music Archives - Page 16 of 261 - Ramblin' with Roger

Start Making Sense

Tribute to Talking Heads

In mid-December, one of my pastors emailed me: “I’m wondering—do you like the Talking Heads? I have two tickets to “Start Making Sense: A Tribute to Talking Heads “for Sunday, 12/29, at 7:30, which I would love to give to someone who would like them. Would that be you?”

It might be. I wrote about them here and several other times. I saw them perform on August 5, 1983, at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC) in upstate New York. It was one of the two or three greatest concerts I had ever seen.

But what about Start Making Sense? The program at the Cohoes Music Hall notes the group “celebrates the entire Talking Heads’ catalog with a seven-piece band meticulously executing the sounds and iconic live visual elements in every performance. Together, these skilled and dedicated musicians enjoy bringing the unique, infectious energy of a Talking Heads live show that you know and love to the stage.”

I said yes to the tickets, though I was/am wary of tribute bands. My wife agreed to go with me even though she had to get up early the following morning. It was good that she and I had gone to see the movie Stop Making Sense in 2023, about the 1983 Talking Heads tour, because she was not nearly as familiar with the TH oeuvre as I was.

Our seats were in the front row of the balcony, which was a great place to watch the show. While some people were sitting on the lower level, many stood and danced up front.

Deja vu?

The show began like the 1983 Talking Heads concert, in which the lead singer (Jon Braun) performed Psycho Killer with the boom box. Next, a couple of songs with the bass player/singer (Jenny Founds) and the drummer (Jesse Braun), then the guitarist/singer (Brian Davis). Soon, others (Colin Miller – Percussion & vocals; Alex Ayala – Keyboards & vocals; Kate Desisto-/ Vocals) joined on stage.

I wondered whether this would be a replication of the movie, but then they did a song from after that period. There was a Tom Tom Club song in the second half, and then the lead singer came out in a large suit.

On their website was this message: “To all you listeners… This is an appropriate title — Start Making Sense. This band makes plenty of sense to me and is a great representation of Talking Heads’ music. So listen up and go check them out!” —BERNIE WORRELL, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame member and keyboardist for Talking Heads and Parliament / Funkadelic

Many audience members had seen them in the past decade and a half, including in Cohoes, yet I had been unaware of them. They were very good.

The group will tour Australia from January 23 to February 1. Then, they will embark on their Spring tour with the Ocean Avenue Stompers, “playing the music of Talking Heads, David Bryne, and more with a full Horn Section!!!” The first show will be at The Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank, NJ, on March 28.

Here’s a Reddit link, plus some videos on their Instagram feed, including a pair of COVID-era concerts.

Musician/actor Steve Earle is 70

I Feel Alright

Someone must have given me a Steve Earle album or two back in the 1990s, probably I Feel Alright. His breakthrough album, Guitar Town, came out in 1986, going to #1 on the Billboard Country charts. I hadn’t thought of him so much as a country artist as a folk/Americana (whatever that means) musician.

He has long been an anti-war activist, opposing the wars in Vietnam and Iraq. He’s also been involved in other progressive/socialist causes. On one of his live albums, he mentioned that he sang at an early Farm Aid concert, admitting that it benefited him more than the farmers because “they didn’t know who the hell I was

His biography on Wikipedia is extensive. It mentioned his younger sister, Stacie Earle, and his late son, Justin Townes Earle (d. 2020), both of whom he has sung with. He’s been married seven times, including to one woman twice.

Writer

“Earle wrote and produced an off-Broadway play about the death of Karla Faye Tucker, the first woman executed since the death penalty was reinstated in Texas.“

He’s a bit of an iconoclast: In describing the writing of The Book I Swore I’d Never Write, he noted: “I’m writing a memoir,” he said in a to-be-published article. “I made a deal for two books, a memoir, and a novel. They made me an offer I couldn’t understand [laughs].”

He continued, “It’s not an autobiography, it’s a literary memoir, a little more abstract. It’s not like, ‘I was born a poor black child…’ and it doesn’t try and encompass every minute of my life. I think it’s about something besides me. It’s really about heroes and mentors, good and bad, so obviously the first part is about [renowned songwriter and Earle’s mentor] Townes [Van Zandt], before I started making records. The record-making aspect is in other books about me, I understand, but I’ve never read any of them.

Songs

Roughly leading to my favorite song

Goodbye’s All We’ve Got Left

The Galway Girl

John Walker’s Blues, the song about the captured American Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh, created controversy. Earle responded by appearing on various news and editorial programs and defending the song and his views on patriotism and terrorism.

Christmas In Washington

The Revolution Starts Now

Way Down The Hole. Earle’s version of Tom Waits‘ song was the “theme song for the fifth season of the HBO series The Wire, in which Earle appeared as a recovering drug addict and drug counselor named Walon (Earle’s character appears in the first, fourth, and fifth seasons).” Earle is a recovering heroin addict.

