Showing posts with label honeycombs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label honeycombs. Show all posts

Friday, May 18, 2018

Happy Bir....

(To my friend, "Your Name Here")

My birthday isn't until tomorrow, but I'm choosing to celebrate it tonight. 

When I was a kid, I considered the year 2000 and thought, wow, I'll be forty-five! Essentially on my death bed! The good news is, it's 2018 and I'm still kickin'. And I know now that forty-five is nothing. When I was forty-five, gravity was still averted. You know that picture you run across from 1945 in the ragged family photo album and you think, really? That's my mom? Turns out that, yes, we all were young and dewy-skinned once. I don't look like myself anymore, but I'm so used to my countenance in the morning mirror that I don't give it a second thought. It's only when I (accidentally) see a photograph of myself that I realize some grievous calamity has apparently occurred.

I've given up on regaining my lost figure. It just doesn't work anymore. I'm not going to become one of those delusional fitness fanatics. I've never exercised more than ten days in my life and I'm not about to start now. Plus, I deserve to eat.

The thing about turning 63 is that I spend more time looking back than forward. I mostly choose to remember the good things. It's not that I've forgotten the bad. I can conjure up those memories in a snap if I choose to, but when I do, I tend to view them philosophically, like a neutral bystander. Humans do the best they can do with what they have. I don't hold it against my parents for what they did. They didn't damage me on purpose. 

Today I received some birthday wishes from my co-workers. My best work friend Barb brought me a single-serve DQ cake. It was awesome. The cake had a cobalt-blue plastic butterfly ring atop it and I slipped it on my finger and wore it throughout the day. Everyone I encountered chose to ignore the humongous butterfly encircling my finger; sure (no doubt) that I'd made an unfortunate fashion choice. That made me giggle. A boy (really) that I trained four years ago asked me about my birthday plans and we got to talking about retirement. I told him that 2020 is the year. He said, "It won't be any fun here without you." I didn't realize I was still "fun". I used to be fun back in 1997, when I commanded a department at Aetna (US Healthcare), but I essentially just feel tired now and don't have the energy to be engaging. How lame must everyone else be, that I am regarded as the "fun" one?

I blame (or credit) Sirius Radio with my current state of look-back. Every single song I click on evokes memories. I hover between classic country and sixties and seventies rock; and sometimes fifties rockabilly. Some of the songs make me cry, for reasons only known to me. My best friend died in 2000 (when she was only forty-five). The songs we shared together are bittersweet. I almost feel embarrassed to still love those songs, because Alice is gone and she and I can't share them. 

When I hear John Lennon's voice, my heart breaks a little. John was my education in "real" music, beginning when I was nine years old or so. 

I don't "sum up" when it comes to music. Songs are quicksilver. Songs are not dissectable, like some scientific experiment. Anyone who slices and dices music is not a music lover. I love a song by the Honeycombs and one by Tommy James, and one by Steve Wariner and "God Bless The USA" by Lee Greenwood just because. I like Boston and Gene Pitney and Bobby Bare and Dobie Gray. Nobody needs to know why. 










Happy Birthday to me.










Saturday, June 2, 2012

One-Hit Wonders

(That's pronounced, "OH-NEED-ers")

Yes, I was watching, "That Thing You Do" tonight, and it led me to think about real-life one-hit wonders.

I found a nice, comprehensive site that lists all the one-hit wonders throughout the decades, and little did I know that some of these artists had only one hit!  Perhaps, like the fictional oh-needers, creative tensions led these groups to disband after their one solitary hit record.  Or maybe they only had one good song in them!  

You know how it is; you work and strive all those years just to get a record contract, and then, if you're lucky enough for your song to hit, you need to follow it up with something, and you got nothin'.  Maybe, like the Kingsmen, they were just a garage band who happened to catch on with an incomprehensible song, like "Louie Louie", and they said, hey man!  We were just goofin' around!

Or maybe they were just unlucky.

