June 2017 - Page 3 of 6 - Ramblin' with Roger

X is for excellence: Kennedy Center Honors

Betty Lavette singing Love Reign O’er Me, from the Who’s Quadrophenia album, practically a religious experience

As anyone who has read this blog often enough knows, I watch the Kennedy Center Honors, a designation of excellence, every December just after Christmas.

It is “an annual honor given to those in the performing arts for their lifetime of contributions to American culture (though recipients do not need to be U.S. citizens). The Honors have been presented annually since 1978, culminating each December in a star-studded gala celebrating the Honorees in the Kennedy Center Opera House.”

I’m wondering who will host this year. Stephen Colbert has done so since 2014, but given the unkind things the comedian has said about the current White House regime, I can’t imagine that would continue. “The first host was Leonard Bernstein in 1978, followed by Eric Sevareid in 1979 and Beverly Sills in 1980. Walter Cronkite hosted from 1981 to 2002 and Caroline Kennedy hosted from 2003 until 2012. Glenn Close was host in 2013.”

At the gala, the Honors find performers who highlight the work of the recipients, with the recipients, and usually the President and First Lady looking on.

Some particular performances stick in my mind:

2007: Brian Wilson
Libera, boys choir from London, singing Love and Mercy, the debut song from his first solo album
Listen here at 6:20 or here at 13:04

2008 The Who (Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey)
Betty Lavette singing Love Reign O’er Me, from the band’s Quadrophenia album, practically a religious experience
Listen here or here

2012: Led Zeppelin (John Paul Jones, Robert Plant, and Jimmy Page, pictured L-R)
Heart’s Ann and Nancy Wilson perform Stairway to Heaven, from LZ’s fourth album, with the late John Bonham’s son Jason playing the drums
Listen here or here at 13:50

2013: Billy Joel
Garth Brooks and friends singing Goodnight Saigon, from Joel’s Nylon Curtain album
Listen here at 12:33 or here at 12:34

2015: Carole King
Aretha Franklin sings the Goffin-King classic (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman, and Carole is SO excited!
Listen here or here

June rambling #2: Sheila E. and Lynn Mabry

Adam west was one of “most accomplished and revered ‘B’ level actors of all time”

Three new discoveries in a month rock our African origins

THE ARCTIC DOOMSDAY SEED VAULT FLOODED. THANKS, GLOBAL WARMING

Left-lean faith leaders are hungry to break the right’s grip on setting the nation’s moral agenda

Amy Biancolli: I yam what I yam by the grace of God

Social Capital and Inequality

Time for equal media treatment of ‘political correctness’

The toddler defense

American Ex-Pats Explain Why They Quit America

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Brexit II

Dustbury has discovered not everyone he’s likely to meet is prepared to deal with someone who walks only with a bunch of equipment

The Short, Sad Tale of Allyn King of Albany

Arthur is 15 Years a Kiwi citizen

Baby boomers are downsizing — and the kids won’t take the family heirlooms

The Negro Motorist Green Book, which I wrote about here. Check out
the 1949 edition

The art of writing an obituary

An Interview With Author Kelly Sedinger

She returned from Iraq to a broken family. Then writing changed her life

Anne Lamott: 12 truths I learned from life and writing

Anita Pallenberg Passes Away at Age 73

In appreciation of an old-school journalist, the late Dan Lynch

HEATHER FAZIO: I spent two days with Dennis Rodman

The Tony Awards — rehearsals

Documentary producer Robert Weide interviewed Woody Allen live on Facebook

Gary Burghoff explains Radar

Bill Messner-Loebs and Jack Kirby to Receive 2017 Bill Finger Award

Night Court was the black sheep of NBC’s sitcom dynasty

Pete and Harry, two rabbits in commercials for Carnation Milk. I DO NOT remember this

Too Many People Still Think Chocolate Milk Comes from Brown Cows

Now I Know: Fighting North Korea in a Flash and The Counterfeit Money Which is Intentionally Worthless and The Green Versus the Eardrums and Why Mattresses Come With Warning Tags and There’s No Place Like 0,0

Adam West, star of the ‘Batman’ TV series, dies at 88. Here’s his Idaho phone listing. Some insights from Mark Evanier and reflections by Chuck Miller, plus Eddie’s elegy and Rob Hoffman calling him one of “most accomplished and revered ‘B’ level actors of all time”

MUSIC

The Absolute Authenticity of REBECCA JADE (niece #1) and CD REVIEW – PETER SPRAGUE & REBECCA JADE: Planet Cole Porter, available here. Recently, Rebecca has sung at least twice with percussionist Sheila E. and singer Lynn Mabry. Lynn, among many other things, sang backup on the Stop Making Sense tour, which I saw at SPAC in 1984

Coverville: Sgt.Pepper 50th anniversary plus Gregg Allman tribute and All 213 Beatles Songs, Ranked From Worst to Bestand The Final Beatles Concert

What is Life – Weird Al

K-Chuck Radio: The Mystery of Blueberry Hill

Bohemian Rhapsody – Vika Yermolyeva

Pieces about Bobby Vee and Brian Hyland, both apparently inspired by me

Wap Bap, the most hated song on YouTube

Song of the Volga Boatmen sung by the Red Army Chorus

Reg Kehoe and his Marimba Queens

Billy Joel on Self-Doubt and Finally Becoming Cool

Dad and his three kids on Father’s Day

“Everything looks better in black-and-white.”

My sister Marcia posted a picture on Facebook. It was all pinkish, and I couldn’t even see her in the photo. So I asked Arthur the AmeriNZ guy, who must be related to Annie Sullivan, because he’s a miracle worker, if he might have a go at it.

