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Music throwback: Telling Me Lies

Don’t waste your time in the arms of a man
Who’s no stranger to treason

One Clear Moment Listening to Telling Me Lies from the Trio album (1987) always affects me greatly. Part of it is the tight harmony among Linda Ronstadt, Dolly Parton, and Emmylou Harris.

The song was the album’s second single, and it reached #3 on the US Billboard country singles charts. The recording was nominated for a Grammy award in 1988 for Country Song of the Year.

The message is painful:

You told me you needed my company
And I believed in your flattering ways
You told me you needed me forever
Nearly gave you the rest of my days

Should’ve seen you for what you are
Should never have come back for more
Should’ve locked up all my silver
Brought the key right to your door

The song first appeared on Linda Thompson’s One Clear Moment album (1985), her first solo collection “after divorcing husband and former collaborator, Richard Thompson.” The track was written by Linda Thompson and Betsy Cook, as were most of the songs on the album, which many critics believed included many well-written songs, often marred by that era’s heavy-handed production.

Don’t put your life in the hands of a man
With a face for every season
Don’t waste your time in the arms of a man
Who’s no stranger to treason

Listen to Telling Me Lies:

Linda Thompson here

Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, and Emmylou Harris here or here

I cover my ears, I close my eyes
Still hear your voice and it’s telling me lies
Telling me lies
***
For good measure, another 1980s female trio with tight harmonies, though a somewhat different style:

You work too hard to take this abuse
Be on your guard jerks on the loose

Listen to Keep On Doing What You Do/ Jerks On The Loose – the Roches, written by by Terre and Suzzy Roche, from the Keep On Doing album (1982)

Janet Jackson @ SPAC – July 26, 2018

Toward the end of the night, Janet Jackson showed photos of her father Joe Jackson, who passed away just last month.

The Saratoga Performing Arts Center or SPAC, just 35 miles north of Albany, is a venue where I’ve seen dozens of concerts. But none recently until I saw Janet Jackson last month with my friend Mary from church.

Janet is the youngest of the musical Jackson clan who I used to watch as Penny during the latter days of of the TV show Good Times. The Times Union reviewer is correct, that she “is one of the most important and successful artists ever.”

I’ll admit that I was much more familiar with the early work of Janet Jackson, the Control (1986) and especially the Rhythm Nation 1814 (1989) albums. Fortunately, she performed generous chunks from each.

It was clear that she wanted to both address the State of the World, the title of the opening video as well as the name of the tour, and to have her fans have a dance party. At 52, she has a LOT of energy, as did her eight dancers, along with a four-piece band and a DJ.

The Troy Record reviewer noted: “Toward the end of the night Jackson showed photos of her father Joe Jackson, who passed away just last month, during her 1997 hit Together Again. Michael Jackson, Janet’s brother, also showed up on the stage’s big screen during Scream, a song they released together in 1995.

We were glad to have gone. As Mary noted, “Fun show, great music, amazing dancing.” We were REALLY glad that it didn’t rain, because we had lawn seats and did not want to be sitting in a sea of mud. That’s something the younger selves could have endured. My thanks to my ticket benefactor, so the only expenditure was the $10 parking charge.

Listen to Janet Jackson:

The Skin Game Part I
The Knowledge

Nasty
Miss You Much

Control
What Have You Done for me Lately
The Pleasure Principle

Escapade
All For You

What About

Together Again
Scream (with Michael Jackson)

Rhythm Nation
State Of The World

It’s odd that I haven’t been to SPAC in a while. I saw Joni Mitchell there in 1974 (Miles of Aisles tour), Talking Heads in 1984 (Stop Making Sense), Bobby McFerrin in 1999 with the Philadelphia Orchestra, other orchestra and ballet performances, at least a half dozen Jazz Festivals, and the 1998 folk festival with Lyle Lovett, Joan Baez and many others.

We gotta get out more.

July rambling: fog of confusion

A Harlan Ellison Story, featuring Jack Kirby

6 Ways Social Media Affects Our Mental Health

Poverty Is Criminalized, Wealth Is Immunized

10 Signs of Fascism

Accused Russian Spy’s Boy Toy Is a Serial Fraud

Fog of confusion

There Are 3 Main Theories That Explain His Approach to Putin and Russia—Which One Makes the Most Sense?

