February 2019 - Page 5 of 6 - Ramblin' with Roger

Music throwback: Beatles Decca tapes

Coincidentally, both the Tremeloes and the Stones recorded Beatles’ songs.

Someone on Quora posted 10 of the 15 songs that appeared on the Beatles Decca tapes, an audition which took place on 1 January 1962 in London.

As you may know, Decca Records rejected the Beatles – John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and drummer Pete Best – with a polite “guitar groups are on the way out.”

The order of the songs at the session was:

Like Dreamers Do (A) (Lennon/McCartney)
Money* (That’s What I Want) (Gordy/Bradford)
Till There Was You* (Meredith Willson)
The Sheik of Araby (A) (Smith/Wheeler/Snyder)
To Know Her Is to Love Her* (Phil Spector)
Take Good Care of My Baby** (King/Goffin)
Memphis, Tennessee (Chuck Berry)*
Sure to Fall (In Love with You)* (Cantrell/Claunch/Perkins)
Hello Little Girl (A) (Lennon/McCartney)
Three Cool Cats (A) (Leiber/Stoller)
Crying, Waiting, Hoping* (Buddy Holly)
Love of the Loved** (Lennon/McCartney)
September in the Rain** (Warren/Dubin)
Bésame Mucho* (Consuelo Velázquez)
Searchin'(A) (Leiber/Stoller)

*unreleased version **unreleased (A) appears on Beatles Anthology #1, 1995

I had – actually have – ~~a bootleg~~ an unauthorized version of the Decca Tapes on vinyl from some point in the 1970s. I know that because my girlfriend at the time, who otherwise liked the collection, scowled when she heard Three Cool Cats: “save one chick for me!” It was a song, let’s say, of its time.

The decision to reject the Beatles turned out to be fortunate for three bands:

Brian Poole and the Tremeloes, “who auditioned the same day as the Beatles, as they were local and would require lower travel expenses”

The Beatles, who ended up at Parlophone under the tutelage of George Martin

The Rolling Stones: after the Beatles became popular in England, Decca snatched up the Stones

Coincidentally, both the Tremeloes and the Stones recorded Beatles’ songs.

Those five Decca recordings on the Anthology 1 collection in 1995 was a boon to Pete Best’s bank account.

10 songs
Searchin’
Three Cool Cats
The Sheik Of Araby
Like Dreamers Do
Hello Little Girl

I also own The Songs Lennon and McCartney Gave Away, a “compilation album containing the original artist recordings of songs composed by [the duo] in the 1960s that they had elected not to release as Beatles songs. The album was released in the UK in 1979.” Three covers of the Decca songs appear there.

Hello Little Girl- The Fourmost
Like Dreamers Do – The Applejacks
Love of The Loved – Cilla Black

Economic Color Blindness of the Sears Catalog

Sears’ innovative business model brought unprecedented market access to black customers

Sears catalog I already felt badly in 2017 when the local Sears store closed, even though I probably hadn’t shopped there in over a decade. I felt worse in 2018 when the company filed for bankruptcy.

Part of it was that Sears should have been the best position to become what Amazon has turned into, the category killer. It was because of the Sears catalog.

Now I’ve read this very entertaining article, The Economic Color Blindness of the Sears Catalog. The company “played an important role in circumventing the institutionalized racial discrimination of the Jim Crow South.”

I get the sense that a lot of people in America don’t understand how restrictive things could be. “For example, a black shopper would likely face greater difficulty than a white shopper in obtaining credit for a large purchase when such decisions fell to a racist store owner. The retail store could impose a higher credit price structure on black patrons as a matter of personal discretion, or deny them credit entirely.

“The Sears catalog, by contrast, would allow black patrons to buy the same item by mail on credit, with Sears having little ability to bring race into the equation.

“Black patrons could also be refused a sale in a store if they sought an item deemed dangerous to the racial hierarchies of segregated society, such as a firearm.” But Sears, in the days before more restrictions, could ship guns to any home.

“The Sears catalog circumvented the ability of local store owners to discriminate as it essentially allowed for a faceless transaction that took place entirely by mail. Combined with the expanded price competition it brought to the retail industry” – isn’t that what Amazon did more recently? -“Sears’ innovative business model brought unprecedented market access to black customers — and did so in a way that allowed them to avoid the indignities of discriminatory treatment at the cash register counter.”

What’s also interesting is the assessment by Gary Becker from back in the 1950s that “a discriminatory cultural belief such as racial prejudice also carries associated economic costs for the discriminator.” In other words, it costs bigots to be bigots, a lesson still applicable today.

“I cannot throw out these books”

I wrote 10 or 11 blog posts re Never A Dull Moment: 1971, the year that rock exploded by David Hepworth.

Jaquandor recently wrote about owning books. In part, he quotes from Life Itself by Roger Ebert, which makes more sense in its entirety, and really speaks to me. “I cannot throw out these books. Some are enchanted because I have personally turned all their pages and read every word. They’re shrines to my past hours.”

Looking at my bookshelves in the office, I realize the sheer number of books I am not going to get rid of, because. And that doesn’t even count the ones in the bookcases that are in the attic, arranged, BTW, and the relatively few in the living room.

Initially, I was just going to pick books as they appeared on the shelves. Then I decided to put them in some sort of imperfect order

ALBANY

Six and Eleven – Ed Dague (2010). Former local news anchor I hung out with him one night and have a transcript – somewhere – of that night’s broadcast in 1994

A Day Apart: How Jews, Christians, and Muslims Find Faith, Freedom, and Joy on the Sabbath – Christopher Ringwald. (2007). Signed to me. I got to hear him speak on the topic in my church a few years before his tragic death.

Figuring Sh!t Out: Love, Laughter, Suicide, and Survival – Amy Biancolli (2015). Signed to me, my wife and our daughter. About surviving the suicides in her life, including that of her husband, the aforementioned C Ringwald

O Albany – William Kennedy (1983). The greatest writer out of the city. Both he and Biancolli worked for the local newspaper, the Times Union, and both were honored by the Albany Public Library Foundation

RACE

Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II – Douglas A. Blackmon (2008) – signed to me in 2009 at an event arranged by Bill Kennedy

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness – Michelle Alexander (revised 2011). Because it makes sense.

The Sweeter the Juice – Shirlee Taylor Haizlip. when I wrote a blog post about it, I got an email from her!

Brothers in Arms: The Epic Story of the 761st Tank Battalion, WWII’s Forgotten Heroes – Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Anthony Walton (2004). Did you know Kareem was on JEOPARDY! for the first time the same month I was?

FANTACO

The Nearly Complete Essential Hembeck Archives Omnibus – Fred Hembeck (2008). I remember helping friend Fred unload boxes of these at a comic book convention in Saratoga Springs, NY

Xerox Ferox: The Wild World of the Horror Film Fanzine – John Szpunar. It premiered at FantaCon 2013. I got it signed by the author, plus subjects such as Steve Bissette, Tom Skulan, Dennis Daniel and Jim Whiting

Saga of the Swamp Thing: Book One – Alan Moore, Stephen Bissette, John Totleben (2009), art plate signed by Steve; I met Steve at FantaCo in 1987

FantaCo book publications, almost all of which have stories; I know I was quoted in the Washington Post about Splatter Movies (1981)

Elfquest books – Wendy and Richard Pini, the original 20 issues in four volumes. Wendy and Richard came up to FantaCo for signings thrice a year

MUSIC

Blues People – LeRoi Jones (1963), before he became Amiri Baraka, he wrote about “the Negro experience in white America and the music that developed from it.”

Soulsville USA – Rob Bowman (1997). The story of STAX Records

Never A Dull Moment: 1971, the year that rock exploded – David Hepworth. I wrote 10 or 11 blog posts on this book

Across the Charts: The 1960s – Joel Whitburn (2008), This a book that shows the power of songs that cross over among the pop, soul, country, and adult contemporary charts.

Plus a slew of books on the Beatles

This post is getting LONG – more books soon.