Lucky or not, this first group's hit will live on forever, thanks to Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey.  Here are the Contours:


I always really liked this next song, and I couldn't have been the only one, because it was a hit for the Honeycombs.  Plus, one has to love this cheesy video, in which none of the guys bother to plug in their electric instruments, and the girl drummer apparently just got home from a long day at the secretarial pool, and didn't have time to change.

Have I The Right:


J. Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers probably disbanded because all the marquee owners revolted over trying to fit their unnecessarily long name on the banner.  I include this song from 1964, because I rather hate it, and thus, naturally, I remember it well.  For the nine-year-old listener, this song creates much too vivid imagery of blood and car crashes and death (all the things that little kids love to hear!)

Last Kiss:


There was a movie titled, "Baby The Rain Must Fall".  The song is way better than the movie, even though it did star Steve McQueen (overrated).  The recording is by Glenn Yarbrough, who was obviously a folk singer, because they all sang like that.  Just watch the movie, "A Mighty Wind". I happen to like this song, however, but I do object to the dancer in the video who, again, like they all did back then, is trying to do the jerk to a song that just does not lend itself to it.  When will they learn?  Apparently never, since the 60's were 50 years ago, and it's a bit late to go back and school them on this.
  

Did Buffalo Springfield really only have one hit record?  That doesn't seem right to me.  The one-hit wonders site says it's true, though.  If that is the case, at least their one hit song will live on forever in 60's counter-culture documentaries shown on the History Channel or one of those upper-tier channels that are all interchangeable, and in Viet Nam war movies.  So, all I can say is, you better watch, children.  What's that sound?


Ever hear of the Lemon Pipers?  Only if you remember the song, Green Tambourine.  The song isn't necessarily bad, for its time, but the reason I'm including it is, I was driving somewhere on a weekend to do errands, and this song happened to come on the radio, and I actually listened to the lyrics.  Let me just say that this guy is awfully proud of the fact that he can play a tambourine.  Frankly, any blithering idiot can play a tambourine.  All you have to do is smack it against something.  I mean, really.  A little known fact:  they give the lamest guy in the band the tambourine to play.  Just so he has something to do.  "Any song you want, I'll gladly play"?  Well, they all sound the same!  Like this:  clink, rattle, crash.  But we do love that jingle jangle mornin'!  

"Money feeds my music machine"?  Well, that's a nice scam you've got goin'!  Music machine!  Here, let me tap on a couple of these Campbell's soup cans.  How do you like that?  Now give me money. 

Regardless, here is the song:
 

John Fred & His Playboy Band were, it seems, rather delusional.  I mean, look at them.  Do they look like playboys to you?  They wish!  Frankly, the guys in the background look uncomfortably self-conscious about the whole spectacle.  "Hey, can we go back to the science lab and dissect something now?  That was more fun."  Perhaps the name, "Playboy Band" was bestowed ironically.

Nevertheless, here is Judy In Disguise:


Everybody makes fun of McArthur Park, although the late Donna Summer actually took this monstrosity and made something of it.  You know, the whole, "someone left the cake out in the rain" bit.  Who would do that?  And what a crappy birthday party that would be.  The puzzling thing to me is, Jimmy Webb is such a good songwriter.  He even wrote a book on songwriting, called, "Tunesmith".  I haven't read it (yet), but I would like to know if he has a chapter on McArthur Park, and if he discloses that he wrote that song as a joke.

I understand that the actor, Richard Harris, was quite the drinker, so, as things tend to go, in the wee small hours, crazy things start to make perfect sense, and thus, Richard recorded:


Now we come to the Crazy World of Arthur Brown.  I like that an artist is upfront with the fact that he's crazy.  Unlike delusional tambourine players who think they are musical virtuosos, or science geeks who fancy themselves as playboys, Crazy Arthur just lays it all out there for us.  "I'm crazy.  Take it or leave it."  The world today really needs more of that full disclosure.  And this is actually a good song.

Fire:


Which, naturally, leads me to Napoleon XIV.  Oddly, the one-hit wonder site does not list this song, but obviously, it was a one-of-a-kind.   

