Showing posts with label the five. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the five. Show all posts

Friday, July 5, 2019

Keep Politics Out


There was a time when artists just wanted to have a hit. It's true. For a couple of years, The Monkees recorded anything that was laid out before them. Then their egos exploded their brains and they thought they were much more than a hugely successful pre-fab pop group. And then they were done.

There was a time when making good music was the objective. Sure, we had Bob Dylan, but he was drunk on Woody Guthrie songs and a plethora of vomited words. The Beatles might have had something to say, but one couldn't actually tell, because a million people interpreted their lyrics a million different ways. The seventies were essentially a silly time, when anything, no matter how insipid, could become a hit, and did.

Then came the eighties and Bruce Springsteen, who insisted on airing his grievances for the world. The rich boy who bemoaned the plight of people like me, who he could only conjure in his imagination. He had a problem with a president most of us revered, but Bruce was drowning in jewels, so he could afford to bitch from his gated mansion on the hill.

In the two thousands, a perfectly nice country group called The Dixie Chicks couldn't muzzle their lead singer, who was compelled to spill her bitter guts about another president. And we just wanted to hear "Tonight The Heartache's On Me". The Dixie Chicks, like Springsteen, forgot about the music.

I don't want anybody's politics to befoul something as sacred as music. There is an absolutely putrid single that's currently setting download records, called "Shut Up About Politics", and I just want The Stupid Five to shut the hell up. If I have to hear that insipid soundbite one more time, I'll smash a rock through my TV. And I generally like The Five.

Can we have one thing in our lives that isn't political?

Everybody seems to have forgotten that music is supposed to be fun. That's the bane of social media ~ it's ruined one of the precious few organic pleasures in life.

Here's what music is supposed to be:
















Friday, February 7, 2014

Fifty Years Ago Today


I was a farm kid riding Bus Number Seven to school every day. The Beatles didn't know about me, or care, but I sure knew about them. My repertoire of music up 'til then consisted of my older sisters' Elvis Presley records and Eddie Cochran's Summertime Blues. Those tunes were all well and good, but kind of outdated for the hip early nineteen sixties. Elvis and Eddie were my sisters' music, not mine. I'd only grabbed hold of them because what else was there, really? Connie Francis?

The Beatles, though, they were mine. My sisters didn't get it; my parents sure didn't. I stood on the sidewalk across from Valley Elementary, delaying my walk to Wednesday catechism, and had a heart-to-heart talk with Debbie Lealos about these four British guys who were making music like nothing either of us had ever heard before. And talking about the cute one - Paul.

Cuteness was very important to a fourth-grader. Cuteness held a cache that colored our ten-year-old critique of The Beatles' music.After all, John was married. Thus, our chances of marrying John were nil. Ringo was odd-looking; George was too skinny.

Yes, it was Paul who all the girls were determined to marry - determined to become Mrs. Paul McCartney. It could happen. Paul would see us for the cool girls we were. He'd sweep us off our feet. To hell with Jane Asher.I waited and watched for Paul on that three-block walk to Sacred Heart Cathedral, but he never once whizzed by in his Aston-Martin, or whatever the English cars were called.

I never gave up, though. I spent the entirety of my hard-earned allowance money at Poplar's Music Store buying Beatles singles. The 45's were orange and yellow and I bought every single one, and I even played the B sides.

I was obsessed. And The Beatles were mine.

If you don't know this about me by now, I am a music snob. I admit it. I am a snob.I don't know what half-baked acts anyone holds up from the nineteen nineties as being timeless. Mariah Carey? C'mon.

I watched a talk show the other day, where one guy argued that The Beatles were heaven-sent, and the other four imbeciles on the show started throwing out names like Aerosmith and the Oak Ridge Boys, for God's sake. Really? What universe do these people exist in? People can be so ignorant.

Trust me, if it wasn't for The Beatles, Steven Tyler would still be howling in a garage somewhere, and the Oak Ridge Boys would be garnering a dedicated following in Baptist churches all across the south.  And I like the Oak Ridge Boys.

For anyone who is too young to know, here it is: The Beatles changed music forever.

Here's their very first Ed Sullivan appearance (and I was there - well, in front of my TV, I mean):


I'm not going to enumerate all the great Beatles songs through the years, because I don't have time to search them all out on YouTube, but trust me on this. If you're planning to be shipwrecked on a desert island somewhere and you can only grab one artist's records on your way to the boat dock, grab The Beatles.

Steven Tyler and Joe Bonsall can just wave at you from the shore.







Friday, February 22, 2013

Ten Thousand Angels


I believe it was the fall of 1996 when I saw Mindy McCready in concert.  I'd traveled 287 miles with my sister to see George Strait at the Fargodome.  Mindy was George's opening act.  She didn't perform well, but she was new, after all; plus, everybody was dying to see George, so maybe we all were a bit jaded.

She'd had two hits by that time; ultimately, the only two hits she would ever have.

I'd read a book way back when, called "Three Chords and the Truth", and somehow I'd never forgotten the passages about Mindy.  It's not as if 1996 was dominated by Mindy songs.  1996 was mostly Shania Twain and Garth Brooks, and, of course, George Strait. But Mindy had a story.  She'd had a mostly crappy life, with a mother who apparently wanted to experience her missed fame and fortune through her kid; a mom who was unnaturally tough on a little girl; one who, on the one hand, pushed her kid to attain new country music heights; and with the other hand, smacked her down and treated her as little more than a chamber maid.  Mixed signals like that can screw somebody up for life.

I didn't know what happened to Mindy after her two hit singles.  I think I read in People Magazine that she was engaged to Dean Cain, but after that, she fell off my radar.  Then, sometime later, all the sordid stories began, and it was frankly too much drama for me.  I hate drama.  Drama exhausts me.  

Mindy hadn't been relevant in the music world for a decade and a half.  Most people don't remember what happened yesterday, much less 17 years ago.  For Entertainment Weekly, Mindy's death was a huge story on....what was it?  Monday?  Now they are bored with it all.  That's the shelf life of most entertainers.

I watch The Five, or I, rather, listen to it, on weekdays, after I get home from work.  I like having a TV to keep me company while I'm playing around on the computer and de-stressing.  Greg Gutfeld said something, when the topic turned to Mindy McCready, about keeping (I'm paraphrasing, because I don't recall his exact words) damaged people at arm's length.  His reasons were different from mine; but I, too, tend to keep people like that away from me.  Because those people drain you.

It wasn't her fault.  There were a bunch of threads snaking through Mindy's life; bad choices, bad people; bad decisions; mostly, bad parents (sorry, but it's true).

I just hope her kids turn out okay, because life is a tough row to hoe, even when everything falls into place just so; as if anything ever does.

I've felt that kind of despair in my life.  Maybe the difference was, I didn't have ciphers pumping visions of grandeur into my brain; telling me that if I fail, I'll fail BIG.  I was just a "normal" nonentity; and I had to take care of my kids and myself, as best I could.  Maybe being inconsequential saved me.

Every life has its worth.  Even if EW forgets you in a day, not all of us forget.

Here is Mindy: