January rambling #2: Jerks on the Loose

The Wife and I saw Something Rotten at Proctors Theatre in Schenectady.


‘Doomsday Clock’ Moves 30 Seconds Closer To Midnight

From the Barmen Declaration: 8.18 We reject the false doctrine, as though the Church were permitted to abandon the form of its message and order to its own pleasure or to changes in prevailing ideological and political convictions.

“I was a stranger and you did not welcome me.” and What the Bible Says About How to Treat Refugees

Christians’ Call to Speak Truth to ‘Alternative Facts’

Crowd statistics worldwide, 21 January 2017

If you’re looking for those climate change and LGBT rights and Native American pages on whitehouse.gov that disappeared on January 20, know that they are archived at https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/

Obama Foundation

The legitimacy and illegitimacy of 45 and A Guide to His Huge Debts—and the Conflicts They Present. Mr Brunelle explains it all

Inaugural speech was the most dreadful in history

This Is Our Most Dangerously Retrograde Government in 150 Years, including, but not limited to, intentionally lying to us and/or gaslighting us and attacks on the freedom of the press – Historically, tyrants have tried to control the press using 4 techniques and getting payments from foreign governments, though we have no idea what they are and Aides Keep Leaking Embarrassing Stories About How He Can’t Handle Embarrassment and struggles badly to pass a test of presidential maturity, while using the White House page for puffery

The “Muslim ban”, which these politicians fought, is “Immoral,” “Stupid,” and “Counterproductive” and excludes those countries from the ban that have killed Americans on US soil, while including those that have not. Quebec Mosque Terrorist Is White Christian Pro-Trump Fanatic

Not to mention: controlling Voice of America and silencing EPA and the cone of silence on USDA scientists. Is this a trial balloon for a coup?

Make of this what you will: his mother was a Scottish immigrant. And his father’s middle name was Christ, pronounced Krist, the surname of Fred’s mom; Fred said he was Swedish, when his parents were German.


(From here)

Kellyanne Conway on Donald Trump, BEFORE he hired her

I Was Trained for the Culture Wars in Home School, Awaiting Someone Like Mike Pence as a Messiah

Possibly the worst news of the month: Steve Bannon Gets A Seat At The NSC Table

Steven Mnuchin Unmasked By Samantha Bee – he’s the Treasury Secretary nominee

Joy Reid of CNN: “We have to think about how do we, a free press, operate with an increasingly authoritarian regime and change everything we’re doing. We can’t just report what he says and live on his Twitter feed.”

1984 climbs the bestseller list — almost 70 years after it was published

How to lose the war on terror

Out Here, No One Can Hear You Scream – The dangerous culture of male entitlement and sexual hostility hiding within America’s national parks and forests

Something Rotten (Boston Globe review) – When the Wife and I saw it at Proctors Theatre in Schenectady earlier in the run, we laughed uproariously.

PK Miller, an Albany original and colorful character, dies at an uncertain age – I’d see him often at our monthly concerts at my church, among other places. we’re FB friends, and a couple weeks after he died I got one of those cloned invitations to Friend him.

When I posted on Facebook that Miguel Ferrer had died of cancer at the age of 61, people kvetched about what shows Variety noted. NCIS: Los Angeles (his current gig, which I’ve never seen) and Crossing Jordan (which I watched regularly), as opposed to Twin Peaks and Robocop and Star Trek.


John Hurt: 1940-2017

Della Street, er, Barbara Hale, R.I.P.

Dick Gautier, R.I.P.

Dan Savage speaks frankly about Savage Love

Mark Evanier: Rejection – a wilderness guide for writers

John Oliver returns February 12

Historic Albany Foundation Inventory – An attempt to document the oldest structures in Albany, NY

News anchor sets off Alexa devices around San Diego ordering unwanted dollhouses

Now I Know: New Jersey’s Shockingly Dangerous Water Slide and How Pride Makes Basketball Players Worse

Fortune teller who uses ASPARAGUS to predict the future

NOT ME (guy in Australia) WHEN Roger Green was nominated for the Clarence Valley Local Hero Award, he had raised more than $64,000 in 12 years.

Music

Gimme Some Truth- David J

Get Up Stand Up – Bob Marley

Ladies First – Queen Latifah

“Kellyanne Conway” cover Chicago’s “Roxie” on SNL

I saw the Roches a couple of times and got several of their albums. So I was sad to hear about the passing of Maggie Roche, at the age of 65, from cancer. Listen to We and Hammond Song and Hallelujah Chorus and Keep On Doing What You Do/ Jerks On The Loose and about 100 more tunes. Also Was a Sunny Day – Paul Simon featured Maggie and Terre Roche; Liquid Days (Part I) – Philip Glass Ensemble has Maggie and Terre and Suzzy; Forgetting – Philip Glass Ensemble has Linda Ronstadt and the Roches.

