Tag: music

Ringo Starr is 70

Besides my Top 10 Ringo songs, versions of a couple of the same songs by John and George.


I decided that, for all four of the Beatles, I would list my Top 10 favorite songs on their 70th birthdays, or in the case of John and George, what would have been the big seven-oh.

Ringo is easy, because I have relatively few of his albums, as well as a live triple-CD anthology and a greatest hits collection. This will NOT include any live versions of his old Beatles tunes.

ten It’s All Down To Goodnight Vienna – a most peculiar song by John Lennon, who plays piano, with odd scansion to boot. jl-piano.

nine Liverpool 8 -. A history lesson.

ate Oh My My -featuring background vocals by Martha Reeves and Merry Clayton, those great Billy Preston keyboards, and Tom Scott on the sax.

seven Love Me Do. As obsessive Beatles fans know – guilty as charged – Ringo replaced Pete Best shortly before the Beatles went into the studio for the first time with producer George Martin. Martin, disliking Best’s drums, and unfamiliar with Starr’s, hired session musician Andy White to playing drums, relegating Ringo to playing tambourine. Ringo STILL seemed miffed by this while he, Paul, and George were making the Anthology albums and videos in the mid 1990s. This record is, I suspect, partially closure for the drummer.

six Step Lightly, mislabeled as Six O’Clock; indeed, most of this YouTube guy’s Ringo videos are given incorrect titles. This is from the Ringo album and features the dancing feet of Richard Starkey, MBE.

five Early 1970, a piece about the other Beatles at the time of the breakup. It is noteworthy that all of them play and write songs for Ringo, even as acrimony amongst the others festered.

for No No Song. This always reminded me of a variation on Randy Newman’s Mama Told Me Not To Come. Ringo’s old drinking buddy, Harry Nilsson, does the backing vocals.

three I’m the Greatest. A cheeky song that John Lennon wrote for his friend who was also born in 1940. Here’s John Lennon’s demo version.

too It Don’t Come Easy – with Badfinger on backing vocal; here’s George Harrison’s demo version.

won Photograph . A song co-written by George and Ringo, with George also on backing vocals and 12-string guitar. As Ringo mentioned at the Concert for George in November 2002, a year after George’s death, the song has taken on a whole new meaning:
Ev’ry time I see your face,
It reminds me of the places we used to go.
But all I’ve got is a photograph,
And I realise you’re not coming back anymore.

Ringo took a lot of heat in recent years for declaring that he would no longer sign autographs. In subsequent discussions, he indicated that he was tired of signing items only to see them on eBay or Craigslist the next week; I sympathize with that.

Ringo kicks off Live from the Artists Den on PBS this week.

Happy birthday, Richie.

Guilty pleasure music QUESTION

Ah — Beach Boys harmony.


Some people, rightly, do not believe in the notion of “guilty pleasure” regarding one’s taste in movies, TV, music and the like. I use the phrase more as it’s understood as something the cool kids don’t watch/listen to.

Links included.

Could It Be Magic – Barry Manilow. First it was the piano intro (and outro) that was a direct, and apparently unconscious, steal of Chopin’s Prelude No. 20 in C Minor. But eventually I got sucked into the whole strings, especally as the strings build at about the three-minute mark.

I Haven’t Got Time For The Pain – Carly Simon. But especially the strings at the end. BTW, Lesley Gore – yes, THAT Lesley Gore – does her own version, pretty good, but without that great ending.

Wishing You Were Here – Chicago. It’s not the whole song; I find Peter Cetera’s vocals on the bridge occasionally grating. But it is that lovely Beach Boys harmony from Al Jardine, Carl Wilson, and Dennis Wilson that has always moved me.

Rosanna-Toto. You that part, “Not quite a year…”? Well, I love that bit. More than that, I love singing along in harmony vocal. If I think about it, there are a number of songs I enjoy specifically on that basis.

ABC-Jackson 5 When they first came out, they were considered “bubblegum soul”, and no song epitomized that more than this abecedarian tune. Thing is, I could always sing all the parts that Tito and especially Jermaine (second lead on most tunes) performed, so I always had a soft spot for the early J5,.

What are YOUR musical guilty pleasures?

30-Day Challenge: Day 9- Favorite Flower


(At this rate, this will be the 30-MONTH Challenge. I’ll pick up the pace in July, if only because I’ll be away for a few days.)