What changed in Helsinki

What if Russia took over the United States? We saw it in 1987

He doesn’t want skilled immigrants either

God, the regime, and the meaning of morality

She warned America that Russia hacked our voting rolls. Why is she in jail?

Dan Rather’s New Podcast

On Bullshifting

This conservative would take Obama back in a nanosecond

More Evidence That Half of Americans Are In or Near Poverty

What kind of justice would Brett Kavanaugh be?

Trevor Noah Responds to Criticism from the French Ambassador – Between The Scenes | The Daily Show

stating the obvious

What the Mystery of the Tick-Borne Meat Allergy Could Reveal

A Century of Global Warming, in Just 35 Seconds

A history of modern capitalism from the perspective of the straw. Seriously

Disney’s magic highway (1958)

Why Don’t More Men Take Their Wife’s Last Name?

Mr. Rogers was my actual neighbor. He was everything he was on TV and more

The Jackie Robinson of Rodeo

Jaquandor writes his Thoughts on THE LAST JEDI, a lot of them

Greg Burgas: tribute to Steve Ditko without using Spider-Man or Doctor Strange!

Pepe Le Pew

Mark Evanier: Yet Another Harlan Ellison Story, featuring Jack Kirby

Actress Mari Blanchard

Now I Know: The Crime Witness Who Missed the Point and Why Hunters Wear Orange and Full-Circle Wikipedia and The Man Who Was Buried in Paperwork and How a Failed Star Trek Episode Helped Save the Franchise and The Far Side Dinosaur

Internet wading: Lost and found

MUSIC

Warzone – Yoko Ono

Keep a Little Soul – Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, previously unreleased

Sober – Demi Lovato

Let’s Impeach The President – Neil Young

Tango Seasons: Seasons Recomposed III – the Cappella Gabetta ensemble

Benadryl – Sofi Tukker

3 a.m. eternal – KLF

Phree Burd · Beth Patterson

50/50 -Garfunkel and Oates

Sleepwalk – Scott Bradlee

These Days – Erin Bode

Lost in the Supermarket – the Johnny Clash Project

Coverville 1224: You’ve Got To Hide Your Indie Hodgepodge and Requests Away and 1225: Rolling Stones Cover Story V

Karelia Suite – Sibelius

Sergei Lyapunov’s Rhapsody on Ukrainian Themes

Forgetting- Philip Glass

Die Fledermaus overture by Johann Strauss

Car Phone – Sheeler and Sheeler

RSA – comedy duo The Fan Brigade (Have you signed in?)

Those Sesame Street psychedelic videos

Obladi, Oblada – Bing Crosby

Music throwback: 1-2-3 by Len Barry

We battled with them for two years and had a ton of legal bills,

1-2-3 Len Barry was born Leonard Borisoff in Philadelphia on 12 June 1942. He was the lead singer of a group called the Dovells in the early 1960s, which had a couple Top 5 hits, before he went out on his own.

1-2-3 was Barry’s biggest solo hit, co-written by John Madara and David White, who helped pen songs such as You Don’t Own Me and At the Hop. It got to #2 on the November 20, 1965 Billboard pop charts, kept out of the #1 slot by I Hear a Symphony by the Supremes.

Speaking of whom, as Madera explains:

“In 1965… we were sued by Motown during the period when Berry Gordy was suing anyone whose records sounded like a Motown record… [he was] saying that ‘1-2-3’ was taken from a B-Side of a Supremes record called ‘Ask Any Girl.’ The only similarity between the two songs are the first three notes where the Supremes sang ‘Ask Any Girl’ and Lenny sang ‘1-2-3’…

“Motown kept us in court, tying up all of our writers’ royalties, production royalties, and publishing royalties, and threatened to sue us on the follow-up to ‘1-2-3,’ which was ‘Like A Baby.’ So after battling with them for two years and having a ton of legal bills, we made a settlement with Motown, giving them 15% of the writers’ and publishers’ share.

“We never heard ‘Ask Any Girl.’ The only influence for making ‘1-2-3’ was to make a ballad with a beat. And the sound of ‘1-2-3’ was definitely the sound of the era. Listen to ‘The In-Crowd’ – that’s not the Motown Sound, that’s the sound of the era – and ‘1-2-3′ definitely had a beat!”

I’ve heard both those songs for decades and still don’t hear the connection, except for those first three notes, used in Till There Was You and countless other songs.

