Beatles Archives - Page 17 of 34 - Ramblin' with Roger

May rambling #2: Leterman, and Vivaldi’s Pond

James Taylor interview by Howard Stern on May 12

You might want to bookmark this because it’s updated regularly: Who Is Running for President (and Who’s Not)? Most recently, it’s former New York governor George Pataki, who’s been out of office since 2006.

Obama To Posthumously Award “Harlem Hellfighter” With Medal Of Honor For Heroism on June 2, 2015. That would be Sgt. Henry Johnson, who I wrote about HERE.

On July 28th, 1917: Between 8,000 and 10,000 African-Americans marched against lynching and anti-black violence in a protest known as The Silent Parade.

“Playing the Race Card”: A Transatlantic Perspective.

The Milwaukee Experiment. How to stop mass incarceration.

The Mystery of Screven County by Ken Screven.

From SSRN: Bruce Bartlett on How Fox News Changed American Media and Political Dynamics.

Does Color Even Exist? “What you see is only what you see.”

The linguistic failure of “comparing with a Nazi.”

Vivaldi’s Pond by Chuck Miller.

Arthur is dictating the future, albeit imperfectly. Plus AT&T did a good job predicting the future.

Woody Allen On ‘Irrational Man’, His Movies & Hollywood’s Perilous Path – Cannes Q&A.

The Tony Awards for Broadway air on CBS-TV on Sunday, June 7. Some nifty theater links. Listen to songs from Something Rotten.

Lead Belly, Alan Lomax and the Relevance of a Renewed Interest in American Vernacular Music.

Trailer of the movie Love & Mercy, about Brian Wilson.

James Taylor interview by Howard Stern on May 12, in anticipation of Taylor’s new album release on June 16th, listen to HERE or HERE. A friend said, “it was Howard at his best. James forthright, thoughtful and plain honest.”

Why Arthur likes Uma Thurman by Fall Out Boy, besides the Munsters theme.

SamuraiFrog ranks Weird Al: 70-61.

For Beatlemaniacs: Spirit of the Song by Andrew Lind Nath.

The Day That Never Happened and Let’s Drop Beavers from Airplanes and Tater tots and termites.

Apparently Disney Used To Recycle Animation Scenes.

Muppets: Rowlf ads.

Of course, there’s a lot of David Letterman stuff. Here’s How Harvey Pekar became one of his greatest recurring guests. Articles by National Memo and Jaquandor. Or one could just go to Evanier’s page and search for Letterman.

EXCLUSIVE Preview: HOUSE OF HEM #1, a collection of Marvel comics stories written and drawn by my friend Fred Hembeck.

I love Rube Goldbergesque experiments.

GOOGLE ALERTS (me)

The Ranting Chef’s Two-Timing Number One.

I made SamuraiFrog’s This Week in Neat-O, which is kind of…neat. And Dustbury shared the same piece.

Dustbury on Procol Harum.

I suppose I should complain, but it’s so weird. Twice now in the past month, someone has taken a blogpost I’ve written and put it on their Facebook page. The person has kept a citation to my original post, which I imagine could be stripped as it gets passed along. But I’m so fascinated someone would even bother to do so that I haven’t commented – yet.

GOOGLE ALERT (not me)

Roger Green, Art Green’s grandfather, “was born and bred in Rangitikei, and ran the family farm, Mangahoe Land Company, during the 1960s until they put a manager on it in 1967.” (Arthur Green is in New Zealand’s version of The Bachelor.)

Music Throwback Saturday: Oh, Babe, What Would You Say?

“Would you greet me or politely turn away
“Would there suddenly be sunshine on a cold and rainy day”

In late January 2015, my family attended I attended one of those Deconstructing the Beatles lectures by Scott Freiman, “a series of entertaining multimedia presentations about the composition and production techniques” of the band.

Previously, the Wife and I experienced Looking Through A Glass Onion: Deconstructing The White Album, which also covered the recording of ‘Hey Jude’. Freiman “discusses the studio techniques used by the Beatles during 1968 and share many examples of rare audio and video of the Beatles in action.”

More recently, the three of us saw YEAH! YEAH! YEAH! Deconstructing The Early Beatles, in which Freiman traces “the birth of the Beatles from Liverpool to Hamburg. The journey continues from their initial recording sessions at EMI for ‘Love Me Do’ through their first several groundbreaking singles.”

At some point, Freiman mentioned Norman Smith, the engineer on all of the EMI studio recordings by the Beatles through Rubber Soul. As an avid reader of liner notes, I did recognize the name. After he stopped working with the Beatles, he produced early albums for Pink Floyd.

What I did not know, until Freiman played a clip, was that Norman became a recording artist under the name Hurricane Smith. His big hit, which I remember quite well, was “Oh, Babe, What Would You Say?”, “which became a US No. 1 Cash Box and a Billboard Pop No. 3 hit. It reached No. 4 in the UK Singles Chart in the Northern Hemisphere winter of 1972-73, when he was nearly 50.

