Category: Music
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Ordinals and Cardinal >10
I did zero to ten a few years back. What songs can you think of that feature ordinals or cardinals greater than tenth or ten? Well, racking wracking my brains there's Connie Stevens, Sixteen Reasons. With footage from David Lynch, "Mulholland Drive." Simon and Garfunkel, 59th Street Bridge Song. What a great song! Slow down you…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Some Good Tunes from the ’70s
The '60s rule, of course, since no decade in Anglospheric popular music was richer or more creative. I say Anglospheric because great stuff came out of the U. K., Canada, and Australia. I don't know about New Zealand. But let's not ignore the cream of the '70s. Full enjoyment of course requires proper synaptic lubrication.…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Varia
It's Satyrday Saturday night. Pour yourself a stiff one and loosen for a time the bonds that tether you to the straight and narrow. Tomorrow's another day. Freddy Fender, Cielito Lindo. Tex-Mex version of a very old song. Arizona's own Marty Robbins, La Paloma. Another old song dating back to 1861. Barbara Lewis, Hello Stranger, 1963. 1963 was arguably…
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Travel and the Indifference of Places
Malcolm Pollack writing from Ha Long Bay, near Hanoi, Vietnam: . . . mainly I’m writing just now to note how little enthusiasm I have for travel these days. I’ve been all over the place in my lengthening life (I’ll be 69 in April), and more and more it seems to me that every place…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Ramblin’ Charles Adnopoz
David Dalton, Who is That Man? In Search of the Real Bob Dylan, Hyperion, 2012, p. 65: As Dave van Ronk pointed out in his autobiography, many of the people involved in the first folk revival of the 1930s and '40s were Jewish — as were the folkies of the '60s. Van Ronk reasoned that for…
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Scott Johnson on Richie Havens
Powerline: Havens grew up in Brooklyn singing with a choir in church and with doo wop groups on street corners. He crossed the river to figure out how to make a go of it in Greenwich Village as a performer. He recorded two albums on Douglas Records before he signed a contract with Verve Forecast…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Remembering Suze Rotolo and the Songs She Inspired
Suze Rotolo, depicted above, died on 25 February 2011 at 67 years of age. Dylanologists usually refer to the following as songs she inspired: Don't Think Twice. This Peter, Paul, and Mary rendition may well be the best. It moves me as much as it did 62 years ago in 1963 when it first came…
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Peter Yarrow (1938-2025)
Guardian obituary. Malcolm Pollack's tribute. And here is a rare photo taken by an unknown German photographer at Gerde's Folk City, Greenwich Village, 1961. (HT: Tony Flood)
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Radosh and ‘Spengler’ on Dylan
In October of 2016, I wrote, This brings me to Bob Dylan who was recently awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature. Now I've been a Dylan fan from the early '60s. In the '60s I was more than a fan; I was a fanatic who would brook no criticism of his hero. And I…
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A Complete Unknown
A lot happened to young Bob in a few short years, from Song to Woody to Like a Rolling Stone. I saw the movie and it moved me. How about you? Here is a good article about Dylan's falling out with Seeger. A Complete Unknown isn’t that interested in clarifying this point. Because the film almost…
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New Year’s Eve Again
Last year I wrote, in an excess of pessimism, Happy New Year, everybody. Not that there is much to be happy about. As our great republic approaches its end, whether with a whimper or a bang remaining to be seen, Irving Berlin's "The Song is Ended" seems an appropriate way to convey the thought that…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Billboard Top Ten in October, 1963 at the Height of the Profumo Affair
Some of us are old enough to remember John Profumo and his entanglement with sex kitten Christine Keeler, which eventually lead to Prime Minister Harold Macmillan's resignation in October of 1963: At a party at the country estate of Lord Astor on July 8, 1961, British Secretary of State for War John Profumo, then a rising…
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Saturday Night with ChatGPT and Newsworthy Persons
Maverick Philosopher Saturday Night Based on the provided search results, here’s a comprehensive answer: The Maverick Philosopher’s Saturday Night series focuses on nostalgic music reviews, often tied to a specific theme or month. The titles within this series include: Saturday Night at the Oldies: Guns and Gun Violence (March 2019) – Discusses songs related to guns…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Love and Murder
We'll start with murder. David Dalton (Who Is That Man? In Search of the Real Bob Dylan, Hyperion 2012, pp. 28-29, hyperlinks added!): Most folk songs had grim, murderous content (and subtext). In Pretty Polly a man lures a young girl from her home with the promise of marriage, and then leads the pregnant girl to…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Ghosts and Death
Leslie Kean's Surviving Death: A Journalist Investigates Evidence for an Afterlife (Three Rivers Press, 2017) just arrived via Amazon. HT to Vito for recommending it. It looks good. Have book, will blog. Pressed for time this evening. But not so pressed that I can't scrounge up three tunes. Highwaymen, Ghost Riders in the Sky Spiderbait…