August 2017 - Page 5 of 7 - Ramblin' with Roger

Glen Campbell, legendary singer and guitarist

He, along with three of his six children, went on one final tour, recorded for the documentary Glen Campbell: I’ll Be Me.

The first time I became really aware with Glen Campbell was when he became the host of something called the Summer Brothers Smother Show, the summer replacement for the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in late June through early September 1968. It even featured the Smothers’ Presidential “candidate” Pat Paulsen. I watched it and liked it.

He had already had a couple crossover hits: Gentle on My Mind was penned by John Hartford, a regular on the show. By the Time I Get To Phoenix was written, as many of Glen’s recordings were, by Jimmy Webb. Plus he had a couple country hits.

Then he starred in the Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour from January 1969 to June 1972, which I also viewed. It coincided with more hits such as Wichita Lineman, which has possibly THE most romantic couplet in pop music. Also Galveston, the Texas city I visited in 1995 or 1996 and kept singing in my head.

Sometime around this time, I learned that he had filled in for Brian Wilson on the Beach Boys tours for six months in the 1960s, and I thought that was cool.

I never saw him in the movie TRUE GRIT with John Wayne, for which the Duke won an Oscar. And I stopped paying attention to him as he went through what my buddy Johnny Bacardi called “his excessive wild man ’70s and ’80s-up phases, coke, and Tanya Tucker and all that nonsense.” But like Johnny, I learned he was part of the legendary Wrecking Crew of session musicians, and I developed a huge, newfound respect for him.

In this 2007 interview, Glen Campbell discusses his forgetfulness, which he attributed to his wild lifestyle of the past. But in 2011, it was announced that he had Alzheimer’s disease.

Then he, along with three of his six children, went on one final tour, recorded for the documentary Glen Campbell: I’ll Be Me, which I thought was extraordinary.

On Facebook, Jimmy Webb wrote: “I watched him in awe executing his flawless rendition of ‘“The William Tell Overture’ on his classical guitar in his Vegas show. Jazz he loved. He claimed he learned the most about playing the guitar from Django Reinhardt.”

Glen Campbell died at the age of 81. Here’s an interview with Alice Cooper talking about his late good friend.

Listen to

Turn Around Look at Me, pop #62 in 1961, his first charted hit
Brenda, the B-side

Gentle on My Mind, pop #62 in 1967, #39 in 1968; country #30 in 1967, #44 in 1968

By the Time I Get To Phoenix, pop #26, country #2 in 1968

Wichita Lineman, pop #3, country #1 for two weeks
“And I need you more than want you, and I want you for all time.” – Jimmy Webb

Galveston, pop #4, country #1 for three weeks in 1969

Rhinestone Cowboy, pop #1 for two weeks, country #1 for three weeks, his signature song

Some Dustbury links, including Adios, recorded in 2015 but released in July 2017.

August rambling #1: Money Never Sleeps

Lynn Mabry, Sheila E., Rebecca Jade who I’ll get to see perform soon

Young Troy filmmakers document Hudson River pollution

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Alex Jones and Stephen Miller

ACLU to Coal Baron Targeting John Oliver: “You Can’t Sue People for Being Mean to You, Bob”

The Ugly History of Stephen Miller’s ‘Cosmopolitan’ Epithet and White House Accuses French Woman of Spreading Pro-Immigration Propaganda (satire)

The 7 Most Mind-Boggling Moments From That Wall Street Journal Interview

He has built a White House that will only attract the worst

The Victim Of His Own Incompetence (from Red State!)

