August 2008 - Page 5 of 7 - Ramblin' with Roger

Songs That Move Me, 10-2

10. Neil Young – Harvest Moon
A beautiful song, with specific recollections of a romance that burned brightly, then ended.
Feeling: autumnal.

9. Crying- Roy Orbison And k.d lang.
As good as Roy’s original is, this one is better. It’s the harmonica. And when lang gets to sing, by herself, the chorus, it is stunning.
Feeling: there’s something in my eye.

8. Biko – Peter Gabriel.
The story of the slain South African is penetrating, but the vocals, the rhythm, and that ending!
Feeling: ticked off.

7. John Hiatt – Have a Little Faith in Me
How does this rate so high? It’s just a guy on the piano. Well, it’s the quality of both. Hiatt remade this song with more orchestration for a greatest hits album; it was not improved, and in fact was somehow diminished. Not so incidentally, a key song on a mixed tape I made for my now-wife.

6. When Love Comes To Town – U2/B.B. King.
From the opening drumming to King’s guitar lines, to King’s and Bono’s vocals, I almost always platy this song twice.
Feeling: struggling with the power.

chops off 1st notes and then too soon.

5. Billy Joel-Lullabye (Goodnight, My Angel)
As beautiful as it is, the piano on the bridge just lifts it higher. I heard an a cappella version of this, which was lovely.
Feeling: melancholy.
HERE.

4. Roberta Flack – Gone Away.
I was watching the Grammys in the last couple years and discovered someone has sampled this. This song, part of the group of songs I used to play when love went south, really builds after the 1:30 mark, with instruments (a painful guitar line, and is that a tuba?) plus mournful vocals that feature the late Donny Hathaway.
Feeling: brokenhearted.

3. I Only Have Eyes For You – the Flamingoes.
I hear those first three or four chords and I am always surprised how it leads to such a lush tune. My first favorite song, probably for 30 years.
Feeling: loving.

2. Let’s Go Crazy – Prince.
Unfortunate that the video overlays the preach part with the musical beginning, for it’s both elements that I love. The danceability, plus my favorite guitar solo possibly ever. I have a 7-minute version that’s even more fun.
Feeling: let’s get nuts!

So, here are
the rules.
100-91.
90-81.
80-71.
70-61.
60-51.
50-41.
40-31.
30-21.
20-11.

Anyone want to venture a guess as to #1?

(Confidential to T&C, who started before I did, but somehow will finish after: it’s from my top 10 with which one or more of your Top 40 will converge, I’m guessing.)
ROG

"Obama is No MLK" and other pieces of GOP thought

One of the things I find that I need to do, as a citizen as well as a librarian, is to get summaries of differing points of view politically, delivered by e-mail because I’m not likely to remember to go to the sites. On the left, it’s Common Dreams which I find less strident, and less likely to get into internecine battles than, say, the Huffington Report, which, at this point I seldom read. On the right, it’s Human Events, which features some political heavyweights such as Newt Gingrich and Pat Buchanan; the latter is so iconoclastic that he sometimes gets criticized by people on the right end of the spectrum.

Now and then – OK, often – Human Events will offer up an ad, such as from the McCain camp. One recent one, from the National Black Republican Association is currently trying to get a lot of mileage out of the assertion by a niece of Martin Luther King, Jr, that MLK was a Republican. I don’t doubt it for a minute; my parents were Republicans, the party of Lincoln. Particularly in the South in the 1960s and before, the Democratic Party was the party of segregation; think George Wallace, Lester Maddox, and Strom Thurmond before he switched; lots of blacks in the South were Republicans. What’s bothering me is the implication that the GOP of 1968 is the GOP of 2008, and therefore, of MLK were still alive, he would still be a Republican. This, of course, is utterly unknowable.

Meanwhile, a Human Events contributor, whose initials are the same as Alternating Current, has been beating the drum on this John Edwards story for weeks that the National Enquirer “broke”. She has submitted that the story did not make it into the MainStream Media because of its liberal bias. One could make the case that it didn’t make it into the MSM because the original source was the National Enquirer. The Washington Post may have just felt uncomfortable trusting it enough to quote the Enquirer as the source of its stories. Also, the Enquirer story is still suggesting that Edwards is the father of his former lover’s child, something Edwards is still denying, even as he admitted to the affair.

Suddenly, all those stories about John Edwards’ $400 haircuts can be/will be spun into a symbol of his general narcissism. I’m just happy, in retrospect, that his candidacy never really caught on, though John McCain (and Newt Gingrich for that matter) have been accused of the same thing; having sex with someone not his spouse, while the wife suffered from various ailments.

This political season is getting really…interesting, and it’s not even Labor Day yet.
ROG

Woman to Woman

Two from Johnny B..

