Debris Slide

One Fine Day

2012-02-09T09:09:00.003-05:00

As my friend Rob Sheffield has been pointing out on every form of social media known to man, today is Carole King's 70th birthday. There's another important pop-music anniversary today as well: On February 9th, 1964, the Beatles made their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. Carole King was no doubt watching, along with every other rock & roll fan in America; it was her 22nd birthday.

Carole King was arguably at that point the most important songwriter in pop music. She had already co-written four Number One hits - "Will You Love Me Tomorrow," by the Shirelles, "Take Good Care of My Baby," by Bobby Vee, ""Go Away Little Girl," by Steve Lawrence, and "The Loco-Motion," by Little Eva. She had done all that by the age of 21.

It's common to think of the Carole King/Brill Building revolution giving way on the radio to the Beatles revolution, but if Carole was watching CBS on that February evening, she was looking at two musicians who were older than she was - John and Ringo were both 23. Paul McCartney was (and still is) four months younger than Carole. There aren't many people who get to change the world before they turn 22, but Carole King sure did.

Just a Formality

2012-02-02T09:40:00.000-05:00

Eric recently called my attention to the following video of the Cowsills, appearing on The Mike Douglas Show, which he calls "off in so many ways":

What's wrong with it?

* It's the Cowsills covering "When I'm 64," which is a bad idea to begin with.

* Susan Cowsill, who was about 11 at the time, creepily touches Mike Douglas' cheek at one point.

* Susan doesn't know the words to the song, or at least she doesn't know all of them, and of the ones she does know, she doesn't know what order to sing them in.

* Although members of the Cowsills went on to surprisingly strong musical careers (John Cowsill was even in Tommy Tutone) and were famous for their onstage harmonies, here they sound like they're playing in the basement of a church after a Sunday night pancake supper.

But as Eric points out, the gang did one thing exceedingly right: They're wearing tuxes. This may be hard for some of you younger folks to imagine, but at one point, pop acts dressed for success.

Which brings up the question: When did pop music stars stop wearing formalwear onstage? The Jackson 5 busted out some classic threads in Jamaica circa 1978, although they seem to have lost their ties:

Rich Williams, the rhythm guitarist for Kansas, used to wear a tuxedo onstage; that was his shtick, a way to get noticed. But mostly it made him look like a guy whose prom date had stood him up, so he decided to spend the evening sitting in with the band instead:

So far as I know, Williams is the last pop star to regularly take the stage in formalwear. James Brown always dressed sharp, but he seems to have lost the black tie sometime in the late 1960s. Anyone else?

Annals of Match Game: Obituary Edition

2012-01-26T22:01:00.002-05:00

This blog can offer no finer tribute to the late Sweathog Robert Hegyes than to salute his appearance on "Match Game."

Annals of Match Game

2012-01-26T12:54:00.001-05:00

Who knew Harpo Marx lived long enough to make an appearance on "Match Game"? No, wait, that's - hat tip to jb - Dodger great Don Sutton!

Annals of Match Game

2012-01-25T09:38:00.000-05:00

"I'd like to strangle John Phillips with his own BLANK."

Annals of Match Game

2012-01-24T14:55:00.002-05:00

I've decided that what this blog needs is more pictures of unlikely celebrities appearing on "Match Game." Here's Buck Owens:

Too Much Stress

2012-01-22T22:43:00.003-05:00

The problem for all those people in that commercial mis-singing "Rocket Man" isn't so much that Elton John is some kind of mushmouth, it's that he and Bernie Taupin can't get on the same page as far as which syllables to emphasize. In the line "Burnin' up his fuse out there alone," EJ's music stresses the syllable "there," which isn't the worst possible syllable to emphasize but is clearly in the bottom half. And then the music crams the entire two-syllable word "alone" into not much more than a single note.

One song that makes the words almost impossible to understand - although nobody cares, because it's such a fantastic song - is the Jackson 5's "I Want You Back." In the chorus, the first half of each line is punched out like Regis is singing it, only to force poor Michael to get four or five words onto a single note in the second half: "Won't! You! Please! Let! Me! Backinyourheart." Michael kinda survives that one, but if you say you understood "Now! That! I! See! Youinhisarms" the first time you heard the song, you're lying.

You know, those people in the TV commercial wouldn't need whatever product that ad is pushing if they'd just listen to the Shatner version. Among the man's many virtues, he sure can enunciate:

The Color of Spinach

2012-01-18T23:04:00.004-05:00

If you watch the classic cartoon network Boomerang, you've probably seen the bumper featuring a Popeye cartoon in which our sailor-hero is trying to put his four nephews to bed, except that as soon as Popeye leaves the room, they leap up and keep playing a raucous Dixieland-style tune. The slamming of the bedroom door and the snoring of the nephews is integrated into the rhythm of the song, which is executed with whip-crack timing; it's a truly delirious piece of work.

I had been fortunate enough to see this entire episode on Boomerang once, which features the nephews - Poopeye, Pipeye, Pupeye and Peepeye - playing music on whatever is handy, including a radiator, a hot water bottle, a pair of suspenders, etc. Recently I found a collection of Popeye classics on Netflix, which my son Mark (who would rather watch a Popeye cartoon from 1938 than a lot of the cruddy cartoons they're making today) and I began watching together. When I noticed there was an installment titled "Me Musical Nephews," I got excited, figuring this had to be the one. And it was, except... it was in black and white.

I knew the first time I had seen this, it was in color. The Boomerang 30-second bumper, obviously, was in color. Yet it was also obviously the same cartoon. Did someone colorize it? Was the Netflix version taped off a black-and-white broadcast from Channel 32 in 1966?

It turns out that "Me Musical Nephews," which was released in 1942, was remade, shot for shot, in 1950 as "Riot in Rhythm." (As an aside, 1942 seems awfully late to be releasing black-and-white cartoons, but that's what IMDB says.) I've watched both of them, and I'm sure they didn't just color in the cels from the first version; there are small, subtle differences. For instance, in "Nephews," Popeye stomps a radio, then crushes the tubes that were inside it; in "Rhythm," there are no tubes inside that radio.

But the scenarios, dialogue, everything is pretty much the same. You'd have to watch them back-to-back to notice any difference. Which brings up the question: Did the animators really re-create an entire seven-minute cartoon from scratch? Did they at least reuse the soundtrack, which is nothing short of incredible? I feel sorry for them, at this late date, if they had to re-record all that music.

And of course, the big question is, how often did this happen? Were other B&W cartoons remade in color? I am hardly enough of a cartoon expert to answer that. But I do know that if you're going to make new versions of black-and-white cartoons, "Me Musical Nephews" is a good place to start.

I know you don't want to watch a B&W cartoon, so here's "Riot in Rhythm." You'll never know the difference.

The Archaic YouTube Policy of the NFL

2012-01-12T20:46:00.004-05:00

Grant Bisbee at the Baseball Nation site has been writing recently about what he calls "The Archaic YouTube Policy of Major League Baseball," pointing out that it's counterproductive for MLB to take down old games presented on YouTube when all they're really doing is promoting interest in baseball. For whatever reason, I have latched onto old NFL games on YouTube rather than MLB ones, as I've brought up on this very site ad nauseum, but I can say that the NFL's policy is exactly the same. Old games stay up on YouTube for weeks, months if you're lucky, before the NFL's rapacious lawyers see fit to enforce their copyright claims.

I totally understand the legal reasoning behind this, but I still think it's dumb. For one thing, if the lack of response to my posts here on the subject are any evidence, I am the only person around who has any interest at all in these games.

More importantly, though, the NFL has shown that they have absolutely no plans to exploit the moldering tapes of these ancient contests. I can say this because a couple of weeks ago, at Christmas, the NFL Network presented a special on the famous 1970 Christmas Day playoff game between the Dolphins and Chiefs, the game that ended up being the longest in NFL history. As part of this presentation, the network planned to show, directly from the original broadcast, the game's overtime period.

Well, if you'll pardon my saying so, whoop de do. I would have a very strong desire to see this broadcast in its entirety, including the commercials, which lend so much of the proper period flavor to these things. But a little piece of it? Eh, maybe. It's hard for me to get excited if you're not going to even bother to show the first 60 minutes of game time from one of the most famous games in NFL history. These people must not be football fans.

So, O lordly NFL, if you don't even have the nerve to show that classic in its entirety, what chance do I have of legally watching the Falcons-Giants game from week two of the 1983 season, as I happen to be doing now? There is zero chance of the NFL displaying this game in any context whatsoever, much less making a buck off of it. So how about you just let me and my fellow YouTubers enjoy it in peace?

Let me add that there is some historical value to this game. It's the second game of Bill Parcells' Hall of Fame coaching career (although I don't know yet whether it's his first win, and don't you dare tell me). John Madden is the color man, before he got elevated to CBS' top broadcasting team; here he's paired with Jack Buck. And he's just amazingly good. Madden is able to describe, in clear and colorful terms, why each play succeeds or fails, with great accessibility and enthusiasm. John Madden is the best TV analyst in NFL history, and here he is in his formative years. Catch him while you can.

Who Reported the Murder of John Lennon?

2012-01-04T23:32:00.003-05:00

There's a legend that has grown up around the notion that the person who broadcast the news of the murder of John Lennon to the American public was Howard Cosell, who was announcing a Patriots-Dolphins game on that fateful Monday evening in December 1980. Last year, ESPN devoted an entire special to the role played by Monday Night Football on that terrible night.

But by the time Cosell got around to telling the nation what had happened, many people already had a pretty solid inkling. I can say this because I just watched a videotape of that MNF telecast, taped off the air from the ABC affiliate in Baltimore. With three minutes left in the game, there was a special news bulletin reported via crawl, noting that "Former Beattle [sic] John Lennon" had been shot. The crawl appeared just as the Dolphins were connecting on a deflected touchdown pass that tied up the game at 13-13.

It wasn't until the Patriots were lined up for a potential game-winning field goal, with just three seconds left in the game, that Cosell made his fateful announcement. That was about 12 minutes in real time after the crawl had appeared in Baltimore. Clearly, many football fans in Charm City - and presumably elsewhere around the country - knew Lennon had been shot or even killed before Cosell said anything about it.

The Dolphins blocked that kick, by the way, sending the game into overtime, to the obvious dismay of Cosell and Frank Gifford, who clearly could not fathom how they were going to shift gears back into the excitement of professional football. Fran Tarkenton, the third man in the booth, just seemed oblivious.

Part of this may be due to the lag between the initial reports, that Lennon had been shot, and word of his death. On the other hand, there couldn't have been too much time in between, since he was reported DOA at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital. One wonders if the shooting of a Beatle would have been enough to disrupt Monday Night Football, as opposed to the death of one. I really don't know.

Wash Teeth If Any

2012-01-01T23:19:00.003-05:00

The incredible photography blog If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger, There'd Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats - which you should be reading already - recently posted a page from Woody Guthrie's journal in which he wrote out his new year's resolutions. They're really applicable to all of us, but if you want to live like Woody, here's what to do:

1. WORK MORE AND BETTER
2. WORK BY A SCHEDULE
3. WASH TEETH IF ANY
4. SHAVE
5. TAKE BATH
6. EAT GOOD - FRUIT - VEGETABLES - MILK
7. DRINK VERY SCANT IF ANY
8. WRITE A SONG A DAY
9. WEAR CLEAN CLOTHES - LOOK GOOD
10. SHINE SHOES
11. CHANGE SOCKS
12. CHANGE BED CLOTHES OFTEN
13. READ LOTS GOOD BOOKS
14. LISTEN TO RADIO A LOT
15. LEARN PEOPLE BETTER
16. KEEP RANCHO CLEAN
17. DONT GET LONESOME
18. STAY GLAD
19. KEEP HOPING MACHINE RUNNING
20. DREAM GOOD
21. BANK ALL EXTRA MONEY
22. SAVE DOUGH
23. HAVE COMPANY BUT DONT WASTE TIME
24. SEND MARY AND KIDS MONEY
25. PLAY AND SING GOOD
26. DANCE BETTER
27. HELP WIN WAR - BEAT FASCISM
28. LOVE MAMA
29. LOVE PAPA
30. LOVE PETE
31. LOVE EVERYBODY
32. MAKE UP YOUR MIND
33. WAKE UP AND FIGHT

Authorities Have Been Notified

2011-12-25T18:58:00.003-05:00

From "Walter Scott's Personality Parade" in today's Parade magazine: "Is it true Johnny Depp owns his own island?" - Jeff Swanson, Lake Stevens, Wash.

From "Who's News" in today's USA Weekend: "Is it true Johnny Depp owns his own island?" - Jeff Swanson, Lake Stevens, Wash.

Mr. Swanson, you sure show an unhealthy interest in Johnny Depp's potential ownership of a private island. I can only imagine there have been similar queries submitted to the Straight Dope, MTV News, and Guns & Ammo.

A Hardrock Christmas

2011-12-23T10:36:00.001-05:00

Merry Christmas from all of us here at Debris Slide! If there's anything that truly captures the spirit of Christmas it's Santa having no need for Joe, but taking him anyway because he loves him so:

Schmocumentary

2011-12-20T23:21:00.004-05:00

At the recommendation of erstwhile Debris Slider Eric, I recently caught up with the 2006 documentary Who Is Harry Nilsson (and Why Did They Give This Movie a Long, Dumb Parenthetical Title?), which was re-released in 2010 with additional found interview footage of Nilsson. I believe it's the latter version that I saw on Netflix. While the film didn't answer my most fundamental question about the man - why did he bill himself as just "Nilsson" rather than "Harry Nilsson"? - it was enlightening nevertheless.

Everyone knows that John Lennon and Ringo Starr spent much of the early 1970s pub-rolling around Los Angeles with Nilsson, but the Beatles actually became big fans after Nilsson's 1966 album Pandemonium Shadow Show. At the press conference introducing Apple, Lennon and Paul McCartney both named Nilsson as their favorite American srtist. Lennon of course later produced Nilsson's 1974 album Pussy Cats, and Ringo was best man at Nilsson's third and final wedding.

One thing I did not know before seeing the movie was that Nilsson did not do live performances - he never toured, and never even performed in concert, near as I could tell. There's a clip in the movie of Nilsson singing on the TV show Playboy After Dark, with luminaries such as Otto Preminger and Norm Crosby gathered round, but that's apparently as close as Harry ever got.

Nilsson was noted as much for his songwriting as for his singing, which made it kind of odd that his first hit single was Fred Neil's "Everybody's Talkin'," which Nilsson took to Number Six in 1969, and his biggest hit was his Number One cover of Badfinger's "Without You," in 1972. He also wrote "One," (he based the opening one-note riff on a busy signal) which Three Dog Night took into the Top Ten in 1969, and took his own composition "Coconut" into the Top Ten in the summer of '72. That's how you know he was an exceptional songwriter, that he could come up with something that so effortlessly resembled an old Jamaican folk song, which I had always assumed it was.

So Nilsson had a Top Ten hit with a cover and with his own song, plus wrote a Top Ten hit for another artist, which is quite the trifecta. Bruce Springsteen did that, with several of his own Top Tens, covers by Manfred Mann's Earth Band ("Blinded by the Light") and the Pointer Sisters ("Fire"), and his live cover of Edwin Starr's "War," which went to Number Eight in 1986. Tommy James sorta did it as well, although he only co-wrote "Mony, Mony." Anyone else?

Q: Are We Not Men? A: He is Neil Young

2011-12-14T16:53:00.003-05:00

The great Andy Greene of Rolling Stone took me along to see Devo last night at Irving Plaza in New York City. Devo are his favorite live act, which is a little strange because – well, you don’t know Andy (or maybe you do, in which case: Hi!), but he’s a walking classic-rock encyclopedia with a devastating knowledge of Dylan and Springsteen bootlegs, and he’s spent a lot more time in the back of long black limousines talking with Neil Young than I have, so the idea of him going gaga for guys whose whole thing is taking the individuality out of rock (or at least making a commentary on same), well, it strikes me as a little odd. He's a generation-plus younger, but he's an Ohio spud boy just like them, and never having seen Devo myself — grew up with their records, learned to dance because of them (and the B-52s, and yeah, I know: lame!), but always found them a little off-putting (because, after all, isn’t that what they were going for?) — I wanted to tag along to see what the fuss was.

Thing is, I forgot (or maybe never paid close enough attention to get) that there’s the same warmth and one-of-us sense of community in their crowd that you used to get from a Ramones show. (Ramones had “Pinhead”; Devo had “Mongoloid”; you could argue both were about being outside of society; certainly both became anthems for their audiences, and “gabba gabba hey” is language devolution.) Good show, half split between ‘80s keyboard-driven robo-funk and ‘70s guitar-driven robo-punk. Funny how creepy their retro-futuristic art-movie apocalypto seemed when I was a kid, and how quaint and homey it seems now. (Of course, since lots of it referred to populuxe ‘50s imagery and assembly-line costumes they grew up with, it probably seemed kind of homey to them back in Akron in the ‘70s, but it sure came off as freaky ten years later in the ‘80s in a way the Human League didn’t, even if the Human League came from their own burned-out industrial city – Sheffield, England – and wanted to play around with the same sci-fi notions of dehumanization. And here endeth the digression.) One of the few spontaneous bits of stage patter came when Gerry Casale intro’d “Jocko Homo” by talking about how the plumes of methane that had just been discovered in the Arctic Sea proved that devolution was a reality. True enough, but made me realize just how old-school protesty these retro-futurists always were.

