January 2016 - Page 4 of 7 - Ramblin' with Roger

Music Throwback Saturday: Time Has Come Today

It also quotes several bars from “The Little Drummer Boy”.

Unlike the Doobie Brothers or the Righteous Brothers, the Chambers Brothers really were male siblings, originally from Carthage, Mississippi, George (b. September 26, 1931) on bass, Lester (b. April 13, 1940) on harmonica, and Willie (b. March 3, 1938) and Joe (b. August 22, 1942) on guitars.

Like many artists of the period, they “first honed their skills as members of the choir in their Baptist church.” They eventually relocated to Los Angeles.” As a foursome, they began performing gospel and folk throughout the Southern California region in 1954, but they more or less remained unknown until appearing in New York City in 1965.” I can hear the gospel sound in the first song of theirs I ever owned, Going to the Mill.

“With the addition of Brian Keenan (b. January 28, 1943) on drums, [singer Barbara] Dane took them on tour with her and introduced them to Pete Seeger, who helped put the Chambers Brothers on the bill of the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.” Dane and the Chambers recorded a well-regarded album together.

Listen to Time Has Come Today written by Willie & Joe Chambers

1966 original version – Columbia 43816 – the original recording, 2:37 in length, which is completely different from the widely known 1968 “hit versions”.

1968 “hit version” #2 – Columbia 44414 – 4:45 edit. The label now mentions the album The Time Has Come. The single spent five weeks at No. 11 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the fall of 1968. There’s also a 3:05 edit of the LP version that does not refer to the album The Time Has Come; I’m sure it’s out there somewhere…

1968 album version – 11:06. Various effects were employed in its recording and production, including the alternate striking of two cowbells producing a “tick-tock” sound, warped throughout most of the song by reverb, echo, and changes in tempo. It also quotes several bars from “The Little Drummer Boy” at 5:40. The song blends a fusion of psychedelic rock, soul, and acid rock with its use of the guitar’s fuzz/distortion. This shows up a lot: HERE and HERE and HERE, e.g.

The Time Has Come album.

Covers by
The Ramones
Joan Jett
Steve Earle with Sheryl Crow

Martin Luther King – Loving Your Enemies

Jesus was very serious when he gave this command; he wasn’t playing.

Martin Luther King Jr. delivered at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama, 17 November 1957.

…It’s so basic to me because it is a part of my basic philosophical and theological orientation—the whole idea of love, the whole philosophy of love.

In the fifth chapter of the gospel as recorded by Saint Matthew, we read these very arresting words flowing from the lips of our Lord and Master: “Ye have heard that it has been said, ‘Thou shall love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy.’ But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven.”

Certainly, these are great words, words lifted to cosmic proportions. And over the centuries, many persons have argued that this is an extremely difficult command. Many would go so far as to say that it just isn’t possible to move out into the actual practice of this glorious command. They would go on to say that this is just additional proof that Jesus was an impractical idealist who never quite came down to earth. So the arguments abound.

But far from being an impractical idealist, Jesus has become the practical realist. The words of this text glitter in our eyes with a new urgency. Far from being the pious injunction of a utopian dreamer, this command is an absolute necessity for the survival of our civilization. Yes, it is love that will save our world and our civilization, love even for enemies.

Now let me hasten to say that Jesus was very serious when he gave this command; he wasn’t playing. He realized that it’s hard to love your enemies. He realized that it’s difficult to love those persons who seek to defeat you, those persons who say evil things about you. He realized that it was painfully hard, pressingly hard. But he wasn’t playing.

And we cannot dismiss this passage as just another example of Oriental hyperbole, just a sort of exaggeration to get over the point. This is a basic philosophy of all that we hear coming from the lips of our Master. Because Jesus wasn’t playing; because he was serious. We have the Christian and moral responsibility to seek to discover the meaning of these words and to discover how we can live out this command, and why we should live by this command.

Now first let us deal with this question, which is the practical question: How do you go about loving your enemies? I think the first thing is this: In order to love your enemies, you must begin by analyzing self. And I’m sure that seems strange to you, that I start out telling you this morning that you love your enemies by beginning with a look at self. It seems to me that that is the first and foremost way to come to an adequate discovery to the how of this situation…

Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that…

Read the whole text HERE.

