Tag: music

Feb. rambling: Manufactured outrage

VOTE for Rebecca Jade!

RESPECT.Lamb's Theater
Pictured: Sydney Joyner, Caitie Grady, Rebecca Jade, Joy Yandell, Janaya Jones & Angela Chatelain Avila.

Manufactured outrage: phneh and giving a horse an apple and Super Bowl edition

How Poland, Long Leery of Foreigners, Opened Up to Ukrainians

SCOTUS will consider whether tech giants can be sued for allegedly aiding ISIS terrorism. You need to know about Section 230, the most important law for online speech.

MTG’s dream of a “national divorce” deserves a serious response

Central Bankers “Punt” on Climate Initiatives

Airlines Are Ditching Carbon Offsets. That’s a Mistake.

New Jersey becomes first state to mandate K-12 students learn information literacy

You Really Can’t Trust Fox News Channel, Ever and How Dominion Voting Systems filing proves Fox News was ‘deliberately lying’

Small World by Nikon

Masks Revisited. Despite common misreporting, a recent Cochrane review, limited in scope and problematic methodology, does NOT show that masks do not work. Check out this

Choose your enemies well

Nathan J. Robinson’s Responding to the Right: Brief Replies to 25 Conservative Arguments

Facebook’s New Penalty System Is Less Harsh but More Informative

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Why I Should Not Have Tried to “Walk It Off”: My unexpected journey with Atrial Fibrillation (AFib)

Google’s chatbot panic

Ron DeSantis Shouldn’t Be Covered Like Just Another Republican, Molly Jong-Fast, Vanity Fair

The Tubi commercial that showed a red flag

Kelly is closing a few tabs

Now I Know: The Crows Didn’t Mind Dick Cheney, Though and When Bees Get Too Buzzed and The Worst House Money Can’t Buy and The Secret Writer’s Secret and The TV News Program’s Key Mistake and Why This Reindeer Looks Like It Has a Lightsaber Hat

Culcha

BAFTA Awards. Two days after the awards came out, someone told me several of their friends posted online that the Oscars had taken place. Nah, it was lost in translation; probably, the friends missed that it was the so-called “British Oscars”

The book “Side by Side in Eternity:” by James Robert McNeil and J. Eric Smith is now available. I have my copy. There’s a chapter about Apollo 1, one defining event growing up.

The six-year making of the Wait But Why book What’s Our Problem: a self-help book for societies

Cory Doctorow: Matt Ruff’s “Destroyer of Worlds”  – Return to  Lovecraft Country

“A Poet is Not a Jukebox”

Persi Diaconis, magician-mathematician

“I will seek not the shadowy region”

100 years ago, an animated dinosaur became a sensation

NYC’s The Farmer’s Dog’s emotional Super Bowl commercial is being called the best ad of the game.

Ana de Armas Thinks Social Media Has Ruined the “Concept of a Movie Star.” “For the most part, we’ve done that to ourselves — nobody’s keeping anything from anyone anymore.” This has been self-evident for a long while.

Milestones

60 of 23 and Michael Jordan donates $10M to Make-A-Wish for 60th birthday

Bruce Willis’ Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD)

Tom Sizemore Remains in Coma With “No Further Hope” After Suffering Brain Aneurysm From Stroke

Richard Belzer, stand-up comic and TV detective, dies at 78. The only time I ever watched The X-Files is when Munch showed up.

Raquel Welch, actress and model, dies at 82

Tim McCarver, champion catcher turned famed broadcaster, dies at 81

Stella Stevens, RIP

Barbara Bosson, Emmy-Nominated Actress on ‘Hill Street Blues,’ Dies at 83

In Memorium reel at the 2023 Screen Actors Guild Awards

Kareem: Black History Month Edition

United Nations Exhibit Sheds Light on Dutch Colonial Slavery

Two Alexander Macombs: A Slaveholder and a Duplicitious Negotiator

Yale honors the  work of a 9-year-old Black girl whose neighbor reported her to the police

Activist and volunteer Nell Stokes discusses her life of service

MUSIC

Rebecca Jade, the first niece, was nominated for FIVE San Diego Music Awards, which will be taking place on April 25. You can VOTE EVERY DAY. Vote in category 20, Best R&B, Funk, or Soul Song for Show Me; category 21, Best R&B, Funk, or Soul Album, for A Shade of Jade (available for $9); category 25, Artist of the Year; category 26, Song of the Year; and category 27, Album of the Year. You could also vote in category 4, Best Jazz or Blues Album, for Peter Sprague Plays the Beatles – Day Tripper, featuring vocals by Rebecca Jade, which one can download for $10.