Anti-intellectualism: “dumbing down” of America

There is a disjunction between Americans’ rising level of formal education and their shaky grasp of basic geography, science and history

Somehow, reading Ray Williams’ article The cult of ignorance in the United States: Anti-intellectualism and the “dumbing down” of America made me sadder than other pieces I’ve read on the subject.

For one thing, Williams’ article is from 2014. He cites Susan Jacoby, author of The Age of American Unreason from 2008, who said in an article in the Washington Post, “Dumbness… has been steadily defined downward for several decades. She specifically cites “a disjunction between Americans’ rising level of formal education and their shaky grasp of basic geography, science, and history.”

This is not a recent trend. Richard Hofstadter won a Pulitzer Prize in 1964 (!) for his book, Anti-Intellectualism In American Life.

We’re creating a world of dummies. Angry dummies who feel they have the right, the authority and the need not only to comment on everything, but to make sure their voice is heard above the rest, and to drag down any opposing views through personal attacks, loud repetition, and confrontation.

The article blames a variety of factors for this disturbing trend includes:

* Training people to get jobs rather than educating them
* Anti-science religiosity influencing education
* “The new elite are the angry social media posters, those who can shout loudest and more often, a clique of bullies and malcontents baying together like dogs cornering a fox”

Sure, there is vapidness in pop culture. “Fashion, entertainment, spectacle, voyeurism – we’re directed towards trivia, towards the inconsequential, towards unquestioning and blatant consumerism.”

The article addressed many problems but offers little in terms of solutions beyond that the trend “should be a cause for concern for leaders and the general population, one that needs to be addressed now.”

No doubt in my mind this is all true. But what does one DO about it? Je ne sais pas. And THAT’S what frightens me, not just for myself but for my child.

E is for entertainment for the whole family

In the 1980s, I ROCKED at Trivial Pursuit

Uno In November 2018, Slate came up with The 40 Greatest Family Games, entertainment for the whole family. There are five things games should be: the right length, fair, action-packed, helping you learn something, and encouraging spontaneity. “Not every good game follows all these commandments, but the best ones balance them well.”

I will only note the ones I have actually played.

Sorry! – wrote about its greatness here eight and a half years ago
Concentration – I’ve always been notoriously bad at this. By the time my daughter was eight, she could beat me. I used to watch a TV version with Hugh Downs as the host.
Uno – I am a harsh competitor. Even when she was much younger, if the Daughter didn’t say “Uno” when she played her penultimate card, I made her take two more. I also insisted she keep her cards above the table. Slate calls it Bloodthirsty, Thrilling, and Desperate
Air Hockey – when we’re at the timeshare, the daughter, nieces and I often play. Something visceral about it.

Apples to Apples – “asks players to decide which of a set of proposed nouns best fits that round’s designated adjective.” It’s often hilarious.
Boggle – My wife is MUCH better finding words than I.
Cribbage – I actually have a cribbage board and deck of cards both in my office and at home
Pictionary – I’m lousy at it because I cannot draw worth beans
Chess – I learned how the pieces move, but that is about it

Scrabble – I played this with my great aunt over 55 years ago. My college roommate painted me a Scrabble board. I’ve reviewed a book about Scrabble. I haven’t played in a while. No, I’ve seldom played Words with Friends online.
Scattergories, Stratego – I’ve played them but never owned them
Trivial Pursuit – in the 1980s, I ROCKED at Trivial Pursuit. Now, any 21st century pop culture question would ground me
Yahtzee – a dice game that I like because it requires decision-making and odds calculating

Slate also notes the 10 Worst Family Games

Candy Land – pretty lame, I thought, even as a child
Clue – I never “got” Clue
Hangman – boring
Life – I actually liked it as a kid, but quit by my teen years

Monopoly – I’ve played it enough that, at one time, I could have told you the price and rent of every property on the board. I suppose they’re right, though – “the most famous branded board game of all time can be made enjoyable — with the help of some aggressive house rules”
Operation – hated it from the start
Risk – never warmed to it
Tic-tac-toe – statistically boring

For ABC Wednesday