Martin Luther King was born on this date in 1929.
***
One Of TV’s Most Inspiring Women Almost Gave Up

Movie review: Spotlight

Where the Post had Ben Bradlee, the Globe had Ben Bradlee, Jr.

It appears that every movie I’ve seen lately, most recently Spotlight, is designed to tick me off. The subject of my ire this time is the Roman Catholic church that allowed its priests to prey upon its young, vulnerable members. Not only did they do nothing about it, but the system also allowed priests to get transferred to other parishes to continue their misdeeds.

All this I knew coming in. What was interesting in the telling was this: once upon a time, great metropolitan newspapers actually took on the system, even when that system is the mighty RC church in Boston. One truly chilling moment in the movie was one priest’s rationalization of why his actions weren’t so bad. Beyond the pain I felt from the physical and emotional abuse of the victims was the loss of faith and trust the now-adult victims experienced.

Some have compared Spotlight with All the President’s Men, and I think it would be fairly apt. Instead of two disparate reporters from the Washington Post trying to make sense of Watergate, there’s the special unit of the Boston Globe (Rachel McAdams, Brian d’Arcy James, and the headstrong character played by Mark Ruffalo). The group is headed by Walter ‘Robby’ Robinson (Michael Keaton), attempting to ascertain the scope of the church scandal.

Where the Post had Ben Bradlee, the Globe had Ben Bradlee, Jr. (John Slattery), plus a cerebral new boss (Liev Schreiber). The closest thing to Deep Throat is an infuriating, possibly crackpot lawyer (Stanley Tucci) who was representing some of the victims.

At one point, the team asks someone who had studied the phenomenon whether it could be as many as 13 priests in their area. Of course, there were far more, and not limited to the Boston diocese. In fact, the end of the movie lists all the areas in the country, then the rest of the world, where pedophile priests were rooted out. This included Albany, NY, first on the alphabetical list, as the nearly sold-out crowd at the Spectrum Theatre in the city noted.

The other great sadness of this story is that the events happened early in this century, yet the level of investigative reporting has all but disappeared, due to budget cutting. This is not a flashy movie but is a solidly made, occasionally tension-inducing narrative, despite the fact that we largely know the outcome.

David Bowie: Thin White Major Aladdin Stardust

David Robert Jones changed his last name to that of the inventor of the Bowie knife.

In 1971, I won a David Bowie album called Hunky Dory, from WNPC, the New Paltz (NY) college station. I was only vaguely familiar with the guy, from that Space Oddity song. (In the day, I was very good at winning things from the radio stations I listened to because I had very good dialing fingers, an advantage lost when the redial button was invented.) I liked the LP, though it was kind of strange. My roommate Ron HATED it, except for one song, something called Changes.

Then I got Ziggy Stardust. Played it until the grooves practically wore out, especially some songs on Side 2: Star, Suffragette City, and the title track. Got Aladdin Sane considerably later, but I liked Pin-Ups, the covers album; and much of Diamond Dogs.

Two things I definitely watched at the time: Bowie “singing” Golden Years and Fame on Soul Train in November 1975, and the bizarre pairing of Bowie on the 1977 Bing Crosby Christmas special, which aired AFTER the older crooner had died. Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy became an unlikely Christmas standard.

I could go on, through his “comeback” in the early 1980s, and onto Tin Machine, which didn’t click with me. I did find it funny that two of Soupy Sales’ sons were in the band, especially since Soupy and David shared a birthday.

Arthur wrote how David Bowie helped change his life, which you should just read. Like him, I didn’t know Bowie was sick, from cancer, for well over a year, which added to the shock, I’m sure. That and the fact I’d been playing Bowie music this past week in honor of his natal day this past Friday.

Chuck posted a bunch of Bowie songs; oddly, I cried during the Queen/Bowie track Under Pressure. But he didn’t include one of my favorites, Panic in Detroit. Also, listen to the new one, Lazarus, a “parting gift” for fans, which is, in its own way, as resonant as Johnny Cash’s cover of Hurt, or Warren Zevon’s last album. I was going to buy the Blackkstar album yesterday from Amazon, but it was temporarily out of stock on CD and vinyl; it will be his first U.S. #1 album.