Andy pointed out that Devo started out at Kent State University, and that they were there during the shootings, along with Chrissie Hynde. This I knew. I didn’t know that Devo had come up with the phrase “rust never sleeps” or that they’d appeared in a 1982 Neil Young movie called Human Highway. But while we’re talking Ohio and Neil Young connections, does anyone ever really talk about Young’s sci-fi apocalypto bent? Maybe the burned-out basement he’s holed up in during “After the Goldrush” is just a hippie crash pad, and maybe the knights in the first verse and the silver spaceships loading up on kids and silver seeds in the last verse are just drug-fueled visions, but hearing it in the suburbs without the aid of tie-dye or illegal substances, all that stuff sure made me wonder just what kind of machines Mother Nature was on the run from, and who was driving them. That kind of question comes up a lot in Neil Young songs. Like what’s with those thrashers more than two lanes wide bearing down on the people planting their crops by the light of the moon in “Thrasher,” and why do you have to go to where the pavement turns into sand to get away from them? And is it just me, or does this remind anyone else of Cormac McCarthy? And even though I know the answer to this one, just asking: is the human highway one we’re all traveling, or is it [cue Twilight Zone theme music] a highway made out of humans?

Anyway, Human Highway, directed by Young, co-starring Dean Stockwell, Russ Tamblyn and Dennis Hopper, who cut one of Sally Kirkland’s tendons with a knife he was playing around with during the filming. The clip above of Devo playing “Hey Hey My My” with Young is freaking amazing. For one thing, Devo is a way better rhythm section than Crazy Horse (who tend to thud more than they gallop). For another, Devo is doing their industrial alienation thing and Young is doing his hippie hurricane thing and each one give the other a whole new kind of gas-gas-gas. And the way Young wigs out at the end just banging and clanging makes his tour with Sonic Youth nine years later seem a whole lot more sensible. Essential stuff, and I’d never seen it before.

John Lennon Starts Over

2011-12-08T09:29:00.003-05:00

In the summer of 1980, after five years as Mr. Mom, John Lennon sailed from the tip of Long Island to Bermuda, helping to pilot the boat along the way, with the intention of recording some demos that would get him back into the music business. After six days at sea, Lennon arrived in Hamilton, picked up a guitar, and set to work. "I was so centered after the experience at sea that I was tuned in to the cosmos," he said later, "and all these songs came!" He spent most of July in Bermuda - with his son Sean, although his wife wasn't present - writing songs.

Lennon returned to New York at the end of July, and on August 4th, he went into the studio to start officially recording. Producer Jack Douglas brought along some friends to help with the track "I'm Losing You" - Cheap Trick guitarist Rick Nielsen and drummer Bun E. Carlos. They were stoked - Nielsen made it to the session even though his wife had given birth that morning - but Mrs. Lennon was not happy, and the song was eventually redone with session musicians. Douglas soon learned that it was best to keep the Lennons apart, even though the album was considered a collaboration by the two of them. For most of the sessions, Yoko did her recording in the afternoon, with John not showing up till after 7:00 p.m.

On the last day of rehearsals, John brought in a new song called "Starting Over." “I was listening to some Roy Orbison and I thought this would be kind of like a Roy thing," Lennon said. The song was instantly identified as the album's first single, which meant they needed to get it done first. The opening sound was provided by a Tibetan wishing bell that Lennon kept at his home. At the last second, they added "(Just Like)" to the title in order to differentiate the song from a new Tammy Wynette single called "Starting Over."

"(Just Like) Starting Over" was released as a single on October 24, 1980, fifteen days after Lennon turned forty. It was Lennon's first single since the cover of "Stand by Me" he had put out in the spring of 1975. A week later, "(Just Like) Starting Over" made the Billboard Top Forty, and by December 8, it had reached Number Three on the charts. After Lennon's tragic murder, it moved into the Number One slot on the charts as of the week of December 27, displacing Kenny Rogers' "Lady." "(Just Like) Starting Over" would stay on top for five weeks.

Trivial Notes

2011-12-07T08:40:00.003-05:00

Toni Tennille provided backing vocals for pink Floyd's album The Wall. The Captain was nowhere in sight.

"Weird Al" Yankovic released a single called "Christmas at Ground Zero," way back in 1986.

Lindsey Buckingham wrote nine of the songs on Fleetwood Mac's Tusk album; Stevie Nicks wrote five. Still, Stevie's songs take up more of the original album's running time than Lindsey's.

Donovan and the Beastie Boys are both going to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame next year, which means that the Beasties' King Ad Rock will be forced to share a stage with his ex-father-in-law. Awkward! I'll have much more on the Class of 2012 shortly.

Tweedle-ee-Deedle-ee-Deet

2011-12-07T08:32:00.003-05:00

If you just can't get enough of whatever it is we do around here, you may wish to head on over to Twitter and follow @TJNawrocki and @RealJoeLevy. Just a suggestion.

Mazel Tov to the Baby Jesus!

2011-12-01T18:01:00.002-05:00

Top Ten Christmas Albums by Jewish Artists:

10. Christmas Sing-Along With Mitch, by Mitch Miller
9. Miracles: The Holiday Album, by Kenny G
8. Christmas With Eddie Fisher, by Eddie Fisher
7. Barenaked for the Holidays, by Barenaked Ladies
6. Christmas Is Almost Here, by Carly Simon
5. In the Swing of Christmas, by Barry Manilow
4. A Cherry Cherry Christmas, by Neil Diamond
3. A Christmas Album, by Barbra Streisand
2. Christmas in the Heart, by Bob Dylan
1. A Christmas Gift for You, by Phil Spector

Bumper

2011-11-23T17:08:00.003-05:00

I know no one other than me is interested in these old NFL games on YouTube - I'm currently watching a Buccaneers/Falcons game from 1979, which has me questioning my own sanity - but there's a lot of cultural detritus to be found in these telecasts, especially if you're fortunate enough to find one with all the commercials intact. It's a real window into what the 1970s were really like, much moreso than, say, listening to Steely Dan's Pretzel Logic. Or into what my 1970s were like, anyway.

For instance, in the early 1970s, did you know that there were still a lot of cigar ads on TV? If you wanted to give someone White Owls for Christmas, there was an ad giving you your range of possibilities. There was even the occasional spot for pipe tobacco. You don't see that much anymore.

Even within the broadcasts, there are all sorts of great little nuggets. I've seen CBS games from consecutive weeks in 1979, and they're pimping pretty hard the "Battle of the NFL Cheerleaders," to be seen on the upcoming Saturday's CBS Sports Spectacular. I haven't seen it, but I'm assuming this battle was fought with poleaxes and maces, World of Warcraft-style.

At one point, there's a graphic showing the evening's CBS lineup, including The Jefferson's [sic], which is only slightly less embarrassing than the fact that that series was preceded by Alice, surely the worst sitcom ever produced in the free world. C'mon, guys, don't you know how to use an apostrophe? Tiffany Network, my left buttcheek.

It was much better when they promoed the Monday lineup, and erstwhile Golden Boy Paul Hornung squeals, with obvious delight, "Then it's my man, Dr. Johnny Fever! On WKRP in Cincinnati!" BOOGER!

The Heart of Monday Night

2011-11-17T20:53:00.005-05:00

As I often do this time of year, I've been watching a lot of old NFL games from the 1970s on YouTube. The stash gets periodically refreshed after the NFL, in its infinite humorlessness, goes through and forces people to bring down the video they've posted, and at the moment there are, for whatever reason, a lot of Monday Night Football games out there.

It's hard to overstate how culturally significant these were to sports fans of the early 1970s; it was almost literally like the circus coming to town. The fans at the stadia hung banners; the fans at home talked about how much they hated Howard Cosell even as they hung on his every word. With the wisdom of distance, I thought it might be worth assessing how these guys were simply as sportscasters.

Frank Gifford: The Giffer's mind had not yet been melted by overexposure to Kathie Lee, and he was surprisingly good - fluent, smooth, professional, unflappable. He had a voice that went down easy on TV and a way of ignoring the carnival barkers around him to remain focused on the game. Plus, he offered more analysis than your standard play-by-play man.

Gifford's weakness was in the more technical aspects; he often neglected to give us the down and distance, or the time remaining in the quarter, notable omissions in an era when there wasn't a constant box on the screen reminding us of these things. Actually, I blame the producer, who should have been telling the booth to offer up the down and distance, as much as the Giffer.

Don Meredith: The Danderoo was the real revelation to me. Despite his reputation as a singing buffoon, he combined an enormously likable personality with real insight into the game. I watched a Cardinals-Cowboys game from 1972, and Meredith apologized early on because he admitted he was hoping for a Cowboys win, and wouldn't be objective about the game. But he was terrific, thoroughly knowledgeable about the Cowboys and clear-eyed about their shortcomings (they played horribly in the game). The fact that Meredith is honest about his feelings toward his old team makes him more endearing, and more effective.

And the level of his analysis could be shockingly precise: When the Cowboys completed an out pass, he noted that the Cardinal cornerback who had blown the coverage was better at going in than going out. I get the sense that as time went on, Dandy Don forgot about the insight and became more of a personality, but in the earlier games I've been watching, I have no complaints about his performance.

Alex Karras: Karras replaced Meredith from 1974 to 1976 when Dandy Don went to NBC (technically, he replaced Fred "the Hammer" Williamson, who handled the preseason games in 1974 but was found not to be up to the job; both Karras and Williamson were natives of Gary, Indiana). He was pretty good, wryly funny and occasionally incisive on matters of line play. Karras' biggest problem was that he projected zero personality, an odd failing for someone in the middle of a journey from famously violent defensive tackle to a star on Webster. His voice was weak, and he rarely sounded enthusiastic about the games. And he wasn't that funny, although he did later host Saturday Night Live, in 1985, with Tina Turner as the musical guest.

Howard Cosell: Cosell did some things well; he came to the games well-prepared, and had reports from the coaches or a key player or two to offer during the game. He was good about providing context for the players and plays, noting that a certain rush was reminiscent of something O.J. Simpson had done a few weeks earlier. He twice referred to one running back, I can't recall which one, as a speedier Don Nottingham, if you can dig that. And he was good on the halftime highlights, although I did hear him repeatedly refer to a second-year Chargers quarterback as "Don Fouts." (One thing I've noticed about the halftime highlights, which I missed the first time around, was that they had phony crowd noise edited into them. One dead giveaway is that the fans cheer as loudly for the visitors as they do for the home team.)

Aside from that, though, he was terrible. His sense of game time was awful, so that he'd start telling one of his boring stories at a bad moment and have to pick it up again half a quarter afterward. A direct quote: "Should they have declined that penalty, Alex? Answer the question later - we're back to the action now." I don't believe Alex ever bothered to answer the question.

He had a habit of asking his ex-player colleagues questions that were half-needling, half-genuine, like after a pass was thrown by a wide receiver: "You threw a lot of passes like that, right, Giffer?" Mercifully, his ex-player colleagues usually chose not to answer these ridiculous queries. Cosell apparently thought he was being clever, but he was never funny, at all. Occasionally, celebs would show up in the booth, and Cosell would interview them, and he was awful at that, too. He'd ask them questions that provided all the necessary information, leaving the celeb with nothing to say but "That's right, Howard."

And then of course, there was Cosell's famous linguistic perspicacity. He'd toss out words like "revivify" and "truculent" in a way that accomplished nothing but draw attention to Cosell's vocabulary. At least Walt "Clyde" Fraizer would rhyme these things, say "truculent and succulent" and make the whole thing a little fun. Cosell wasn't fun. My favorite exchange in this area came when Cosell described a crowd as "quiescent," to which Don Meredith responded, "What? They're just quiet." Quiet doesn't mean exactly the same thing as quiescent, but then again, quiet would have been a better descriptor of the crowd.

My guess is that ABC set this up as a clash of opposites, the New York intellectual vs. the dumb jock from Texas, but Meredith was as smart as Cosell. And a much better announcer, to boot.

I Almost Forgot....

2011-11-11T06:30:00.001-05:00

Now that I've seen all the original episodes of Columbo - all the installments from NBC's Sunday Night Mystery Movie from 1971-78, plus the two pilot movies that were made - what strikes me is that this was really the last of the great anthology series. Sure, the character brilliantly portrayed by Peter Falk towers over each episode, but that's basically the only bit of connective tissue.

Since we never see Columbo at his office or even (with very rare exceptions) at police headquarters, and we certainly never see him at his home, we're never on the same set twice. The effect is of everything being shot on location, with new venues being explored in every episode. The cast is also fresh with every episode. Bob Dishy appears twice as Sgt. Wilson (IMDB says he had a different first name in the two episodes, though), and Bruce Kirby (father of Bruno, who also shows up a time or two) makes four appearances as Sgt. Kramer - but he also makes appearances as other characters as well, such as a TV repairman, so the effect is more that of his being part of the repertory company than of playing a recurring character.

The only true recurring character is Columbo's nameless dog: "Sometimes we call him 'Hey,' sometimes we call him 'Dog,' sometimes we just whistle. It don't matter what we call him, because he never comes anyway." And again, with very rare exceptions, Columbo himself doesn't even appear until the second or third act. So for the first 20 minutes or so of every installment, we had an entirely fresh set of characters, stories, settings - it was all new.

Because of this, Columbo gives a much truer picture of the 1970s than the series that, at the time, seemed much more pegged into the zeitgeist, like All in the Family and The Mary Tyler Moore Show. But with their limited roster of cast members and sets, those shows, seen today, capture the mores of the 1970s very well but give very little insight into what those times looked and felt like.

In contrast, consider a Columbo episode like "An Exercise in Fatality," with Robert Conrad (who runs around for long stretches wearing only tight shorts) as the murderous owner of a string of gyms. The idea of a health club, as you probably know, was pretty new in the 1970s, and one of the benefits of this show is that we get to see exactly what they looked like: dank, cramped, covered with gold lame wallpaper, nothing at all like today's airy, high-ceilinged monstrosities. The treadmills all appear to be heading uphill. One gym even had a Ping Pong table in the middle of an otherwise empty room.

Stephen Bowie fave Collin Wilcox steals this episode as Conrad's alcoholic yet somehow dignified ex-wife; you watch her scenes and immediately want to rewind them and watch her again. Incidentally, if you're at all interested in this stuff, you need to be reading Bowie's blog. He has been writing about Kojak lately and has pointed out how 1970s police dramas have been largely overlooked as cultural touchstones in favor of the (admittedly outstanding) sitcoms of that era. Similarly, Mark Marquardt has been writing about The Rockford Files and its portrayal of 1970s-style grimy masculinity.

The director of "An Exercise in Fatality," Bernard Kowalski, probably wasn't intending to give us a slice of mid-1970s life, and certainly didn't consider the notion that people might be watching this show in 2011. But I for one am very happy to have it.

Ugliest Band In History Nomination

2011-11-07T18:11:00.007-05:00

A few weeks ago, Tom was telling us about the journey of Quinn the Eskimo from the basement of 2188 Stoll Road in West Saugerties, New York, around the world. YouTube is packed with Quinn covers, including the 1910 Fruitgum Company (surprisingly good and garage-y), and the Beatles doodling around on “I Got A Feeling” and slipping into a few Eskimo chords. But as Tom pointed out, it was Manfred Mann who took it top ten in the U.S. (No. 1 in the U.K.), introducing impressionable youngsters to the idea that you could like your sugar sweet and still be discerning about what, or who, was your preferred cup of meat.

All of which sent me back to Lo and Behold, a Manfred Mann-produced 1973 one-off collection of then-unreleased Dylan songs from a bunch of Brits who may well have the distinction of being the ugliest band in rock history, or at least the ugliest good band in rock history. Tom McGuinness played bass and guitar for Manfred Mann; Hughie Flint played drums for John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers when their guitarist was still Eric Clapton. Together they formed McGuinness-Flint with singer-keyboardist Dennis Coulson and two songwriters, Benny Gallagher and Graham Lyle, who had been in-house at Apple (and who can also claim to have written the title track for Art Garfunkel’s 1975 solo album, Breakaway). McGuinness-Flint had a U.K. Christmas No. 2 with their first single, a bouncy mandolin-driven thing with some Christmas-y kazoo and the not very Christmas-y title “When I’m Dead and Gone.” (Even less Christmas-y: a Wikipedia contributor deduces it’s about Robert Johnson from the line “Hey there, ladies, Johnson’s free.” Said case is not bolstered by said Wikipedia contributor transcribing the line incorrectly.)

Anyway: Coulson Dean McGuiness Flint. Excellent album! Cowbell, glammed-up guitar, country honks, polyphonic New Orleans horn marches, sitars, and English girls trying to be gospel singers. Plus their version of “Odds and Ends” cops the guitar lick of “Dizzy Miss Lizzy” for an outro, a neat way of playing up all ghosts of ‘50s rock that danced around Robbie Robertson’s guitar strings.

But just look at them! It’s as though Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem have been joined by a guy auditioning to play Lemmy in a Motorhead cover band. Never have leather and denim been so misused, abused, confused and wrongly accused. On the right, McGuinness and Flint are doing their best to project the aloof cool of guys who’ve had a few hit singles, but come off like a would-be hipster high-school teacher and biker who’s never ridden a motorcycle; on the left, Coulson and Dean look like drunk guys who’ve just hatched a plan to steal 50 pounds of cotton candy from a local fair. (They will later find out it has no resale value.) Today, when even bearded yabos like My Morning Jacket have access to a stylist and a groomer, does any band look this slovenly and goofy on their album cover?

Schoolhouse Light R&B

2011-11-01T21:23:00.003-04:00

Back in 1970, on their album Portrait, the Fifth Dimension recorded a song called "The Declaration," which was nothing more than the Declaration of Independence set to music. As you'll recall from your sophomore year of high school, the Declaration of Independence doesn't scan or rhyme or do any of the things that normal, successful song lyrics do. So the song ends up as just a meandering little essay, with the Fifth Dimension adding their special blend of sassafras and moonshine.

