crazy by Gnars Barkley.

The Tony Awards, celebrating Broadway’s finest, are on this Sunday, broadcast on CBS-TV. I always watch because it’s generally more entertaining than any other awards show. There’s a large number of actors more associated with TV and film who are nominated this year. Also nominated for Best Musical: American Idiot, based on the Green Day album.

Ramblin' with Roger
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