music Archives - Page 44 of 264 - Ramblin' with Roger

Music that’s gone to the dogs

Beatles, Royal Guardsmen, and, of course, Rufus Thomas

Oh, no, I missed National Dog Day on August 26. But we’re still in the midst of Responsible Dog Ownership Month. We can still celebrate National Dog Week, September 20-26. Why Dog Day isn’t in Dog Week, I just don’t know. And here are more celebrations.

Now for some music that’s gone to the dogs. Two things: I own physical copies of each of these songs and not all of them are actually about dogs.

Black Dog – Led Zeppelin

Diamond Dogs – David Bowie. The title song of the album.

Dirty Old Egg Sucking Hound – Johnny Cash, from the “comedy” album, Everybody Loves A Nut.

Hey, Bulldog – The Beatles. The group was supposed to record a promotional film for Lady Madonna but decided to record a new song instead upon arrival. A great song and a joyous video. The recording ended up on the Yellow Submarine soundtrack.

Hound Dog – Big Mama Thornton. Reportedly, someone did a cover of this, which was fairly successful.

(How Much Is) That Doggie In the Window – Patti Page

I Love My Dog – Cat Stevens

I’ll Be Doggone – Marvin Gaye

More canine choruses

Jealous Dogs – The Pretenders. I was playing my Pretenders albums in honor Chrissie Hynde (7th) and Martin Chambers (4th), whose birthdays are both in September, and I had forgotten about this song.

Martha My Dear – Beatles. Paul’s English sheepdog, a factoid I’ve known since before the group broke up.

My Dog and Me – John Hiatt

Old King – Neil Young

Quiche Lorraine– The B-52’s. For the second time this year, the song appears in this blog.

A Salty Dog– Procol Harum. The “salty dog” in question is the captain of a majestic sailing ship.

Snoopy Vs. the Red Baron – The Royal Guardsmen. The RGs had a few Snoopy songs, including a relatively dark one, Snoopy v. Osama, which I wrote about here and here.

Walking the Dog – Rufus Thomas. He had several dog songs, including No More Doggin’ Around (from 1952!), The Dog, Can Your Monkey Do The Dog, and Somebody Stole My Dog (all from 1963 and ’64).

Movie review: Golda

Henry Purcell

Right after we got home from church, my wife said we had to go NOW if we were celebrating National Cinema Day with $4 tickets. I didn’t know that she’d selected a movie to see at the Spectrum Theatre in Albany.

I knew nothing about the film Golda, except that it was about the late Israeli prime minister and starred Helen Mirren.

After a cursory history of Israel (formed in 1948 and fought the Six-Day War in 1967), we heard a discussion among Israel’s military leaders about what turned out to be the Yom Kippur War of 1973. There were disagreements about strategies in anticipation of Egyptian and Syrian military buildups; a preemptive strike by Israel would have been unacceptable to the US leadership of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger.

What I learned in the film is that Golda Meir smoked cigarettes. She smoked a LOT of cigarettes. Smoking cigarettes was hazardous to her health.

Meanwhile, the battles far from Tel Aviv seemed at arm’s length, hearing about defeats and victories via audio transmissions.

I was not engaged in the film until about halfway through when Henry Kissinger (Liev Schreiber) arrived. There’s subsequently a good scene with multiple phones and a few others. But it was too little, too late.

Wanted more

Golda Meir, the person, is intriguing; she was born in Kiev/Kyiv in 1898, immigrated with her family to Milwaukee, and then emigrated to Palestine with her husband in 1921. She became the first female head of government in the Middle East.

Golda, the movie, is, according to critic Todd Jorgenson of Cinemalogueone” “.. .uninvolving as a political thriller and incomplete as a recap of Golda’s background and rise to power. It remains emotionally detached while struggling to penetrate her steely gaze.” I’ll buy that. It was 51% positive with the critics, though 89% with the audience on Rotten Tomatoes.

Music

One thing I loved was the outro music. It was from Henry Purcell’s opera Dido and Aeneas, specifically Dido’s Lament from the aria “When I am laid in earth.” Conductor Leopold Stokowski wrote a transcription of the piece for the symphony orchestra.

Here’s a version conducted by Stokowski. The video has too much background hiss, but I love that the conductor announces that it’s a piece “we all know.”

Listen to a version from the 1995 Proms, conducted by Andrew Davis.

One last thing: to the woman whose cellphone rang at least four times during the film- Grawlix.

Sunday Stealing: Storyworth

Watergate

The Sunday Stealing this week is by Storyworth.