CCKMP – “Cocaine can’t kill my pain.”

Hard-Core Troubador

Day’s Aren’t Long Enough with Alison Moorer, his then-wife

The Devil’s Right Hand

Copperhead Road

Feel Alright

Ellis Unit One – Music From And Inspired By The Motion Picture Dead Man Walking. Earle is an anti-death penalty advocate.

Guitar Town

You’re Still Standing There with Lucinda Williams

Valentine’s Day. My favorite February 14 lyrics

Steve Earle turns 70 today.

January rambling: Lebensraum

Monroe Doctrine

We’ll get to Lebensraum in a bit.

Global temperatures in 2024 shattered records, soaring past 1.5°C as extreme weather devastated millions. 26 Climate-Fueled Extreme Weather Events Killed at Least 3,700 People.

Big Agriculture Is Leading Us Into the Bird Flu Abyss: The federal government’s deference to agriculture industry interests has put the US at risk of a public health crisis.

How The Polio Vaccine Destroyed Trust In Healthcare (a bit of a misleading title, but not entirely wrong)

Bernie Sanders’ Prescription to ‘Make America Healthy Again’: “Our real problem is not so much a healthcare crisis as it is a political and economic one.”

A Disastrous Development in Our Response to Disasters

Veterans rights and discrimination: a guide

New VIP+ Special Report: Generative AI: Deepfakes & Digital Replicas

Aaron Brown, CNN Anchor During the Sept. 11 Attacks, Dies at 76

Ask Arthur 2024: Racism and change; Miscellany

The art of monotasking: “Being busy” doesn’t necessarily mean we’re doing what matters. Focusing your attention on only one task at a time is the secret to performing tasks correctly.

The Best Reviewed Broadway Shows of 2024

A book on Albany’s railroad history? Yes, please…

Embiggen – defined earlier than the Simpsons

“Explain a Movie Plot Badly” — A Fun Party Game

What era?

A real meditation on American greatness

When people would talk about MAGA, liberals wanted to know which era was the “great” one they wanted to go back to. Many thought they were talking about the 1950s before integration. Or the 1920s before the Great Depression and FDR regulations. Maybe they meant the 1880s and 90s during the Gilded Age.

I would have picked any of those. But I did not have on my bingo card the 1820s. We’re going back to the Monroe Doctrine era. The Daily Signal, a right-wing online publication, favorably suggested the same. The piece by Jarrett Stepman ends: “If Trump does revive some form of the Monroe Doctrine, it could represent a much-needed return to tradition and to a stronger foundation for U.S. security in an increasingly dangerous world.”

Suddenly, the January 7 press conference made sense. djt said he’d be renaming the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.”

“The once and future president also doubled down on his aims to acquire Greenland, retake control of the Panama Canal, and put pressure on Canada to change its trade relations with the United States” which he voiced before Christmas.

Here’s former Trump national security adviser Robert O’Brien on Fox News:

It’s strategically very important to the Arctic which is going to be the critical battleground of the future because as the climate gets warmer, the Arctic is going to be a pathway that maybe cuts down on the usage of the Panama Canal.

Or MAYBE we’re going to become 1930s Germany. Lebensraum is “the policy of Nazi Germany that involved expanding German territories to the east to provide land and material resources for the German people while driving out Jewish and Slavic people.”

The Corporate Giants Bankrolling the Inauguration: PAY to play.

The President Can Self-Pardon, but It Would Be an Impeachable Offense (CATO Institute, Dec 2020)

MUSIC

Bemba Colorá-Sheila E. ft. Gloria Estefan on Jimmy Kimmel; I see Rebecca Jade!

Coronation Procession by Ruth Gipps

You Get What You Give – New Radicals

Love In Action – Utopia

Rocket 88 – Jackie Brenston & His Delta Cats

Coverville 1516 and 1517: The 2024 Coverville Countdown

Down By The Riverside – Elvis Presley · Carl Perkins · Jerry Lee Lewis · Johnny Cash. I bought this CD after I saw the Million Dollar Quartet musical

The theme from the 1967 Spider-Man cartoon show – Midtown

Tomorrow – Julie Benko and Cantor Azi Schwartz

Weekend Diversion: 1984, Part 21: The final notes – all of the US pop #1s

Peter Yarrow Dies at 86. Leaving On A Jet Plane – Peter, Paul, and Mary

Sam Moore, who died at age 89, was more than a Soul Man – he was one of the 20th century’s great live performers. When Something Is Wrong With My Baby – Sam And Dave.

Beatles For Sale begat ’65 and VI

Capitol knew how to churn out the product

Many of us who grew up with the American versions of the Beatles albums were confounded when we discovered that the United Kingdom albums were different. For instance, Beatles For Sale on Parlophone generated the majority of songs for two Capitol albums in the United States, Beatles ’65 and Beatles VI.