If you’re on Facebook, you should go to the page of Adrian Belew and read a piece from about 11:30 a.m. on January 12 that starts, “In 1978 I did my first tour of Europe as ‘stunt’ guitarist and singer for Frank Zappa’s band. The night we played in Cologne, Germany unbeknownst to me Brian Eno was in the audience. Brian knew David Bowie was looking for a new guitarist for his upcoming tour.”

The cliche is to say “he was an original,” but seldom has it been more true. Here’s his 1996 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame description. Watch David Bowie as Pontius Pilate, from Martin Scorsese’s movie Last Temptation of Christ.

David Robert Jones (8 January 1947 – 10 January 2016), who changed his last name to that of the inventor of the Bowie knife, so he would not be confused with a Monkee, rest in peace. I am very sad.

Picture

Bowie’s mugshot, posted on Facebook by Jeff Sharlet.

For weed, in Rochester, with Iggy Pop. The local paper reported: “His biggest greeting was the screams of about a half-dozen suspected prostitutes awaiting arraignment in the rear of the corridor outside the courtroom.”

As someone on my FB page commented, “Oh, you pretty thing.”

A for Arthur Ashe

Arthur Ashe’s mother had suffered from cardiovascular disease before she died at the age of 27.

Arthur Ashe (July 10, 1943 – February 6, 1993) was a top-ranked tennis player in the 1960s and ’70s, despite experiencing the slings of segregation, which did not allow him to participate in the sport, growing up in Richmond, VA. Tennis was not a sport I much paid attention to until Ashe came on the scene.

He was the #2 ranked men’s player in 1976, and he was competitive at many levels of the sport, from making the Davis Cup team in 1963 to being the only black man to win the singles title at the US Open (1968), Australian Open (1970), or Wimbledon (1975) v. Jimmy Connors, against whom he had never won previously.

Ashe was committed to issues of social justice, health, and humanitarian issues. He fought against South African apartheid, and the US crackdown against Haitian refugees, and was arrested in protests regarding both these issues. In 1988, Ashe published a three-volume book titled A Hard Road to Glory: A History of the African-American Athlete, which was more important to him than his tennis titles.

Ashe’s mother had suffered from cardiovascular disease before she died at the age of 27. His father had suffered a first heart attack at the age of 55. Arthur suffered a heart attack in July 1979, while holding a tennis clinic in New York. “In view of his high level of fitness as an athlete, his condition drew attention to the hereditary aspect of heart disease.” He went through two rounds of heart surgery, in 1979, and after developing chest pains, in 1983.

“In September 1988, Ashe was hospitalized after experiencing paralysis in his right arm… [Eventually] Doctors discovered that Ashe was HIV positive. Ashe and his doctors believed he contracted the virus from blood transfusions he received during his second heart surgery. He and his wife decided to keep his illness private for the sake of their daughter, who was then two years old.

“In 1992, a friend of Ashe’s who worked for USA Today heard that he was ill and called Ashe to confirm the story. Ashe decided to preempt USA Today’s plans to publish the story about his illness and, on April 8, 1992, publicly announced he had contracted HIV. Ashe blamed USA Today for forcing him to go public with the news but also stated that he was relieved that he no longer had to lie about his illness…”

I own a copy of Daddy and Me: A Photo Story of Arthur Ashe and His Daughter Camera by his wife Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe, a sweet book published after his death. It is a “photographic portrait of Ashe’s relationship with his six-year-old daughter during his illness, accompanied by the child’s reflections on living with and helping her father.”

“After Ashe went public…, he began to work to raise awareness about AIDS and advocated teaching sex education and safe sex. He also fielded questions about his own diagnosis… In a speech to the United Nations General Assembly on World AIDS Day, December 1, 1992, he addressed the growing need for AIDS awareness and increased research funding saying, ‘We want to be able to look back and say to all concerned that we did what we had to do when we had to do it, and with all the resources required.’

“Ashe founded the Arthur Ashe Foundation for the Defeat of AIDS. Two months before his death, he founded the Arthur Ashe Institute for Urban Health to help address issues of inadequate health care delivery and was named Sports Illustrated magazine’s Sportsman of the Year. He also spent much of the last years of his life writing his memoir Days of Grace, finishing the manuscript less than a week before his death.”

The main stadium for the US Open since 1997 is the Arthur Ashe Stadium in Queens, New York City.

ABC Wednesday – Round 18

Month: January 2016