1. Did you ever have a commercial you really liked?

I used to watch the Super Bowl ads fairly religiously. Someone put together the 25 best ones, and I remember liking 1, 2, and 7.

2. How did you learn to ride a bicycle?

I have no idea. When I was 16, I rode someone else’s bicycle from Binghamton’s First Ward to the South Side. I was crossing the bridge from Riverside Drive, gaining on my friend Carol, but I couldn’t stop. So I put my foot down, tumbled, and severely scraped my left arm, a wound I had for another three and a half decades. I had never had a bicycle with hand brakes, having always stopped by essentially trying to pedal backward.

3. How did you celebrate your 21st birthday?

It was a Thursday, and I was a political science major in college. Six days earlier, a “grand jury in Washington, D.C., indicted several former aides of President Richard Nixon, who became known as the “Watergate Seven”—H. R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, John N. Mitchell, Charles Colson, Gordon C. Strachan, Robert Mardian, and Kenneth Parkinson—for conspiring to hinder the Watergate investigation. The grand jury secretly named Nixon as an unindicted co-conspirator.”

There is no doubt that Watergate was the source of gleeful conversation since the first three in particular were contemptible sorts.

4. What fascinated you as a child?

The World Almanac. I received it every year from when I was 10 to 60. The longest rivers, the most significant cities, and the sheer number of Canadians in the list of Famous Personalities, folks like Lorne Greene of Bonanza.

5. What was one of your favorite playground games?

I always liked slides and still do.

6. What things matter most to you in life?

Survival of the species, justice, equality.

Time travel?

7. If you had to go back in time and start a brand new career, what would it be?

I’m not sure that I would. Maybe I would have become a librarian sooner. Conversely, my experience working at FantaCo, a small business, was extremely useful in being a small business librarian.

8. What do people get wrong about you?

They think I’m an extrovert. I have written about this a lot, most recently here.

9. Do you believe that people can change? Why or why not?

Most people can change because the species would not have survived this long.

10. What is some of the best advice your mother ever gave you?

My mother was not great with useful advice. It tended to be a lot of platitudes. To be fair, she might have agreed with that assessment if asked.

11. If you could see into the future, what would you want to find out?

Nothing.

12. How has your life turned out differently than you imagined it would?

Occasionally, I was directed to make a plan in work and non-employment situations. What do you see yourself doing in five years? Except for retiring, this has never been at all useful or correct.

13. What is the longest project you have ever worked on?

Quite possibly, this blog. 18 years, four months. Unless you consider owning a house a “project.”

14. What have been some of your favorite restaurants through the years?

Little Caesar’s in Binghamton, NY. Lombardo’s in Albany. The former is still operating.

15. What is one of the best shows you’ve ever been to?

The reunion show of The Temptations and the Stop Making Sense tour of Talking Heads.

1983 #1 songs with an Arthurian twist

Weekend Diversion

I am going to list the 1983 #1 songs. But this post will have an Arthurian twist. Arthur Schenck, the AmeriNZ, who I may have mentioned once or twice in this blog, is the reason.

He wrote in April: “As last year was winding down, I wanted to come up with some blog posts I could easily prepare in advance, hopefully increasing my overall output. The first thing I thought of was reviving ‘Weekend Diversion’ posts, but how?…

“I’ve done posts about older music many times, and I suddenly realised that this year I could focus on the Number One pop songs of 1983.

“The thing about 1983 isn’t (merely) that it was 40 years ago, it’s that it was my first full year living in Chicago, and it’s when I established what my life would be up until 1995 when I met Nigel and moved to New Zealand. 1983 was a very significant year for me.”

I remember 1983 exceedingly well too, in no small part because it was the year FantaCo artist Raoul Vezina died in November.

“The idea for these posts is loosely based on a series of posts Roger Green did as artists turned 70. Like his posts, these wouldn’t necessarily be every week because pop songs are often Number One for weeks in a row. Even so, the specific dates are fixed, so I could do the posts well in advance. As a bonus, the Number One dates for 1983 are all Sundays this year—almost like it was planned.

“That’s when it all fell apart: I completely forgot all about it. In fact, I only remembered it because I ran across some links I saved at the end of last year, but that means I’m already behind schedule.”

The songs

But he got caught up. His first post includes Maneater , which I wrote about in my 1982 post.It went to #1 for four weeks beginning on 12/18/82 so was #1 for two weeks in EACH year.

The hyperlink to the title will be the link to the song. The hyperlink to the artist will be the link to Arthur’s commentary. As he finishes up the year, I’ll come back and add those last half-dozen connections.