Actually, "The Declaration" is technically part of a medley with "A Change Is Gonna Come" and "People Got to Be Free," but each song is presented in full, so that the whole thing runs 10:12. "A Change Is Gonna Come" is credited to Sam Cooke; "People Got to Be Free" is credited to those rascals Felix Cavaliere and Eddie Brigati. "The Declaration" is credited to Rene DeKnight, a longtime jazz pianist who later served as the Fifth Dimension's music director, and Julianne R. Johnson, about whom I could find nothing. That was apparently her only songwriting credit, and although there's a Julianne R. Johnson credited with some vocals on a Dandy Warhols album, I have no way of knowing if it's the same person. I kind of doubt it.

Anyway, isn't there a songwriter we're missing here? One Thos. Jefferson, of the same Virginia that spawned Missy Elliot and Timbaland? He would seem to have written the lyrics for "The Declaration." "Turn! Turn! Turn! (to Everything There Is a Season)" is officially credited to the Book of Ecclesiastes, although we don't really know who wrote the Book of Ecclesiastes, which means, I think, that a Trad. would have sufficed. But we definitely know who wrote the Declaration of Independence, at least the first draft, and poor old Jefferson doesn't even get a Trad.

The Declaration has long since fallen into the public domain, so the Jefferson family (or the Hemings family) isn't due any royalties from the Portrait album or the single - "The Declaration" was issued as the B-side to the medley of the other two songs it's affixed to on the album. But it would be nice to throw some propers at Jefferson and change the album credits. Let's get right on this, Marilyn McCoo.

When the Eskimo Gets Here

2011-10-18T14:55:00.000-04:00

For a long time, I assumed that the version of "The Mighty Quinn (Quinn the Eskimo)" that appeared on Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Vol. II had been taken from the Basement Tapes sessions, a little bonus ripped from those widely bootlegged tapes. After all, it was obviously recorded live, in one take, and the unmistakable voice of Rick Danko yelps out the harmonies. And I knew it had been recorded for the Basement Tapes, because Manfred Mann had picked up the song as early as 1967.

What I had forgotten was that it had also appeared on Self-Portrait (which doesn't necessarily preclude it being a Basement Tapes song). I feel a little guilty about this, since I have defended Self-Portrait in the past, especially "Minstrel Boy," although I haven't listened to it in about fifteen years since I have it only on vinyl. (Did it ever come out on CD?)

Here is the biography of the song:

July 1967: Dylan and the Band record the song for the first time, and take one ends up on the bootleg album Great White Wonder, "released" in 1969 and sadly unheard by me. The dirgelike take two ended up on Biograph in 1985. Greil Marcus claims the title of the song derives from The Savage Innocents, a 1960 Nicholas Ray film in which Anthony Quinn plays an Eskimo named Inuk. "I don't know what it was about," Dylan said in 1985. "I guess it was some kind of nursery rhyme."

Late 1967: The Basement Tapes are circulating as demos; Peter, Paul and Mary take their cover of "Too Much of Nothing" into the Top Forty in the last two weeks of 1967. Manfred Mann had already had hits in the U.K. with "If You Gotta Go, Go Now" and "With God on Our Side" (!), so they jumped all over "Quinn the Eskimo." Released on January 12, 1968, their version - titled "Mighty Quinn (Quinn the Eskimo)," according to Billboard, but without the parenthetical according to the label above - went as high as Number 10 in the spring of '68.

August 31, 1969: Dylan performs with the Band at the Isle of Wight Festival, for his first live show in three years, since the motorcycle accident. The Beatles are in attendance, and afterward they hole up with Dylan to play him a test pressing of Abbey Road. Dylan plays (among other songs) "She Belongs to Me," "Minstrel Boy," and "The Mighty Quinn (Quinn the Eskimo)," all of which will end up on Self-Portrait. You would think a British audience would recognize the song more as a Manfred Mann Number One hit (which it was in the U.K.) than an unreleased Dylan song, but Dylan works in mysterious ways. Listening to it now, I can hear the signs that it was recorded after the Basement Tapes era: Dylan has his "Lay, Lady, Lay" croon working, and that voice was only heard in 1969 during the Nashville Skyline era, plus you can hear Levon Helm's voice joining the last chorus, and Levon wasn't there for the Basement Tapes.

June 8, 1970: Self-Portrait is released, with that live version of "The Mighty Quinn (Quinn the Eskimo)" as the second-to-last song on Side Three. The single from that album, "Wigwam," was almost a hit, going to Number 41 on the Billboard charts. My copy of Self-Portrait, incidentally, still has the price sticker on it; I bought it for $5.50. Worth every penny.

November 17, 1971: Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Vol. II is released. The only song from Self-Portrait accorded the honor of being included on the double album is "The Mighty Quinn (Quinn the Eskimo)."

November 7, 1985: Biograph is released, including Take One from the July 1967 session. This version is now called "Quinn the Eskimo," with no parenthetical. At the time, it probably didn't even have a title.

February 16, 1989: The film The Mighty Quinn, with Denzel Washington as a Jamaican police officer, opens. The title song, here called simply "The Mighty Quinn," is done by Sheryl Lee Ralph reggae-style and with the verses rewritten. They were apparently hoping it would be as big a hit as Sister Carol's reworking of "Wild Thing," from Something Wild in 1986. It wasn't.

In Chronicles, Dylan wrote: "On the way back to the house I passed the local movie theater on Prytania Street, where The Mighty Quinn was showing. Years earlier I had written a song called 'The Mighty Quinn' which was a hit in England, and I wondered what the movie was about. Eventually I'd sneak off and go there to see it. It was a mystery, suspense, Jamaican thriller with Denzel Washington as the Mighty Xavier
Quinn, a detective who solves crimes. Funny, that's just the way I imagined him when I wrote the song 'The Mighty Quinn,' Denzel Washington."

No Bud of Mine

2011-10-10T23:39:00.004-04:00

With all the encomiums, most of them deserved, heaped upon Steve Jobs' head in the past week or so, it's worth remembering that he is also responsible for one of the true scourges of the modern music fan: the earbud. I don't know if the earbud existed prior to the introduction of the iPod, but that's when I first encountered it, and when it becamse ubiquitous. It was fitting for an Apple product: simple, sleek, discreet, no doubt cheap. Remember those early commercials, with the Kara Walker-style black silhouettes of people grooving to their new iPods? Those ads were as much about the earbud as they were about the iPod.

There was only one problem with earbuds: They don't work. Maybe my ears are unnaturally small, but I could never keep those things in place at all. I don't mean they would fall out if I moved my head around too vigorously; they would fall out if I nodded "yes."

I never used the earbuds that came with my iPod, but at the time I was able to find some headphones that hung snugly over the ear, with a tiny speaker nestled on top of the tragus. Recently, though, out of some misguided sense of paternal devotion, I lent those to my son, who liked them so much I ended up giving them to him. What he didn't realize was that I had direct access to the family's bank account, and could thus go buy a new pair for myself.

What I didn't realize is that all you can get these days are earbuds. Since they were an Apple product, and everyone knows Apple products are designed perfectly, they took over the market. When I went to Best Buy, I found earphones with a similar design as my old pair, ones that attached to the top of the ear, but the speaker was the modern form of the earbud, a little rubber raspberry perched on a stick that's supposed to be plugged into your ear. When I didn't have my hand pressed to the side of my head, they stayed in for about 20 seconds. At least the frame keeps them on my ears, unlike the classic free-form earbuds, but since they're so loosely placed in my earhole, the sound tends to be thin and tinny.

But unless you want those '70-style headphones that clamp over your ears, this appears to be the only option now. After all, they're so sleek and well-designed. I guess for a generation of people who only otherwise listen to music coming out of their computer's speaker, they're good enough.

Sylvia Robinson, 1936-2011

2011-09-29T20:56:00.006-04:00

The great vocalist and label executive Sylvia Robinson has passed away at the age of 75. Robinson was a one-hit wonder twice over - first with Mickey and Sylvia and the 1957 classic "Love Is Strange," then with her 1973 solo hit "Pillow Talk" - as well as the mastermind behind yet another one-hit wonder, the Sugarhill Gang's 1979 "Rapper's Delight." "Love Is Strange" is one of my all-time favorite singles, so let's revisit something I wrote about that a few years ago:

It all goes back, as so many things do, to Bo Diddley. Bo wrote and recorded "Love Is Strange," although the guitar lick had been composed by Jody Williams, who played with Bo, for an instrumental called "Billy's Blues." Bo took that lick, put it together with his own parts, and had himself a tune. In the ways of pop songs in the 1950s, though, Diddley couldn't take the songwriting credit because of a legal dispute, and there was no way he was giving it to Williams, so "Love Is Strange" went down on record as being written by Ethel Smith, Bo's wife.

I'm not sure when Bo cut his version of "Love Is Strange," whether it was a single, or B-side, or what, but that track did end up on I'm a Man: The Chess Masters 1955-1958, his 2007 box set. I do know that Bo and Jody Williams were playing it on tour in 1956, and one of the other acts on that tour was Mickey and Sylvia.

Raised in an orphanage in Kentucky, MacHouston "Mickey" Baker ran away to New York City at the age of 16. There he worked as a pool shark for a while before picking up a guitar at a pawnshop. He taught himself to play jazz on it but soon realized the bluesmen were the ones making the real money. By the mid-1950s, Baker was the lead session guitarist for Atlantic Records as well as on the Savoy and King labels.

He also taught guitar, and one of his students was a singer named Sylvia Vanderpool. Sylvia supposedly cut her first record at the age of 14, in 1950, and was signed to the Cat label as "Little Sylvia" when she met Mickey. Mickey, cognizant of the success of Les Paul and Mary Ford, asked her to form a musical duo with him. (Rumor has it that Mickey wanted them be a combo in more ways than one, but Sylvia rebuffed him.)

Their first single (I think we're in 1954 at this point) was on that Cat label, "Fine Love" b/w "Speedy Life"; they were billed as by "Little" Sylvia Vanderpool and Mickey Baker and His Band. Then they moved on to the Rainbow label and released three singles as Mickey and Sylvia in 1955. That apparently landed them the slot on the Diddley tour.

According to Dave Marsh, Bo didn't want to record "Love Is Strange" at all because of a war with his publishers, so when Mickey and Sylvia expressed interest in the song, he went ahead and gave it to them. On October 17, 1956, Mickey and Sylvia went into a studio and laid down the song with the drummer Bernard Purdie (later the drummer for James Brown and the musical director for Aretha Franklin), making his recording debut. Producer Bob Rolontz overdubbed and overdubbed the guitars, and by the end of the day, Mickey and Sylvia had another single.

By the time Mickey and Sylvia got done with the song, it didn't sound much like Bo Diddley. The blues guitar contrasted nicely with M&S' harmonies, but it was the spoken-word passage - which had been a gruff call and response in Bo's version - that really made it special. "Love Is Strange" hit the Top Forty on January 12, 1957, and went as high as Number Eleven on the pop charts. It spent two weeks at Number One on the R&B chart.

Mickey apparently hated touring and the high life associated with being a pop star. M&S had a few more R&B hits, but in 1959, Mickey decided to break up the group. After a few more years of session work and a single billed to "Mickey and Kitty," Baker split for France in 1962 and went back to playing mostly jazz. Sylvia married a gentleman named Joe Robinson in 1964, and the two of them started a string of indie labels in New Jersey: All Platinum, Stang, Turbo and Vibration.

In 1973, Sylvia offered a song called "Pillow Talk," which she had co-written, to Al Green, but the Reverend Al turned it down as too risque. So Sylvia recorded it herself, for her own Vibration label, and it turned out to be a huge smash, going to Number Three on the pop charts and spending two weeks at Number One on the R&B charts, just like "Love Is Strange" had 16 years earlier. Then, Sylvia pulled off a third act in 1979 when she herded a group of rappers into the studio and christened them the Sugarhill Gang.

Like Sylvia, "Love Is Strange" resurrected itself as well when it appeared in the 1987 film Dirty Dancing, as lip-synced by Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey. They were supposedly just goofing around in rehearsal, miming the famous spoken-word bridge, but director Emile Ardolino had the cameras rolling, and liked it so much he kept it in the final cut. By 1987, that eerie guitar still sounded futuristic.

Buddy Holly, the Everly Brothers, Paul McCartney & Wings and Peaches and Herb all covered "Love Is Strange," as did, of course, Bo Diddley, at some point. None of them sounded as good as Mickey and Sylvia.

Would Somebody Please Buy Dustin Hoffman a Calling Card?

2011-09-26T11:34:00.002-04:00

In The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman offers to give Norman Fell a twenty-dollar bill if he'll just let him use his telephone.

In Marathon Man, Dustin Hoffman gives a cab driver his expensive watch in exchange for some change to use a pay phone.

My 9/11 Remembrance

2011-09-10T21:50:00.001-04:00

My son Jack had just started kindergarten, and around noon, the teachers decided they had better tell the children what had happened. When Jack heard that planes had flown into the World Trade Center and knocked it down, he raised his hand and said that his mom worked across the street from there, and he thought she was probably not hurt but that they should make sure the towers hadn’t fallen on her building.

So he called me at home – I had never left for work that day – and I was able to tell him that I had talked to his mother, and she was just fine. I asked him if he wanted to come home, and he said, no, that wasn’t necessary, but he’d like to give me a hug. I ran the four blocks to the school and gave him the biggest hug I could possibly give. I asked again if he wanted to come home, and he said he might as well finish the school day.

September 11, 2011, was a horrible day, and it led, both directly and indirectly, to more horrible times for me personally and for this great nation of ours. I don’t like to think about that day at all. I think a five-year-old boy instinctively had the right response: check to see if everyone’s OK, give each other a big hug, and then go on. Because we had no choice except to go on.

Double Fantasy

2011-09-07T11:28:00.003-04:00

"Children, don't do what I have done." - John Lennon, from "Mother," on Plastic Ono Band

"If you want to be a hero, well, just follow me." - John Lennon, from "Working Class Hero," later on Plastic Ono Band

Make up your mind, Lennon!

Top Five Episodes of "Columbo" As Ranked by the Murderer's Hair

2011-08-29T18:25:00.005-04:00

5. Nicol Williamson, "How to Dial a Murder" (Originally aired April 15, 1978) Though this Shakespearean stage star's blond locks were receding up top, he kept them flowingly long on the side, in a nest of well-honed curls and waves. Hey, it was the 1970s, when a middle-aged man could keep his hair long and stylish. I have to admit I have a soft spot for Williamson's do because it bears a passing resemblance to my own, although I am not blessed with as much of Nicol's natural waviness, but rather just an unruly bunch of cowlicks.

4. Ruth Gordon, "Try and Catch Me" (November 21, 1977) Miss Gordon keeps her hair swirled around and piled on top of her head, as befits an 81-year-old woman. (She's the oldest killer in any episode of "Columbo.") The dye job is so subtle that I noticed it only fleetingly in one scene, but what places her on this list is when she lets the whole thing pile down in a long pigtail that dangles down her back, turning Miss Gordon into the world's only 81-year-old pixie.

3. Johnny Cash, "Swan Song" (March 3, 1974) Jet-black, shaggy, freed from its AquaNet cage, Cash's hair reaches its own pinnacle in this episode. He is manly but relaxed, hip enough to still come off as cool during the gospel numbers - although he also does a wonderful version of "Sunday Morning Coming Down."

2. Robert Vaughn, "Troubled Waters" (February 9, 1975) Vaughn's hair is legendarily perfect, but what makes it remarkable in this episode - the one on the cruise ship - is that it was actually shot on board the Sun Princess. So every time Vaughn stepped outside, the wind blew his hair every which way, but by the time he came back inside, every single strand had fallen back into its proper place. It's amazing to see a head of hair with its own character arc.

1. John Cassavetes, "Etude in Black" (September 17, 1972) Cassavetes' cascading Greek curls beautifully fit his character, a philandering (and murderous, natch) conductor: artistic, louche, sophisticated. His jetting around in a convertible only tousles his mop to ever-greater insouciance. It is a magnificent performance by a magnificent head of hair.

Dan Fogelberg, Linguistic Innovator

2011-08-29T18:10:00.003-04:00

In his song "Make Love Stay," I think that Dan Fogelberg may have pioneered the use of "love" as an intransitive verb. The first two lines of this 1983 No. 1 hit on the Adult Contemporary charts: "Now that we love/Now that the lonely nights are over." Generally one loves something, but the Bard of Peoria is nothing if not innovative.

It's the "we" that makes the phrase work. If Dan had said "Now that he loves," you'd have no idea what the subject was loving. But with "we," it's obvious they love each other. Nicely done, Dan!

In Record Time

2011-08-14T19:52:00.004-04:00

The first long-playing record I ever owned was Elton John's Greatest Hits, which was issued in November 1974 and which came into my possession at the ensuing Christmas. The last new LP I bought was Bob Mould's Workbook, in 1989. I did continue to buy used record albums for some time after that, but for most purposes, I stopped buying wax by the 1990s.

So for me at least, the vinyl era lasted only about 15 years. For the rock-&-roll-music-appreciating public as a whole, the album era can probably be dated to around 1964, with Meet the Beatles. Prior to that, the most popular albums were things like the West Side Story soundtrack, which spent more than a year at the Number One spot on the Billboard album chart (no, really, 54 weeks) in 1962 and 1963. So if everyone else stopped buying albums around the same time I did, the era of the vinyl record album lasted around 25 years.

I was thinking about these issues whilst re-reading Robert Christgau's Consumer Guide to the Albums of the '70s (or whatever it's called; I'm reading it on his Web site). Christgau's work is thoroughly about the physical object, which entails writing about the music contained within the grooves, of course. But it also means he discusses the cover art, and differentiates side one versus side two, and complains once in a while about having to get up and flip the thing over, and even points out pricing issues on occasion. Fittingly, for something that calls itself a consumer guide, one never forgets that Bob (I get to call him Bob because I met him at a party once) is describing a physical product, a big black platter.