A Chilling Theory on Nonstop Lies

Why The SCARIEST NUCLEAR THREAT May Be Coming From INSIDE The White House

Call for police brutality is no joke

’80S DRUG WAR NOSTALGIA

His first media controversy – it happened in 1980

Checkpoint, U.S.A.: Crossing the border into Trump’s America

Living with a nuclear North Korea

Cabinet Secretaries Attend Bible Study Led by Pastor ‘Not Biblically Qualified for Spiritual Leadership’

Ivanka is part of the problem in the White House

From the end of June: Salary info for White House aides

Appointment Of Beaker As White House Communications Director Draws High Praise

Social justice: The Bible tells me so

Foxconn’s corporate welfare deal will cost Wisconsin taxpayers more than 3 billion dollars. No, I’m not moving from upstate New York

What a dump: Beyond the Forest (1949) with Bette Davis; Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf (1966) with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton

What film features DJT and Anthony Scaramucci in cameo roles? Wall Street II: Money Never Sleeps

The 8 Worst Presidents in U.S. History, excluding the incumbent

Maybe we need a new word for ‘offended’

Being rich wrecks your soul. We used to know that

Michelle Obama on the racism and sexism she endured as the nation’s first lady

Don Baylor, who was an MVP player and person has died at the age of 68

Dick Locher, Pulitzer Prize-winning Tribune cartoonist, dies at 88

Green Corn Rebellion (Oklahoma, August 1917)

Periodic Table of Technology teaches about science and technology by showing how elements are used in everyday tech-use

Now I Know: The Very Lost Wallet and Why Barns are Red and The Number That’s Illegal to Share and Why We Wake Up With Crusty Eyes and The Poop Collector

MUSIC

For sale on eBay: heaps of classical records, courtesy NYS. I actually bid three or four times on this, getting up to $150. I was only slightly overbid – the winning offer was $1,125 But because I almost never use my eBay, the company has “reason to believe” that my “eBay account has been used fraudulently”.

The Glamorous Life – Sheila E.

Sweet Mother – Prince Nico Mbarga

Coyote – Joni Mitchell: studio version and from The Last Waltz, song about Sam Shepard

I Made A Fool Of Myself Over John Foster Dulles – Carol Burnett

Liar – Three Dog Night

Angels of Fenway- James Taylor

Wipeout – Sina

The Liquidator – Harry J All Stars

Barbara Cook, Tony Award-Winning Actress And Singer, Dies At 89

Rolling Stones Won’t Be Outdone by Beatles “Sgt Pepper” Box: Anniversary Edition “Satanic Majesties Request” on the Way – but why?

Dad’s green sweater, and other things

The events surround his death 17 years ago are still as vivid as if it had happened a few months ago.

This is unprofound: one’s age is frozen in time when one dies. Dad was 26 when I was born, so he was mostly in his 30s and 40s when I was growing up, in his 50s and 60s, when I visited him when he and mom and the “baby” sister moved to Charlotte, NC from Binghamton, NY.

But he was never young, a boy or in his teens or early twenties, at least not in my self-centered reckoning. This picture I don’t remember, and I don’t know how old he was. But I think I remember the sweater. It was a forest green sweater, and it was cream-colored, rather than white. Or so I recall.

He used to paint trees, but they were almost always barren, often in wintertime.

He was a month and a half shy of 74 when he passed away on August 10, 2000, before 1 p.m. As I mentioned previously, I got to sign a document that the hospital needed in order to provide the death certificate; the joy of being the oldest, I reckon.

The events surround his death 17 years ago are still as vivid as if it had happened a few months ago. And I still have residual stuff to deal with.

A book of his poems I should do SOMETHING with, for instance. The Daughter had a poetry day at her school a few years ago; maybe I could have tried out a couple of his pieces for human consumption. The one thing he did, though, was to go wild with ellipses. Where you and I might use three dots, he might use three dozen. If I were ever to try to get them published someday, am I bound by his crazy use of punctuation?

I’m still no closer to finding his biological father than I was last year, though I haven’t given it much effort, truth be told. I fear microfilm will be in my future, probably in northern Pennsylvania.

“Why so many blacks in ads?”

“An America fully integrating blacks is a better America.”

“Why so many blacks in ads?” is one of those burning issues that I was totally oblivious to until Frank S. Robinson, no relation to the Hall of Fame outfielder, as far as I know, laid it out recently.