Rebecca ALSO appears in a musical called RESPECT about the great music of the female singers of the 1960s at Lamb’s Player Theater in San Diego through April 9.  (Picture above.)

Noah – The Jubalaires. The first rap song?

Concert Overture No. 2 – Florence Price

Of Our New Day Begun by Omar Thomas, performed by the James Madison University Wind Symphony.

Coverville 1432: The Burt Bacharach Tribute

THE ALAN PARSONS PROJECT – Promo “Eye in the Sky,” 4 Tracks by R&UT

Ground Round – Corey Klemow (parody of Petula Clark’s Downtown by MAD magazine’s Frank Jacobs)

Hey! Need some love music?

K-Chuck Radio: The name’s the same … sorta …

Song of Scheherazade

cf. Rimsky-Korsakov

The Final JEOPARDY answer for Tuesday, January 10, 2023, was in the category CLASSIC TALE CHARACTERS. “In one 19th-century translation, she ‘perceived the dawn of day and ceased’ speaking nearly 1,000 times.”

To my mild surprise, no one got the correct answer. The contestants answered Little Mermaid, Sleeping Beauty, and Echo.

I knew immediately it was Scheherazade, though I wasn’t positive I knew how to spell it. While I read a story about this Arabian Nights tale, my greater recollection was from the music, which is often the case with me.

Specifically, there is an album by a group called Renaissance. It put out an album called Scheherazade and Other Stories. The title track, Song of Scheherazade, which took up the entirety of Side 2 on the LP, ends with these lyrics:

Scheherazade bewitched him
With songs of jeweled kings
Princes and of heroes
And eastern fantasies

Told him tales of sultans
And talismans and rings
A thousand and one nights, she sang
To entertain her king
She sings, Scheherazade…

Natal day present

I had heard the album several times when I was in college at SUNY New Paltz. But I did not own it.

As I noted seven years ago, in the winter to spring of 1977, I had graduated from college. But adrift, I ended up crashing at my parents’ house in Charlotte, NC. I was pretty miserable, helping sell costume jewelry and other geegaws. (If I had used a word as sophisticated as “geegaws” at the craft fair, I would be chided for allegedly putting on airs.)

My family asked me what I wanted for my birthday. I requested that Renaissance album, and I received it. But it was clear when my father heard it, he didn’t think much of it, which merely fed into my melancholy.

After the JEOPARDY show last month, my wife reminded me how much her college friend Alison played that album in heavy rotation. This prompted me to buy the CD, which now came as a three-disc (2 CDs, 1 DVD) set.

The first time I came to the end of the album, I wept, partly from the beauty of Annie Haslam’s voice and maybe a little from a sad memory.

The classical side

This story reminded me of another piece of music titled Scheherazade, written in 1888 by  Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov. A 2007 NPR story by Scott Simon explained the power of music.

“For centuries, composers have tried to spin tales in music. My understanding of how important the concept could be was cemented by Leonard Bernstein when I went to a New York Philharmonic rehearsal. Bernstein raised his hands up and asked, ‘Do I have to tell you the story of this Haydn symphony?’

“These typically reserved musicians were practically jumping up and down, nodding their heads in anticipatory glee, like children at storytime. Bernstein was the consummate storyteller, often elaborating on or, dare I say, even fabricating some of the finer details for dramatic effect. But the memory was indelible for me, and the lesson was clear: It’s all about the story.”

Listen to:

Renaissance album

Renaissance side two

Several versions of the Rimsky-Korsakov

Music by The Spinners

Produced by Thom Bell

When I wrote my post about Thom Bell, I left off some songs I liked that he did not write but did produce. As it turned out, they were all by the Spinners, or the Detroit Spinners or Motown Spinners, as they were known in the UK. There was a British folk group called The Spinners in the late 1950s.

The group started back in 1954 as The Domingoes became The Spinners in 1961. It released a couple of Top 100 songs that year, including their first recording, That’s What Girls Are Made For (#27 pop, #5 RB), on Tri-Phi Records.

Motown bought up the Tri-Phi roster in 1963. Per Wikipedia, “With limited commercial success, Motown assigned the Spinners as road managers, chaperones, and chauffeurs for other groups, and even as shipping clerks.”

They were moved to Motown imprint V.I.P. In 1970, they finally had a hit with It’s A Shame (#14 pop, #4 RB), produced by Stevie Wonder and written by Wonder and Syreeta Wright. But Motown wasn’t a great fit for the group.

A new ocean

Aretha Franklin recommended they sign with her label, Atlantic, and they did in 1972.