Many of us reading Christgau's work at the time didn't realize how doomed the LP was, what a short shelf-life it would end up having. It was the way we had always experienced our precious little rock & roll, and if we had bothered to think about it at all, we would have guessed that things would always be that way, although we didn't and it wouldn't.

By 1989, if the music-buying public was anything like me, we were buying compact discs. The first CD I ever bought was the Cure's Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, and the last new CD I bought was Traffic and Weather by Fountains of Wayne, in 2007. It is entirely possible that I will never buy another physical CD, although who knows. In any case, the era of the compact disc seems to have lasted roughly 15 years, which is even shorter than the era of the rock LP.

If I continue on reading Bob's reviews into the 1990s, I'm sure I won't read about the differences between the two sides of the album, or hear him whine about having to get up and turn over From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah in order to hear it in its entirety. Perhaps there will be other little telltale details of listening to CDs, although from my vantage point, I couldn't tell you what they would be. At the same time, in 1979, I wouldn't have been able to provide the telltale details of listening to vinyl, either.

There will come a day, you know, when people no longer listen to music on iPods or their phones or whatever else we're carrying around these days. All things must pass in the end.

Jackson Plus Jackson

2011-08-11T14:16:00.003-04:00

It is alarming enough to learn that the Jackson 5 covered Jackson Browne's "Doctor My Eyes." But when I hear that the single actually went to the Top Ten in the U.K., I start to wonder if someone is pulling my leg.

Tell Me Why

2011-08-10T22:09:00.003-04:00

Aside from the way that Peter Gabriel is able to sound simultaneously bored and self-absorbed, nothing irritates me about pop music more than when a lyricist completely botches what should have been an obvious rhyme. Consider the Boomtown Rats' 1979 hit "I Don't Like Mondays," which goes:

And daddy doesn't understand it,
He always said she was as good as gold.
And he can see no reason
'Cause there are no reasons
What reason do you need to be...

And here every listener in the world is silently mouthing "told," which not only rhymes but completes the thought quite nicely. Everyone except Bob Geldof, that is, who goes with "shown," which is merely assonant and doesn't provide any extra meaning beyond "told" that I can detect.

I wonder if he ever came up with a rhyme for "Nobel Prize."

All in the Timing

2011-08-04T00:01:00.004-04:00

The episodes of Columbo I've been watching have come in two varieties: The ones that originally filled a 90-minute time slot run about 1:13 without commercials, while the ones that filled a two-hour slot go about 1:38.

But tonight I'm watching "Now You See Him," with Jack Cassidy as a magician ("The Great Santini") who - SPOILER ALERT - kills a guy. According to Netflix, the running time on this one is 1:29.

Now, what kind of slot is that going to fill? Was this for a 1:45, just in case the Raiders-Chiefs game ran long?

Does anyone know?

Number One Hits With Parentheticals in the Title (From 1976 to 2000)

2011-08-01T22:53:00.001-04:00

"(Do You Know Where You're Going To)," by Diana Ross, 1976

"(Part 1)," by the Miracles

"(Oh, What a Night)," by the Four Seasons

"(Shake, Shake Shake)," by KC and the Sunshine Band, 1976

"(Part 1)," by Rick Dees and His Cast of Idiots, 1976

"(Gonna Be Alright)," by Rod Stewart, 1976

"(To Be in My Show)," by Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr., 1977

"(Evergreen)," by Barbra Streisand, 1977

"(Pt. 1)," by Marvin Gaye, 1977

"(Love Is)," by Andy Gibb, 1978

"(Enough Is Enough)," by Barbra Streisand and Donna Summer, 1979

"(The Pina Colada Song)," by Rupert Holmes, 1979

"(Part II)," by Pink Floyd, 1980

"(Live at Glasgow)," by Paul McCartney & Wings, 1980

"(Just Like)," by John Lennon, 1980

"(Nine to Five)," by Sheena Easton, 1980

"(Best That You Can Do)," by Christopher Cross, 1981

"(No Can Do)," by Hall and Oates, 1982

"(Are Made of This)," by Eurythmics, 1983

"(All Night)," by Lionel Richie, 1983

"(Take a Look at Me Now)," by Phil Collins, 1984

"(No More Love on the Run)," by Billy Ocean, 1984

"(Forget About Me)," by Simple Minds, 1985

"(Man in Motion)," by John Parr, 1985

"(To Make You Cry)," by Billy Ocean, 1986

"(For Me)," by Aretha Franklin and George Michael, 1987

"(I Just)," by Cutting Crew, 1987

"(Who Loves Me)," by Whitney Houston, 1987

"(I've Had)," by Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes, 1987

"(Free Baby)," by Will to Power, 1988

"(Forever)," by New Kids on the Block, 1989

"(Can't Live Without Your)," by Nelson, 1990

“(The Postman Song),” by Stevie B, 1990

“(Without You),” by Janet Jackson, 1991

“(Everybody Dance Now),” by C + C Music Factory, 1991

“(The Kissing Game),” by Hi-Five, 1991

“(Everything I Do),” by Bryan Adams, 1991

“(Aladdin’s Theme),” by Peabo Bryson and Regina Belle, 1993

“(But I Won’t Do That),” by Meat Loaf, 1993

“(I Missed You),” by Lisa Loeb & Nine Stories, 1994

“(Shoop Shoop),” by Whitney Houston, 1995

“(bayside boys mix),” by Los Del rio, 1996

“(Love Theme From ‘Titanic’),” by Celine Dion, 1998

“(That Thing),” by Lauryn Hill, 1998

A Third of America, Down the Drain

2011-07-27T18:42:00.002-04:00

Dan Peek, one of the trio who made up George Martin's second-most successful production effort, dead at the tender age of 60. Peek formed America with Dewey Bunnell and Gerry Beckley in Britain in the late 1960s; all three had fathers who were in the Air Force and stationed in London. They were signed to the British label Kinney in 1971 - Peek, who shares a birthday with me, was 20, and the other two were just 19 - at the behest of Ian Samwell, who was best known over there as Cliff Richard's guitarist. Samwell produced their debut album, 1971's America, which didn't do a whole lot in Britain.

Before it could be released in the U.S., though, Bunnell had come up with a tune he called "Desert Song" (the three members composed independently of one another). The band eventually retitled it "A Horse With No Name," and stuck it on the later pressings of the debut album. "Horse" shot up the charts and landed at Number One on March 25, 1972, displacing its soundalike Neil Young with his "Heart of Gold."

After the first album finally became a hit, America relocated to Los Angeles and hired Hal Blaine to play drums - good idea - on their second LP, Homecoming, which came out in November 1972. It spawned the big hit "Ventura Highway" as well as the first Top Forty single written by Dan Peek, "Don't Cross the River." But the closest thing to hit on the third record was the unfortunate "Muskrat Love," so the band decamped again, this time back to England. There they worked with George Martin, who hadn't done anything of note since the Beatles' 1970 album Abbey Road, with the exception of Paul McCartney's "Live and Let Die." "He's such a hot arranger," Peek said at the time, "thinking about all the stuff that he's done." Right.

The resulting album, Holiday, was a huge hit, with the first single, "Tin Man," going to Number Four, and the follow-up, Peek's "Lonely People," went to Number Five, as well as Number One on the Adult Contemporary charts. It would be the biggest hit ever written by Dan Peek. (Some sources say his wife, Catherine, collaborated on it.) The Martin-produced follow-up, Hearts, contained America's second and last Number One hit, Beckley's "Sister Golden Hair," which provided the title for a blog I used to write. Plus "Daisy Jane," which I like a lot as well.

America was ready to issue a greatest-hits album at that point, 1976's History, with a cover designed by Phil Hartman - yes, that Phil Hartman. It was a good time to release a hits package, because the next two records, Hideaway and Harbor, didn't have a whole lot of chart action in them.

At that point, Dan Peek decided to leave the band and pursue a career in Christian music. He was pretty successful at this, putting four singles into the Christian Contemporary Music Top Ten. I wonder about the efficacy of this, though, since by putting out Christian-branded music, he was limiting his audience to people already predisposed to such things. If Peek had continued with America and put Christian messages into their music, he would have reached a much broader and more heathen crowd. Oh, well: It was his life, and I don't have the right to tell him what to do.

I've seen reports that Peek lived in the Cayman Islands in the 1990s, which would suggest that Christian music pays better than I would assume. At some point, he came back to the U.S. and settled in Farmington, Missouri, which is where his family had lived before his dad was transferred to England in the late 1960s. It was there that Dan Peek died, last Sunday, at the age of 60.

Bunnell and Beckley carried on as America, never forgetting their bandmate and friend. "We still do 'Lonely People' and 'Don't Cross the River' every night on stage," Bunnell said. "We'll always acknowledge Dan's contribution, and those years that we were together as America were really special times."

This is for all the lonely people, thinking that life has passed them by - you never know until you try:

Every Number One Song With a Parenthetical in Its Title (From 1955 to 1975)

2011-07-24T00:39:00.008-04:00

"(Wallflower)," by Georgia Gibbs, 1955

"(We're Gonna)," by Bill Haley and His Comets, 1955

"(Dog Ziggity Boom)," by Perry Como, 1956

"(Let Me Be Your)," by Elvis Presley, 1957

"(in His Hands)," by Laurie London, 1958

"(Volare)," by Domenico Modugno, 1958

"(My Love)," by Bobby Vinton, 1962

"(I Can't Get No)," by the Rolling Stones, 1965

"(To Everything There Is a Season)," by the Byrds, 1965

"(You're My)," by the Righteous Brothers, 1966

"(With Glasses)," by John Fred and His Playboy Band, 1968

"(Sittin' On)," by Otis Redding, 1968

"(The Flesh Failures)," by the Fifth Dimension, 1969

"(Exordium & Terminus)," by Zager and Evans, 1969

"(Falettinme Be Mice Elf Again)," by Sly & the Family Stone, 1970

"(Not to Come)," by Three Dog Night, 1970

"(They Long to Be)," by the Carpenters, 1970

"(Running Away With Me)," by the Temptations, 1971

"(Naturally)," by Gilbert O'Sullivan, 1972

"(You're a Fine Girl)," by Looking Glass, 1972

"(Give Me Peace on Earth)," by George Harrison, 1973

"(Part I)," by Eddie Kendricks, 1973

"(The Sound of Philadelphia)," by MFSB, 1974

"(You're)," by Paul Anka, 1974

"(Hey Won't You Play)," by B.J. Thomas, 1975

"(Like I Love You)," Tony Orlando and Dawn, 1975

"(I Like It)," by KC and the Sunshine Band, 1975

Twilight Zone: My Five Faves

2011-07-14T23:55:00.005-04:00

I have finally finished watching every single episode of the original Twilight Zone, and I have to say, it wasn't really much of a burden. All I had to do was, for the first half of this year, watch nothing else on television except the Zone - aside from, of course, sports. In retrospect, I wish I hadn't watched them in rough chronological order, since the fifth and last season was the weakest, but what the heck.

What made it easier was the fact that The Twilight Zone was a really good show. It wasn't just a bunch of spooky stories or weird tales; at their best, they always added an extra fillip of reality or drama that lent the shows real texture. I've picked out my five favorite episodes (which isn't quite the same thing as the ones I think are the best shows) (and interestingly enough, two of these are from that feeble fifth season), all of which demonstrate that in one way or another:

1. "The Hitch-Hiker": Doomed actress Inger Stevens (she ended up overdosing on barbiturates in 1970) stars as a woman driving alone cross-country who is haunted by a strange, silent man that she repeatedly sees trying to hitch a ride from her. Stevens is so freaked out by this that at one point she picks up a young Navy man and offers to sleep with him if only he’ll keep riding with her. No, really, she does, despite the fact that we’re in January 1960, and this aired on prime-time TV.

2. "A Stop at Willoughby": This is the one where the executive, Gart Williams, keeps falling asleep on his train home and being transported to a magical town about 80 years in the past. What’s unsettling is the way his business life is portrayed: His boss keeps yelling at him that “This is a Push! Push! Push! business,” which sends Gart back to his office to pop some Valium. At home in Connecticut, when Gart talks about giving up his hectic life for something quieter, his wife calmly informs him that she married him with expectations of his professional and monetary success, and has no intention of settling for anything less. At the very end of the episode, we see that the only escape from this modernist conundrum is the sweet relief of death.

3. "The Invaders": Agnes Moorehead delivers an astonishing wordless performance as an isolated farm wife terrorized by tiny invaders from outer space. In my favorite Twilight Zone performance ever, Moorehead is positively feral as she takes on the little critters, who at one point shoot some sort of ray at her, raising welts just below her collarbone. When she pulls the neckline of her dress down to see them, that’s about as sexy as the Zone ever gets. (Actually, the sexiest episode is the one where Lois Nettleton spends most of the running time hanging around in a slip and sweating bullets. Aside from that, there is no sex at all in that episode.)

4. "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet": Everyone remembers William Shatner facing off against the gremlin on the wing of the plane, but what makes it so delicious is the setup: Shat is just returning from a six-month stay at a sanitarium after a nervous breakdown, and the last thing he needs to do is tell people that the Snuggle Fabric Softener Bear has been rescued from a muddy ditch and set loose on the plane’s engines. Special bonus reminder of the pre-9/11 world: Shatner pulls the gun from a holster of a snoozing passenger. Plus, you know, Shatner is kind of a genius.

5. "Living Doll": Telly Savalas gets terrorized by a Talky Tina doll (voiced by Rocket J. Squirrel himself, June Foray) and tries to exact his revenge. What makes this one so juicy is the nature of the jerry-built family: Savalas has recently married his new wife and taken in her daughter, and he doesn’t seem too crazy about either of them, although the wife pledges that she’ll do anything to make him happy. He acts like he wants to take his Players Club Gold Card and head to Vegas, if not for this doll that keeps threatening his life. For what it's worth, the little girl doesn't really take to Telly, either. Those uncomfortable dynamics make this much more than just a scary story; it’s a family tragedy.

Roll Me Over, Romeo

2011-07-07T19:22:00.001-04:00

In the Electric Light Orchestra's cover of "Roll Over, Beethoven" (which I cannot, in good conscience, recommend), Jeff Lynne pretty clearly pronounces the titular name as BAIT-hoven. Chuck Berry, as well as every other American I can think of, says it "BAY-toven." The distinction is subtle but very clear once you start listening for it.

Is this just a difference between British and American English? How would the Germans - say, the Scorpions or Falco - pronounce it? Anyone know?

Just One More Thing

2011-07-04T17:12:00.003-04:00

"I'm Lt. Columbo," he says near the beginning of "Etude in Black" to famous conductor Alex Benedict. "I'm a big fan of yours. A really big fan." What makes this line totally delicious is that it was delivered to the great John Cassavetes, playing Alex Benedict. Peter Falk was a friend and colleague to Cassavetes, but as much as that, he was a longtime fan. "Every Cassavetes film is always about the same thing," Falk once said. "Somebody said, 'Man is God in ruins,' and John saw the ruins with a clarity that you and I could not tolerate." I don't know what that means, but it sure sounds positive.

When "Etude in Black" was made, in 1972, Falk and Cassavetes had acted in an Italian crime picture together, 1969's Machine Gun McCain, which is apparently where they met. Then the two starred in Cassavetes' 1970 film Husbands. So the Columbo episode was early on in their partnership; afterward, Falk appeared in Cassavetes' A Woman Under the Influence and Big Trouble, and the two starred in Elaine May's Mikey and Nicky, which is supposed to be awesome, if Mark Lerner is to be believed.

Although Cassavetes is best remembered these days as a director, he was a fairly busy actor as well, getting an Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actor for The Dirty Dozen and playing Mia Farrow's husband in Rosemary's Baby. As I understand it, he took acting roles until he had enough money to finance one of his own pictures, then went and made his movies. He's great in the Columbo episode, and shows that he always had very underrated hair.

The question I have about that Columbo episode is: Did Cassavetes direct it? The credited director was Nicholas Colasanto - yes, the old Coach himself. Colasanto was an in-demand TV director at the time, helming episodes of Starsky and Hutch and Bonanza as well as the Columbo with Johnny Cash. But IMDB describes Colasanto's work on "Etude in Black" as "credit only," and claims that not just Cassavetes but Falk as well were the uncredited directors.

Does anyone know what's going on here? I'd really like to know.

Who's Bad?

2011-07-02T19:04:00.001-04:00

I promise, we'll have actual content on here again at some point, but in the meantime.... here's Sammy Davis Jr. singing Michael Jackson's "Bad." Unfortunately, I couldn't find the footage of him covering U2's "Bad."

If You Want Some Fun...

2011-06-24T11:36:00.002-04:00

I have a few things I want to write about, but I don't have the time to put them together right now. So in the interim, here's Bing Crosby singing "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da."

How Can I Tell You About My Loved One?

2011-06-18T15:42:00.004-04:00

It was 35 years ago this month that Wings' "Silly Love Songs" was in the midst of ruling the Billboard charts, staying at Number One for five weeks and putting up the longest chart-topping reign since Roberta Flack's "Killing Me Softly With His Song" had also been Number One for five weeks, back in the winter of '73. "Silly Love Songs" was greeted by the critics as the apotheosis of McCartney as the Cute One, a harmless bit of fluff that was better off ignored. But it has held up remarkably well, not just as a superbly crafted pop single but as McCartney's cri de coeur.

"Silly Love Songs" was in a way a step forward. McCartney had been in the habit of constructing multi-part pop suites, like "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey" and "Band on the Run" - arguably dating back to "Hey Jude" - but for "Silly Love Songs," he integrated all those ideas into one fluid number. "Silly" has as many moving parts as those earlier records, but by sliding back and forth between them, he creates a song that floats along ephemerally without ever seeming repetitive. Did you realize this thing goes on for almost six minutes? At the time, it was the fifth-longest Number One single of all time,* yet it never flags for a second.