I always thought the song had a certain melancholy, both in the vocal and the lyrics:
“Would you greet me or politely turn away
“Would there suddenly be sunshine on a cold and rainy day”

Hurricane Smith died in 2008.

LISTEN to Oh, Babe, What Would You Say? HERE or HERE or HERE.

April Rambling: Mr. Rogers, and SNL

“A wonderful experience, but it also tests the limits of human emotions.”

Here’s A News Report We’d Be Reading If Walter Scott’s Killing Wasn’t On Video. Also, from Albany: Chief Krokoff’s Retirement And The Ivy Incident.

Orioles COO John Angelos offers an eye-opening perspective on Baltimore protests. And from late 2013, David Simon: ‘There are now two Americas. My country is a horror show’.

Looking forward to watching the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight this weekend? I’m not.

Religious Freedom: Colorado’s sensible middle way. Also, ‘The Good Wife’ Defends Gay Marriage Against ‘Religious Freedom’ and Matthew Vines: “God and the Gay Christian”.

Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an” and Practicing Islam At A Catholic University.

Kitty Litter Shuts Down Sole US Nuclear Weapons Waste Facility.

20 photos that change the Holocaust narrative.

Not everyone has come to grips with the reality of that spring day in 1995.

Virginia is still imprisoning an almost certainly innocent man—even after he did the time.

Meryl Jaffe analyzes “March: Book 2” by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell.

Before Jackie Robinson.

Six things not to say to a mixed-race person.

The Radical Politics of Mister Rogers.

Jeb ‘Put Me Through Hell’. “Michael Schiavo knows as well as anyone what Jeb Bush can do with executive power. He thinks you ought to know too.”

In the “really sucks” category, my buddy Eddie Mitchell still has cancer.

Dustbury’s blog turns 19. I love that Steely Dan song. Speaking of which, he masterfully blends Meghan Trainor, Maya Angelou and Steely Dan in a piece about selfies.

ADD asks “How Do You Decide What’s Right and Wrong?”

Mark Evanier and his dad: on retirement.

Jack Rollins celebrates his 100th birthday. He has managed Harry Belafonte, Woody Allen, Robin Williams, Billy Crystal, Joan Rivers, Nichols and May, Tony Bennett, Jim Carrey, Dick Cavett, Diane Keaton, David Letterman, and a bunch more.

A telegram Joan Crawford sent to Rod Serling after she saw The Planet of the Apes (1968).

The Inside Story of the Civil War for the Soul of NBC News. Also, A DUMB JOB: How is it possible that the inane institution of the anchorman has endured for more than 60 years?

SNL is: Nora Dunn: “A traumatic experience. It’s something you have to survive.”. Also, “‘A wonderful experience, but it also tests the limits of human emotions”: Gary Kroeger looks back on his three seasons.

Frog explains how the filmmakers wrecked The Incredible Hulk movie.

What the critics wrote about the Beatles in 1964. And The least-celebrated Beatle is finally getting the respect he deserves.

Apparently, Dancing with the Stars and The Voice are using the arrangements of Postmodern Jukebox without acknowledging the group. Here are their versions of Wiggle (Jason Derulo/Snoop Dogg cover) and Creep (Radiohead cover).

Joni Mitchell is Not a “60s Folksinger”.

Percy Sledge.

SamuraiFrog ranking Weird Al: 115-101 and 100-91.

K-Chuck Radio: Guitars sound better with fuzz.

The Laughing Heart (Listen – it’s just one minute.) Never Let Go – Tom Waits Cover.

The top 100 movie number quotes.

Muppets: 40 minutes of “Sam and Friends and Tough Pigs has been collecting those Muppet Moments from Disney Junior and Aveggies: Age of Bon Bons and Cookie Monster, artist and Game of Chairs and one grouch’s trash is another grouch’s outfit and Taraji P. Henson on Sesame Street (sort of) and SamuraiFrog’s Toad Dweebie and Miss Piggy is recipient of prestigious New York museum award.

Passover, Rube Goldberg style.

GOOGLE ALERT (me)

After a hiatus of more than a year, the podcast 2political is back on a regular schedule! With Arthur (yes, THAT Arthur) and Jason, from DC.

Jaquandor answers a bunch of my questions.

Dustbury points out the Judgmental Map of Oklahoma City. He is also disinclined to get a smartphone.

Gordon now has a greater appreciation for the work of librarians and realizes why libraries are important.

GOOGLE ALERT (not me)

This was unsettling: Ex-Burnley teacher Roger Green dies aged 62. BTW, I am 62.

March Rambling: a quintillion or a trillion?

Fred Hembeck talks about a compilation of his Marvel work, House of Hem.

Delayed exoneration of a death row inmate, after 30 years.

9 Things Many Americans Just Don’t Grasp (Compared to the Rest of the World).

“The phone rang. It was my college rapist.”