For whatever reason, there seemed to be a lot of crazy, or deluded, or schizophrenic songs in the 1960's.  I think it was a natural reaction to the times.  (Full disclosure:  I realize this song was written and recorded as a joke.  But the fact remains that it simply reflected the tenor of the culture.)

And the thing about it was, we all (all us kids) memorized this song and sang along with it.  We, in fact, at our young age (eleven for me), found it hilarious.  

They're Coming To Take Me Away (Ha-Haaa!):


Bob Lind is not a name that rings many bells, but Bob Lind had a 1960's hit that approached life from another perspective.  Yes, Bob chose to embrace the hippy hippiness of butterflies and rainbows.  Personally, give me crazy.  Because I just feel (and maybe it's a personal bias) that guys should never sing about butterflies.   

However, Bob, in this video, fancies himself as not just a butterfly, but an elusive butterfly.  And really, if you've ever observed them, butterflies really are elusive.  That's no big revelation.  Ever try to catch one?

Flittingly, here is "Elusive Butterfly":


In conclusion, as is my wont, I may (or may not) turn this into a series.  After all, I have really only scratched the surface of one-hit wonders, and I didn't even feature the entire one-hit wonder experience of the 1960's in their entirety.  And there are other decades as well!

I will leave you tonight, however, with a nice, fictional, one-hit wonder song, by none other than the Oh-NEED-ers, because I like it, and it was the impetus for this whole post.  So, it at least deserves to be featured here:














 

Thursday, December 18, 2008

My Top Discoveries of 2008 - Video Edition


Don't you just love lists? It's a commonly-shared trait among homo sapiens, for some reason. We're drawn to lists. Do you ever not read a list, when you notice it in a magazine or newspaper, no matter how inane it might be?

I don't think a list would even need a category for people to read it. It could be something like:

1. French Toast
2. Magazine Subscription Inserts
3. Running Water
4. Candle Wicks
5. Snow Tires

And people would read it and argue aloud with the choices. "Well, number five for sure, but definitely not number 3!"


So, not to be left out of the list-making extravaganza, here's my list of my top five video discoveries of 2008:

1. Pop Video - Sixties Edition - Groups - TIE!

THE LOVIN' SPOONFUL - DO YOU BELIEVE IN MAGIC




This isn't the original video that I posted earlier this year. That one, alas, has been removed. I love watching the Lovin' Spoonful perform, chiefly because of the raw enthusiasm of the late Zal Yanovsky. Watch his interaction here with John Sebastian. Infectious!

THE HONEYCOMBS - HAVE I THE RIGHT



I don't know what it is about this song, but I love it. And they hardly ever play it on oldies stations, for some reason. The Honeycombs were a British Invasion band who, as far as I know, had just this one hit. And a girl drummer! The most amazing part, of course, is that they were able to play their electric guitars without plugging them in! Ingenious!

2. Pop Video - Sixties Edition - Solo

DEL SHANNON - RUNAWAY




Here is the late Del Shannon, shooting the breeze with the thinner version of Burton Cummings, talking about the creation of his most famous song. And then! The video morphs into one great performance! Amazing what one can do with an A minor and a G and one killer organ solo!

3. Bluegrass VideoRICKY SKAGGS WITH THE DEL MCCOURY BAND - RAWHIDE



I found this video by accident when I was searching for Ricky Skaggs. And I started watching it, and I said, "Hey!" This is cool! So then I watched it again!

4. Country Duet

DAN SEALS & MARIE OSMOND - MEET ME IN MONTANA





I'd forgotten how much I like Dan Seals. And this duet with Marie Osmond is just pretty. I love watching and listening to this song.

5. Pop Culture - American Idol Edition

JASON CASTRO - DAYDREAM



Let's face it. Pretty much everyone gets sucked in by American Idol every season, so why deny it? Jason Castro was my sentimental favorite of the past season, and I still maintain, if he plays his cards right, he can have a nice career in music. I liked this performance a lot, and no, I'm not biased toward John Sebastian.

So, there you go. Argue among yourselves. But this category is so broad, it's basically argument-proof.

And no, there is no new music here, but 2008 was kind of a bummer for new music. When in doubt, therefore, go with something old and something good.