The lyrics are as much a statement of purpose for McCartney as "1999" is for Prince, or "I Hate Music" for the Replacements. This is a man who made his bones on silly love songs, as the early Beatles basically put dummy lyrics into many of their songs. If you want to hear a really silly love song, go listen to "Eight Days a Week."

The biggest problem for McCartney, with respect to these '70s records, was that he just may have been too happy. Sting famously said about songwriting, "If you have not got any pain, you better go get some." I think that's probably a pretty good idea, especially since most of us wouldn't pass up an opportunity to inflict some pain on Sting. But Paul in the 1970s seems just plain glad to be alive. The Paul and Linda marriage was more durable and equitable than the much ballyhooed John-and-Yoko union. Until Paul was jailed in Tokyo for eleven days in 1979, they had never spent a night of their marriage apart.

Paul didn't go around writing songs that claimed, "I just believe in me, in Linder and me," because he didn't have to; his music said it for him. Paul was devoted enough to always keep Linda in the band, but sensible enough to let the soundman turn down her mike during concerts. That seems like the right balance to me.

Is there a McCartney song expressing genuine anguish between "Let It Be" and the death of John Lennon? I don't think so. I think his only real option was to express how full of delight his life was, and so that's what he did. "Silly Love Songs" fosters that sense of joy and optimism, and even its length bespeaks a man who never wants his life to end. Plus it has one of the most indelible basslines of all time. And what's wrong with that? I'd like to know.

* "American Pie," "Hey Jude," "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone," and Elton John's cover of "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds."

Celebratory Notice

2011-06-18T15:08:00.002-04:00

Happy birthday to our fellow Debris Slider Marshall. I'm not sure how old Marshall is; I'm not even 100 percent sure that he still inhabits corporeal form. But I do know that he's a heck of a guy and one of Milwaukee's finest sons, and for that he deserves our best wishes today. Salut!

Yesterday When I Was Young

2011-06-15T22:21:00.002-04:00

Bruce Springsteen was 25 years old when he wrote the line "So you're scared and you're thinking that maybe we ain't that young anymore."

John Lennon was 24 years old when he wrote the line "When I was younger, so much younger than today, I never needed anybody's help in any way."

Bob Dylan was 23 years old when he wrote the line "I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now."

Andrew Gold, 1951-2011

2011-06-09T10:35:00.000-04:00

Andrew Gold, who died earlier this week, was born to be a pop star: His mother was Marni Nixon, once famous as the most prolific singing dubber in Hollywood. She dubbed Deborah Kerr in The King and I, Natalie Wood in West Side Story, and Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady. Gold's father was the Hollywood composer Ernest Gold. With so much entertainment royalty around, Andrew had a chance to meet the Beatles at the home of the head of Capitol Records in 1964. One thing he noticed was how dark Paul's hair was, and how red John's was.

Andrew joined Linda Ronstadt's band in 1973, and became one of the key players on her huge records of the 1970s. He played almost all the instruments on "You're No Good," for instance, including the guitar solo. Gold also was a crucial collaborator on Art Garfunkel's best album, Breakaway - he played just about everything on that LP, too. Gold's first solo album, 1975's Andrew Gold, didn't have any hits, although Leo Sayer made the song "Endless Flight" the title track to one of his own records. Gold cut his second album, 1976's What's Wrong With This Picture, at the same time as Linda Ronstadt's Hasten Down the Wind, using the same band and same producer (Peter Asher). "We would go in and cut alternating days and nights with Linda," said Gold, who also opened for her on the road.

What's Wrong had Gold's first and biggest hit, "Lonely Boy," which went to Number Seven in 1977. It was quite autobiographical: Gold really was born on a summer day in 1951, and in the summer of 1953, his parents really did bring him a sister. (They brought him another one in 1962.)

In 1978, his "Thank You for Being a Friend" - from his third solo album, All This and Heaven Too - was a more minor hit, peaking at Number 25. But it gained new legs in 1985 when a singer named Cynthia Fee cut an abridged version as the theme for The Golden Girls. With the decline of the scene that Robert Christgau liked to call "El Lay," Gold wasn't doing a whole lot else in the 1980s, so I'm sure the royalties were most welcome.

In the early 1980s, Gold was part of a duo called Wax with one of the guys from 10cc, and they had a few hits in Europe, but nothing here. In the 1990s, he formed a group with several other peripheral members of that 1970s El Lay scene: Wendy Waldman, Kenny Edwards and Karla Bonoff, for whom Gold had written and produced her biggest hit, 1982's "Personally." Gold also wrote and sang the theme song for Mad About You, which was so memorable that I could not for the life of me think of how it goes, until I found it here:

So by the end of his career, Andrew Gold had basically turned into his father, which is a fate that befalls many of us. Andrew Gold was only 59.

Top Ten Titles of 'Twilight Zone' Episodes

2011-06-04T15:36:00.005-04:00

"And When the Sky Was Opened"

"The Howling Man"

"Nervous Man in a Four-Dollar Room"

"Of Late I Think of Cliffordville"

"On Thursday We Leave for Home"

"The Purple Testament"

"The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms"

"To Serve Man"

"Two"

"You Drive"

Slippin' Into Darkness

2011-06-02T21:12:00.005-04:00

I recently picked up a box set, jampacked with nine CDs, containing all of Paul Simon's solo studio work from 1972's Paul Simon through 2000's You're the One. (It's evidently titled The Studio Recordings, although I couldn't find that name anywhere on the packaging.) You would think this would be comprehensive - it even has Songs From the Capeman, which nobody wants to hear - but it somehow manages to omit the single "Slip Slidin' Away," which went to Number Five very early in 1978. I thought it might be worth exploring how this happened.

By 1977, it had been two years since Simon's Still Crazy After All These Years, he owed Columbia one more album, and he wanted to sign with Warner Bros. So he put together a greatest-hits package for a Columbia, with a couple of new songs to put out as singles; they were the Etc. in Greatest Hits, Etc. (The record, which has been out of print since at least 1988, may be most significant for the fact that Simon appears on the cover hatless.) And they weren't exactly new; "Slip Slidin' Away" was a leftover from the Still Crazy sessions. For its patience, Warners was rewarded in 1980 with One-Trick Pony.

"Slip Slidin' Away" also showed up on 1988's Negotiations and Love Songs, 2002's The Paul Simon Anthology, and several other greatest-hits packages, but it's nowhere to be found on the The Studio Recordings box. It wouldn't make sense to include Greatest Hits, Etc. in the reissue of all his solo work, but couldn't they have slapped a hit single on as a bonus track somewhere? To be fair, there's a demo of "Slip Slidin' Away" included as a bonus track on Still Crazy, but why not put the actual single on there? The demo doesn't even have the Oak Ridge Boys!

Its partner from Greatest Hits, Etc., "Stranded in a Limousine," is included in its final form on the One-Trick Pony reissue. So there's some precedent for this sort of thing. But as things stand now, the people who buy most or all of Paul Simon's albums - his biggest fans, in other words - are forced to buy a greatest-hits package, containing almost entirely songs they already own, in order to get one of his biggest hits. That's not right.

The Twilight of Albert Salmi

2011-05-28T00:22:00.002-04:00

As I've mentioned, my latest project is to watch every single episode of the original Twilight Zone, and one thing that makes this such an enjoyable experience is the brilliance of the casting. You will very often see performances from people who turned into stars shortly after the series' 1959-1964 run: Robert Redford, Telly Savalas and Peter Falk show up, as well as Burt Reynolds, doing a note-perfect Brando imitation. There's a whole flock of future sitcom stars: Jack Klugman (four times!), Dick York, Buddy Ebsen, Agnes Moorehead in a brilliant, wordless performance as an isolated farmwife terrorized by alien invaders. Bill Shatner has two starring roles, including his turn in the hysterical "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet."

One of my favorite Twilight Zone regulars was a beefy, round-faced actor named Albert Salmi, who took the lead in two episodes: "Execution" and "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville." Neither one of them was exactly successful. In the first, Salmi was a horse thief about to be executed in 1880 when he's whisked into the future (or into the present, if you will) by the instantly typecast Russell Johnson as a physics professor. The first half of the episode was pretty good, but eventually a small-time hood tries to rob Johnson's lab (as if physics professors kept a lot of cash lying around), then kills the much-bigger Salmi in hand-to-hand combat, all for no apparent reason except they couldn't think of a better ending.

In "Cliffordville," which boasts one of the series' best episode titles, Salmi plays a rapacious business tycoon who arranges with a female devil (future Catwoman Julie Newmar) to get sent back in time to his Indiana hometown, so he can build his fortune all over again. He fails at this, for reasons the script never quite makes clear. But as in "Execution," Salmi is eminently watchable, obviously delighting in playing the villain. It's rare to see someone so blatantly enjoying his acting. Both performances would have you noting to try to catch anything else you can featuring Albert Salmi.

Salmi never became a star, but he was awfully busy throughout the 1960s and 1970s, making several appearances on Gunsmoke and Bonanza and popping up in series from Toma and Kung Fu to Scarecrow and Mrs. King. He was a regular on Petrocelli, and played Danny Noonan's father in Caddyshack.

By the end of the 1980s, the parts were drying up, and Salmi moved with his wife to Washington State, where he planned to write his memoirs. But Albert suffered from depression, and his wife, Roberta, moved out of their Spokane home. I've seen it reported that Roberta was terminally ill, and that during their separation Albert had gone to live in Idaho.

On April 23, 1990, Albert Salmi drove back to the house he had once shared with his wife. He walked into the kitchen, shot Roberta dead, then went upstairs and pulled the trigger on himself. Albert Salmi was 62.

Jeff Conaway, 1950-2011

2011-05-27T16:51:00.003-04:00

Jeff Conaway, Grease costar (he had played Danny Zuko on Broadway) turned Taxi star turned sleazy movie auteur, dead at the age of 60.

I'm just sorry he didn't live long enough to fulfill the role he was born to play, starring in Torn and Frayed: The Life and Times of Keith Richards.

Here Comes Something, and It Feels So Good

2011-05-16T21:53:00.003-04:00

There's a video going around of a woman at a Paul Simon concert who got his attention well enough to let him know that she had learned how to play guitar using his song "Duncan," and got to go up on stage and play and sing it. I too love the song "Duncan," although I can't play it, or much of anything else, on the guitar. It seems to me to be a serious step forward in his songwriting: Back with "El Condor Pasa," Simon merely appropriated a Peruvian folk song and wrote new lyrics for it. For "Duncan," though, Simon used these Andean influences to create a mood around a much better and more personal song. (The lyrics also seem to be an upgrade on "The Boxer," with a similar story but actual characters.)

But even more than that, "Duncan" is distinctive because it takes its title from the main character's last name. "Lincoln Duncan is my name, and here's my song" goes the end of the first verse, although "Lincoln" seems like an odd name to give a poor boy from Canada.

How many other pop songs are named after a character's surname? There are plenty named after first names ("Mandy," "Alfie,"), or last names with honorifics ("Doctor Wu," "Mr. Jones"), or full names ("Amos Moses," "Eleanor Rigby"), or titles with a last name that's part of a longer title ("A Fifth of Beethoven," "Along Came Jones"). But are there any others that are just a last name?

While you're pondering that, here's Rayna with Paul Simon:

Okay, Tommy — Beatles Songs That Could Also Regard "The Twilight Zone" and Dolls

2011-05-11T05:55:00.004-04:00

"Eleanor Rigby" (Guess who could put her face in a jar? That's right — a doll!)

"She's Leaving Home" (Yeah — more like "Dollhome"!)

"Another Girl" (Hey, what's that word for "another girl"? Oh, right: "doll"!)

"Sweet Little Sixteen" (Wait. Do you mean she's 16 inches? That seems biggish.)

"Here, There, and Everywhere" (Paul, no one held a gun to your head when you decorated your room.)

"Ask Me Why" (Okay, me first. What's your "thing" about dolls, John Winston Serling?)

"She Came in Through the Bathroom Window" (And you have got to imagine just how damned easy that was.)

"I'll Get You" (At FAO Schwarz, but not too late, because there's always a rush.)

"Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" (Answer: Mr. Brian Epstein who generously holds down doll-string over lunch.)

"One After 909" (Again, Debris Slide people, can we just leave our in-house Quality Control numbers outside the doll packaging?)

"Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby" (Obviously, the need-not-apply list, in complete alphabetical order: dolls. That is all.)

"Polythene Pam" (Even I am smart enough to see no reason to work in a joke here.)

"I'm Looking Through You" (For you are the doll they used to make called "The Visible Woman." Grr!)

"She's a Woman" (Eh. Maybe not so much.)

And to all Debris Sliders (and by that I mean you asked for this, Tommy, my dear friend): I remind you of that wee album, "Rubber Soul." Rubber. You read me. Case closed. Good day to you, sir, and sirs! (Also to all of yours and even most of theirs. To a limit.) Go back to your homes; there is nothing to see here.

We Can Dance If We Want To: The Saga of Men Without Hats

2011-05-10T15:18:00.005-04:00

Yes, there was a time in their career when the fact that they were hatless was worthy of note. Men Without Hats hailed from the city of Montreal, where it gets very cold in the winter, but Ivan Doroschuk and his band refused to sacrifice style for comfort. (Ivan was actually born in Urbana, Illinois, but moved to Montreal as a child, and lives there still.) They were Wave 21 at first, Ivan and his brother Colin along with a dude named Jeremy Arrobas, and still in high school. They became Men Without Hats in 1977, and went through many personnel changes after that, some with another Doroschuk brother named Stefan, and with only Ivan as the constant.

In 1980, Men Without Hats had their first chance to go into the studio and record. They were almost purely an electronic band at this point, although Ivan had played some guitar at earlier gigs. The result was an EP called Folk of the '80s, which was released in Canada on Trend Records and in the U.K. on Stiff. In 1982, they recorded their first full-length LP and gave it the Soviet-sounding title Rhythm of Youth.

The big winner on the album was the track "The Safety Dance." Although it was an insistent little techno-pop tune, what really pushed the song over the top was the video, which went into heavy rotation on the year-old MTV. The video suggested a community-theater version of The Lord of the Rings, with Ivan Doroschuk as Aragorn and a dwarf named Mike Edmonds sitting in for all the little people of Middle Earth. Edmonds went on to play an Ewok in Return of the Jedi and appeared in a Harry Potter movie as well. I wouldn't make this up. The Safety Dance itself, as Ivan repeatedly demonstrated, was apparently this thing where you kind of made a box around your head with your forearms, making it one of those '80s would-be dance crazes, alongside the Bud Light Slide, that nobody ever did.

Released in March of 1982, "The Safety Dance" took its sweet time but eventually climbed all the way to Number Three on the Hot 100 in the summer of 1983. Ivan claims the song is really about pogo dancing, and how bouncers in clubs would try to keep people from pogoing because it was allegedly too dangerous. Thus, it's safe to dance. Everyone who heard it thought it was the epitome of a one-it wonder, so when their follow-up album, Folk of the '80s (Part III), arrived in 1984, no one expected too much of it. The lead single, "Where Do the Boys Go?," didn't make the Hot 100 at all, and only went to Number 30 in Canada.

But Men had one more trick up their sleeve. Their third LP, Pop Goes the World, was released in June 1987, and danged if it didn't have another hit on it in the title track. "Pop Goes the World" was produced by someone named Zeus B. Held - I'm guessing that's a pseudonym - and went to Number 20 in the fall of '87. Possibly even more intriguing from that album was a track called "On Tuesday,' which features guest flute work from Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson.

That success earned them the right to record another album, 1989's The Adventures of Women & Men Without Hate in the 21st Century. The single "Hey Men" made it to the Top Ten in Canada, but America yawned, and when it came time to make the follow-up, Sideways, from 1991, the Men couldn't even get it released in the U.S. That was really it for Men Without Hats, although they reunited in 2003 to make an LP called No Hats Beyond This Point. It's not clear to me if this ever really saw a proper release; according to Wikipedia, it was never sold in record stores.

In 2010, Ivan Doroschuk began performing with a group of heretofore non-MWH personnel under the Men Without Hats moniker, including a show at this spring's South by Southwest festival in Austin. It was apparently very well-received. Perhaps there's life for the hatless yet.

The Shame of Jackie Cooper

2011-05-05T09:16:00.005-04:00

Jackie Cooper died on Tuesday, after a unusually long and notable showbiz career, from starring in the Our Gang comedies in the early 1930s to playing Perry White in all four of the Christopher Reeve Superman movies, as well as directing several episodes of Black Sheep Squadron, The White Shadow, and Jake and the Fatman. Among his other distinctions was that he starred in the worst-ever episode of The Twilight Zone, "Caesar and Me," which aired on April 10, 1964.

Its prime competition for that honor would seem to be "Cavender Is Coming," the ill-fated, laugh-track-bedecked outing starring Carol Burnett. I discount "Cavender" for a couple of reasons. One, it wasn't really a Twilight Zone episode so much as it was a pilot for a spinoff series Rod Serling wanted to sell. Two, I haven't seen it. It has been a project of mine recently to watch every original episode of The Twilight Zone, and I'm up to around 120 out of 156. "Cavender" is still missing, but I'll catch up to it in the next couple of weeks.

"Caesar and Me" dates from the Zone's troubled fifth (and last) season. By this time, Rod Serling was teaching at Antioch College in Ohio, commuting back and forth to Los Angeles to tape his intros and still writing the occasional script, but his day-to-day duties had pretty much ended. The episode features Cooper as a ventriloquist whose dummy starts talking to him - already a shopworn conceit that the Zone itself had done much better in "The Dummy," from Season Three. In this one, Cooper has almost no onstage career, so his dummy starts ordering him to rob homes to make a living. Yawn.