Every Breath You Take – The Police, eight weeks at #1, gold record

Billie Jean – Michael Jackson, seven weeks at #1, platinum record. MTV made Michael Jackson, and Michael Jackson made MTV.

Flashdance… What A Feeling – Irene Cara, six weeks at #1, gold record

Say Say Say – Paul McCartney, six weeks at #1, platinum record. That friendship fractured.

All Night Long (All Night) – Lionel Richie, four weeks at #1, gold record

Total Eclipse of the Heart – Bonnie Tyler, four weeks at #1, gold record

Down Under – Men At Work, four weeks at #1, gold record

Beat It – Michael Jackson, three weeks at #1, platinum record

Islands In The Stream – Kenny Rogers with Dolly Parton, three weeks at #1, platinum record

Baby, Come To Me – Patti Austin with James Ingram, two weeks at #1, gold record

Maniac – Michael Sembello, two weeks at #1

A single week at #1

Let’s Dance– David Bowie, gold record

Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) – Eurythmics, gold record

Tell Her About It – Billy Joel

Africa – Toto, gold record

Come On Eileen – Dexys Midnight Runners

Most awarded songs #14

Summer’s here

The countdown continues. Some of the most awarded songs #14. Grammy and/or Oscar love. Citations in Rolling Stone magazine, RIAA, ASCAP, CMA, NPR, and more.

20. The Tracks Of My Tears – The Miracles. Classic Smokey Robinson poetry. “Since you put me down My smile is my make up I wear since my break up with you” It uses the clown motif, as did the Miracles’ Tears of A Clown.

19. Always On My Mind – Willie Nelson. Interestingly, this is a song that was NOT written by Willie. The 1972 song was also successfully recorded by artists, including Elvis, before Willie’s Grammy Award-winning version in 1982.

18. Be My Baby – The Ronettes. Written by Jeff Barry, Ellie Greenwich, and Phil Spector, the only Ronette on the track was Veronica Bennett, later Ronnie Spector. Sonny and Cher sang backup vocals. The Wrecking Crew played the instruments, with Hal Blaine making an error in the drumming that stayed on the recording.

17. Great Balls Of Fire – Jerry Lee Lewis. The song I most associate with Lewis was used in the 1957 movie Jamboree.

Sacrilege

16. Light My Fire – The Doors. I’ll admit it. The album version of this song, which was often played on the radio despite its 7-minute length I grew to find tedious.

15. What’d I Say – Ray Charles. His first big crossover to pop hit is a great call-and-response. And also very suggestive, especially in part 2. Ray closed every live show with the song. The unedited version.

14. Stand By Me– Ben E. King. This was a rewrite of an old gospel song by King, Leiber, and Stoller, released in 1961. It was featured on the soundtrack of the film of the same name a quarter of a century later. It was covered over 400 times, by Otis Redding, John Lennon, and many more.

13. Dancing In The Streets – Martha and the Vandellas. The song was written by Marvin Gaye, Mickey Stevenson, and Ivy Jo Hunter. The Vandellas had the hit in 1964 after Kim Weston passed on the piece. It was a party song, enjoying splashing through the open fire hydrants in the summer. But it was adopted as a civil rights anthem as well.

Hello, Darkness

12. The Sound Of Silence – Simon And Garfunkel. From Hello Darkness, My Old Friend: How Daring Dreams and Unyielding Friendship Turned One Man’s Blindness into an Extraordinary Vision for Life by Sanford D. Greenberg. Much of this is accurate, but the part about the song, written by Paul Simon, of course, is not.

Sandy was roommates with Art Garfunkel at Columbia University. [Sandy went blind from severe glaucoma and went back home, defeated, to Buffalo. But his buddy Art showed up at the front door.] Art escorted Sandy around campus and even referred to himself as “Darkness” to demonstrate his empathy with his friend. “Darkness is going to read to you now.”

While at Oxford, Sandy got a call from Art. Art had formed a folk-rock duo with his high school pal Paul Simon, and they desperately needed $400 to record their first album. Sandy and his wife Sue had literally $404 in their bank account, but without hesitation, Sandy gave his old friend what he needed. Art and Paul’s first album was not a success, but one of the songs, The Sounds Of Silence [later changed], became a #1 hit a year later. The opening line echoed the way Sandy always greeted Art.

11. You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’ – The Righteous Brothers. Written by Phil Spector, Barry Mann, and Cynthia Weil in 1964, it was the epitome of the Wall Of Sound.