A song that reminds me of myself

It could make you wonder why

KermitTheFrogTo a greater or lesser degree, LOTS of the songs I’ve linked to in the past several weeks remind me of myself. Certainly, the ones that made me happy or sad fall into that category.

Still, Having been Green my whole life, I know the wisdom of the song first sung by the great philosopher Kermit the Frog.

It’s not that easy bein’ green
Having to spend each day the color of the leaves
When I think it could be nicer bein’ red or yellow or gold
Or something much more colorful like that

Having been around flashy people, I know that’s just not me.

Bein’ Green was written by Joe Raposo and was originally performed by Jim Henson as Kermit on both Sesame Street and The Muppet Show.

It’s not easy bein’ green
It seems you blend in with so many other ordinary things
And people tend to pass you over ’cause you’re
Not standin’ out like flashy sparkles on the water
Or stars in the sky

It has been covered by a number of performers such as Ray Charles, Van Morrison, and Frank Sinatra.

However

But green is the color of Spring
And green can be cool and friendly-like
And green can be big like an ocean
Or important like a mountain
Or tall like a tree

In particular, being friendly-like is important to me, particularly at church, where I see myself as an ambassador of the membership to guests and relative newcomers.

Bein’ Green was sung by Big Bird (Caroll Spinney) at the two memorial services for Jim Henson in 1990.

When green is all there is to be
It could make you wonder why
But why wonder, why wonder?
I am green and it’ll do fine
It’s beautiful
And I think it’s what I want to be.

That’s the end of the 30-Day Music Prompt thing I’ve been participating in this year.

Tom Waits

Tom Waits, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame musician, turns 70 today. Chuck Miller wrote about him recently.

Someone posted these Tom Waits lyrics as condolences to a friend’s loss: “As we scramble on our wheels each day with lights and horns blinking blowing. the loss of such a ray of hope does cause us in our tracks to slow. reflect and remember, recall and assemble.” As was noted: “You may not like his voice but the man has a way with words.”

St Nick’s Day miscellaneous array

The Bob Dylan section

st nick's dayMy annual St. Nick’s Day post. Back on November 7, the Hallmark Channel was showing about eight Christmas-themed TV movies. I’m sure this continues to this day and beyond. This does not bother me whatsoever.

A radio station in Chicago started playing holiday music even earlier than that. As long as I don’t have to actually listen to it, I just don’t care.

Thanksgiving is as late as it can be this year. This encourages retailers to offer pre-Black Friday sales as soon as the Halloween pumpkins are put away. Whatever.

It’s my opinion that people fuss WAY too much about Santa’s sleigh jumping into the turkey’s and jack-o-lantern’s lanes. In fact, I saw a cartoon somewhere depicting that. It just does not rise to an impeachable offense.

But MY seasonal music listening starts TODAY and runs to January 6, which is Three King’s Day or Russian Christmas. Here are a bunch of links, mostly from after last year’s St. Nick’s Day.

The melancholy section

I’ll Be Home for Christmas – Bing Crosby
Winter Snow · Booker T. & The MG’s. It features Isaac Hayes on the piano

The Stan Freberg section

The Night Before Christmas (1955)
Green Christmas (1958)

The Bob Dylan section

Must Be Santa
Little Drummer Boy
Twas The Night Before Christmas

The advertising section

The first ad I came across this season was Argos Christmas – The Book of Dreams (Extended Version). Arthur always has adverts, usually from New Zealand, that tend to irritate me less than American commercials; here are all of them.

More Yule

Et in Terra pax – Vivaldi and Handel. The former, which I’ve sung, is particularly moving to me.

STAR IN THE EAST – The Southern Harmony, from ROSE ENSEMBLE. I stole this from fillyjonk, but the other video in the post was no longer working, alas.

Christmas Eve with Cookie Monster

White Christmas – Julian Neel; Mr. Berlin’s song, more or less Drifters-style

Christmas Wrapping – the Waitresses. I own this song on something called vinyl.