The story goes that the producer found himself one week without a script, so his secretary piped up and said she had been working on something. "Caesar and Me" would be the only televised work ever credited to one Adele T. Strassfield. It's not hard to see why.

Photo borrowed from the excellent site Twilight Zone Museum

588-2300

2011-04-28T23:19:00.002-04:00

The Empire Carpets guy has died. The family has asked that in lieu of flowers, mourners should buy two rooms of wall-to-wall carpeting and get the third room absolutely free.

Spoilers For All 156 'Twilight Zone' Episodes

2011-04-28T17:47:00.002-04:00

* It turns out they're dolls!

* The little scary ones — they're the Earthlings!

* It turns out they're a bunch of different dolls!

* That wasn't Earth, this is Earth!

* It turns out he's in love with a doll!

* The nice grandmother is actually an elderly-seeming robot doll!

* This is Earth. That wasn't Earth!

* The ventriloquist's dummy doll was not actually a doll!

* A toy phone ruins then saves everything (possibly doll-related)!

* It turns out the space dolls were the Earthlings and not the other way around!

Trivia Answer

2011-04-27T22:13:00.003-04:00

The Beatles recorded 192 songs during their career. Over the five seasons it ran on CBS (really four and a half), there were 156 episodes of The Twilight Zone aired. Advantage, Fab Four.

To even the score a bit, here's Rod Serling doing the intro to the very first episode of The Twilight Zone. Except this intro wasn't for viewers; it was for advertisers, with Rod explaining why Twilight Zone viewers will then rush out to buy Sanka. It drives me crazy the way he always pronounced "robot" as ROW-butt.

Phoebe Snow, 1952-2011

2011-04-26T11:58:00.004-04:00

Phoebe Snow was not only a big star in the 1970s pop world, with the unforgettable hit "Poetry Man" (written about Jackson Browne, of all people), but she was enormously well-respected, a singer's singer, recording duets with the likes of Linda Ronstadt and Paul Simon. But that is far from the most admirable thing about the life of Phoebe Snow.

In 1975, Phoebe married some schmo, right about the time she began making hits, and they had a daughter named Valerie who was born that December. Valerie was born with severe brain damage, and Phoebe's husband skipped town, as men are wont to do. Phoebe was determined to raise Valerie on her own, and tried for a while to continue her career while doing so. In 1977, she went on a five-week tour, leaving her daughter back home in New Jersey with a young couple.

"When I came home, she was literally starving herself, and I was virtually insane," Phoebe said in 1982. "I said, 'I've been away from my kid for over a month, and I'm not gonna do it again.'"

So Phoebe Snow spent the next several years in an apartment in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, raising a severely disabled child all on her own and trying, in her spare time, to maintain a career. From 1981 to 1989, she didn't record at all, except for commercial jingles.

Valerie died in March 2007, at the age of 31. Phoebe got back to work, cutting a new album and singing at Howard Stern's wedding, before she suffered a stroke in January 2010. For more than a year, she lived mostly in a coma, regaining consciousness only sporadically, before she died this morning. Phoebe Snow was 58.

Trivia Question

2011-04-25T17:39:00.003-04:00

What were there more of: songs released by the Beatles during their recording career, or episodes made of the original Twilight Zone? I'll give you the answer tomorrow.

Speaking in Tongues

2011-04-18T22:49:00.003-04:00

Several years ago, I was listening to a show on an oldies station in New York City that replayed the Top Ten for that week from a year in the late Fifties or Sixties. This particular week, there was a jaunty but otherwise unremarkable tune from 1959, sung completely in German. It was called "Morgen," and the singer was a Yugoslav named Ivo Robic.

My initial reaction to hearing this song was that surely this happened in the golden age of payola, because no listeners would ever want to hear a pop song like this, in a language almost none of the audience could understand. On the other hand, why someone would pay to get Ivo Robic on the radio? (The full credit on the record reads "Ivo Robic and the Song-Masters," which makes me think someone might have been pulling our leg with this entire production.)

Still, there have been a fair number of foreign-language pop hits, some of which I even like. By my count there have been five Number One songs in languages other than English, although I'm not going to tell you what they are right now, so you can see how many of them you can recall.

One song I'm not including is Nena's "99 Luftballons," which my source (The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits) lists as a foreign-language song. Although the German version got some airplay (and some face time on MTV), it is my recollection that the "wary, wary superscary" English single was the one that went to Number Two in 1984. Anyway, with the customary caveat that I may have missed something while compiling this list, here are the songs in foreign tongues that have landed themselves on Billboard's Top Forty:

"Lullaby of Birdland," by Blue Stars, went to Number 16 in 1956, in French The vocalist on this song was the future cabaret star Blossom Dearie.

"Liechtensteiner Polka," by Will Glahe and His Orchestra, went to Number 16 in 1957, in German

"Lazy Mary (Luna Mezzo Mare)," by Lou Monte, went to Number 12 in 1958, in Italian

"Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blu (Volare)," by Domenico Modugno, went to Number One in 1958, in Italian I think if you asked 100 people what the name of this song was, 98 would say "Volare."

"Torero," by Renata Carosone, went to Number 18 in 1958, in Italian

"Marina," by Rocco Granata and the International Quintet, went to Number 31 in 1959, in Italian

"La Bamba," by Ritchie Valens, went to Number 22 in 1959, in Spanish It reached the Top Forty two weeks before Ritchie's death.

"Morgen," by Ivo Robic and the Song-Masters, went to Number 13 in 1959, in German

"Jealous of You (Tango Della Gelosia)," by Connie Francis, went to Number 19 in 1960, in Italian She was born Concetta Rosa Maria Franconero; this song was the B-side of "Everybody's Somebody's Fool."

"Al Di La," by Emilio Pericoli, went to Number 6 in 1962, in Italian My goodness, people loved Italian pop songs in this era. No wonder we needed the Beatles.

"Sukiyaki," by Kyu Sakamoto, went to Number One in 1963, in Japanese

"El Watusi," by Ray Barretto, went to Number 17 in 1963, in Spanish

"Dominique," by the Singing Nun, went to Number One in 1963, in French

"Guantanamera," by the Sandpipers, went to Number Nine in 1966, in Spanish

"Louie, Louie," by the Sandpipers, went to Number 30 in 1966, in Spanish I know you don't believe me, that a slowed-down version of "Louie, Louie," sung in Spanish by a proto-wimp-rock vocal trio, would even exist, much less be a hit, so here it is:

"Pata Pata," by Miriam Makeba, went to Number 12 in 1967, in Xhosa (!)

"Corazon," by Carole King, went to Number 37 in 1973, in Spanish

"Eres Tu," by Mocedades, went to Number 9 in 1974, in Spanish

"La Bamba," by Los Lobos, went to Number One in 1987

"Sadeness Part 1," by Enigma, went to Number 5 in 1991, in Latin and French The follow-up, "Return to Innocence," is not listed as a foreign-language song, so apparently all that hollerin' is in no language at all.

"Macarena," by Los Del Rio, went to Number One in 1996, in Spanish

Footnote: While researching this post, I read the Wikipedia page for "Dominique," which contains the following extraordinary passage: "It was the second foreign language song to hit #1 on the Hot 100 in 1963, the other being 'Sukiyaki' by Kyu Sakamoto. No other foreign language song reached the US Top 40 Billboard charts until the Spanish language hit 'Eres tú' hit the US charts in 1973." That's all well and good, except that "Volare" hit Number One on the Hot 100 in 1958 (it was actually the second-ever Number One following the introduction of the Hot 100 on August 4, 1958, after Ricky Nelson's "Poor Little Fool"), and there were four other foreign-language songs in the Top Forty between "Dominique" and "Eres Tu." Oh, and "Eres Tu" made it to the Top Forty on February 16, 1974, not 1973. Otherwise, spot on.

Some Kind of Lonely Clown

2011-04-13T09:36:00.000-04:00

It's tempting to say that the saga of Paul Williams could have only happened in the 1970s, but even then, it wasn't very likely that a runty songwriter without any hits of his own would go on to a career as an actor and as a most unlikely teen crush. Paul Williams had basically no recording career at all - his only hit to reach Billboard's Hot 100, "Waking Up Alone" from 1972, peaked at Number 60 - but he was perhaps the most important pop songwriter of the early 1970s, and he starred in movies, got his own TV pilot, and appeared as Edna's heartthrob on The Odd Couple. Who else had a career like that?

The key is that Williams started out not as a songwriter but as an actor. Born in Omaha in 1940, Williams moved to Southern California after his father's death in 1953. He knocked around the theater for a while before landing a part in the 1965 Tony Richardson counterculture film The Loved One; Williams was already 25 years old, but he was just five foot two, so he played a ten-year-old kid. I haven't seen the movie, myself, but Marshall probably has. The next year, he appeared with Marlon Brando, Robert Redford and Jane Fonda in The Chase.

Both of these were small parts, though, and Williams got frustrated with his lack of acting opportunities; he had auditioned for the Monkees, but didn't get the job. He got hired by the record label White Whale as a staff songwriter, but was fired after just three months. While in Los Angeles, Williams met comedian Mort Sahl, who hired him as a writer. It is often reported that Williams wrote for Sahl's stand-up act, but I don't think that's true; the best source I've found describes Williams' job as "writ[ing] skits for a local television program." I have no idea what this show was, but I do know that Williams met a composer named Biff Rose at that gig, and they decided to try writing songs together.

What strikes me is how late this all happened. We're in early 1968 now, which makes Paul Williams 27 years old. Many pop songwriters, such as Jimmy Webb or Ellie Greenwich, are already done with the most productive parts of their careers by age 27. Williams was older than both John Lennon and Paul McCartney, who had written a notable number of songs by 1968. But Paul Williams was just getting started.

Williams and Rose wrote a song called "Fill Your Heart," which found its way to Tiny Tim. Tim made it the B-side of "Tiptoe Through the Tulips," which was a big hit, going to Number 17 on the charts. As you probably know, the songwriters of a single's B-side get as much in royalties as the writers of the A-side, so Williams did pretty well with this. "Tiny always called me 'Mr. Williams,'" he said later. "He was very sweet, a gentle spirit and very strange. I remember a period when he’d only eat baby food."

Tiny Tim's producer - the soon to be very famous Richard Perry, who ended up working with everyone from Captain Beefheart to Barbra Streisand - encouraged him to start a band of his own. Williams called the group, which included a former bassist from the Jefferson Airplane and a former drummer from the Turtles as well as his brother Mentor on guitar, the Holy Mackerel. They churned out an album by the end of 1968, which went nowhere.

Fortunately for Williams, though, an executive at A&M (Tiny Tim's label) thought he might work well with a composer named Roger Nichols, whose lyricist Tony Asher - best known for co-writing much of Pet Sounds - was gradually leaving the music business. Williams and Nichols hit it off immediately; their first composition, "It's Hard to Say Goodbye," was recorded by future skier-shooter Claudine Longet within days of its writing. They embarked on Williams' solo debut, Someday Man (given the fits and starts of his career, there should have been a comma in that title), with Nichols producing and playing most of the instruments. This album, too, flopped. The high point was that the Monkees, well past their sell-by date, turned the title track into a single of their own.

Despite the failure of his own recordings, Nichols and Williams were still staff songwriters for A&M. Nichols would write a melody and hand it over to Williams for lyrics. They were asked to write a jingle for Crocker National Bank in Los Angeles, to run over some video of a young couple starting out on their financial future. They put something together very quickly - "I wrote the lyrics on the back of an envelope," Williams recalled - and added a bridge and a third verse just in case any real singers wanted to record it. (Williams himself sang the bank commercial.)

One night, a young fellow named Richard Carpenter saw the ad on TV, and decided he wanted to cut the song with his sister, Karen. It was huge, going to Number Two on the charts in the fall of 1970. Meanwhile, Three Dog Night, one of the hottest pop acts in the country, had released Nichols and Williams' "Out in the Country" as their followup to the Number One single "Mama Told Me Not to Come." Inexplicably, the song went only to Number 15, despite the fact that it's one of the finest records of the pop era.

As Stephen Sondheim had done a decade earlier, Williams went out on his own thereafter, writing both words and music. The hits just kept on comin': "Rainy Days and Mondays" went to Number Two for the Carpenters in the spring of '71; "An Old Fashioned Love Song" went to Number Four late in 1971 for Three Dog Night; "You and Me Against the World" went to Number Nine for Helen Reddy in the summer of '74; "Evergreen" went to Number One for Barbra Streisand in March 1977 (Barbra wrote the music for that one). (Also during this period, Paul's brother Mentor, a veteran of the Holy Mackerel, wrote "Drift Away" for Dobie Gray.)

But Paul wanted to be more than a songwriter. He still wanted to be a star. He guest-starred on The Odd Couple in 1974 as the object of Edna's crush, which brings up a question that perhaps someone who was paying better attention than I was during the early 1970s could answer: How did anyone know who Paul Williams was, much less become infatuated with him, in 1974? In the episode, Williams wrote a song supposedly from Felix to Edna, which he composed pretty much on the spot: "They kept changing the end of the story and never got around to writing the note so they gave me the note the morning of the shoot," he said. "I wrote that song that morning."

Williams had played an ape named Virgil in 1973's Battle for the Planet of the Apes (no, really), and in 1974, he starred (and wrote the songs for) Brian DePalma's Phantom of the Paradise. Somewhere in there, he also shot his own sitcom pilot, The Paul Williams Show, in which he played the host of a kids' TV show. A 1976 appearance on The Muppet Show led him to develop a relationship with Jim Henson, and Williams scored The Muppet Movie in 1979, winning an Oscar nomination for "The Rainbow Connection." It lost to "It Goes Like It Goes," from Norma Rae, neither the first nor the last bad decision Oscar has made.

The Eighties passed for Paul Williams in a haze of cocaine and vodka. He blimped up to 187 pounds, which may not sound like a lot, but remember, he is five foot two. "When I'd run out of cocaine, I'd eat everything," he said in 2001. "I was a serious cocaine addict, and then all the empty calories in vodka." He did write the terrible (and terribly funny) songs for Ishtar, which seems appropriate for a cokehead. He partied with Robert Mitchum, who lived near Williams in Los Angeles. On September 22, 1989, Paul Williams cleaned up for good.

Since then, he's mostly puttered around, playing a small role in The Doors, appearing on a soap opera, writing the title song for a Tom Clancy movie. He now lives in Peter Lorre's old house in L.A. (which probably fits him nicely, since Lorre was five foot four) and hangs out with Richard Dreyfuss (a comparative behemoth at five foot five).

Did you know there were three famous musical Paul Williamses in the 1960s and 1970s? There was Paul Williams the baritone in the Temptations, who took his own life in 1973, and Billy "Me and Mrs. Jones" Paul was born Paul Williams as well.

Just One Theory

2011-04-08T08:30:00.001-04:00

I'm always sort of amazed that the name "Loveless" is so relatively common. My only theory about its derivation is that some lippy old hag was sitting around a holiday meal on Magna Carta Day or whatever they celebrated, and suddenly interrupted all the brutal family fighting to shriek, "Know what they should call this family? Loveless! They should call it Loveless!"

The Latest From Apple

2011-04-07T19:14:00.004-04:00

According to Leon Russell, in the summer of 1972, George Harrison was going around with a mixtape (or maybe an acetate) that he had made, collecting the Beatles' post-Beatles solo material. It is rather tempting to imagine what such a record might have sounded like, what the Beatles' post-Abbey Road album would have been (and yes, I realize I'm not the first person to conjure this up).

First, I tried to put together a record up through the summer of '72, to mimick what George was playing for his friends - but it can't be done. You can't make a single coherent album out of all that. My first pass had 16 songs on it, but I had already cut "Beaucoups of Blues," had almost nothing from Plastic Ono Band (although a lot of that stuff doesn't translate to a Beatles context anyway), then realized I didn't even have "Cold Turkey."

So let's back up the date a little, to the summer of 1971, after Lennon has released Plastic Ono Band, but before Imagine. McCartney has released McCartney and Ram, Ringo has released a couple of covers albums and a handful of singles, and Harrison of course has put out All Things Must Pass.

But let's imagine they spent the first four months of 1971 back on Abbey Road, and they're coming out with the Beatles' Instant Karma! LP (although, given all the whining they were doing at the time, I'm tempted to call it Wah Wah). It might look a little something like this:

Side 1.
1. “Instant Karma!” (Lennon-McCartney)
2. “Maybe I’m Amazed” (Lennon-McCartney)
3. “Cold Turkey” (Lennon-McCartney)
4. “Wah Wah” (Harrison)
5. “It Don’t Come Easy” (Starkey-Harrison)
6. “Back Seat of My Car” (Lennon-McCartney)
7. “Mother” (Lennon-McCartney)
8. “What Is Life” (Harrison)

Side 2.
1. “My Sweet Lord” (Harrison)
2. “Another Day” (Lennon-McCartney)
3. “Beaucoups of Blues” (Buzz Rabin)
4. “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” (Lennon-McCartney)
5. “Working Class Hero” (Lennon-McCartney)
6. “Power to the People” (Lennon-McCartney)
7. “Isn’t It a Pity” (Harrison)

Pretty good record, eh? I'm really sorry I didn't have room for "Apple Scruffs," but I'm sure it'll be on the followup, 1972's Gimme Some Truth.

Ancient Footprints

2011-04-03T22:43:00.003-04:00

We were up in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, all this past week, and my son Jack and I spent some time at one of our favorite places, Epilogue Book Company. The front part of it is an unremarkable resort-town bookshop, but the backroom has shelves lined with the most randomly assembled collection of very old books I have ever seen. We spent over an hour poring through such things as the Congressional Record from 1911 and Volume III of a metallurgy textbook from 1944.

