numbers Archives - Ramblin' with Roger

30-Day Music Prompt: colors, numbers

At first, I thought to cheat and pick Fancy Colours by Chicago

green 7 One of the things I’m really bad are those daily challenges on social media. I don’t remember to do them each day, and and I tend not to read other people’s.

For instance, Chuck Miller is doing one on Facebook for Black History Month, but I don’t read anybody except my sisters every day on any social media platform. Well, other than some other blogs. Fortunately for me, he consolidated a few of them into a blog post.

Jaquandor accepted the 30-Day Music Prompt, but instead of doing it daily on Facebook, he’s doing it weekly on his blog.

I decided months ago that was a swell idea, but then I kept finding other musical topics to write about.

A song you like with a color in the title. (Why would I write about songs I didn’t like?)

At first, I thought to cheat and pick Fancy Colours by Chicago.

But no, I guess I’ll go with the other obvious choice, Green Tambourine by the Lemon Pipers, a “psychedelic/bubblegum band,” which Jaquandor also picked. The song, BTW, went to #1 in early 1968.

What makes green? Yellow and blue. I suppose I should select Mellow Yellow by Donovan (#2 for 3 weeks in 1966) and Crystal Blue Persuasion by Tommy James and the Shondells (ALSO #2 for 3 weeks, but in 1969).

And what’s on the wheel opposite of green? Red, of course. Red Rubber Ball by the Cyrkle, which went to #2 in 1966, but for only one week. Paul Simon wrote it, and it shows up on some Simon & Garfunkel live album.

Oh, what the heck:

Name a song you like with a number in the title:

So my birthday is in March, the 3rd month. I’ll Go with Three Little Birds by Bob Marley, which appeared on some children’s program my daughter used to watch.

For the 7th, it has to be 7 and 7 Is by Love. Only got to #33 in 1966.

Year 19XX – 19 by Paul Hardcastle – #15 in 1985.

Alas, no songs with 53 in it. Or is there? 867-5309/Jenny by Tommy Tutone went to #4 in 1982.

Next week, I’ll continue on this, unless something else catches my fancy.

Musical Throwback Saturday: Count the Days

There are a LOT of songs with counting in them, from Len Berry’s 1-2-3 and Feist’s 1234 to the Jackson Five’s ABC (“easy as 1, 2, 3”) and the Beatles’All Together Now or the end of You Never Give Me Your Money (“1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, All good children go to heaven”). Here’s a Reddit post on the topic, and there are plenty more.

By odd coincidence, I played a couple songs in the category on the same day recently.

13 Question Method by Ry Cooder is a fairly obscure Chuck Berry song. The YouTube description says it was a Berry bootleg in 1957, then released as a legitimate track in 1961.

Count the Days (1-2-3-4-5-6-7), recorded by Gene Pitney, was written by Y. Williams, C. Fox, and B. O’Dell. Pitney’s take, released at the end of 1968, does not appear to have charted. However, a version from about a year earlier, by the brother-and-sister group Charlie and Inez Foxx, went to #17 R&B and #76 pop on the Billboard charts. The duo’s big hit was Mockingbird, later covered by James Taylor and Carly Simon.

I must admit being a sucker for a Beach Boys song in the genre, When I Grow Up (To Be A Man), that starts with age 14 and fades out at 31. It got to #9 in 1964.

Listen to:

13 Question Method (live) – Ry Cooder, with David Lindley
13 Question Method – Chuck Berry (1957)
13 Question Method – Chuck Berry (1961)

Count the Days (1-2-3-4-5-6-7) – Gene Pitney
(1-2-3-4-5-6-7) Count The Days – Charlie and Inez Foxx

When I Grow Up (To Be A Man) – Beach Boys

1-2-3 – Len Berry

1234 – Feist
1234 – Feist, Sesame Street version

All Together Now – Paul McCartney (live in 2013 in Tokyo)

ABC – Jackson Five

1,2,3 Red Light – 1910 Fruitgum Company

Repeating numbers

There will be other repeated phenomena, such as 2/2/22, 3/3/33, which will save us from a total desert of no repeated digits.

Tomorrow is 11/11/11. I’m as fascinated as anyone by this fact. A bunch of people are getting married on that date. Is it that they consider it particularly lucky, or is it that they just want to make sure they don’t forget their anniversaries? Or maybe it’s that it’s a peculiar phenomenon that takes place 12 times at the beginning of the century, then not at all for 88 years, that they wish to embrace.

The movie being released on that date with that name is being directed by Darren Lynn Bousman (Saw II, Saw III, and Saw IV); to say that I’ll never see it is a gross underexaggeration.

The repeated number phenomenon is much more interesting to me than the sequential system – 09/10/11, e.g. It’s because the latter is not universal. In the United States, that’d be September 10, but in most of the rest of the world, it’s October 9.

Not that I wouldn’t use the sequential if it made sense. My officemate Amelia was pregnant and due on 8 October. So I picked 09 (day)/10 (month)/11 (year) at 12:13 pm. Charlie was born on 9 October 2011, at 12:51 p.m., and I won the office pool. Amelia’s happy because he was born on Jackson Browne’s birthday.

There will be other repeated phenomena, such as 2/2/22, 3/3/33, which will save us from a total desert of no repeated digits.

Let’s look back at the previous repeating digits this century:
01/01/01, a Monday – the beginning of the 21st century, and the third millennium as many needed to point out. We learn that many people cannot spell the word millennium, which has 2 Ns, not 1.
02/02/02, a Saturday – Prince Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands, heir to the Dutch throne, marries Máxima Zorreguieta Cerruti in Amsterdam.
03/03/03, a Monday – “third day of the third month of the third year of the third millennium. That’s an awful lot of threes,” as noted here.
04/04/04, a Sunday – According to the Hartford (CT) House of Prayer, “This date is strategic. God raises up prophets to point the direction.”
05/05/05, a Thursday – The Canadian House of Assembly celebrates “the victory that Canadian troops helped make in World War II.”
06/06/06, a Tuesday – A number of sites express concern over occult happenings. Also, If Your Child Is Born on 06-06-06; Christian Parenting Alert!
07/07/07, a Saturday – Conversely, the Magical Qualities of the Number 7 led to perhaps the biggest wedding day ever.
08/08/08, a Friday – The Beijing Summer Olympics began on this date because 8 is lucky in Chinese culture.
09/09/09, a Wednesday – The Beatles’ mono and stereo remasters are released as well as the Beatles on Rock Band.
10/10/10, a Sunday – Yet another significant day.
11/11/11 will be a Friday, of course, and 12/12/12 will be on a Wednesday.

A Perfect Ten

What will YOU be doing (or what were you doing) on 10/10/10 at 10:10?

Twelve times a century, indeed, the first 12 years in the century, there will be a day when the day, month, and year all line up, then nothing for the following 88 years. But 10 is the only round number, and round numbers seem to have a certain panache in the culture.

Maybe it’s because we have fingers and ten toes, which (eventually) led us to use the decimal system, thanks to the number zero.

Maybe that’s why we have the 10 Commandments, formerly 15, according to Mel Brooks.

There are other numeric patterns related to dates, but they are imperfect, such as 01/02/03. The problem is that some places recognize the month/day/year, such as the United States, while most CIVILIZED people prefer the smallest to largest logic of day/month/year

David Letterman came up with a Top Ten list, not a Top 12 or Top 9. So tell me: what will YOU be doing (or what were you doing) on 10/10/10 at 10:10? I will be in rehearsal for our church choir.