“Books are like seeds. They can lie dormant for centuries and then flower in the most unpromising soil.” (Carl Sagan); “Nothing ever dies on the Internet.” (anon.); “This is not your father’s Oldsmobile.” (Madison Ave. [m]adman). My posts amalgamate these three philosophical elements into one novel experience; they champion critical thinking, human dignity / equality, levelheaded / even-handed / liberty-based governance and solid environmental stewardship. C’mon in!
There’ll be no de-nuked North Korea, toot sweet,
The “dealer”, deranged Don, deferred; chose defeat!
Why walk away empty handed?
Read ‘tween the lines! Let’s be candid!
Kim can’t trust a racist and conman and cheat! *
* I didn’t say that… this (lack of) character reference was
uttered by the fake prez’s X-Fixer… a.k.a. Michael Cohen…
Note Kim’s PRICELESS smirk (@0:43) when a reporter asks Donny about Cohen…
Donny sure is looking glum. Must be his worries about how the gusty winds
might muss up his hair, the absence of trumpeting fanfare and his suspecting
the shit is about to hit the fan once Air Farce [sic] One touches down stateside…
Week #24 of our Sunday Song Series finds us tagging along with lyricist / vocalist / Doobie Brother Tom Johnston as he wanders through Another Park, Another Sunday… however…
Neither the “walk in the park” idiom nor the upbeat instrumentation / tempo applies here… both could easily “lead us down the garden path.” That’s owing to the fact that ol’ TJ is actually lamenting over love lost.
Spending Sundays in our local parks can provide us a prime locale to contemplate much of what life winds up tossing our way… such natural settings oft enhancing my own soul searching episodes.
Hope to meet you back here next week for our next Sunday Song…
For week #23 of our Sunday Song Series we find Joe Jackson lyrically lashing out while leafing through the Sunday Papers… delivering his op-ed rant targeting / condemning the sorry state of tabloid journalism (in every negative connotation of that “t” word)… all of this backdating to his song’s February 1979 release.
One cannot help but wonder how Jackson would weigh in a full four decades later re the alarmingly, all too real potential for a media driven, (global?) Fascist overthrow and the resultant stripped of liberty, joyless, soulless Orwellian society.
To those who say, “Not possible!”, I’d counter by pointing out how things are trending these days… here within my homeland. Perhaps this crap is going down within your homeland, too?
• There are an inordinate number of willing to be subjugated sheeple turning to “their” electronic, Sunday Papers equivalents… becoming brainwashed by Bad Vlad Putin’s hacked social media AND/OR by the big biz bastards flinging the Fascist fake prez’s feces from the Fox network’s alleged newsroom.
• This propagandized, malleable electorate is swooning over / slash / sucking up to a foolhardy / malleable / Putin suck-up leader, whose wretched regime (just like a crop of mushrooms) thrives on shit and darkness. In that capacity (incapacity?) that downright dangerous autocrat-in-training believes he’s entitled to make his power-grab (he does love to grab things)… inclusive of trampling our free speech and free press rights AND (must there always be an AND?) flipping off legislative oversight / checks and balances AND (must there always be another AND?) loading up the judiciary from top down with a shitload of his suck-up judges.
• That fake prez is routinely and wrongfully castigating / categorizing journalism… the genuine article… as “fake news” AND (must there always be another AND?) branding reporters the enemies of the people… thereby rabble rousing his minions… tacitly approving their doing all his dirty work… i.e., their committing vile and violent acts against the very scribes who are trying to warn society… save humankind from such a dismal, freedom barren fate.
If/when Fascism takes root, you WON’T be “reading all about it” in the Sunday Papers or those published on any other days of the week. Ditto that re their online equivalents.
AND (must there always be another AND?) if such an autocrat should wind up hitting the Internet Kill Switch sometime within the next seven days (or will that be measured in minutes?)…you WON’T be back here for our next Sunday Song.
True…at least for the time being… we are still talking hypotheticals making it highly likely that next week’s Sunday Song will get posted on schedule.
Till then stay hopeful that journalistic freedom and integrity will persevere and remain mindful of the wise words once spoken by a Real President… George Washington…
“If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”
Excuse my lateness in posting my Valentine’s Day messages. For a reason that’ll soon be obvious, I was in no particular hurry.
To each of you who has found the love of your life… count your blessings… you have “The Song of Happiness” in your heart to accompany all that you do on this special day… throughout all your special days of togetherness ahead.
For each of us stumbling around this world while minus our soul mate… experiencing the unenviable pangs of loneliness on this day… I’m furnishing three different “roads” for us to travel down… i.e., to experience the flip side of “The Song of Happiness”… a.k.a. the J.D. Souther / Glenn Frey composition… Last In Love.
Why three paths? Well… hearing this song sung in both female and male voices is so apropos… after all… gender-wise… loneliness knows no bounds.
Since gender is not always an either/or prospect… and I was unable to locate any representative recording artists… well… at least not those who’ve recorded this particular, off the beaten path, musical selection… below my parting paragraph you’ll find the lyrics in text form.