Happy St. Nick’s Day!

Songs I remember from my childhood

I was appalled by the double negative

Farewell to the First Golden EraIf I were to list the songs I remember from my childhood, it would number about a half a jillion. Still, these stood out.

Twist and Shout – The Beatles, #2 for four weeks in 1964; #23 in 1986 upon reissue.
Not only is this the best cover version by the group, I consider this to be one of the greatest cover songs EVER. It was a revision of a song recorded by the Top Notes in 1961, and then a hit by the Isley Brothers in 1962. It was kept out of the #1 slot by Can’t Buy Me Love.

The story goes that when the group recorded the Please Please Me album, they saved this song for last because John Lennon’s voice had only one or two takes in him. They got it on take #1.

Summer in the City – Lovin’ Spoonful, #1 for three weeks pop.
I could play a VERY rudimentary version of this on my grandmother’s piano. At the time, the sound effects were revolutionary.

(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction – Rolling Stones, #1 for four weeks pop, #19 RB in 1965.
It seemed as though every other band would end their live version of other songs with the hook from this one. As a child, I was appalled by the double negative in the title, but I’ve gotten over it.

Uptight – Stevie Wonder, #3 for two weeks pop, #1 for five weeks RB in 1966.
I have a couple of Stevie compilation albums from the period. Most of the songs before this one sounded “old-fashioned”, but this was fresh and new.

Love Is Like An Itching In My Heart – the Supremes, #9 pop, #7 RB in 1966
This is my favorite Supremes song, and I don’t know why it did so relatively poorly on the pop charts when lesser songs – The Happening, for one – fared much better.

I Saw Her Again– Mamas and the Papas, #5 pop in 1966
There’s an album called Farewell To The First Golden Era which came out in 1967. It contained their hits from the first three albums, plus Twelve-Thirty (Young Girls Are Coming To The Canyon).

For some reason, when I played I Saw Her Again, and no other track, Denny Doherty’s lead vocal would often drop out, leaving the harmonies of Cass Elliot and Michele Phillips. You’d think this would be annoying. It was not. It was fascinating to hear the harmony vocals with the instrumentation. If I wanted to hear the song as it was intended, I’d just play their second album.

Nov. rambling: gifts of grace

Contractions-bitsThe Child Soldier Crisis: ‘Kids Are Cheap’

1619-2019: From Slavery to Mass Incarceration

Flat Earth conspiracy is growing especially among born again religious zealots

John Oliver Slaps Down Coal Baron’s SLAPP Lawsuit: ESB

Samantha’s Journey Into the Alt-Right, and Back from The New Yorker Radio Hour with David Remnick. I happened upon this while listening on the radio in the car last week. Whoa.

Susie Meister: How Studying Religion Made Me a Liberal and The Reality of Being a Reality Star, from Ken Levine’s podcast

Why use Ukraine to impeach when you’ve got the emoluments clause (and the Hatch Act)?

Weekly Sift: An Impeachment Hearing Wrap-Up

Recognizing Israeli Settlements Marks the Final Collapse of Pax Americana

The GOP Tax Cuts Didn’t Work

As a Veteran, I Refuse to Celebrate War

On Nov. 19, 1863, the accomplished Massachusetts statesman Edward Everett gave a two-hour speech at Gettysburg, but history gave him the shaft

RIP, the great Howard Cruse, from cancer.

Now I Know: The Woman Who Sniffed Out Parkinson’s and The Man Who Won a Trip to Mars and The British Ban on Clapping and When the US Air Force Bombed Montana and How Luke Skywalker Beat the Puffins and Why Did the Crab Cross the Road? and The Poacher Who Got Sent to the DVD Player

Gifts of grace

Ranked-Choice Voting “Allows You to Vote for the Person You Really Like”

Why bad taste is over – An interview with John Waters

Ruthie Berman & Connie Kurtz Residence – NYC LGBT Historic Site

Worker Training Program tackles opioid misuse and addiction. I know Jonny Rosen IRL.