Could It Be I’m Falling In Love (#4 pop in 1973, #1 RB, #14 adult contemporary, gold record) was co-written by Melvin and Mervin Steals, two songwriter brothers working for  Atlantic sometimes credited as “Mystro and Lyric.” The house band MFSB provided the backing. Bobby Smith sings lead through most of the song while Philippé Wynne handles vocal duties on the outro.

One Of A Kind (Love Affair) (#11 pop, #1 for four weeks RB, #19 AC in 1973, gold record) was written by Joseph B. Jefferson. Wynne was the lead singer.

Mighty Love (#20 pop, #1 for two weeks RB in 1973) was written by Joseph B. Jefferson, Bruce Hawes, and Charles Simmons.

Biggest hit

Then Came You (#2 RB, #3 AC in 1974, gold record) was credited to Dionne Warwicke and the Spinners (from 1971 to 1975, Warwick added a final ‘e’ to her last name). Sherman Marshall and Phillip T. Pugh wrote the track.

“Released during a time that Warwick’s chart fortunes were at an ebb after moving to Warner Bros. Records in 1972, the Philadelphia soul single was a rare mid-1970s success for the singer. Sung as a duet with the Spinners’ main lead singer Bobby Smith,  the song became Warwick’s first-ever single to reach number one on the US Billboard Hot 100. It became her highest-charting R&B record of the 1970s, and it was also the first number-one pop hit for the Spinners. It was nominated for a Grammy.”

When I was growing up, I was annoyed with folks who denigrate musicians who aren’t making the “right” music. Charlie Pride’s country music, Jimi Hendrix’s rock, and Dionne Warwick sing Bacharach -David was not considered appropriate by some people, which I thought was stupid. Still, I was happy that Dionne got her soul cred with this track.  

Games People Play, also known as “They Just Can’t Stop It The” (Games People Play) (#5 pop, #1 RB, #2 AC in 1975, gold record) written by Jefferson, Hawes, and Simmons. It featured lead vocals by Bobby Smith. The house band MFSB provided the backing. It “featured guest vocalist Evette L. Benton (though producer Bell disputed this in a UK-based interview, claiming Evette’s line was actually group member Henry Fambrough – his voice sped up), and led to the nickname “Mister 12:45″ for bass singer Jackson, after his signature vocal line on the song.”

I love the fact that there was a bass vocal solo; I can barely reach the lowest notes.  

February rambling: Rock Hall 2023

Empower Ethiopia

Journalistic integrity requires a reckoning with how news media covers the criminal legal system

The People Onscreen Are Fake. The Disinformation Is Real.

Are AI Chatbots in Healthcare Ethical?

How did we get $32 trillion in debt?

Massive Inequality Is a “Concerted Elite Class Project

I was given a house – but it already belonged to a Detroit family

U.S. Employee Engagement Needs a Rebound in 2023

Here is the publisher’s link to the book titled Side by Side in Eternity: The Lives Behind Adjacent American Military Graves. The book is co-authored by J. Eric Smith, my old blogging buddy. It is currently available for pre-order from the publisher and also from all of the significant book-selling platforms.

From the Books: NO NAME IN THE STREET by James Baldwin

What I Think About LeBron Breaking My NBA Scoring Record by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Mike Roach, a SABR report of a baseball player who played in Binghamton more than a century ago.

Charles Kimbrough, Anchor Jim Dial on ‘Murphy Brown,’ Dies at 86#

Nathan Lane reminiscing about a few of the 25 starring roles he’s played on Broadway

From 2005:  Periodical comics face many issues

TB12

Now I Know: The Man Who Did Well By Himself and The Radio Station for People Who are Blind and The $35 Mailbox That Cost $33,000 and Ten Thousand Reasons to Read Before Hitting “I Accept”

On Monday, February 6, my wife and I, with a couple who got married six months after we did, were on a Trivia for a Cause team at Fort Orange Brewing in Albany. The cause was Empower Ethiopia. We started slow but ended up in third place, thanks to our teamwork. I was the one who knew there was only one member of the Gilligan’s Island cast, Tina Louise, who was still alive.
Most of the questions were reasonable. But one bugged me. It was about the six ORIGINAL Disney characters on the Hollywood Walk of Fame besides Mickey Mouse? We guessed Minnie Mouse and Donald Duck, which were right, and Goofy, Pluto, and someone else (Daisy Duck?), which were incorrect.
The other answers were  Tinkerbell, Snow White, and Winnie the Pooh.  Tinkerbell? She was in the J.M. Barrie books. Snow White was in the Grimm books, and Pooh was created by A.A. Milne. The good news is that NO team got more than three of the five.
The final question was about the first filmed sporting event in 1894, produced by Thomas Edison. What was the sport? Look here. BTW, NO team got it correct.
Rock Hall

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is again offering a Fans’ Ballot. You can select up to 5 Nominees daily and submit your vote until April 28th.

