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30-Day Music Prompt: LOUD enough?

No other version will do. Not the pedestrian studio version nor the too short 2005 live take. This is a live take from Goodbye Cream.

Discipline.King Crimson Continuing on that 30-Day Music Challenge.

A song that needs to be played loud.

This is extremely challenging, since there are SO many choices. One could say most of the Who or Led Zeppelin or insert your favorite. Also, a lot of these songs could easily fit in other categories of the quiz.

And it’s not just the “loud” songs that are served by volume. i tend to crank up The Boxer – Simon and Garfunkel (#7, 1969) after the line, “The fighter still remains” to better feel the pain of the percussive sound and the strings.

when I was a teenager, and my parents weren’t home, I’d tweak up the volume during the last four minutes of the Beatles’ Revolver (1966), from the last chorus of Got to Get You Into My Life (#7, 1976), into Tomorrow Never Knows. Just thinking about it gives me an adrenaline rush.

All Day and All of the Night – the Kinks (#7, 1965). The Kinks were the first REALLY LOUD group I was aware of. I remember that my good friend Karen was fond of buying their singles at the local Philadelphia Sales, only a couple blocks from our school, Daniel S. Dickinson, where we attended K-9.

I’m So Glad – Cream (1969). No other version will do. Not the pedestrian studio version nor the too short 2005 live take. This is a live take from Goodbye Cream.

High School – MC5 (1970). The group was nominated to get into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this past round, but wasn’t selected. My friends made an antiwar video with High School as the soundtrack.

Wah Wah – George Harrison (1970). From that monumental All Things Mus Pass album. I knew George could be loud – see It’s All Too Much – the Beatles. But the wall of sound works here, in live versions, such as the Concert for Bangladesh, or even the Concert for George tribute album.

Won’t Get Fooled Again – The Who (#15, 1971). Back in the day when I could actually play music in my office sans headphones, the then-Associate State Director would come into the office if this song were on, mesmerized.

Kashmir – Led Zeppelin (1975). From the first LZ album I bought on CD.

Cars – Gary Numan (#9, 1980). From that very first vibration…

Police on My Back – the Clash (1980). I started playing Side 6 of the Sandinista album, and this song almost knocked me over.

Elephant Talk – King Crimson (1981). And the remix is danceable as well.

Cannonball – the Breeders (#44, 1994). I have this on some 4-song EP that a friend gave me.

30-Day Music Prompt: reminds me of summer

I worked as a customer service representative at Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield in from February 1989 to March 1990. I mostly hated it.

steel wheels Continuing with the 30-Day Music Prompt:

A song that reminds me of summer – There are lots. References are to the Billboard (US) pop charts, unless otherwise indicated.

Walking on Sunshine – Katrina and the Waves, #9 in 1985. After the 2005 hurricane, I always thought the group name was most unfortunate.

I Wanna Be A Lifeguard – Blotto. Albany’s own appeared on MTV on its very first day, back when they actually played music videos.

Then there are all the songs with the word “summer” in them:
In the Summertime – Mungo Jerry, #3 in 1970. This skiffle song was Jaquandor’s pick

Summerfling – k.d. lang, 2000. Lots of strings

Summertime, Summertime – the Jamies, #26 in 1958, and #38 in 1962. An irritating little song I loved while growing up.

Summertime – Billy Stewart, #10 pop, #7 soul in 1966. There are LOTS of versions of this Gershwin classic. On one of those Red, Hot, and Blue albums featuring the composer that I own, there are five or six iterations. I picked this one because I really liked it, but my former office mate Anne despised it.

Hot Fun in the Summertime – Sly & the Family Stone, #2 for three weeks pop, #3 for three weeks soul in 1969 – lawd, at the end I feel like I’ve gone to church. One of the reasons I bought that wonderful greatest hits album; an alternate ending

A song that reminds you of someone you’d rather forget

I’m having difficulty with this. But there’s an album that reminds me of a place I’d rather forget.

I worked as a customer service representative at Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield in from February 1989 to March 1990. I mostly hated it. If you don’t know why, I need to write more about that period.

But I got along with the other reps. I discovered that, for the Christmas gift exchange, I was to get something for this woman named Karen. As it turned out, Karen had selected me.

So we talked about music we mutually liked, and we came up with the Rolling Stones. The band had released Steel Wheels in August 1989, so I bought it for her and she for me.

