Roger Green: a librarian's life, deconstructed.
Kathyrn Dawn Lang was born on the 2nd of November, 1961 in Consort, Alberta, Canada, which means she turns 50 this year. For reasons more complex than I need to note here, I always associate the country singer turned chanteuse with an ex of mine.
Anyway, this is a lovely song from k.d. lang’s 2000 Invincible Summer album, Summerfling, which came out well past the time I broke up with my ex.
I’m afraid she already knew Hello Goodbye from one of those Glee soundtracks her mother owns.
You might think that, since I have so many Beatles albums, that when my daughter expressed interest in the band, I might have given her some of mine; you would be mistaken. Instead, I ordered for her the most popular album in the first decade of the 21st Century, Beatles 1. I figured she ought to have something of her own, and if she lost it, it wouldn’t bug me as much. In fact, she has misplaced the CD case, but not the disc.
I never owned #1 myself; I have all the albums. Some purists think it’s a terrible intro to the band, merely picking the songs that made it to #1 on the US and/or UK charts. But it includes many songs she was previously familiar with.
Love Me Do she knew vaguely before. It is a simple song and she now knows all the words.
A Hard Day’s Night she knows so well, she now intentionally muffs the lyrics, switching ‘dog’ and ‘log’ in the first two lines as she’s singing along.
Help is probably her favorite song, as she knows all the lyrics and asks me to sing with her, even when the recording isn’t playing.
Unbidden, she will sing Eight Days A Week, Penny Lane, and more interestingly, parts of Come Together.
She is particularly fond of the “Life is very short” bridge of We Can Work It Out.
Yesterday she knows well. At some level, I think she gravitates mostly to the more melancholy songs.
Yellow Submarine allows her to imitate the nautical noises. She loves the ‘sea of GREEN’, as well she should.
Eleanor Rigby she calls ‘Lonely People’; I attempt to correct her, and she replies, “Whatever.” She knows most of the lyrics to this song.
She is specifically fascinated by the reprise of She Loves You within All You Need Is Love.
I’m afraid she already knew Hello Goodbye from one of those Glee soundtracks her mother owns.
When she hears Hey Jude, she’ll substitute, “Hey, Jules” ever since I explained that the song was written by Paul McCartney to John Lennon’s elder son Julian, after John’s breakup with John’s wife and Julian’s mom, Cynthia.
The only songs not on the album that she had previously expressed interest in are Tell Me Why and, again to my surprise, I Am the Walrus.
So yes, I’m indoctrinating my daughter with music from my favorite band.
There was an earthquake 28 km (17 miles) W of Albany yesterday morning.
Here’s the current expected trajectory for Hurricane Irene. If all goes as this map suggests, the Category 3 hurricane will be hitting around Fayetteville, NC Sunday at 2 a.m., about 135 miles (217 km) from Charlotte, NC, where one sister and niece live, and where my wife and daughter will be visiting, starting on Thursday.
Meanwhile, there was that 5.8 earthquake yesterday at about 2 pm. EDT near Louisa, Virginia, less than 100 miles from Washington, DC. And I sure felt it in my office in Albany, NY. I was sitting at my desk and I thought I was having leg tremors, or something terribly physiologically wrong with me until I saw a cubicle neighbor’s picture swaying.
Last week, a 3.6 earthquake in Maryland hit, which was the largest recorded within 50 kilometers (31 miles) of Washington since a database was created in 1974.
Oddly, there was also an earthquake 28 km (17 miles) W of Albany yesterday morning. It was a 2.2, and I’m not sure that I felt that one.
***
I Feel The Earth Move-Carole King
Like A Hurricane-Neil Young
Good Night, Irene-Leadbelly
The other fire songs here, which I also own, are about passion, romantic passion.
Here’s another look at a word that has, either alone or in combination with other words, has several meanings.
The most common meaning of fire, of course, is that chemical change that creates heat and light, and usually smoke, which can evolve into a “destructive conflagration”. It was one of four substances thought in ancient and medieval cosmology to constitute the universe, along with earth, air, and water; five, if you count spirit.
But fire also means:
*enthusiasm, passion e.g., “all fired up”
and in one is at work and NOT “fired up” one could be subject to dismissal from employment, “getting fired”
Also:
a severe test; a trial or torment, “under fire”
the discharge of firearms or the like, “ready, aim, fire!”
to bake in a kiln, such as with pottery
to throw with force and speed; “fire a ball at a batter”
to ask questions, “fire away”
exposed to attack, “under fire”
*a burning sensation sometimes produced by drinking strong alcoholic liquor, “firewater”
and a whole lot more
Word History: Primitive Indo-European had pairs of words for some very common things, such as water or fire. Typically, one word in the pair was active, animate, and personified; the other, impersonal and neuter in grammatical gender. In the case of the pair of words for “fire,” English has descendants of both, one inherited directly from Germanic, the other borrowed from Latin.
As is often the case, I have found some songs that address the issue.
First, by The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, a reference to hellfire. This song actually went to #2 in 1968 in the US, and somewhere I have it on some LP.
But the other fire songs here, which I also own, are about passion, romantic passion.
The Ohio Players, a #1 song from the winter of 1974-75.
Bruce Springsteen. His live 1978 version went to #46 in 1987. (I don’t know the vintage of this video.) And here’s a studio version. This Boss song was a big hit for the Pointer Sisters, #2 in the winter of 1978-79.
ABC Wednesday, Round 9
Summer in the City entered the Billboard charts on the 16th of July 1966, and spent 11 weeks there, including three consectutive weeks at #1, starting on 13th of August.
When I joined the Capitol Record Club in 1965, book and record clubs had this thing called the negative option. That is, you would get the selected book or record UNLESS you sent in the response card in time. I was really bad at the negative option; I almost NEVER got the card in on time.
Which is how I ended up receiving the album Daydream by the Lovin’ Spoonful on Kama Sutra Records; loved that yellow label. Turns out, I was very fond of the early Spoonful. And when the subsequent single Summer in the City came out in 1966 (b/w Butchie’s Tune from the Daydream album), I had to buy it, probably from the Philadelphia Sales discount department store in Binghamton, NY, which was only two blocks from my elementary/junior high school, one of the very few singles I ever purchased; I was, even early on, an LP guy.
Summer in the City entered the Billboard charts on the 16th of July 1966, and spent 11 weeks there, including three consecutive weeks at #1, starting on the 13th of August.
It is one of the few songs I ever learned to play on the piano, albeit very badly.