Syracuse University janitor who cleaned racist graffiti replaces it with kindness

We desperately need to get out kids back outside

blue books

250 families receive “gifts of grace” to donate to meaningful causes

US Census Bureau: American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month

Authentic black beauty

102 Common English Idioms with Meaning and Examples

The Beautifully Macabre Cartoons of Gahan Wilson

Massachusetts Highway Exits to Be Renumbered by 2022

It’s a Musical

Who’s the greatest JEOPARDY! player of all time? I’m so glad this is on ABC-TV in January, not part of the syndicated series

Gone in 13 Episodes (or Less!)

The story of The Whistler radio program

Groucho Marx on TV after the game show You Bet Your Life

MUSIC

He’s Just a Gurl Who’ll Quid Pro Quo – Randy Rainbow

Dommage – Bigflo & Oli; English lyrics to Dommage

Papaoutai – Stromae

I’m Going Home – Sacred Harp Singers At Liberty Church; Idumea– ditto; Sacred Harp and Shape Note singing

The Rock by Sergei Rachmaninov

Mr. Tambourine Man – the Starbugs, from New Zealand

One, a U2 cover, features McKenna Breinholt as the soloist and the 100-person Cinematic Pop orchestra and choir, arrangement of Rob Gardner

Hooked on a Feeling – Pomplamoose

Coverville 1285: The Bonnie Raitt Cover Story and 1286: J. Geils Tribute and Indie Hodgepodge

Metamorphosis episode of Star Trek (original series), incidental music

Rockin’ in the free world, the Netherlands, 2016

Mah Na Mah Na – Piero Umiliani (1968); Mah Na Mah Na – first Seaame Street appearance (1969)

LAY DOWN (Candles In The Rain) – Melanie & The Edwin Hawkins Singers (1970). Full recording.

I Wanna Be A Lifeguard – Blottomoji version

A highlight of the Barbershop Harmony Society’s International Convention

Tina Turner is 80 years old. The big Interview

The Best-Selling Music Artists of the Last 50 Years

An artist whose voice you love

I’m leaving off the Beatles and Motown…

Judy Collins.Wildflowers
Judy Collins.Wildflowers
I’ve come up to the prompt, “A song by an artist whose voice you love.” This is intriguing.

What makes the human singing voice appealing? There are plenty of vocals by artists whose sounds are not “pretty,” yet I like to hear them sing. Bob Dylan falls into that category.

Somewhere – Tom Waits. I heard this song for the first time near the end of the 1997 movie Afterglow with Julie Christie and Nick Nolte. I saw it on the February 2018 holiday weekend. In the context of the movie, I wept.
Lay Down (Candles in the Rain) – Melanie with the Edwin Hawkins Singers. I think it’s the juxtaposition of her rough sound with the majesty of the choir.

I had an office mate some years back, and there were only two artists she wouldn’t allow me to play because she absolutely HATED their voices. Naturally, I need to link to them here:

Old Man – Neil Young
Always on My Mind – Willie Nelson

There are countless rockers and soul shouters who’d be on the list:

Black Dog – Led Zeppelin (Robert Plant)
Star – David Bowie
Respect – Otis Redding
I Got You – James Brown

I’m leaving off the Beatles and Motown and the Beach Boys…

The first songs I thought of, though, were these:

Stand by Me – Ben E. King, a great song written by him, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller.
Maybe – Alison Krauss. I’m a sucker for the harmony vocals.
Dimming of the Day – Bonnie Raitt. There are LOTS of versions of this song, and I love most of them.
A Case of You – Joni Mitchell. From the great Blue album.
A Ballata Of Francesco Landini (ca. 1335-1397) Lasso! Di Donna – Judy Collins. When I think of my favorite Judy Collins album, it bounces between Wildflowers, from which this song comes, and Who Knows Where the Time Goes
Rolling in the Deep – Adele. I’m old; she the only artist whose first release was in the 21st century whose whole body of work (that’s more than one album) I own.

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