However you wind up experiencing this track, the mood throughout will be unmistakably unsmiling. However… well… at least the way I’ve interpreted Souther and Frey’s sentiments… there still is a glimmer of hope found right within the song title itself. Last In Love does imply that a race is being run… the human race… and who knows… so long as we persevere (i.e., just keep on running it)… well… maybe… someday… we’ll wind up winners.
Last In Love
by J.D. Souther & Glenn Frey
Blues outside my door
I don’t even know if it’s raining
But I’ve been here before
And I don’t wanna be here again
Every now and then
Voices on the wind
Call me back to the first time
Far away and clear
You can hear the teardrops
Fallin’ for the last in love
If I let you down
All I can say is I’m sorry
Now it’s all over town
So I don’t wanna hear it from you
But please don’t look away
It’s hard enough to say
This could go on forever
When the night is clear,
I can hear the teardrops
Fallin’ for the last in love
Every now and then
I hear voices on the wind
I may love you always, always
Far away and clear
You can hear the teardrops
Falling for the last in love
Callin’ for the last in love
Will we always be the last in love?
Our Sunday Song Series… now at week #22… just keeps on rolling along…
This time we’ve got some warm, feel good vibes going courtesy of Neil Diamond’s Sunday Sun. To sample the overall lyrical mood check out the chorus…
Sunday sun, when you’re ’round
Get to feelin’ like I want to smile
Weekday strings, tie me down
But this one day, baby, I can fly,
I can fly… I can fly… I can fly…
If you haven’t done so already… be sure to click the PB button to check out the rest of the lyrics, too… maybe even lower your BP a bit further by zoning out on the kaleidoscopic imagery… all courtesy of YouTuber janettsue.
Initially, my father’s non-living wage, public school teacher gig had necessitated menus consisting of the cheapest, tasteless cuts of fatty / gristly meats and made patched up hand-me-downs my “fashion statement”. We rented from a slumlord, who probably was counting on his furnace’s carbon monoxide fumes to exterminate his hovel’s rats.
What little tech we did possess involved a snowy, black & white VHF-only TV, staticky AM-only radio and cheapo, monaural phonograph that damaged whatever vinyl it sank it’s stylus / fang into.
Fortunately, Presidents JFK and LBJ’s vision for a Great Society materialized… thereby helping to elevate folks like us out of poverty. By the early 1970s, I was actually pursuing my Broadcast Arts college degree… my parents even generously affording me the tools of my hoped for trade… e.g., an AM/FM stereo receiver, turntable, reel-to-reel tape deck, microphones and headphones.
A show of gratitude certainly was in order. My inspiration came from [1] watching Mom using a low-fidelity, monaural cassette recorder to tape her fave tunes off her tiny, tinny sounding radio AND from [2] listening to her rationale… namely… her concerns regarding Hard Rock station formats popping up all over… up and down the dial… a trend with the potential of banishing her fave Big Band music entirely from the FM band.
My game plan became to give Mom the gift of music… i.e., set up my tech to tape whatever songs she deemed keepers. On the night of our recording session, she became instantly WOWED by the clarity and expanded frequency range, which her audio devices lacked. Even after the passage of 4 decades, I still vividly remember her words… verbatim…
“It’s as if the musicians are right here in the room with us!”
And truth be told, her hard rocker son, too, experienced that same WOW! Never before had I heard Big Bands played in high fidelity.
While this was all good news, this tape did fall short in one crucial aspect. The DJ… perhaps sensing he’d soon be replaced by a rock jock… had been either rapidly rattling off his playlists or flat-out neglecting to do so. His omissions rendered the status of “ARTIST UNKNOWN” to the very song, which had incontrovertibly converted me into a Big Band enthusiast!
While my folks could both name that tune… Bugle Call Rag... neither could quite figure out “The Whodunit”… especially seeing how a bevy of band leaders all had included their versions within their repertoires.
There was one other prob, too… Mom shied away at the mere thought of trying to thread an open reel tape deck… a device sporting a lit up, metered control panel that could’ve fit in well within a jet’s cockpit. Ergo, I needed to be on hand for each playback… i.e., until my acquisition of a HIFI cassette deck. That device had been barely out of the box when I dubbed Mom her user friendly copy.
That handpicked by Mom, 25 song musical set was a representative sampling of the soundtrack to her life. As such, this cassette was destined to become her all time fave… one she wound up constantly playing back for the next (nearly) three decades. She’d have likely insisted on taking it with her, too… well… had there not been strict rules prohibiting worldly possessions beyond Earth’s Exit signs.
Beyond that… throughout the latter years of this tape’s lifetime… I could not help but concede that… just like my Mom… I’d wind up taking my final breath never having even the slightest inkling regarding Bugle Call Rag’s whodunit.
On a more positive note, I did conclude that YouTube… the repository of humankind’s creativity… could afford me my best shot at remedying that prob… especially upon considering the following fun facts…
“The total number of people who use YouTube – 1,300,000,000. 300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute! Almost 5 billion videos are watched on YouTube every single day. In an average month, 8 out of 10 18-49 year-olds watch YouTube.”