I was a sucker for numbers songs, so I used to replace the subsequent lyrics of 1-2-3 with even MORE numbers, up to 21; it DOES work:

1-2-3 (1-2-3)
Oh, how elementary (4-5-6-7-8-9)
it’s gonna be (10-11-12)
C’mon, let’s fall in love, (13-14-15)
it’s easy (16)
(It’s so easy)(17-18)
Like takin’ candy (19-20)
from a baby (21)

Listen to :

Bristol Stomp– the Dovells (#2 pop for two weeks, #7 soul in 1961)
You Can’t Sit Down – the Dovells (#3 pop, #10 soul in 1963)

Ask Any Girl – the Supremes (B-side of Baby Love in 1964)

1-2-3 – Len Barry (#2 pop, despite Madera’s recollection, #11 soul, in 1965)
Like A Baby – Len Barry (#27 in 1966)

This post is the fault of Dustbury.

Musician Yusef/Cat Stevens turns 70

The trauma sharpened Cat Stevens’ quest for a more spiritually focused life.

There’s an article in the September 15, 2017 New Yorker entitled The Unlikely Return of Cat Stevens. That’s the truth.

“In the years since he formally retired from the popular music world, in 1978, his name has popped up in the media from time to time… It was difficult to… reconcile this cold, humorless, unhappy, and severe-looking man with the joyful, understanding, goofy, wise songwriter whose music we’d known and loved.

“For a long time, the man who’d changed his name to Yusuf Islam had completely disowned his artistic output as Cat Stevens—a confusing, dispiriting slap in the face to those it once meant a great deal to.”

A GREAT deal.

Steven Demetre Georgiou, born on 21 July 1948 in the Marylebone area of London, was the youngest child of a Greek Cypriot father, Stavros Georgiou (1900–1978), and a Swedish mother, Ingrid Wickman (1915-1989). “They lived above the family’s restaurant, Moulin Rouge, and everyone, including the children, helped out with the business.”

His interest in music began as a young teen, playing piano and guitar by 15, inspired by the Beatles, folk music, and show tunes such as West Side Story. He also took up drawing, “a skill later displayed in the purposely naive paintings that adorned the covers of his best-known albums.

“By 1966 he had chosen the stage name Cat Stevens because… his girlfriend said his eyes had a feline shape and allure.”

He had some early success on his first two albums. But he made a major change in both his music and his philosophy after contracting tuberculosis, which nearly killed him.

Tea for the Tillerman, which became a Top 10 Billboard hit, sold over 500,000 copies within six months of its release. Teaser and the Firecat (1971) was equally successful.
“Many more hits followed, in an increasingly broad range of styles and arrangements…

“By that time, the singer had already started his religious sojourn… Stevens almost drowned off the coast of Malibu, California [in 1975]. The trauma sharpened his quest for a more spiritually focused life. He found his way into Islam, changing his name to Yusuf Islam in July 1978. The singer’s next album, Back to Earth (1978), would be his last pop record for decades.”

He was embroiled in a long-running controversy “regarding comments which he made in 1989 about the death fatwa on author Salman Rushdie.” He believes he was misunderstood, but 10,000 Maniacs removed his Peace Train from one of their albums. In perhaps a confusion over a similar name, he was on a No-Fly list into the United States in 2004.

He started making music again in the 1990s, “though, at first, it was of an entirely religious nature… He didn’t start exploring secular music again until the new millennium, leading to the release of An Other Cup in 2006, by which point he was again allowed to fly into the US.

Listen to:

The First Cut Is the Deepest from Mona Bone Jakon

Tea for the Tillerman
Where Do the Children Play?
Hard Headed Woman
Wild World
Sad Lisa
Father and Son

Teaser and the Firecat
The Wind; a great description of this song on his Rock and Hall Hall of Fame 2014 induction page
Morning Has Broken
Bitterblue
Moonshadow
Peace Train

Oh Very Young from Buddha and the Chocolate Box (1974)

Boots and Sand, about his 2004 exclusion from the US, recorded in 2008, featuring Paul McCartney, Dolly Parton, and Terry Sylvester

Yusuf / Cat Stevens – CBS Sunday Morning Interview, 2014

Saturday Sessions (CBS)- His most recent album re-covers some of his earliest music (2017)

Coverville: 599: The Cat Stevens Cover Story (August 5, 2009) and 1179: Scrambled Cover Stories for Don Henley, Carlos Santana and Cat Stevens (July 19, 2017)