There was a biblical concordance, given from a mother to a daughter on her 18th birthday in 1879, in which the mother had clearly spent days writing and decorating a beautiful dedication on the frontispiece, in several different colors of ink. I was tempted to buy it just for that dedication. I didn't; what would I want with a biblical concordance?

I noted several of my favorite titles:

The Master’s Carpet; Or Masonry and Baal-Worship Identical, by Edmond Rougne, 1897

I Married a Ranger, by Dama Margaret Smith, Mrs. “White Mountain,” 1931

The Travels of Cyrus: A Discourse Upon the Theology and Mythology of the Ancients, by Chevalier Ramsay, 1728

How We Are Clothed: A Geographical Reader, by James Franklin Chamberlain, 1914

Female Quixotism; or, the Extravagant Adventures of Dorcasina Sheldon, Vol. II, written as near as I can tell by Dorcasina her ownself, 1829

Kentucky’s Famous Feuds and Tragedies: Authentic History of the World Renowned Vendettas of the Dark and Bloody Ground, by Chas. G. Mutzenberg, 1917

I bought a copy of The True Stories of Celebrated Crimes: Adventures of the World’s Greatest Detectives, by George Barton, from 1909. Jack got a novel called A Winning Hazard, by Mrs. Alexander, from 1896; he says he’s going to read it.

Sadly enough, Epilogue has announced it will be closing in April (although not so sadly, we got 50 percent off the books we bought). So that will be our last visit. We’ll miss it.

But That's Just Me

2011-04-01T07:06:00.002-04:00

I'm curious. Does anyone here regret his or her vote? Joe? (Yeah — you're the "her" in this post. I apologize in advance.) Tommy?

I mean, clearly you all voted for Obama, whom I agree is a fine man.

Another Station

2011-03-28T22:52:00.002-04:00

I should have connected the dots a little better on that Station to Station item: The finished album, as I mentioned, ended up with only six tracks, but David Bowie recorded some other material around that same time, including a cover of Springsteen's "It's Hard to Be a Saint in the City." (That particular recording is available on the Sound + Vision box set.) So Bowie had been a Springsteen fan from the early days, and may have been impressed with the piano playing on Bruce's first records.

Except, of course, it was the great David Sancious tickling the ivories on those forst two Springsteen albums, and not Roy Bittan. But as messed up as Bowie was in those days, I can easily believe he wouldn't know the difference.

Seriously, They're Almost All There

2011-03-23T10:24:00.002-04:00

At first I thought it was amazing how many emotions Amy Adams could register on her face at the same time. Then I started thinking, okay, there are way too many emotions happening on Amy Adams' face at the same time.

Zoo Station

2011-03-23T08:57:00.003-04:00

I recently picked up the expanded version of David Bowie's 1976 album Station to Station, which came out last year, and as good as the album is, it's no match for the liner notes. There's an essay by Cameron Crowe, who is as good as always, but the real keeper is the sort of diary of Bowie's activities, from the inception of the sessions in May 1975 through the filming of The Man Who Fell to Earth over the course of that summer, and continuing through Bowie's Isolar Tour, which ended in May 1976.

This was a totally nutty period for Bowie, during which he hoovered up half the GDP of Bolivia, made his frightening appearance on Soul Train and his much-beloved appearance alongside Henry Winkler on Dinah!, and stayed awake for days on end, greatly irritating his collaborators. (Please note that I had earlier described that appearance on Dinah! as being from 1975, but according to these liner notes, it was actually January 3, 1976. My apologies, and happy new year.)

Among the other facts I learned:

* Bowie's pianist on Station to Station was a young man named Roy Bittan, who had just joined an East Coast group called the E Street Band. Bittan's first album with Bruce Springsteen was Born to Run, which was released on August 25, 1975. Less than a month later, he was in the studio with Bowie, who must have moved quickly after hearing Bittan's work on that much-hyped record.

* On September 8, 1975, Bowie attended Peter Sellers' 50th birthday party in Los Angeles. An impromptu band, made up of Keith Moon, Ronnie Wood, Bill Wyman, Bobby Keys and Bowie, bashed away for a while. "Neither David nor any of the other musicians seemed to be playing the same songs," noted Bowie collaborator Geoff MacCormack, a/k/a Warren Peace.

* Also appearing on that Dinah! show was a karate instructor, who showed a few moves to Dinah and David on camera. Impressed by this, Bowie then hired a karate instructor to help keep him in shape on the upcoming tour.

* This has nothing to do with the liner notes, but it boggles my mind that there are only six tracks on Station to Station. You couldn't get away with something like that today, but you couldn't really get away with it in 1976 either, could you? The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle has seven songs on it, but I can't think of another major rock album with only six.

* Just before he started work on the album, Bowie did an interview with Tina Brown (!) wherein he declared: "Me and rock-and-roll have parted company.... I think I've made enough rumpus for someone who's not even convinced he's a good musician."

Beatles Note for the Day

2011-03-16T21:47:00.003-04:00

The film A Hard Day's Night was presented in South America under the title ¡Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Paul, John, George y Ringo!

Dylan Note of the Day

2011-03-15T10:14:00.001-04:00

The version on Self-Portrait is called "Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)." The version on Greatest Hits Vol. 2 is called "The Mighty Quinn (Quinn the Eskimo)."

The latter is the one you want.

Beatles Note for the Day

2011-03-11T13:52:00.003-05:00

After the Beatles broke up, the four individual members went on to have twice as many Number One hits as the Rolling Stones have had in their entire career as a group. If you add in Billy Preston, the Used-to-Be-Beatles had as many Number One hits (18) as Elvis Presley.

Teacher Teacher, Teach Me About Rockpile

2011-03-07T12:09:00.005-05:00

I've written before about the 1980-82 ABC television show Fridays, which was kind of a pathetic attempt to rip off Saturday Night Live, except that the musical guests they got were almost uniformly excellent. Let's face it, SNL's musical guests tended to be pretty hit-or-miss: You'd never know if you'd get Elvis Costello or Chuck Berry or Leo Sayer or Libby Titus. In the premier episode, Lorne Michaels supposedly wanted Stevie Wonder and Carole King, but had to settle for Billy Preston and Janis Ian. I think that sums things up pretty well.

Now, Fridays had the occasional Franke and the Knockouts as well, but they also had the Clash's first American TV appearance, and the Blasters and the Jam and the Pretenders, et cetera. Today, let us take a look at the excellent but short-lived pub-rock outfit Rockpile (I almost said "British pub-rock outfit," but that would be redundant) performing their totally boss "Teacher Teacher" on a Fridays from December 1980.

The guy who isn't Nick Lowe or Dave Edmunds makes a valiant but ultimately futile try at his harmony vocals. Lowe, insouciant devil that he is, chews gum throughout, putting him on a list with John Lennon, Dave Grohl and MCA as rock stars who are willing to indulge in a little Wrigley's onstage.

OK, are you done with that? Now let's see Nick Lowe's solo hit "Cruel to Be Kind," which should be thoroughly familiar to anyone who bought into MTV in the very early days:

Hey, it's the same four guys as in Rockpile! It turns out that Rockpile really wasn't all that short-lived after all. The band that recorded Seconds of Pleasure, the only official Rockpile album, also recorded Nick Lowe's nominally solo album Labour of Lust and Dave Edmunds' nominally solo albums Tracks on Wax 4 and Repeat When Necessary. So that's really four Rockpile albums, for a catalogue that's about the same heft as those of the Shins or the Lovin' Spoonful.

I wonder if they even bothered to tell the guys who weren't Nick Lowe and Dave Edmunds when they showed up for work in the morning whether they were cutting a band album or a solo project.

Mi ĝojus i vid tio

2011-03-02T09:07:00.001-05:00

In 1966, William Shatner starred in a horror film called Incubus, whose dialogue was written and spoken entirely in Esperanto.

Take It, Slim

2011-02-28T20:43:00.004-05:00

One rock & roll trope that has fallen by the wayside in recent years is the lead singer verbally throwing it to his lead guitarist in advance of the requisite guitar solo. This is probably in large part because hardly anything is recorded live in the studio anymore, but also because the gold standard has already been achieved in this field, way back in 1974 on Rick Derringer's version of "Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo," in which he preceded the guitar solo by saying, "Yeah, did somebody say keep on rocking?" Lawdy mama, I believe someone did!

That will certainly never be topped, although we're also quite partial to Ringo Starr, throwing it to George Harrison on the Beatles' "Honey Don't": "Rock on, George, one time for me" - and then following it up, before the next break, with "Rock on, George, for Ringo one time." That was the lofty hurdle Rick Derringer had to clear, but clear it he did.

I'm also partial to the purity Bob Dylan brings to "The Mighty Quinn (Quinn the Eskimo)," the version on his Greatest Hits Volume Two: "Well, that GIT-tar now!" Any other nominees?

Debris Slide Covers the Oscars

2011-02-26T23:45:00.004-05:00

Of all this year's nominees for Best Picture that I've seen, the best is clearly The Social Network. It's also the only one I've seen, but that's neither here nor there. Aaron Sorkin is supposedly the odds-on favorite for Best Adapted Screenplay, but I gotta say, the script wasn't all that great, and Aaron Sorkin is the most overrated screenwriter on the planet.

He's very witty and entertaining; his lines can snap with authority and humor. He's obviously a very bright guy. The problem is that he makes every person talk in exactly the same style, using the same sort of pronunciamentos. He cannot modulate his word choices to reflect the way that different people speak; he cannot use language to denote character. And because he's trying to write the snappiest banter he can think of, it comes out sounding like no human being has ever sounded. The typical Aaron Sorkin scene goes like this:

CHARACTER: Witty declarative statement.

OTHER CHARACTER: Unconnected witty declarative statement.

CHARACTER: Question prompted by nothing in particular?

OTHER CHARACTER: Very witty declarative statement.

It's no coincidence that his projects, like this one set at Harvard or "The West Wing," invariably take place among the best and the brightest. It's impossible to imagine Aaron Sorkin writing for a character who isn't as smart as Aaron Sorkin.

Am I complaining too much? The dialogue is crisp and often laugh-out-loud funny and, thankfully, a lot of it is taken directly from the depositions that occupy much of the film's running time; in those scenes, you can hear people actually communicating with one another. Plus, Jesse Eisenberg deserves some sort of statuette for wrestling a real, well-defined character out of this screenplay. In fact, Sorkin's brilliant but isolated language seems a good fit for the Asperger's-ish Mark Zuckerberg.

One other note: I assumed that Sean Parker, the character played by Justin Timberlake, had to have his name changed for some sort of legal reason, since everybody knows the founder of Napster was really named Shawn Fanning. It turns out that there is a Sean Parker who was involved in Napster and later Facebook; it's a different guy. But in the scene where Parker is introduced, he mentioned that he founded Napster, and the Stanford-panty-wearing girl he's with immediately recognizes him as Sean Parker. Nobody would do that. She would have thought he was Shawn Fanning. I wonder if Aaron Sorkin knows who Shawn Fanning is.

The Truth About Stevie

2011-02-24T13:22:00.003-05:00

I've been reading and mostly enjoying Mark Ribowsky's Signed, Sealed and Delivered: The Soulful Journey of Stevie Wonder, but I'm beginning to wonder about the author's veracity. Last night I came across this passage, concerning the record that gave the book its title, and which contains a whole lotta wrong:

He produced it in classic Motown style, embellished right off the bat by the coiled rhythm of the sitar. While this was not a new feel in rock since the Beatles had Ravi Shankar play it in their late 1960s "Maharishi" period, and the instrument had also been used in the Box Tops' "Cry Like a Baby" and B.J. Thomas's "Hooked on a Feeling," it was surely a new application for soul.

* The Beatles first used the sitar on "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)," which was recorded in October 1965, which no one would confuse for the late 1960s.

* The sitar on that record was not played by Ravi Shankar but rather by one G. Harrison.

* The Beatles' "Maharishi" period arguably starts in February 1968, when the Fab Four decamped for Rishikesh. It certainly starts no earlier than August 1967, when they went up to Wales to hear the Maharishi speak for the first time (they were up there when they got the news that Brian Epstein had died). This would have not only been after "Norwegian Wood," but after Harrison's India-palooza "Within You, Without You" had been cut and released on the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely album.

* I'm not 100 percent sure about this, but I don't think Ravi Shankar ever played on a Beatles record. There are uncredited Indian musicians on "Within You, Without You," "Love You To," and "The Inner Light," but I have to believe that Shankar would have been well-known enough to get a mention in any of these credits had he actually played on them.

* We've discussed the Box Tops and B.J. Thomas records at great length on this site; they both employ an electric sitar, which has quite a different sound from the original sitar. Until very recently, I had no idea that those songs had any variety of sitar at all, although it's possible that I'm just dense. The instrument on "Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours" sounds to my ears like a classic acoustic sitar.

That's an awful lot to get wrong in a single sentence, isn't it? You might think, well, the book's about Stevie Wonder, so the Beatles aren't really Ribowsky's area of expertise - but if you're going to be writing about any pop music of the 1960s, dontcha hafta always know what the Beatles are up to?

I did say I was mostly enjoying the book: There's a lot of good stuff in there, although I now wonder how much of it is true. For instance, in the original studio version of "Fingertips," Stevie didn't play the harmonica at all - just the bongos. (It never even occurred to me that there was an original studio version of "Fingertips.") Also, Stevie's mother gets off the quote of the decade when a girl calls her up, claiming to be pregnant with Stevie's baby: "Honey, if it comes out black, blind and playing the harmonica, then I'll believe you."

Name Them All to Win Free Tickets to See Christopher Cross

2011-02-22T18:44:00.002-05:00

This is undoubtedly the coolest thing on the Internet right now: Five seconds' (more or less) worth of every No. 1 song on the Billboard charts, from 1955 to 1992. It helps to have a list of the Number Ones by your side, so you can figure out which one is the Browns' "The Three Bells," which spent four weeks at Number One in August and September of 1959 and which I'm sure I'd never heard before. That's less necessary, of course, once the Beatles take over.

Thanks to Jim Bartlett for pointing this out.

Wonder Bred

2011-02-17T22:02:00.002-05:00

Stevie Wonder's mother was born Lula Mae Wright in the poignantly named town of Hurtsboro, Alabama. When the aunt and uncle who raised her passed away, she learned that her biological father was a man named Noble Hardaway, and she adopted his last name. Stevie's father was named Calvin Judkins; Stevie's older brother was named Calvin Judkins Jr.

When Stevie was born, on May 13, 1950, his birth certificate gave his name as "Steveland Morris." Near as I can tell, no one has ever really explained how he got the last name of "Morris."

Beatles Note for the Day

2011-02-16T20:05:00.003-05:00

In April 1977, wimp-rock band Ambrosia took an orchestrated cover of "Magical Mystery Tour" into the Top Forty.

LARRY KING IN HELL, Part IV

2011-02-10T19:05:00.001-05:00

Is it me, or is this place lousy with Arabs lately? What's the 911 on that? ... Those scruffy tearaways Uday and Qusay are still full of their shenanigans. I mean, how do you murder someone who's already in Hell? Now I've seen everything! ... Saw R. Sargent Shriver upon his arrival the other day, and the look of surprise on his face was just priceless. Hey, Sarge! They probably thought you'd want to be with your Kennedys! By the way, your Peace Corps: overrated ... Bumped in to Rock Hudson at Il Fuoco as Rock was complaining to Swifty Lazar about his image. Get her! ... Was it racist for me to say "lousy with Arabs" back there? Who cares? What are they going to do, send me to sub-Hell? ... Never thought I'd say this, but Perpetually Burning Jack Kennedy and Perpetually Drowning Teddy Kennedy still have terrific heads of hair. Jack, where do you even keep a comb on that charred, yet horrifically alert, corpse? ... Why is my computer beeping again?...

Some Are Mathematicians

2011-02-09T15:14:00.004-05:00

A timely tweet from friend of Debris Slide Andy Greene reminds us that not only is Slow Train Coming a terrific album, easily the best of Dylan's three Christian records- which may not sound like it's saying much, but we're fond of all three - but it was very popular at the time. Street Legal, released in June 1978, had only gone gold and peaked at Number Eleven on the Billboard album charts, but Slow Train, which came out in August 1979, went platinum and climbed all the way to Number Three. It would be Dylan's last Top Five album until "Love and Theft" made it to Number Five in 2001; since then, in a time of greatly reduced album sales, both Modern Times and Together Through Life have peaked at Number One.

"Gotta Serve Somebody," Slow Train's first single, was also a big hit, relatively speaking, going to Number Twenty-Four on the Hot 100. With the marginal exception of "We Are the World," "Gotta Serve" will almost certainly be Dylan's last-ever Top Forty hit. The closest he's come since then is... come on, go ahead and guess.

For the record, Dylan never had a Number One album in the Sixties, but he had three in the Seventies: Planet Waves, Blood on the Tracks and Desire. Planet Waves? Really?

Anyway, the closest Dylan has come to the Top Forty since 1978 was in 1984, when "Sweetheart Like You" went to Number Fifty-Five. But you knew that. Didn't you?

There Were Giants in Those Days, and Oilers Too

2011-02-04T17:49:00.003-05:00

I'll be traveling on Sunday, so I'll get to see the second half of the Super Bowl, at most. But I still have plenty of NFL action to distract myself with, thanks to the magic of YouTube. Lately I have been trolling for professional football games from the 1970s, of which there are a surprising number, contained in ten-minute chunks, as per YouTube style.

I grew up watching the NFL in the 1970s, so these games are as much a cultural referent for me as they are a sporting match. In addition to the odd Super Bowl, there are some seemingly random games, uploaded from old videotapes. I'd much rather watch the long-forgotten mid-season games. I know the score of all the Super Bowls, so none of those games would provide much of a surprise, but when I see a Giants/Bills clash from 1975, well, who knows what's gonna happen there?