1.IF SOMEONE SAYS “IS THIS OKAY” YOU SAY?
“I Kissed a Girl” by Jill Sobule

2.HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOURSELF?
“Graceland” by Willie Nelson

3. WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
“Meadowlands” by Nancy Jacobs and Sisters

4.HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?
“It” by Prince

5.WHAT IS YOUR LIFE’S PURPOSE?
“Tell It Like It Is” by Aaron Neville & the Neville Brothers

6.WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
“In the Bleak Midwinter” by James Taylor

7.WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
“Hey Diddle” by Paul McCartney

8.WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
“Detention” from Cry Freedom

9.WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
“Long May You Run” by Neil Young

10.WHAT IS 2 + 2?
“Torn & Frayed” by the Rolling Stones

11.WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR EX?
“Dreaming” by Cream

12.WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
“Sound of Silence” by Simon & Garfunkel

13.WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
“Fire” by the Pointer Sisters

14.WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
“Is this Love” by Bob Marley & the Wailers

15.WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
“Live Good” by Burning Spear

16.WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
“Oh, Me” by Nirvana

17.WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?
“Whenever You’re Ready” by James Taylor

18.WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST FEAR?
“I Don’t Wanna Talk About It” by Indigo Girls

19.WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?
“Friday Dance Promenade” by k.d. lang

20.WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
“Hey Joe” by the Yardbirds

Directions:
1. Put your iTunes, Windows Media Player, iPod etc. on shuffle.
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS.
Now press Next one more time and use it as your title.

The title tune is by Shirley Brown, a Stax hit. Some of the answers work well (#18 in particular), while I wish #11 and #12 were switched.
***

You are the Sense of Sight

You are a very observant, detail oriented person.

You are able to take in a lot of information at once.

You often see things that other people never notice.

You have a good eye for design and aesthetics.

You love to be surrounded by beauty – natural or not.

When you imagine how something should look, you see it clearly in your mind.

Which of the Five Senses Are You?

***
Isaac Hayes, whose Theme from Shaft ended up on my Top 20 Songs That Move Me, died this past weekend. I don’t have much more to say about the singer/keyboardist/songwriter other than what I wrote last year on his 65th birthday.
***
Fred Hembeck on Bernie Mac (August 10).

ROG

Grave Reference

One of the things I realized just this year, perhaps from a post from Rose which I’m too lazy to find, is that, in the main, it was quite fortunate how my father died in 2000. He went to the hospital on July 29, had a stroke August 4, went essentially into a coma on August 8 and died on August 10. If we had had to deal with end of life issues as a family…let’s put it this way, planning the funeral took over five hours; having to decide to “pull the plug” likely would have been unresolvable.
***

As a librarian, I’m always looking for new sources of information, preferably free. At some point I read about findagrave.com, where you can find the location of the final resting place of folks who are famous, and not so much. So I tried my grandparents without success, and my friends Nancy, Raoul, and Donna were likewise not found. In fact, the only “non-famous” deceased person I could find was my father:

Birth: Sep. 26, 1926
Death: Aug. 10, 2000
Inscription: US Army WW II
Burial: Salisbury National Cemetery Annex
Salisbury, Rowan County
North Carolina, USA
Plot: VA Section 8, grave 358

Record added: Oct 11 2001
By: Havis McDonald

So, thanks to Havis McDonald, whoever you are.

ROG

THREE QUESTIONS: Memory

I am fascinated by those people who can meet a roomful of people and recite every one of their names; that’s not me. At all. This article, by contrast, is very much me.

1. What is your earliest memory? Mine seems to be me at the late, lamented Catskill Game Farm inside a metal pumpkin when I was about three. Although now that I think of it, do I actually remember it, or do I remember the picture of it? Same with those “frozen in time” memories: do I remember the JFK assassination, or am I now remembering my own retelling of the event?

2. What are you good at remembering? Names, dates, places? I find that if it has a numeric hook, I’m more likely to recall it: some credit card numbers, our license plate number, certain dates. I remember the date in 1974 that I saw Joni Mitchell (August 22); on the other hand, I was waiting all summer for that concert, and it turned out to be pretty much of a disaster.
Other dates I can remember if I can hook it to another date or at least period. Carol and I often refer to things as B.L. and A.L. – before and after Lydia, as a point of reference. When did we see some play? (Probably B.L.) Having the blog helps in this regard.
Whereas names commonly escape me. Let’s say I see a bank teller every day for two years, and refer to her by name; she leaves the bank, I see her six months later, I remember HER, but her NAME has escaped me. Oddly, the facts about her (where she lives, what she likes, the pets she owns) stays with me. It’s only the actual name that fades, not the person’s identity.

3a. Do you worry about losing your memory? I do, when certain words don’t come immediately to me, usually specific terms that I learned later in life, such as that big piece of furniture in my bedroom that holds my clothes for the last four years. What IS that? Oh yes, armoire. I was a dresser and closet guy and “armoire” does not come immediately to mind; the fact that I don’t really LIKE the armoire certainly has nothing to do with remembering its name, does it?
3b. Did you ever have a false memory? I SWEAR I saw Jose Canseco get his 40th stolen base in Oakland, to join the 40/40 club in 1988. But looking at the Baseball Almanac, it appears that he got his 40th HR on September 18 in Oakland, where I’ve been, but didn’t get his 40th steal until 5 days later in Milwaukee, where I’ve never been. I definitely saw the 40th SOMETHING, but I seem to have dreamed the rest. Did that ever happen to you?