Category: Music

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Chimes and Bells

Antar Blue, The Chimes of Freedom.  A very competent cover of the Byrd's version of the great Bob Dylan anthem.  The Byrds' version with lyrics.
The Byrds, The Bells of Rhymney
Laura Nyro, Wedding Bell Blues 
Donnie Brooks, Mission Bell  Fleetwood Mac version
Del Vikings, Whispering Bells 
The Edsels, Rama Lama Ding Dong 
Ding Dong the Witch is Dead!

I'm beginning to stretch now . . .

Derek and the Dominoes, Bell Bottom Blues 
Alma Cogan, Bell Bottom Blues

Really stretching now . . .

Tee Set, Ma Belle Amie

Saturday Night at the Oldies: The Marvelettes

In the calendrical '60s, before the '60s became the cultural '60s,* there was a lot of great music from girl groups like the Marvelettes.  I spent the summer of '69 delivering mail out of the Vermont Avenue station, Hollywood 29, California.  One day out on the route two black girls approached this U. S. male singing the Marvelettes' tune, Please Mr. Postman.   Ah, yes.  Ever dial Beechwood 4-5789?  Playboy.   Don't Mess With Bill.

*I reckon the cultural '60s to have begun on 22 November 1963 with the assasination of JFK and to have ended on 30 April 1975 with the fall of Saigon.  Your reckoning may vary.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: The Implements of Sewing

Wanda Jackson, Silver Threads and Golden Needles (1956).  With less of a country flavor, and more of a folk-rock sound, The Springfields' version is the best to my taste.  Features Dusty Springfield before she went solo and a great guitar solo.  Here's Dusty with her first and main solo hit.  And here's a 1969 Linda Ronstadt version of Silver Threads.

Jackie De Shannon, another '60s cutie, here gives forth with Needles and Pins.  The British group The Searchers provide a competent cover. 

George Shearing Dead at 91

Kerouac aficionados will  recall the "Old God Shearing" passage in On the Road devoted to the late pianist George Shearing.  Here is a taste of his playing.  And another.

You will have noticed, astute reader that you are, that my opening sentence is ambiguous.  'The late pianist George Shearing' must be read de re for the sentence to be true, while my formulation suggests a de dicto reading.  Compare:

a. The late George Shearing is such that that there is a passage in OTR about him.

b. There is a passage in OTR about the late George Shearing.

(a) is plainly true and wholly unproblematic.  (b), however, is false in that there is no passage in OTR about George Shearing under the description 'late' or 'deceased.'  On the contrary, the passage in question depicts him as so exuberantly alive as to drive Dean Moriarty 'mad.'  But is (b) plainly false?

I suppose it depends on whether 'about' is ambiguous in (b).  Can a passage that depicts x as F be about x even if x is not F? Or must x be F if a passage that depicts x as F is correctly describable as about x? My tentative view is that there are both uses in ordinary English.  Consequently, (b) is not plainly false.

Is the definite description 'the man in the corner with champagne in his glass'  about a man in the corner even if he does not have champagne in his glass but sparkling water  instead?  If you say 'yes,' then you should agree that (b) is not plainly false, but ambiguous.

A Memorable Weekend 40 Years Ago This Weekend

We have it on good authority that the unexamined life is not worth living.  The same goes for the unrecorded and the unremembered life.  So I pause to remember my best pal (at the time) and my best gal (at the time) and the trip we took in my 1963 Karmann Ghia convertible up the California coast to my favorite city (at the time). Van Morrison, Brown-Eyed Girl.  Thelonious Monk, 'Round Midnight.  Scott MacKenzie, San Francisco.  While I was with the girl, Tom, fellow Kerouac aficionado and memory babe, stumbled upon a Monk gig, dug him and met his wife.  Tom tells me that his remembrances of things past play like movies in his head.  Me, I have to keep a journal.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Captain Beefheart and Buck Owens

Don Van Vliet, better known as Captain Beefheart, has died of complications of multiple sclerosis at age 69.  Obituary  here.  Apparently, hanging out in the Mojave desert can do strange things to your head.  Here is a taste from the 1969 Trout Mask Replica album.  Far out, man.  Here is something rather more accessible from the 1967 debut Safe as Milk album.  And I think I remember Abba Zabba from that same album.  (Which reminds of the saying, 'If you remember the '60s, you weren't there.')

From Mojave to Bakersfield.  I once had a girlfriend, half Italian, half Irish.  Volatile combo, not recommended.  I had me a Tiger by the Tail.  My wife's half Italian, but the phlegmaticity of her Polish half mitigates, moderates, and modulates her latent Italianate volcanicity, which remains blessedly latent.

Truck Drivin' Man.  Act Naturally.