Derrick Boudwin: For Utah Father, Music Eases the Pain of Going Blind

Jeanne Mitchell: America’s First Young Lady of the Fiddle

Butch Trucks, Allman Brothers Band Drummer and Co-Founder, Dead at 69

The passing of Soul Survivors vocalist Richie Ingui

Coverville 1156: The Warren Zevon Cover Story II – he would have been 70 this month

Orion, The Would-Be Elvis

Paul McCartney sued Sony/ATV, the massive music publishing company that owns, among other things, all of The Beatles’ songs written by Lennon and McCartney. Paul wants his 50 percent share of the songs back.

Buddy Greco, Jazz Pianist, Vocalist and Las Vegas Mainstay, Dies at 90

Music Throwback Saturday: For Sentimental Reasons

The Nat Cole version started up the charts earliest and charted highest

natkingcole-sentimentalI was looking at the Billboard Top Ten bestsellers charts for January 18, 1947, 70 years ago, and there were not one or two, but FOUR different versions of (I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons, the song written in 1945 by Ivory “Deek” Watson, former founding member of The Ink Spots, and William “Pat” Best, a founding member of The Four Tunes. “Best later stated that Watson had nothing to do with the creation of the song, but Watson maintained in his late 1960s autobiography that he and Best wrote the song together, lyrics and music respectively.”

The King Cole Trio Cole first hit the Top 10 on November 30, 1946, with Charlie Spivak (vocals by Jimmy Saunders), Eddy Howard, and Dinah Shore all joining him on the charts nearly two months later. Cole debuted at #8, fell off the charts for a week, and then was #5 for two weeks before dipping to #8 on December 28, right behind his own The Christmas Song (Merry Christmas To You).

In 1947: Jan 4: #6 Cole. Jan 11: #5 Cole. Jan 18: #4 Cole, #7 Spivak, #8 Howard, #10 Shore. Jan 25: #4 Cole, #6 Howard, #9 Spivak

Feb 1: #3 Cole, #6 Howard, #7 Spivak, #9 Shore. Feb 8: #4 Cole, #6 Shore, #8 Howard, #9 Spivak. Feb 15: #1 Cole, #8 Howard, #9 Shore. Feb 22: #4 Cole.

So the Cole version started up the charts earliest, charted highest (#1), and lasted longest (12 weeks)

But there was an alternate chart during this time that took into account not just sales but radio play and jukeboxes. On THAT chart, Cole was #1 for SIX weeks, Shore was #2 for two weeks, Howard got to #2, and Spivak to #5. Also, Ella Fitzgerald got to #8 and Art Kassel, with vocalist Jimmy Featherstone, to #15, all in the same time frame.

Listen to (I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons

Nat King Cole (different recordings) HERE or HERE

Ella Fitzgerald and the Delta Rhythm Boys HERE or HERE

Eddy Howard HERE or HERE

Art Kassel HERE

Dinah Shore HERE or HERE

Charlie Spivak/Jimmy Saunders HERE or HERE

A time of great distress

Are we in a time of great distress? I was, right after the election for about a month. Then I hit a plateau. But now I see the previous guy doing his farewell tour, and I’m feeling the tension all over again.

Let the record show that I did not consent to this. Yet we are about to have a President:

*whose Cabinet picks are “a lethal combination of corporate bigwigs and military men with plenty of know-nothing about political affairs and diplomacy,” a group the National Council of Churches condemned as “morally inconsistent with Christian principles.”

*whose plan to avoid conflicts of interest is toothless

*who orders ambassadors to yank their kids out of school and come home ASAP in disregard of precedent even as taxpayers are subsiding two households for the Trumps so that their child doesn’t have to move from NYC to DC mid-school year

*who threatens the press for doing its job

*who petulantly taunts Schwarzenegger over Celebrity Apprentice ratings, a program for which he is an executive producer

*who is for sale

*whose DC Hotel has been tagged With $5 Million in Unpaid Worker Liens

*who now asks Congress, not Mexico, to pay for a border wall, but tweets that MX will pay for it eventually – good luck with that

*who has necessitated Internet Archive’s special archive

*who is Like King Henry VIII Revived — Without The Charm

*who is turning America into a Stan

*who prompted California to hire former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder for legal counsel

and yet
* who complains that he is being mocked

I guess As We Enter 2017, Keep The Big Picture In Mind, and Here’s how we prepare to be ungovernable in 2017.

FLATUS is the regular target of Lawrence White, especially on the Russia thing.

I choose to think we’ll get through this, we’ll get through this, we’ll get through this…

But I won’t use the Make Your Face Great Again makeup tutorial. Instead of going to the inauguration, I could look at editorial cartoons.

Hey, TCM is airing A Face in the Crowd today at 5:45 p.m. ET- great film! – in honor of Patricia Neal’s birthday. It’s one of the films to get us through his Presidency, according to Chaz Ebert.

But what I REALLY need…

Music!

Seriously. Sara Bareilles imagines what President Obama must have been thinking about this past election and Donald Trump before November 8, but couldn’t say publicly. Leslie Odom, Jr. performs the song.

