I’m seeking inspiration in the dog days of summer, and I’m cheating a little bit. This 3-song playlist isn’t songs, but it is three opportunities to laugh. And can’t we all use more laughter?
I first saw this video a few years ago. I always knew dogs were smart!
I first saw this video a couple months ago. It still cracks me up every time I watch it.
And what do we want to do most on those lazy, hazy days of summer? Sleep!
Where I grew up [in Louisville, where the women are fast and the horses are beautiful...] the first Saturday in May means the running of the Kentucky Derby. I haven’t posted a 3-Song Playlist in a while. Here’s one for Derby Day, from the sublime to the ridiculous.
The Big Sleep [1946] featured Humphrey Bogart as Raymond Chandler’s detective Philip Marlowe and continued the on-screen chemistry between Bogart and Lauren Bacall. I like mysteries and I like Bogie and Bacall and I love this bit of trivia [as described on IMDb]:
While working on the script, writers William Faulkner and Leigh Brackett couldn’t figure out from the novel who murdered a particular character. So they phoned Raymond Chandler, who angrily told them the answer was right there in the book. They shrugged and returned to their work. Chandler soon phoned to say that he looked at the book himself and couldn’t figure out who killed the character, so he left it up to them to decide. In the original cut, shown to the armed services, this question is resolved; in the film as released, it isn’t.
In one scene Bacall and other casino patrons sing And Her Tears Flowed Like Wine. Embedding for the clip is disabled, but do yourself a favor and click over http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z11dA7srESo to give it a listen.
Big [1988] includes this iconic scene of Tom Hanks and Robert Loggia playing Heart & Soul and Chopsticks with their feet in the FAO Schwartz toy store. I like this movie a lot and I love this scene.
The Big Chill [1983] has a great soundtrack. I never found the story believable, but I like the cast and I love the music. This little clip with Ain’t Too Proud to Beg by the Temptations I think displays nicely the interaction of the characters and how the music is woven into the story.
RRR: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. This is an update of a post from 2007.
Today is Thanksgiving in the U.S. So here’s a 3-Song Playlist with Thanks as the theme. And, “Thanks!” to all the online friends I have here in the blogosphere.
My favorite radio station plays Alice’s Restaurant every Thanksgiving at noon. I saw Arlo Guthrie in concert once. He did not play Alice’s Restaurant that night, but I really enjoyed the show anyway. He had a good sense of humor. Lots of people yelled for that song and others. At one point he said, “We don’t have time to play them all. Thank God we recorded ‘em!”
There are, of course, other songs that would fit this theme. I also considered a theme of things I am thankful for [but this was easier]. What songs would you include [either songs about thanks or things you are thankful for]?
Here’s a 3-Song Playlist I put together for personal reasons just for today.
I read somewhere that when Conway Twitty uttered the words “Hello, Darlin’” in concert a roar would rise from the audience so he got in the habit of waiting a couple extra beats before continuing the song. At one performance though he heard the proverbial crickets chirping. It was a private concert for a corporate client or convention [I'm a little fuzzy on the details at the moment] and the audience was nearly all men. And they just aren’t into the screaming for this song like the women are….
A college friend who is an excellent amateur musician loved to sing “Darlin’.” I’m not sure I’ve ever heard it played on the radio but my YouTube research turned up versions by several artists. I think this is the original.
Two of my favorite singer/songwriters, Steve Goodman and John Prine, wrote “You Never Even Call Me by My Name.” The stories they tell vary in some of the details, but generally it goes like this: They called it [with tongue firmly in cheek] The Perfect Country-Western Song. Then David Allen Coe pointed out several details [like Mom, getting drunk, trucks, prison, and dogs] they had left out. That lead to another verse and a hit song for Coe.
Can you musically connect Tin Pan Alley (New York City) to Montreux, Switzerland to the San Fernando Valley in California? How about connecting piano and big band to heavy metal to art rock?
Here’s my answer:
In 1933 pianist Peter DeRose published a composition called Deep Purple. He worked in Tin Pan Alley and broadcast on NBC. It became a popular big band hit for Paul Whiteman. Lyricist Mitchell Parrish [also lyricist on Star Dust, Stars Fell on Alabama, Moonlight Serenade, and many others] added lyrics in 1938:
When the deep purple falls over sleepy garden walls
And the stars begin to twinkle in the sky—
In the mist of a memory you wander back to me
Breathing my name with a sigh…
The song was recorded by several artists over the years. The version I know best was by brother-and-sister act Nino Tempo & April Stevens in 1963.
The song [I don't know which version] was a favorite of the grandmother of guitarist Ritchie Blackmore. After she kept asking if his band would play the song he named his band Deep Purple. One of that band’s biggest hits is Smoke on the Water. The lyrics in that song refer to a fire that burned down a casino in Montreux during a concert by Frank Zappa and the Mothers. [Someone in the audience fired a flair gun at the ceiling!] Deep Purple was in Montreux at the time for a recording session on Machine Head, their best-selling album.
Frank Zappa was an eclectic artist that wrote rock, jazz, electronic, and orchestral music. One of his best-known songs [about which, he apparently was not happy] is Valley Girl. In that song his daughter, Moon Unit, provided “Valspeak” from California’s San Fernando Valley and made the slang more popular and wide-spread than ever.
This is an update of a post from two years ago.
Eleven November is Veterans Day in the U.S. — a day to thank and honor all the people who have served honorably in the military in wartime or peacetime. One of my cousins was injured in Viet Nam. My father enlisted in the army right after he graduated high school to fight in World War II. I know families that have much stronger and longer traditions of military service.
Regardless of how you feel about our current military involvement, I think we owe a great debt to the men and women who volunteer [and they are all volunteers] to maintain the safety and security of our country. To all those brave people I say THANK YOU!
Here’s a 3-Song Playlist for the veterans. The Ballad of the Green Berets along with The Green Berets movie a couple years later were hugely popular in the sixties. Brothers in Arms was, I think, hugely under-appreciated in the eighties. And Life During Wartime from the seventies is just for fun. Because we all need a little fun….
The melancholy and the joyful. Hopeless and hopeful. Yin and Yang. Two parts of a whole. Ends of a spectrum. Can we truly know anything without having seen it from both sides?
Like a dance, we choose partners and then [more often than not, it seems] promptly step on each other’s toes. Dancing gets easier with practice though and with the right partner — it’s magic!
ONE two three… and so we dance two three… and we hope two three… and we dream two three… Of two three forever….
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