Category: questions

Beatles cover music QUESTION

In my tradition of playing the music that I own, I have divvied up my Beatles music thusly:
In October, in honor of John’s birthday, I play the canon. In this case, the British CDs (including Magical Mystery Tour, which became adopted as such), plus the two Past Masters CDs of singles, B-sides, EPs cuts and oddities.
In February, in honor of George’s birthday, I play the American albums. George, visiting his sister Louise, was the first of the Beatles to visit the U.S.
In June, in honor of Paul’s birthday, I play the more recent items: Live at the BBC, the Anthology series, and Love, e.g.
In July, in honor of Ringo’s birthday I play Beatles covers. After all, Ringo’s All-Starr bands are known to cover the hits of the contributing musicians.

And I have LOTS of whole albums dedicated to Beatles covers. Some are of whole albums: Big Daddy doing Sgt. Pepper, a MOJO collection replicating Revolver, George Benson taking on Abbey Road. There are whole soundtracks: All This and World War II, I Am Sam, Across the Universe.

So what are your favorite Beatles covers? I am fond of these:

Come Together by Tina Turner; Aerosmith’s take is fine, but too close to the original
Eleanor Rigby by Aretha Franklin (she puts it in the first person); though the pure excess of both the Vanilla Fudge and Rare Earth versions always made me chuckle.
Got To Get You Into My Life by Earth, Wind and Fire; one of the only good things to come out of the Sgt. Pepper’s movie debacle.
In My Life by Judy Collins; though there are other fine versions, notably Johnny Cash’s.
We Can Work It Out by Stevie Wonder; I once bought an LP just for that song.
You Can’t Do that by Harry Nillson, which segues in other Beatle tunes in a most delightful way.

Special kudos to Joe Cocker, who made several Beatles’ tunes his own. but the one I’m currently most fond of is You’ve got to Hide your Love Away

And there undoubtedly others. The readers of Rolling Stone magazine pick their favorites.

What’s your least favorite Beatles covers?

There’s a whole slew of older artists of the Beatles era trying too hard to be hip and relevant but feeling like the lounge singer Bill Murray used to play on Saturday Night Live (or a slightly more current reference, the Sweeney Sisters).

Still my thumbs are down to two pop music legends of the 1960s. The Supremes doing A Hard Day’s Night, originally on an album I owned called A Bit of Liverpool. “It’s ben a hard (hard) day’s (day’s) night.” Disliked it on first hearing. the other is Elvis Presley doing an off-key and listless version of Hey Jude; just unpleasant to listen to. (Though not eligible for consideration, Mitch Miller’s version of Give Peace A Chance is a HOOT.)

ROG

ROG

Ask Roger Anything, Solstice Edition

Now that it’s summer (or winter, depending), it is time to Ask Roger Anything. Oh, but wait – I’m distracted by somebody who recently noted that if people from space came to Earth, they might conclude the South Pole is the top of the world and the North Pole is on the bottom; after all there is a large land mass. Or maybe they’d pick some point on the equator or the Tropic of Cancer. Is our sense of top and bottom somewhat arbitrary?

Usually I do this because I’m afraid I’ll run out of things to write about. This is not the case presently; I have three or four blogposts re my trip to North Carolina alone. I am, though, having trouble actually composing them, or even deciding if I should. Answering YOUR questions gives me opportunity to muse on them some more.

Anyway, I already have a question from SB: “So perhaps you’ve already written about this, but I’d be interested to hear how libraries continue to change and evolve with stuff like Twitter and Facebook. Do libraries have their own Facebook badges? Is that – gasp! – allowed?”

Our library has a Facebook page, which is fueled in part from our blog feed. We have a Twitter feed that keeps both our blog and our website fresh. Our Facebook badge is a variation on the SBDC logo.

I’ve seen over 1000 libraries on both Twitter and Facebook, and I’d guesstimate that there are tens of thousands of librarians who are on one or both of the sites; I am on those, LinkedIn and a couple others.

The Library of Congress has over 10,000 followers but is following, last I checked, no one. At least the Library Journal is following a couple hundred while it is followed by over 5,000. I – and apparently others – had contacted the LOC about this, and the folks responded, rather quickly, that were worried that there would be too much noise in the feed. I’m not sure I agree with their thought process.

So, any other questions, folks? Everything is on the table. Let your mind get creative.
ROG

ROG

What the…QUESTION

Last Saturday, I was walking down the street, MY street, with the five-year-old daughter. We walk past a house where I don’t know the residents, unfortunately a too common occurrence.

In any case, there are about a dozen tween or young teen boys gathered along a stairway near the side of the house, with at least one adult male, when one of the boys yells out “faggot!”

I take a couple steps before I start looking around to see who he’s yelling at.

“Yeah, I’m talking to you!”

At first, I think to to say nothing, but then wheel around and say, “Do you really think that’s appropriate,” and walk away.