What Happens When Mein Kampf’s Copyright Expires?

Building Equity: Race, Ethnicity, Class and Protected Bike Lanes.

Giving Homes to the Homeless is Cheaper Than Leaving them on the Street.

Man vs. Machine. A guy walks into a bar. He finds a video poker machine – run by the Oregon state lottery – which dealt him a strange hand.

Re: NCAA men’s basketball March Madness, the odds of a perfect bracket? It’s not 1 in 9.2 quintillion. Not incidentally, 10^18, or one followed by 18 zeroes is in the English system, one trillion. In any case, 9.2 quintillion is NOT 9.20000000000000000000, as NBC Nightly News showed earlier this month; THAT number is equal to a number smaller than 10.

Dustbury explained +/- (plus/minus) in basketball to me: “It’s based on the changing score during a player’s actual time: if, during a six-minute period in which he plays, if his team scores three points more than the opposition, he is +3. This of course varies greatly with substitutions, but electronic box scores update every minute or so.”

John Oliver won’t be your therapist: How he torpedoed the reassuring tropes of fake news.

Selma: the tragic anniversary of the death of Viola Liuzzo and Underground Railroad Project remembers the March.

Joseph Skulan on Wisconsin Mining Bill AB486 (2.17.12).

Major League Baseball’s Dirty Little Secret and Through the No-Looking Glass and Professional Ice Cream Taster.

25 maps that explain the English language.

Jaquandor: Writing Outside the Lines: on outlines. Plus the beer-drinking, 1970s sitcom DVD-watching Hank Speaks: How I Edit.

Dustbury hears voices; I’ve experienced this, too.

Gordon’s eight years in Chicago.

For all you lovers of the dance: here is an explanation of the influence of Africa on modern dance – if you have three hours to spare.

The Beatles or the Stones: Which Side Are You On? “If the Stones resented the Beatles’ cultural primacy, the Beatles resented the Stones’ unassailable coolness and sexual heat.” The Beatles themselves were like other men, but the music and lyrics channeled through them contained magic and messages from beyond the mind.

“Back when L.A.’s recording scene was a hit-minting machine that ruled the airwaves,” the Wrecking Crew worked up to four three-hour sessions a day. Here’s a review of a film about them.

Not only Diana Ross but also Mary Wilson turned 71 this month. 10 underrated Supremes songs.

SamuraiFrog ranks the Weird Al Yankovic songs: 165-151 and 150-136 and 135-126 and 125-116.

Art Spiegelman and jazz composer Phillip Johnston: “Wordless!”

Swamp Thing music.

The cover art on your favorite band’s album is awesome. It’s even better with cats. Must show the Daughter.

My friend Fred Hembeck is interviewed, and talks about a compilation of his Marvel work, House of Hem.

Irwin Hasen, R.I.P., the artist of the comic strip Dondi. Here’s the New York Times obit.

Trailers for 2015: The Best Animated Short nominees.

Muppets: Jim Henson Company and the ‘Into the Woods’ Movie that Could’ve Been and the message of “Rainbow Connection’ and Cookie Monster, Life Coach and Cookie Monster is making unboxing videos and Animal’s Whiplash.

How To Make The IDEAL Chocolate Chip Cookie: Add A Pinch of Science.

Getting more mayonnaise and toothpaste out of the container.

Dominoes and Etch-A-Sketch.

Srinivasa Ramanujan’s Magic Square.

Welcome to the Inauthentic Paper Detector. “Paste any text in the textbox. The chance that your submission is a human-written authentic scientific document will be output. Text over 50% chance will be classified as authentic.” Here’s the paper about it. Everything I write is inauthentic.

GOOGLE ALERT (me)

Chuck Miller: Welcome to the club, Roger Green!! Apparently, I have posted 1000 times on my Times Union blog. I had no idea. Also, Another win for the TU Community Bloggers.

My blog post re: the Barber Adagio was linked to EvilGeniusVic’s Capital Region.

Sharp Little Pencil: Outhouses and Holes We Dig, for Wisconsin governor Scott Walker.

Jaquandor’s Sentential Links (the Leonard Nimoy edition).

The Gospel according to the Beatles, Sunday, March 1

There will be musical revue of The Gospel according to the Beatles on Sunday, March 1 at 12:15 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church, 362 State Street.

There will be a musical revue of The Gospel according to the Beatles on Sunday, March 1 at 12:15 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church, 362 State, corner of Willett Street in Albany, across from Washington Park in Albany, NY. It is an original musical adaptation by director Christy D’Ambrosio, performed by the youth of the church. The narrative is based upon the book The Gospel According to the Beatles, written by Steve Turner.

Orchestration is provided by Christian Diefendorf. Instruments provided by Christopher Trombley, John Keal Music. Theatrical Ramp designed & constructed by John Myers. Costumes provided by The Costumer.