Here’s a real embarrassment: I am outstandingly bad at identifying flowers. Oh, I recognize a rose, a carnation, or the oddball flora such as the sunflower. And the tulip; you can’t live in Albany, which has an annual festival, without being able to ID a tulip. But beyond that, not so much.

“Oh, that’s a pretty violet flower. What is it?”
“A violet.”

This is particularly mortifying because my father worked at a florist shop when I was a child, and for years after that, he would arrange flowers for weddings, debutante balls and other events. He would drag my sister Leslie and me to these gigs, but I still had no absorption of his skills. I WAS useful, though, schlepping stuff from one place to another.

I suppose my favorite may be the lily, mostly because of Easter, and because they remind me of brass instruments.

The first song on the 1994 eponymous album David Byrne is Lilies of the Valley.

June Ramblin’

From the Monty Python movie “Life of Brian”, What have the Romans ever done for us?

Just a reminder that you have only three more full days to enter my giveaway. Rules are on the sidebar, but basically, from now through July 3 at 11:59 EDT, every time you comment to a post, assuming you haven’t commented already to that specific piece, gives you a chance at some prizes, including a complete DVD box set of The Dick Van Dyke Show and a Michael Jackson greatest hits CD.

Speaking of Michael Jackson: in honor of the anniversary of his death this past week, the full-length video of Thriller, performed with Legos.

I KNEW there was a way to post something on Twitter and have it show up on Facebook, but couldn’t suss out the instructions. This really helped me. And, in fact, it was one of my Facebook friends who provided the link.

Author Rebecca Skloot has interesting info about her best-selling book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks on her website, including audio, video, and an excerpt.

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years.

Here’s a link about the book being discussed on PBS Religion & Ethics Newsweekly

Nice tribute to 7’7″ Manute Bol, noted as a basketball player, but noteworthy because of his humanitarian causes, who died last week at 47.

I’ve always liked U.S. Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV), who died this week at the age of 92. Even as his politics evolved, from his brief flirtation with the KKK to civil rights supporter, from Vietnam hawk to Iraq dove, his love of the U.S. constution remained steadfast. He died at 92 this week, and here is an appreciation.

This may make sense only if you know football; I mean, American football: Unsportsmanlike Conduct Jesus.

A singalong version of Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, a song originally from the Monty Python movie “Life of Brian.” That always reminds me of my favorite segment of the film, What have the Romans ever done for us?

Neil Gaiman defends libraries.

visit4info – The Place for TV Adverts and Funny Video Clips from the UK

A Solstice Tradition Continues: Ask Roger ANYTHING!


It is once again time for the operator of this blog to hand over the keys, so to speak when you ask him anything you want. And he HAS to answer. Now he may answer with obfuscation, but he cannot outright lie.

Here are some examples:
What is my favorite song performed by one artist, made more popular by a subsequent artist, but the version I prefer is by the former? (Got that?)

The answer: I Heard It Through the Grapevine, a big, #2 hit for Gladys Knight and the Pips, only to be trumped by Marvin Gaye’s much slower, much more successful, take. In part, I felt bad for the Pips when they would go on the road and people would ask them, “Why are you doing that Marvin Gaye song?”, which had to be irritating to GK&P, enough so that they left Motown at their first opportunity. Moreover, the resurrection of Gaye’s version during the Big Chill movie’s popularity made it become actually irritating to me for a time.

(Rather how I feel about the once perfectly fine Brown-Eyed Girl by Van Morrison, and other songs I hear too often.) But tell me: in this version, can YOU only really hear Marvin’s vocal, as I do? THIS is really cool.

Who was I rooting for in the NBA playoffs?

Actually, I don’t really follow the NBA all that much. That said, I started tiring of hearing about the “inevitable” Cleveland/LA Lakers finals, so I ended up rooting for the Boston Celtics, pretty much as a reaction to the pundits.

Post your questions in the comments, or e-mail me. I’ll use your name unless you specifically request otherwise. Of course, if you don’t leave your name, my chances of being snarky are DRAMATICALLY increased. Sooner, rather than later, I’ll answer your questions in this blog.

Oh, yeah, and since a question (of five words or more) is considered a comment, you’ll also get an entry in my GIVEAWAY; see sidebar for details.

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