LAME response!

Afterwords, I pondered. What was I doing that would make someone that I heretofore had not even noticed refer to me as a bundle of sticks? It probably was my long-sleeve jacket, which I wear even on hot, sunny days like that one lest I get sunburn on my arms. Since the vitiigo, this is a real concern.

I came up with my treppenwitz response: “You are a castrato!” He probably wouldn’t have known what that meant, but to my mind, it was satisfying, in the moment at least, for it would have addressed the fact that he could be “brave” and yell out 30 feet from the street while he was with his pack, knowing my response would be limited while I was with my child. Pretty damn clever of him, too.

So, what would YOU have done? I know it’s a moot point. With the prescription sunglasses I was wearing – good for reading, not distance – I wouldn’t even necessarily recognize him.

If my child weren’t there, maybe my response would have been different.

Or maybe my initial response, to do nothing, was the best?

And I’m peeved more with the adult, who said and did nothing, at least during this brief exchange.
ROG

ROG

The Sotomayor QUESTION

Patrick J. Buchanan called Sonia Sotomayor a “Quota Queen for the Court.” Newt Gingrich called her a racist, then backed off; of course, Newt also said, “No group has benefited more from impartial justice than the less fortunate.”

Her controversial quote: “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

My initial reaction was well, a non-reaction. I knew what she meant. When people who are the “other” in this society succeed, they’ve often learned to navigate both the majority culture as well as their own. For instance, I know there are things that I don’t have to endure because I’m a male. I don’t always know what they are, but I surely know they exist.

Lanny J. Davis in the Washington Times makes the case that in the “3,000 decisions in which Judge Sotomayor participated and the more than 400 opinions that she signed during her 12 years on the appeals court…in case-after-case, she has voted based on applying the law to the facts — even where the result is contrary to the expected ‘liberal’ ideological position…” He says further, “As to Judge Sotomayor’s statement…: The obvious answer is to view the statement in the broader context of what she meant — similar to what Judge Samuel A. Alito said during his confirmation hearings, i.e., that his background coming from an immigrant family would inevitably be ‘taken into account’ as he made his judicial decisions.”

So her “controversial” remark bothered me not at all. The use of the word “better” will be written off as a gaffe, which, politically, it was. She appears to be well-qualified and I imagine she’ll be confirmed.

But that’s what I think. What says you?

ROG

ROG

W.W.C.T.G.Y.T.B.N.C.O.S.Y.A.O. Question

I think it was Mark Evanier who came up with the notion of the W.W.C.T.G.Y.T.B.N.C.O.S.Y.A.O. (the World Wide Conspiracy To Get You To Buy New Copies Of Stuff You Already Own). This is why I’m less than excited by the remastered Beatles music coming out 09/09/09.

I haven’t done this in a while, but last week, I went to the library, got five CDs and burned them. I’m totally unapologetic about it, too, because every single album I’ve not only purchased but still own in vinyl. Until I get around to buying one of those turntables that will convert vinyl to digital form – I saw one listed recently for a little over $100 – then I will keep at it.

So what is on my little foray this week?

Boston- Boston. Yes, THAT album with More than A Feeling, et al.
Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young – Deja Vu – with four writers, they worked hard to be equitable, with each getting two songs, Stills/Young getting one, and the other song a cover of Joni Mitchell’s Woodstock.
Devo- Q: Are We Not Men? A: We are Devo – features one of my all-time favorite covers, Satisfaction. Incidentally, I have a schlocky instrumental album of Devo songs, done by Devo.
The Guess Who- co-founded by Randy Bachman, who later founded Bachman-Turner Overdrive, it has some decent songs. But the one that most fascinated me when i first bought it was a song I did not know before, Hang On To Your Life, which ends with the stark parts of Psalm 22.
Neil Young – Harvest. I listened to this album a LOT in my college years.

I could only take out five at a time. So what was interesting to me was what I didn’t take this time:
Allman Brothers – Brothers and Sisters. I have a colleague who burns so much Allman music for me that I may have ODed on them.
John Lennon – Rock and Roll. I bought this album on December 9, 1980, the day after Lennon died; they were sold out of Double Fantasy by the time I got to the store (Just a song or strawberries) at lunchtime. This is an oddly unsatisfying album, one I didn’t listen to much at the time. Mayne I SHOULD revisit for that reason alone.
Pretenders – the first album. It was a double album with out takes and alternate versions; almost certainly for next time.
Van Halen – the ONLY Van Halen I’ve ever owned, which I probably got for Happy Trails.

Oh, the questions: how do you feel about buying things (DVD, CDs) that you already own (VCR tapes, LPs or cassettes)? Do you avoid them? Pick only the core stuff? Seek out compilations? (Most of my early CDs were greatest hits collections of artists I already owned heavily on vinyl, such as Billy Joel and Elton John.) Do you have a mechanism to convert to newer formats?
ROG

ROG
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