My personal preference is for the broadcasts that are entirely intact, commercials and promos included, which makes for a much stronger cultural moment. In addition to seeing what was new from Ford in 1974, you occasionally get to see things like Teri Garr - as late as 1977 or so, although I've lost track of which game this was in - starring in a Schlitz ad, playing a barmaid who challenges an unseen, unheard presence who dares to take away her clientele's gusto.

Here are some games to get you started:

1970 Giants vs. Eagles: From the first season of Monday Night Football, a game at Philadelphia's frozen Franklin Field. If you believe the legend, this is the game in which Howard Cosell got so drunk he threw up on Dandy Don's boots at halftime, then took a cab back home to New York during the second half. Cosell talks sparingly in the first half, then is indeed absent after halftime, but Meredith mentions near the telecast's end that Howard had been fighting the flu, and wishes him well, a kindhearted gesture for a man with someone else's vomit on his shoes. Keith Jackson, by the way, was the play-by-play man, with Frank Gifford not coming aboard till 1971.

Near the end of the game, with time winding down, there are repeated shots of the Franklin Field official game clock, which was the old-fashioned analog kind, with circular numbers and hands. The digital clock, it seems, had yet to come to Philadelphia, although artificial turf had. Man had walked on the moon, yet the NFL was still counting down the seconds with a second hand.

1970 NFC Championship, Cowboys vs. 49ers: A completely intact game, commercials and all. Watch for the young Teri Garr, the young Sam Waterston, and the not-so-young Vic Tayback. The downside is, if you think about it for a minute or so, you'll figure out who wins before the game even starts.

1977 Rams vs. Browns: The improbable team of Vin Scully and NFL legend/car smasher Jim Brown handles the announcing chores for this miserable, snowy game at old Cleveland Stadium. Brown opines that his old team is doing a poor job of tackling because it's cold out, and it hurts to hit people hard.

1978 Dolphins vs. Oilers: Bum Phillips' mama always told him not to wear his hat indoors, so he is bare-headed, letting his crew cut fly free, for this game at the Astrodome. Another Monday nighter, it's dominated by Bob Griese, now without his great running game and forced to put the ball into the air to the tune of 300-plus yards, and the rookie sensation Earl Campbell of the Oilers.

Nowadays, if you take your helmet off on the field, it's a 15-yard penalty. But Griese had just started wearing these huge dork glasses, which apparently didn't fit under his helmet all that well. He takes his helmet off on the field, I swear, after every third play.

1980 Cardinals vs. Colts: Just a crappy game between two going-nowhere teams, in front of a few thousand bored fans at Baltimore's Memorial Stadium. Announcer Dick Stockton is terrible, too. Thankfully, less than half the broadcast survives, mostly just the Cardinals' drives, although you do get to see Phyllis George's halftime interview at the rural Maryland home of Bert Jones.

The Cardinals do look gorgeous, though, in those rich red jerseys and solid white helmets, with no center stripe or adornment aside from a little bird head. I always loved those helmets. And Cardinal receiver Pat Tilley - the second-most-famous Cardinal in history whose name starts with "Pat Till" - makes an incredibly sweet, one-handed, backhand touchdown catch.

Big thanks to Wisconsin JB for pointing out that 1970 NFC Championship game to me, and getting this whole thing rolling

Well Worth Noting

2011-01-31T23:18:00.001-05:00

If "House M.D." were a bit more like "Columbo," the victim would be dead at the very beginning, and that would give Hugh Laurie almost nothing to do, so the very idea of it is pointless. I don't know why anyone would want to make "House M.D." more like "Columbo."

Top Five Surprising Celebrity Cameos in Keith Richards' 'Life'

2011-01-30T22:29:00.003-05:00

5. David Bowie, cutting the demo for "It's Only Rock & Roll" with Mick Jagger

4. Lynda "Wonder Woman" Carter, having dinner with Mick and Keith in Paris on the last night that Keith ever bought heroin

3. Pope John Paul II, blessing the tapes for Emotional Rescue at a soccer stadium in the Bahamas

2. Billy Preston, getting outed by Keith. Maybe everyone knew this but me, and I can't say I've ever paid a lot of attention to Billy Preston's personal life, but I have read everything about the Beatles I can get my hands on, and I had never heard an inkling of this. Maybe Little Richard recruited him.

1. Bobby Goldsboro, teaching Keith an especially tricky chord as played by Jimmy Reed

A Math Question That's Not About Math

2011-01-25T18:51:00.003-05:00

This is for anybody who knows just a little about math: As you take Pi out to an infinite number of digits, does the probability approach 1 that each numeral is equally represented? That is, are there as many 5s as there are, say, 9s?

I'd say if you could figure that one out, you'd know a lot about life and the nature of things. You'd know if the universe was about order or chaos, for one. Equality or inequality. If God, while he doesn't roll dice, does play favorites. Whatever.

I have no answer to this. But I do have a fine new shirt.

Random Thoughts

2011-01-23T12:53:00.003-05:00

People used to remark on how appropriate it was that the first name listed in the Baseball Encyclopedia was that of Hank Aaron. When I sort the my iTunes alphabetically by album title, the first name on the list is Abbey Road.

Here's something to make you feel the weight of years: Janet Jackson is coming to town, and her concert is being sponsored by the local oldies station.

From the Number One hit "Easier Said Than Done," by the Essex: "They all tell me sing to him/Swing with him/Just do anything for him." Pretty progressive for 1963, isn't it?

According to Jim Dickinson, who played piano on the track, Mick Jagger wrote the lyrics for "Brown Sugar" in about 45 minutes: "He had one of those yellow legal pads, and he'd write a verse a page, just write a verse then turn the page, and when he had three pages filled, they started to cut it."

Don Kirshner, 1934-2011

2011-01-19T20:58:00.002-05:00

Don Kirshner, who died on Monday, was most famous to people of my generation as the guy with the bad toup doing the horribly stilted and name-droppy introductions of acts on his eponymous Rock Concert, which was syndicated from 1973 to 1981. But a generation before that, he was instrumental in the development of the Brill Building sound. His Aldon Music signed such songwriting talents as Goffin & King, Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield, and Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil. He also oversaw the music for the Monkees.

Kirshner is a great example of the kind of person who loves pop music and wants to break into the business any way he can but is held back by his lack of any musical talent whatsoever. I'm sure you can think of others.

Don Kirshner's Rock Concert, like its competitor The Midnight Special, had 90 minutes to fill every week, which meant the show was forced to present a lot of crapola - Black Oak Arkansas was on just about every other week - but also meant he was willing to take some chances on lesser-known acts. In 1977, the Ramones were given seven minutes to fill, and managed to work in four songs, shortly after Kirshner hailed their label execs:

Early Onto the Bandwagon

2011-01-17T23:29:00.004-05:00

"Life Is a Rock (But the Radio Rolled Me)," a breakneck roll-call of rock & roll names by a studio assemblage known as Reunion but sung by Joey Levine, who had also sung "Yummy Yummy Yummy" as a member of the Ohio Express, went to Number Eight in the fall of 1974. Among the Rock and Roll Hall of Famers name-checked in the song are David Bowie and ZZ Top, who by that point had one Top Forty hit between them, Bowie's "Space Oddity."

There may be others as well; it can be awfully hard to make out the names Levine is rapping.

Happy Birthday, Jim Stafford

2011-01-16T16:37:00.004-05:00

Happy Birthday to Jim "Spiders and Snakes" Stafford, who turns 67 today. Stafford was inescapable for about an hour and a half in the mid-1970s, when he had several Top Forty hits, prominent roles in a couple of television shows, and even a short-lived marriage to the great Bobbie Gentry.

Growing up in Florida, Stafford was a multi-instrumentalist and singer who played in several country and rock bands, including one called the Legends that also featured the legendary Gram Parsons as well as a kid named Kent LaVoie, who would later become famous as Lobo. Too bad that band didn't last, eh? After high school, Stafford moved to Nashville and landed a slot in the band of Bill Carlisle, an old-line country star known for such racy hits as 1935's "Jumpin' and Jerkin' Blues," who had become a Grand Ol' Opry fixture by the late 1960s. Stafford's dream was to be a songwriter, and spent quite a bit of time in Nashville recording demos, although he disliked his own voice and didn't expect to sing any of his own songs.

(Incidentally, Wikipedia reports that Stafford spent some time in the late 1960s writing for the Smothers Brothers TV show, which is untrue. I can find no other references to Stafford doing anything but his music career during this period, and Dangerously Funny, a history of the Smothers Brothers, has only a single reference to Jim Stafford, described as the type of new talent the show supported. He probably just did a guest shot or two.)

Stafford saw his old friend Lobo, who had become the King of the Wimp Rockers, after a show in Florida, and offered him a song he had written called "The Swamp Witch." Lobo thought Stafford should cut it himself, and helped him get a contract with MGM. "The Swamp Witch" eked into the Top Forty for a single week, on July 14, 1973. It was enough to get Stafford a deal for an album, the first single of which, "Spiders and Snakes," was written with another Floridian, David Bellamy of the Bellamy Brothers, who would have their own huge hit with "Let Your Love Flow" in 1976. "Spiders" entered the Top Forty the last week of 1973, and went all the way to Number Three. Jim Stafford spawned two more Top Forty singles, "My Girl Bill" and "Wildwood Weed."

By the end of 1974, Jim Stafford was about as big a country-pop star as there was in the U.S. The following summer, he got his own variety show, which didn't last long enough for anyone to record somewhere on the Internet how long it lasted. In 1975, he released Not Just Another Pretty Foot, which produced the minor hits "Your Bulldog Drinks Champagne" (peaked at Number 24) and "I Got Stoned and I Missed It" (peaked at Number 37). All of Stafford's recorded output in this period was co-produced by the legendary Phil Gernhard, who had also produced Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs' "Stay" and Dion's "Abraham, Martin and John," and old friend Lobo.

Stafford's music career appeared pretty much dead at that point - he never released another album, although he continued to put out singles, like 1981's "Cow Patti," which went to Number 31 on the Canadian country chart. He had met Bobbie Gentry while doing his variety show, and married her in 1978; they had a son named Tyler. In 1980, he appeared as a cohost on the early reality show Those Amazing Animals, alongside Burgess Meredith and Priscilla Presley. It lasted just about a year, from August 1980 to August 1981. The Stafford-Gentry marriage didn't last much longer than that. He also worked on the Smothers Brothers' abortive TV comeback in the late 1980s, which is probably where that Wikipedia misinformation comes from.

But in 1990, Stafford settled in Branson, Missouri, which seems to have been dreamed up expressly for his brand of cornpone country-pop entertaining. He's been there, with his second wife Ann, doing 350 shows a year at his own Jim Stafford Theatre. But once upon a time, he was important enough to get Dolly Parton to come onto his show, and sort of rap her way through his biggest hit:

Three Cheers for the Red, White and Blue

2011-01-12T12:31:00.003-05:00

My fellow Debris Slider Marshall has recently taken me to task for a Facebook post wherein I, asked to name 15 albums that would always stay with me, included the Beatles' 1967-1970. I thought this email colloquy would be appropriate to reproduce here, since one thing I want this blog to focus on is not just how culture is created and disseminated but how we, the end users, experience it. Given my age, it was perfectly natural that my primal impressions of the Beatles' career would include the Red and Blue albums. Herewith, Marshall and I hash that out:

Marshall: Tommy,
Am I wrong, or have you cited the Beatles' red and/or blue albums as "albums"? You can't. I'm older than you, so I have the leg-up on this one. The red and blue albums were Greatest Hits albums and we all ("we all") laughed at the chicanery to modify albums that were right then on the stands, ready to be loved.

Anyway. Whatever you were doing there, well, you cut that out.

TN: Are you referring to my Facebook post wherein I was asked to name 15 albums that would always stay with me? I'm younger than you, so my experience of this is quite different from yours. (Plus, I know enough not to hyphenate "leg up.") My musical consciousness was not developed until the Beatles were kaput, so I learned of all these songs in retrospect, mostly just from hearing them here, there and everywhere on the radio. Eventually, sometime in the mid-70s, I became aware that there was this group that had put out a tremendous number of hit songs, just about all of which I loved.

These were the days in which you'd go to a record store and spend your time flipping through dozens of big vinyl records, all stood up in a row. They'd all cost $7.99 or so [Marshall subsequently insisted that this should have been $5.98], and since I wasn't much more than a little kid, that was a lot of money to me. Eventually, while flipping through the B section, I found that there were two Beatles albums that seemed to have all their best songs on them. "She Loves You"! "Yellow Submarine"! "Penny Lane"! "Let It Be"! "Old Brown Shoe"! (I will admit to being baffled as to why "Another Day" wasn't on there, since that was an old song unnmistakably sung by Paul McCartney, at a time when he would have been a Beatle.)

How could I not want to own these albums? NEED to own these albums? Sure, there were other Beatles records in the rack, but who ever really wanted to hear "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite," or "I'm Looking Through You"? I had never heard of those songs, and had no desire to hear them. I wanted the songs I knew, and loved. The decision was easy.

So I make no apologies for having made the Red and Blue albums my introduction to Beatles records. They were so delightful, they way they were packaged with the identical flash-forwarded photos on the covers, and the way the Blue album's vinyl was actually blue (although the Red album was disappointingly black). I made a similar decision that didn't turn out so well, buying Hard Rain as my first-ever Bob Dylan album because I loved several of the songs that were on it - not realizing it was a live album, with screamed, tuneless vocals and every song rearranged for muddy electric guitar.

But I did cite the Blue album as one of the albums that would always stick with me, which I suppose is what has rankled you. The thing is, the Beatles of that period put out an awful lot of great singles that never did end up on an LP, except for the much-ridiculed Magical Mystery Tour album or the now-nonexistent Hey Jude album. Songs that will always stick with me include "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Hey Jude" and "Revolution," none of which I ever owned except as part of the Blue album. Plus, I do really like "Old Brown Shoe."

With apologies to Elvis Presley, the Beatles put out what is clearly the greatest double-sided single of all time - and I have no idea whether that single is "Strawberry Fields Forever"/"Penny Lane" or "Hey Jude"/"Revolution." [Marshall: That's an awfully close tie, I agree. (I remember being absolutely terrified when my sisters played "Revolution 9" near my bedroom. Well, it was a very small house.)] Poor old "We Can Work It Out"/"Day Tripper" can't even make it out of the first round.

And iTunes has totally scrambled the way we experience full-length albums, which is to say that we (or at least I) rarely experience them as a full piece any more; we pick out the specific songs we want to hear, and listen to them over and over again. Suffice it to say that if I were to create a LP-sized playlist of my favorite Beatles songs to listen to on my iPod, it would bear a strong resemblance to the first vinyl record of the Blue album.

And the first real Beatles record I ever owned was the White Album, which made for a nice set. Red, White and Blue.

And You Thought This Would Be Violent

2011-01-12T11:19:00.001-05:00

Life is so full of wonders that sometimes, just once in a while, you wake up and say to yourself, "Let's forget the needle for today!"

(See? Not violent. All right. I'll stop with the pestering.)

Glass Apparently Half Full

2011-01-11T13:37:00.001-05:00

You have to figure that, since six people were killed, statistically, at least one of them must have been a pretty awful person.

The Last Place You Look

2011-01-10T15:43:00.000-05:00

So this morning I was down the hall rooting around in old Mrs. Glieberman's chest cavity when I suddenly thought, "Wait a minute. My car keys wouldn't be in here."

Top Ten Unlikely Performers in Robert Altman Movies

2011-01-09T18:44:00.002-05:00

1. Jim Bouton, The Long Goodbye
2. Andy Richter, Dr. T and the Women
3. Red West (of Elvis' Memphis Mafia), Cookie’s Fortune
4. Vernon Jordan, The Gingerbread Man
5. Althea Gibson, The Player
6. Klaus Voormann, Popeye
7. Desi Arnaz Jr., A Wedding
8. Charles Rocket, Short Cuts
9. Tina Louise, O.C. and Stiggs
10. Johnny Unitas, M*A*S*H

Come on, people.

2011-01-09T12:32:00.000-05:00

Why all the hysteria when I cheerfully stroll through Central Park holding a kid's hand? Like New Yorkers have never seen a tiny severed hand before?

Want Ads

2011-01-05T18:30:00.003-05:00

Hey, check out this batch of extremely groovy print ads for albums from the Sixties and Seventies. That was the heyday for rock magazines, with not only Rolling Stone but Creem, Crawdaddy, and a few others, and these were the people who paid their bills.

These things try really hard to convey what the records sound like, and mostly fail. "...And if you're a poet who sets it all to music, then your name is Leonard Cohen. And this is your second album of - for want of a better word - songs."

The saddest of all is the one that says: "Zager & Evans. Will lightning strike twice?" Well, fellas, the answer is - for want of a better word - no. Not even if you wait till the year 2525.

So Fresh, So Clean

2010-12-31T13:26:00.004-05:00

Here's a New Year's grooming tip from your friends at Debris Slide: In her autobiography, Foxy: My Life in Three Acts, Pam Grier - star of such cinematic landmarks as Black Mama, White Mama and Scream Blacula Scream - writes about how she used to date Kareem Abdul-Jabbar back in the early Seventies. As a very busy professional athlete, Kareem used to take five showers a day, according to Sheba Baby. Pam says that she loved the fact that Kareem smelled and felt so clean, despite the fact that it was his professional obligation to get sweaty.

You're probably taking one shower a day, maybe two, and you're thinking, "Hey, I'm whisper clean! What good would five showers a day do me?" But then again, you haven't bagged the likes of Pam Grier, have you?

Happy New Year!

2010-12-31T12:23:00.002-05:00

This one's for all the Swedes in the extended Debris Slide family. Represent, Goteborg!

I always think they're going to sing: "Happy New Year/Happy New Year/May we all/Have a... beer!" Because that would rhyme, right?