He noted, “The original photo appears to be a low-resolution scan of the photo, and that means there’s not much to work with. If it was a higher-resolution version, I’d have more to work with.

“The pinkish cast to the photo is because of natural deterioration in photos from the 1940s through the 1960s and 70s. The dyes used turned out not to be stable, and photos taking on a reddish hue is common.” Yes, I do have a few of those in photo albums.

I suspect the original negative from 1958 is long gone, and a higher-resolution scan seems to be beyond the capacity of my sister’s machine.

He actually did three versions, one “with the colours lightly corrected”, another with “a little more intense colour correction, with the focus on making the skin tones a little more natural (which makes the background even worse)”, and the one I chose, “a black and white version, with some of the dust and defects caused by the low-resolution cleaned up. This version, because the colours in the background aren’t weird, is a little less distracting.”

Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. As Paul Simon, in his corrected lyrics, once said, “Everything looks better in black-and-white.”

I have only a vague recollection of this photo. I’m sure I saw it at the time, but that was long ago. I assume my mother took the picture, and based on the baby’s size, probably on June 15, 1958. This is the only one I recall with just these four people, Dad, Roger, Leslie and Marcia.

Happy Father’s Day to you, and to me.

Music Throwback Saturday: A World Without Love

The songwriter credit was attributed to “Bernard Webb”.

As I waded through The Billboard of Number One Hits, I noticed that A World Without Love by Peter and Gordon (#1 on June 27, 1964) was immediately followed by I Get Around by the Beach Boys (#1 for two weeks starting July 4, 1964). They appear in reverse order on an album I bought from the Capitol Record Club way back in 1965 or 1966 called Big Hits of from ENGLAND AND USA.

The story of A World Without Love is probably familiar to fans of a certain group that was ALSO popular in 1964. Peter Asher (b. June 24, 1944) and Gordon Waller (b. June 4, 1945) were playing in clubs and were eventually given a recording contract by EMI. They needed songs to record. Peter’s sister Jane was dating a guy named Paul McCartney. Paul had a song he didn’t think was right for the Beatles, so P&G recorded it.

The followup, also on Big Hits, was Nobody I Know, likewise attributed to Lennon-McCartney, which went to #12 in the States. (The Beatles too had two songs on the album, Can’t Buy Me Love and You Can’t Do That, the former of which never appeared on a Capitol Beatles album until they broke up.)

Early in the 1980s, I purchased an album called The Songs Lennon and McCartney Gave Away, “the original artist recordings of songs composed by John Lennon and Paul McCartney in the 1960s that they had elected not to release as Beatles songs.” It included the two aforementioned P&G songs plus I Don’t Want To See You Again, #16 in 1964.

The fourth Peter and Gordon song on the 1979 album was called Woman. The songwriter credit was attributed to “Bernard Webb” as an “experiment to see if it would sell without the Lennon-McCartney name on it. It became a hit before the media revealed McCartney’s involvement.” It went to #14 in 1966.

Peter Asher became the head of Artists & Repertoire at Apple Records in 1968, and signed an unknown artist named James Taylor, and later produced both Taylor and Linda Ronstadt.

Gordon Waller stayed in the music business until he died in 2009 of heart failure at the age of 64.

It occurred to me that the duo were both born in June, as was Paul McCartney (June 18, 1942), and their only stateside #1 got there in that month.

Listen to Peter and Gordon:

A World Without Love here or here
Nobody I Know here or here
I Don’t Want To See You Again here or here
Woman here or here

Listen to the MonaLisa Twins:

A World Without Love here

Talking about the LGBTQ rights journey

His mother couldn’t understand his sudden distaste for orange juice.

During the first Sunday in June’s adult education class at church, a couple folks led a discussion on the journey we have taken individually in our personal understanding of issues involving LGBTQ rights. There were no right or wrong answers, just a safe place to share.

I talked about one guy, Vito Mastrogiovanni, who was “out” when I was in high school, although there were more gay men that I knew personally who were not out at the time.

There was the gay fellow in college, my next door neighbor in the dorm, who was openly hostile to me, seemingly for no reason. I later concluded that perhaps it wasn’t exactly my race but rather how especially judgmental black people, especially in the church, could be. And I was a nominal Christian at that point.

I mentioned being in Boys in the Band, and how transformative that was.

Others shared their stories. More than one told of same-gender couples who they knew. Though those pairings weren’t publicly couples in those days, most people knew.

One older gay man talked about acceptance, and sometimes lack thereof, from his family. In the 1970s, his mother couldn’t understand his sudden distaste for orange juice. I too mentioned boycotting it, over the fact that Anita Bryant was the spokesperson for Florida oranges.

One man was curious about the term “gay” when it used to mean happy. Some of the gay folks explained that it was almost like code, where it would mean different things to different audiences. (The Wikipedia article discusses its evolution. A reference to the Kinks song ‘David Watts’: “The lines ‘he is so gay and fancy free’ attest to the ambiguity of the word’s meaning at that time, with the second meaning evident only for those in the know.”)

Some in the group also mentioned how the term homosexual had become distasteful and anachronistic, rather like “colored” or “Negro” for black people. Moreover, homosexual, in a shortened form was a slur, and the word was a term that had been associated with a people who the psychiatric community had once called diseased.

It was, I must say, a very brave conversation, and I’m glad I was able to participate, only because the Gay Men’s Chorus was singing during the church service, which meant the chancel choir didn’t need to rehearse.