I’m picking the first two singles because the titles reflected my feeling of being at Empire:

Mixed Emotions, #5 in 1989

Rock and a Hard Place, #23 in 1989

“I cannot throw out these books”

I wrote 10 or 11 blog posts re Never A Dull Moment: 1971, the year that rock exploded by David Hepworth.

Jaquandor recently wrote about owning books. In part, he quotes from Life Itself by Roger Ebert, which makes more sense in its entirety, and really speaks to me. “I cannot throw out these books. Some are enchanted because I have personally turned all their pages and read every word. They’re shrines to my past hours.”

Looking at my bookshelves in the office, I realize the sheer number of books I am not going to get rid of, because. And that doesn’t even count the ones in the bookcases that are in the attic, arranged, BTW, and the relatively few in the living room.

Initially, I was just going to pick books as they appeared on the shelves. Then I decided to put them in some sort of imperfect order

ALBANY

Six and Eleven – Ed Dague (2010). Former local news anchor I hung out with him one night and have a transcript – somewhere – of that night’s broadcast in 1994

A Day Apart: How Jews, Christians, and Muslims Find Faith, Freedom, and Joy on the Sabbath – Christopher Ringwald. (2007). Signed to me. I got to hear him speak on the topic in my church a few years before his tragic death.

Figuring Sh!t Out: Love, Laughter, Suicide, and Survival – Amy Biancolli (2015). Signed to me, my wife and our daughter. About surviving the suicides in her life, including that of her husband, the aforementioned C Ringwald

O Albany – William Kennedy (1983). The greatest writer out of the city. Both he and Biancolli worked for the local newspaper, the Times Union, and both were honored by the Albany Public Library Foundation

RACE

Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II – Douglas A. Blackmon (2008) – signed to me in 2009 at an event arranged by Bill Kennedy

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness – Michelle Alexander (revised 2011). Because it makes sense.

The Sweeter the Juice – Shirlee Taylor Haizlip. when I wrote a blog post about it, I got an email from her!

Brothers in Arms: The Epic Story of the 761st Tank Battalion, WWII’s Forgotten Heroes – Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Anthony Walton (2004). Did you know Kareem was on JEOPARDY! for the first time the same month I was?

FANTACO

The Nearly Complete Essential Hembeck Archives Omnibus – Fred Hembeck (2008). I remember helping friend Fred unload boxes of these at a comic book convention in Saratoga Springs, NY

Xerox Ferox: The Wild World of the Horror Film Fanzine – John Szpunar. It premiered at FantaCon 2013. I got it signed by the author, plus subjects such as Steve Bissette, Tom Skulan, Dennis Daniel and Jim Whiting

Saga of the Swamp Thing: Book One – Alan Moore, Stephen Bissette, John Totleben (2009), art plate signed by Steve; I met Steve at FantaCo in 1987

FantaCo book publications, almost all of which have stories; I know I was quoted in the Washington Post about Splatter Movies (1981)

Elfquest books – Wendy and Richard Pini, the original 20 issues in four volumes. Wendy and Richard came up to FantaCo for signings thrice a year

MUSIC

Blues People – LeRoi Jones (1963), before he became Amiri Baraka, he wrote about “the Negro experience in white America and the music that developed from it.”

Soulsville USA – Rob Bowman (1997). The story of STAX Records

Never A Dull Moment: 1971, the year that rock exploded – David Hepworth. I wrote 10 or 11 blog posts on this book

Across the Charts: The 1960s – Joel Whitburn (2008), This a book that shows the power of songs that cross over among the pop, soul, country, and adult contemporary charts.

Plus a slew of books on the Beatles

This post is getting LONG – more books soon.

Backup singer Clydie King (8/21/1943 – 1/7/2019)

Clydie King recorded with Phil Spector, B.B. King, Steely Dan, Barbra Streisand, Linda Ronstadt, Joe Cocker, Dickey Betts, Joe Walsh, Arlo Guthrie, Graham Nash, Elton John, Phil Ochs, Carly Simon, Neil Diamond, and Ringo Starr, among others.

I’m writing about the late Clydie King by request. Someone I know IRL saw and liked the piece I had done about composer Norman Gimbel, another obscure but important musical force who had also recently passed.

Again, you may not know her, but the backup singer warranted an extensive obituary in the New York Times. As is true of many black singers of that era, she grew up in the church. “After her mother’s death was raised by her older sister.” She toured with artists such as Ray Charles, Joe Cocker, and Bob Dylan.