There just had to be at least one other Earthling YouTuber who was aware of my sought after version of Bugle Call Rag… RIGHT??? Yet… many a past search had left me “empty handed”.
It was mere weeks ago… as the waning hours of Tuesday, January the 15th were ticking down into the wee hours of Wednesday the 16th*… when… once more… I found myself scrolling through multiple dozens of YouTube Bugle Call Rag finds… skipping over any that had PB times significantly greater or less than my unknown’s known 2 minutes and 50 seconds timing.
This was where and when the ancient saying, “The Third Time’s the Charm” certainly had come into play. Following my audition of the first two potential matches…
EUREKA!
Within hearing the first few notes of try number three… I simply could not believe my ears! Although this upload was not doing full justice to this track’s base frequencies… my 44-year-old whodunit search had come to a successful conclusion! All the sudden I felt this odd sensation on my face.
Rushing over to a mirror, I realized I was actually smiling… a rarity in my life these days considering the sorry state of our world and my homeland. And I kept on smiling, too, for I could now check “Discover Bugle Call Rag band leader’s name” off my bucket list!
WOW…. I almost forgot to mention that the mystery maestro and his merry music makers were/are Glen Gray and his Casa Loma Orchestra!
And since it had always been my contention that anyone who could’ve created such an energetic gem must also possess a massive repertoire of other must hear music, my next www destination became Barnes & Nobel where I discovered Mr. Gray’s CD… an hour’s worth of Big Band music with none other than Bugle Call Rag as the #1 Track. Within one week, USPS delivered my order.
I’ve now been listening to this entire CD with the same enthusiasm and frequency as Mom had played her birthday present… oh… so long ago. Interestingly enough… I’m using the exact same stereo receiver’s amp to power the very same speakers which blasted forth Gray’s rendition of Bugle Call Rag for my family’s listening pleasure!
*ADDENDUM: My above mention of Tuesday the 15th leading into Wednesday the 16th, has a much deeper significance. The April page of 2003’s calendar conformed to that identical day/date alignment… my Mom’s last two days on Earth… a time where we had been able to converse and reminisce for the first 5 hours of what would turn out to be my 22-hour vigil.
Let’s all think clearly / take moment to pause,
To deconstruct some syntax, each damned clause,
In re Trump’s speech to the nation,
What was his main motivation?
He just showed up for the limelight / applause!
I’ll be suspending my regular format of seguing multiple tracks into one theme. That’s because I’m giving the top billing / the only billing to saxophonist, extraordinaire, Richi Jones. Why?
Because of the rude inattentiveness of… uh… dare we even call them his audience? How could they so brutally, blatantly ignore him while he’s pouring his heart out? Worse yet… unless there had been some sort of a delayed reaction… i.e., after the vid’s cut off point… not even one person applauded him.
I’m not the only one who noticed how nobody was noticing. They just kept on milling about and yackety-yakking. Had he walked off the stage it’s likely it wouldn’t have even fazed them then. So self absorbed were they, it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if some of them are still present… nearly nine years after the production of this video.
A few examples from the YouTube comment section…
“I think that this video is a statement about the [sic] our post-modern world in which aesthetic quality is overlooked in place of other things such as material value. It’s very symbolic in this video as the crowd fails to recognize the aesthetic value and true expression coming from the stage right beside them.”
“So pisses me off that the people there weren’t paying attention to the virtuoso performance of this difficult piece. I hope he stuck with it… at least we have this to preserve and remember him by in any case.”
One commentator even worked in composer Gerry Rafferty’s Baker Street lyrics to make the spot on observation…
“People in the background: ‘It’s got so many people but it’s got no soul.’”
With the arrival of Week #21 of our Sunday Song Series also being in alignment with the first Sunday of 2019’s African American History Month*, let’s turn on our minds to the impactful life and times… tune in our ears to the transcendent music and lyrics composed by pianist Duke Ellington and sung by Mahalia Jackson… a jazz standard a.k.a. their 1958 collaboration titled Come Sunday… a.k.a. the first movement of a suite entitled Black, Brown and Beige.
To quote a passage from Lonnie Bunch’s Our American Story post… which is also in alignment with my own heartfelt sentiments…
“Many music scholars believe this was Ellington’s finest and most ambitious work, and certainly the one in which he made his deepest emotional investment. Mahalia Jackson’s contribution was substantial. It was on this recording that she gave one of music history’s most stirring performances — a heart-stopping rendition of “Come Sunday.” Ellington wrote it specifically for her and she made it her own thanks to her deep-velvet voice and her soul-stirring spirituality.”
For the next Sunday titled / themed song of our ongoing series, I hope you’ll find your own life and times in alignment with this site… seven days from now.
*Why is it that an event… so vital to the enlightenment of our global community… gets assigned a month that lasts only 28 or 29 days?
CommonSenseTom 