“Beatles For Sale was released on 4th December 1964 – just 21 weeks after A Hard Day’s Night. It was The Beatles’ fourth album release in less than two years.” Some fans and critics consider it the band’s least successful collection. It contains six covers, probably because the band was busy with touring and moviemaking; this was the last time the band relied on so many outside songs for their albums. Here are the links.

Beatles ’65 also came out in December ’64, just before Christmas. All are by Lennon/McCartney except when otherwise indicated. If they’re from Beatles for Sale, they’ll be indicated as B4S. Here are the tracks.

Side 1

No Reply – B4S

I’m A Loser – B4S

Baby’s In Black—B4S. Is there a greater string of downer songs in the catalog than these?

Rock and Roll Music (Chuck Berry) – B4S

I’ll Follow The Sun – B4S, written by Paul c. 1958

Mr. Moonlight (Roy Lee Johnson) – B4S. One of the least popular Beatles tracks.

Side 2

Honey Don’t (Carl Perkins) – B4S. The Ringo vocal.

I’ll Be Back – the last song on the UK A Hard Day’s Night album

She’s A Woman – the B-side of the single. Unlike UK albums, which thought of LPs and 45s as separate entities, music producers in the US feared fans wouldn’t buy the album without the single.

I’ll Feel Fine – the A-side of the single.

Everybody’s Trying To Be My Baby (Perkins) – B4S. George loved Carl Perkins.

An interlude

The next Capitol Record was The Early Beatles (March 1965), which included 11 of the 14 songs on the UK’s Please Me album (March 1963). I Saw Her Standing There showed up on the Capitol album Meet The Beatles! (January 1964). The other two songs, Misery and There’s a Place, never appeared on a Capitol/Apple album until the US version of Rarities in March 1980.

Those 14 songs, 12 at a time, also appeared in one of the iterations of VeeJay’s Introducing…the Beatles, just before and after Meet The Beatles!

The sixth Capitol album, excluding The Beatles Story

Beatles VI was released in June 1965, the first Beatles album I ever purchased. Here are the tracks.

Side 1

Kansas City/Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey (Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller/Richard Penniman) – B4S. Note that the latter song was not listed on the album cover.

Eight Days a Week – B4S

You Like Me Too Much – the Harrison track was from Side 2 of the upcoming UK Help! album

Bad Boy (Larry Williams) – The group recorded material especially for the North American market. This song’s first UK release was on A Collection of Beatles Oldies in 1966 and later appeared on the UK Rarities album in 1978.

I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party – B4S

Words of Love (Buddy Holly) – B4S

Side 2

What You’re Doing -B4S

Yes It Is – the B-side to the single Ticket To Ride

Dizzy Miss Lizzy (Williams) – recorded material especially for the North American market. But it showed up on the upcoming UK Help album.

Tell Me What You See – from the upcoming UK Help album

Every Little Thing -B4S

The Story of The Beatles Cartoons & Why They Will Never Be Shown Again

The #1 hits of 1905

remember me to Herald Square

Here are the #1 hits of 1905. Since there was no Billboard or comparable charts, how is that possible? Joel Whitburn’s Pop Memories 1890-1954 gives due credit to Jim Walsh. He is “the world’s leading authority on the pioneer recording age.” His columns in Hobbies magazine ran “a remarkable 40 years.”

The Whitburn book also notes: We compiled charts for those years by incorporating various surveys and sources, notably the Talking Machine World periodical, offered monthly listings of all popular records released starting in 1905 and frequently provided information on the hottest current hits, although not in charge chart form.”

“In the early decades of the 20th century, a song’s popularity was measured by its sales of sheet music and recordings… nearly every department store in five & dime, in addition to music shops, sold sheet music to the day’s top hits. Annual sheet music sales were approaching 30 million by decade’s end. A driving force behind these sails was the ubiquity of pianos in middle and upper-class American homes.”

The songs

The Preacher and the Bear – Arthur Collins (Edison), 11 weeks at #1, gold record. It is listed as a comedy record. It is… of its time.

Yankee Doodle Boy – Billy Murray (Columbia), eight weeks at #1. You’ll recognize part of this. He was The Biggest Star of the Phonograph Era.

In The Shade of the Old Apple Tree – Irving Gillette (Edison), seven weeks at #1

In My Merry Oldsmobile – Billy Murray (Victor), seven weeks at #1. These were still the early days of the automobile industry in the United States. I’ve heard this song!

Give My Regards to Broadway – Billy Murray (Columbia), five weeks at #1. I had forgotten how old Broadway was until my daughter and I went to the Museum Of Broadway earlier this year.

Where The Morning Glories Twine Around the Door – Byron Harlan (Columbia), 5 weeks at #1

Come Take A Trip In My Air-Ship – Billy Murray (Victor), four weeks at #1. Air-Ship, just two years after the Wright Brothers flew in Kitty Hawk

Dearie– Corinne Morgan and Hayden Quartet (Victor), two weeks at #1