He wrote that “I’ve made a point of tallying blacks in ads and commercials. And in fact they are way overrepresented, relative to their 13+% population share.” Oh, dear! And I thought we were supposed to be post-racial!

An “over-educated Trump supporter” named Bruce who’s “a conscientious, growing, practicing follower of Jesus Christ” – that is oxymoronic to me – elucidates further that not only are there too many blacks, but that “women as the head of household and/or the ‘brains of the outfit’ are overrepresented” as well, and breaks down other delineations.

“Urban liberal advertising agency powers are still directing ad content and money to buy ad campaigns, so this should be no surprise.

“However, are they risking a backlash? Are they fomenting a bit of ‘reverse racism’ and unnecessary divisiveness?”

Oh, so NOW it’s “divisiveness”. Maybe I need that course that some GWU law professor suggested to understand certain disgruntled 2016 voters.

To deal with this “scourge”, I recommend:

Frank should look at TV commercials, not just in recent years, but over the period that there has been national television. Let’s pick 1947, because that makes it an even 70 years, and because that was the year the World Series was first broadcast nationally – OK, to six cities from Schenectady to St. Louis.

Bruce should calculate the racial composition of those ads running in the 1950s and 1960s and well beyond versus the racial breakdown. He would discover, shockingly, that there was a certain group that was “overrepresented” compared to its numbers in the population for a very long time.

Moreover, the ads are representing a changing demographic. One in seven marriages in 2014 were of people from different races/ethnic groups, so the commercials represent not just what is but what will be.

At the point that the average number blacks and Hispanics et al. in ads are overrepresented over the seven-decade span – and not just the “non-threatening black friend” (yikes, 1 black person among 4 white people is already over your 13% quota!) – I’ll get back to them on what to do about this “problem”.

Meanwhile, I’ll muse over Frank’s assertion: “That yuppie demographic is where the consumer-spending money is. And for them, blackness is actually attractive; connoting coolness, hipness, with-it-ness, knowing what’s going on. Not inferior but superior. And to this demographic, an America fully integrating blacks is a better America. Putting them in ads hence creates a positive buzz.”

In other words, that assertion from the 1960s and ’70s that some deemed “racist” may be true: Black IS beautiful. And speaking of which, Procter and Gamble put out an ad called the Talk, which a conservative site described, in the title of its article, as “‘Sick sick sick’ racist Procter & Gamble ad crosses every line! If you are white, brace yourself before watching”.

E is for fireworks EAR-itation

I’ve NEVER seen on Facebook such unanimity from all over the city.

Albany, NY has some wonderful fireworks each year on the Empire State Plaza downtown.

Unfortunately, in the past few holidays, there’s been lots of competition from private individuals, and it has only became worse in the last two years when the Albany County legislature allowed individuals to buy items that had previously been banned.

The 4th of July was on a Tuesday in 2017, but I heard what sounded like a war zone each night from the 1st through the 5th.

I did laugh nervously when the family visited a CVS drug store, in adjacent Greene County, in June. Store space devoted to the fireworks was accompanied by a sign that warned people not to smoke near them. Smoking is illegal in most stores anyway, but it such an absurdist thing to see in a building that houses medicine and a pharmacy.

The three of us traversed out to see the downtown fireworks from the soccer field behind the high school, a couple miles from downtown. I had made a point of wearing ear plugs, the kind one uses to block out snoring or the like. I was very happy about that, because the competing local ordinance was close by, and therefore LOUD.

Unfortunately, the haze from the fireworks was THICK. As someone described it, “It was like morning fog by the river in the fall.” There is a potential impact on respiratory health to boot. I’ve NEVER seen on Facebook such unanimity from all over the city, antipathy for the new law.

As it turns out, the nearby Schenectady County legislature voted to ban, again, fireworks, but it widely ignored. Easy enough to do since all the counties around Schenectady still offer them for sale.

Googling for this post, I came across this story about pets suffering from late night fireworks. But it was about Albany, GEORGIA. So we’re not the only Albany suffering.

For ABC Wednesday