Yes, they should have nominated your favorite band, and it doesn’t matter. I still vote.

My ballot includes: 1. Warren Zevon- eligible since 1994, yet nominated for the first time in 2023. Other musicians are pulling for the late singer-songwriter, and so am I. He might get in as a songwriter.

2. The Spinners – I’ve had them in my head since I wrote about Thom Bell, and I’m writing about them again this month. Will the 4th time be the charm?

3. Joy Division/New Order -does this synth-pop group have a chance at its first nomination? I doubt it.

4. Willie Nelson. He’ll be 90 in April, he’s sung with half of everyone, and he just got a Grammy.

The fifth slot I’ve bounced among Rage Against The Machine, ” a legitimately game-changing rap-rock group with critical respect, popular endurance, and contemporary relevance,” on their fifth try; and Sheryl Crow, who I’d been playing a lot during her birth month.

Lately, I’ve been voting for Cyndi Lauper, not just for her 1980s output but for creating the music and lyrics for Kinky Boots, for which she won a Tony.

But I could have easily voted for A Tribe Called Quest, Kate Bush, or the late George Michael. I’m not a big White Stripes fan, but I like Jack White, from his soundtrack for Cold Mountain to his work with Loretta Lynn. Missy Elliot and Soundgarden are worthy. I’m just not that familiar with Iron Maiden.

Yet again, I hope they put, in the non-performer category, Estelle Axton, co-founder of STAX Records!

MUSIC

Playing For Change BHM playlist

Spark Catchers – Hannah Kendall

Redemption Song – Sheku Kanneh-Mason and siblings

Coverville 1431: The Barrett Strong Tribute

Night on Mount Triglav – Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

K-Chuck Radio: What’s that in the air?

Burt Bacharach (1928-2023)

Academy Award winner

Burt BacharachThe New York Times obituary for Burt Bacharach quoted the composer from his 2013 autobiography, “Anyone Who Had a Heart: My Life and Music,” written with Robert Greenfield.

“Mr. Bacharach suggested that as a songwriter, he had been ‘luckier than most.’

“’Most composers sit in a room by themselves, and nobody knows what they look like,’ he wrote. ‘People may have heard some of their songs, but they never get to see them onstage or on television.’ Because he was also a performer, he noted, ‘I get to make a direct connection with people.’

“’Whether it’s just a handshake or being stopped on the street and asked for an autograph or having someone comment on a song I’ve written,’ Mr. Bacharach added, ‘that connection is really meaningful and powerful for me.’”

I thought about that sentiment back in 2012 when Burt’s long-time writing partner, Hal David, died. His passing did not receive the notice I felt his body of work deserved.

On the other hand, Hal wasn’t “sleepy-eyed handsome and suave” or married to Angie Dickinson, the Rat Pack-affiliated star of the television show Police Woman. Burt was, from 1965 to 1981, helping him to be a star in his own right. 

Bacharach acknowledged in the autobio that the split with David “was all my fault, and I can’t imagine how many great songs I could have written with Hal in the years we were apart.”

The Times article has several hyperlinks, which you should be able to play. Still, I’ll put a few here.

Award winner

From THR: ” Bacharach also won two Academy Awards for his work on Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969): best song for “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head” [BJ Thomas] and best musical score. He also won the song Oscar for “Arthur’s Theme” (Best That You Can Do) [Christopher Cross]” from Arthur (1981), which he shared with his third wife, lyricist Carole Bayer Sager; Peter Allen; and singer Christopher Cross.

“Bacharach’s compositions received three other Oscar noms, all of which he shared with David: “What’s New Pussycat” [Tom Jones] from the 1965 Woody Allen comedy; “Alfie” [Cher], the title tune from the 1966 Michael Caine classic; and “The Look Of Love” [Dusty Springfield],” from Casino Royale (1967).

“Bacharach later wrote and produced songs with Bayer Sager, including Warwick’s “That’s What Friends Are For” [with Elton John · Gladys Knight · Stevie Wonder], which won the 1986 Grammy for song of the year; “They Don’t Make Them Like They Used To”recorded by Kenny Rogers for Tough Guys (1986); and the theme from Baby Boom (Ever Changing Times by Siedah Garrett, 1987).

Okay, a few more:

Naked Eyes – Always Something There To Remind Me

A variety of songs from Variety, including, naturally, some by Dionne Warwick 

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