Clydie recorded with Phil Spector, B.B. King, Steely Dan, Barbra Streisand, Linda Ronstadt, Joe Cocker, Dickey Betts, Joe Walsh, Arlo Guthrie, Graham Nash, Elton John, Phil Ochs, Carly Simon, Neil Diamond, and Ringo Starr, among others. She was one of The Blackberries, a trio which backed Humble Pie. In a 1971 interview, she estimated that she had sung on 300 records by then.

She is so noteworthy that she could/should have been in 20 Feet from Stardom, a great documentary about the supporting singers. I don’t believe she was in it, but her friend Merry Clayton was represented. They both sang on Rolling Stones albums. It was King who cajoled Clayton to sing with her on the Lynyrd Skynyrd anthem Sweet Home Alabama.

“Like other backup singers, King’s attempt to carve out her own career resulted in several solid, but commercially unsuccessful, albums.” You can find her discography here and on her Wikipedia page.

The Rolling Stone piece has links of Dylan and King singing together, mostly in his born-again period. .”She was my ultimate singing partner,” says Dylan. “No one ever came close. We were two soulmates”

The Definitely Dylan radio show connects to several tracks, not all related to Bob. In several articles, there are references to a romantic relationship between Dylan and King.

Listen to:

About Love – #45 on the soul charts in 1971
Loneliness (Will Bring Us Together Again) – Brown Sugar (Clydie King), #44 on the soul charts in 1973

January rambling #2: Robert Mueller action figure

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Three Holocaust survivors open up about the rising tide of anti-semitism

What’s Behind Our Obsession With Political ‘Likability’

Here’s the Robert Mueller action figure you’ve been waiting for

Weekly Sift: The End of the Shutdown and Extortion Tactics Have No Place in American Democracy

Research suggests his election has been detrimental to many Americans’ mental health

The Religious Left Is Finding Its Voice

Code Switch podcast from NPR: Intrigue At The Census Bureau (January 24, 2019)

Many Voters Think He’s a Self-Made Man. What Happens When You Tell Them Otherwise?

Impeach him

The World Economy Runs on GPS. It Needs a Backup Plan

The economy is great for billionaires, not for working people

Weekly Sift: My Wife’s Expensive Cancer Drug

Millions of Americans Flood Into Mexico for Health Care

My life after a heart attack at 38

In Newly-Found Audio, Bayard Rustin Says Coming Out ‘Was An Absolute Necessity’

Misty Copeland, Calvin Royal III and the rarity of a black couple dancing lead roles

Former Northwestern PhD student accused of stealing his own car settles with Evanston

Civility: #drawninpowerpoint – original comics, published occasionally by Craig Froehle. Creative Commons license “Attribution-NonCommercial”

Geographical dystopiary

RPI Model Railroad Club Getting Derailed?

The Christmas watch

A Girl Is Born

A Deadly Tsunami Of Molasses In Boston’s North End (1919)

How to rescue your car from two feet of snowbank

A profile of Mr. Eric Idle

Comic book artist George Perez retires; I hired him once, for the FantaCo chronicles for the Fantastic Four

Considering the new DC Universe streaming channel

Alan Alda Just Wants to Have a Good Conversation

Fallacies of composition and division

Now I Know: 150 Years After the Civil War, They’re Still Paying the Bills and How Tesla’s Death Ray Killed a Bill and The Intentionally Bad Novel That Became a Best Seller and Harry Potter and the Uniform of Temporal Distortion and The Man Who Inched Away at History

Becoming a digital near-native. Or not

MUSIC

Shed a Little Light – The Maccabeats and Naturally 7

Feed the Birds – Richard Sherman

Loving You With My Eyes – The Starland Vocal Band

Lola – Lake Street Dive

I Want You Back – Twice

Rimsky-Korsakov’s Cariccio Espagnol with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Leonard Bernstein

Sweet Child O’ Mine – Scary Pockets

Hazy Shade of Winter – Gerard Way, featuring Ray Toro

Running Up That Hill – Candy Says & Marc Canham

Coverville: 1248: Cover Stories for the Yellow Submarine 50th and Crash Test Dummies and 1249: Covering the 2019 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Inductees

K-Chuck Radio: Our Native Brothers and Sisters

Grammy-winning soul legend James Ingram dead at age 66

Land of Confusion – Genesis

The economics of streaming is making songs shorter

U.S. Vinyl Album Sales Grew 15% in 2018, Led by the Beatles, Pink Floyd, David Bowie & Panic! at the Disco