Rebecca Ferguson said she would have played the inauguration if she could have sung Strange Fruit; other suggestions for inauguration day, made by a coterie of folks:

Who Will Survive America? – Amiri Baraka
Mississippi Goddam – Nina Simone
Go Up Moses – Roberta Flack
You can’t bring me down – Suicidal Tendencies;
Alright -Kendrick Lamar
People Have the Power – Patti Smith
Fortunate Son – CCR
Cult of Personality – Living Color
(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang – Heaven 17
There Goes the Neighborhood – the Busboys

I won’t be boycotting L.L. Bean, but maybe I’ll drink some New Zealand wine for Arthur’s birthday.

Music Throwback Saturday: Carry On, Wayward Son

“My charade is the event of the season”

Kansas_LeftovertureWhen I was broke and directionless at the end of 1976, I ended up staying with my parents and my baby sister in Charlotte, NC for the first four months of 1977. It wasn’t a good fit for me.

I spent a bunch of time working in this massive defunct store, broken up into sections. I’d help my parents set up up and restock products, selling some costume jewelry or knickknacks from time to time.

Some of the other vendors believed that I thought I was better than they were. They would criticize me for using two- and three-syllable words. Yet my parents got along with these people just fine.

I was miserable. I even took up smoking, though “took up” would be overstating it a bit. I probably had a half a pack over the four months I was down there, trying desperately to fit in and failing badly.

One day, sister Marcia plugged in a jukebox I had not seen before. I don’t know if she had to put in coins, but I do know what it played, Carry On, Wayward Son by Kansas. And even in this cavernous building, the music was LOUD, almost deafeningly so.

Naturally, all the vendors in my area looked askance. I, on the other hand, did what I had seldom done in my time in Charlotte to that point: I laughed hysterically. That machine REALLY gave a good feeling to the bottom of that song, and it brought me joy for the 45 seconds it was on before either it was turned down or unplugged, I forget.

At the same time, it made a lot of sense lyrically, which I hadn’t thought about until the next day:

Masquerading as a man with a reason
My charade is the event of the season
And if I claim to be a wise man, it surely means that I don’t know
On a stormy sea of moving emotion
Tossed about I’m like a ship on the ocean
I set a course for winds of fortune, but I hear the voices say

Carry on my wayward son,
For there’ll be peace when you are done
Lay your weary head to rest
Don’t you cry no more

Interestingly, I never owned the song until I bought a greatest hits CD considerably later.

Listen to Carry On, Wayward Son by Kansas HERE or HERE.

A for Are You Experienced -Jimi Hendrix Experience

American compilers often choose the singles to be included on the album, whereas the British saw the single and the album as separate entities.

areyouexpukI have the American version of the Jimi Hendrix Experience debut album, Are You Experienced, on vinyl, but it’s difficult to get to in the house. So I went to the public library and borrowed the CD, which has 17 songs, rather than the 11 on my LP. Not that all the other songs were unfamiliar.

What I’ve long known about the Beatles and Rolling Stones and Donovan and many other artists was also true of Hendrix. The US and UK versions were very different, even when the titles were the same. The picture at the top of the page was only vaguely familiar, but it is the original UK cover, which Hendrix didn’t particularly like. Note that the band’s name does not even appear.

Links are to music, but not every song is represented.

The UK/international version, released May 12, 1967, included:

Side one
1. “Foxy Lady” 3:22
2. “Manic Depression” 3:46
3. “Red House” 3:44
4. “Can You See Me” 2:35
5. “Love or Confusion” 3:17
6. “I Don’t Live Today” 3:58
Side two
7. “May This Be Love” 3:14
8. “Fire” 2:47
9. “Third Stone from the Sun” 6:50
10. “Remember” 2:53
11. “Are You Experienced?” 4:17

The original North American edition, released August 23, 1967, dumped Red House, Can You See Me, and Remember in favor of the singles Hey Joe, Purple Haze, and The Wind Cries Mary, even though they weren’t hits in the US, initially. American compilers often choose the singles to be included on the album, whereas the British saw the single and the album as separate entities.
are_you_experienced_-_us_cover
Notice that even the same songs are slightly shorter on the American iteration. Hendrix liked this psychedelic cover far more.

Side one
1. “Purple Haze” 2:46
2. “Manic Depression” 3:46
3. “Hey Joe” (Billy Roberts) 3:23
4. “Love or Confusion” 3:15
5. “May This Be Love” 3:14
6. “I Don’t Live Today” 3:55
Side two
7. “The Wind Cries Mary” 3:21
8. “Fire” 2:34
9. “Third Stone from the Sun” 6:40
10. “Foxy Lady” 3:15
11. “Are You Experienced?” 3:55

Also on the CD are the B-sides of the UK singles Stone Free (Hey Joe), 51st Anniversary (Purple Haze), and Highway Chile (The Wind Cries Mary).

In any configuration, Are You Experienced is considered one of the best debut albums of all time.

ABC Wednesday – Round 20

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