It was fifty years ago that man landed on the moon. One could say they remember the day with awe, or if you were fourteen-year-old me, you would say, am I supposed to be watching this?
Granted, science was never my oeuevre (at all), but my blase reaction to the moon landing could only be chalked up to youthful ignorance. My life in the summer of 1969 was comprised of transistor radios, gabbing on the telephone, and swimming pools.
It was a Sunday night and I happened to trounce through the living room, where my dad was settled into his corner recliner and Mom was perched on the sofa, and Walter Cronkite was intoning through the console TV's speaker. Dad uncharacteristically decreed, "You should watch this." So, I obediently slumped, cross-legged, smack-dab in front of the screen, and tried to decipher what was happening. The picture on the tube was wavy; jagged white lines skittering across the black screen. I was frankly bored, but Walter was excited. I watched Neil Armstrong descend a little ladder onto the surface of the moon and say something like, "That's one (static) step for man; one (static) leap for mankind."
Okay! Can I go now?
I was as unimpressed as only a teenager could be. As I stood up to leave, I sensed my dad's disappointment in my apathetic attitude. And Walter was surely disappointed in me. At least he didn't whip off his eyeglasses. Although I'm pretty sure he shed a tear.
To be honest, I couldn't grasp the magnitude of the moment. My world wasn't that big. At fourteen, one's universe doesn't extend much further than three feet in circumference; much less two hundred thousand-some miles. I thought walking across the Memorial Bridge to the neighboring town was an expedition.
And I can't use the music of the day as an excuse. 1969 was a putrid year for music, especially during that particular week. The number one song was by someone called Zager and Evans (Ooh! Not the Zager and Evans!)
Here's the number two song (no live performance video, but it's vital that I demonstrate what a fetid band Blood, Sweat, and Tears was):
And it actually does get worse. But why dwell on that? Here are some better songs from that week's chart:
(People actually thought like that in '69.)
(People actually thought like that in '69. And I'm aware that this is a poorly-synched video.)
(Don't you love how the lead singer dances? Sort of like Beto O'Rourke.)
The first time I saw this next group on TV, I thought, "What did these idiots do to that nice Mel Tillis song?". My second thought was, "Hey, loser with the tinted glasses and the earring ~ enjoy your career while it lasts."
It's a wonder I was preoccupied by music. I should have paid more attention to Dad and Walter. And my future science teachers would have appreciated my profound knowledge, as opposed to the befuddled looks I cast in their direction during lectures.
In hindsight, the moon landing was a pretty big deal. Sadly, I'm still not feelin' the love; but the mature me understands it was probably more extraordinary and earth-shattering than The Turtles' new hit.
(I used to subscribe to this ~ it had song lyrics!)
By 1969 I could afford to buy albums. Up 'til then I'd been solely a singles gal, because I was penniless. Of course, I was barely a teen, so jobs were hard to come by. Due to family circumstances, however, my mom frequently enlisted me to man the motel office (during the times she was off looking for my dad). Travelers were taken aback by finding a little girl waiting to check them in, but I just did what needed to be done ~ shove the heavy metal bar across the credit card swiper, tear the little side receipt off the registration card and hand it over, answer the beeping switchboard, make change for the Coke machine.
Mom reluctantly determined that I needed to be paid for those nights, when I really needed to be doing homework, so my paying wage became seventy-five cents per hour. Before too long I had enough money saved to buy an album!
Sometimes albums were the only means of obtaining songs I really liked, because our little town's selection of country singles was limited to the top ten. At least JC Penney's basement had a middling country album offering. Often my tastes were dictated by my best friend Alice's inclinations. I was still a relative country music novice; still feeling my way around this new musical world. I liked Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings, and Charley Pride (which essentially sums up sixties country music), but I was keen to spread my wings.
There was a pretty new gal on the scene, a beehived blonde who had teamed up with an old guy with a pale pompadour, and this was the album I bought by this duo:
There had been occasional duet pairings before Porter and Dolly, but none so successful or influential. In the "actual" country music world (as opposed to the faux New York/Hollywood lexicon), they were superstars. Any skim of country music charts from the late sixties will reveal a multitude of hit records by one or the other, or both.
In that vein:
Snigger if you will, but Carroll County Accident was an enormous hit. Granted, Alice and I weren't enamored with it ~ we made up our own, politically incorrect lyrics. But it could not be avoided on AM radio or ignored.
Then there was:
The album cover included a distant shot of Dolly's real-life husband, Carl Dean; the one and only time Carl allowed himself to participate in Parton's musical world.
I fell in love with the sweet voice of Lynn Anderson sometime around 1967. She'd begun moving away from her mom's penned songs (although Liz Anderson was no slouch ~ she did write "Strangers" after all) and was still signed to Chart Records until 1970.
This was an album of covers, but Lynn sang the hell out of them.
No live video, unfortunately:
Not my favorite Hag album, but with few exceptions (see below) I always bought Merle Haggard LP's. I did like this one:
Here's one I didn't buy, and my reasoning is this (if I can remember): I'd heard the single ad nauseam and I didn't need a live version of it. I liked studio recordings, although I never bought this as a single, either. Looking back, I think I had an issue with the title song. At fourteen I was far from sophisticated, but the track seemed almost mocking, and I wasn't on board with that. As for live Haggard albums, "The Fightin' Side Of Me" ranks up there with my favorites of all time, so I had no bias against live recordings.
I also didn't buy this one, and again I will explain. Johnny Cash is the hip country artist that non-country fans always cite. Granted, he had a network TV show in '69 that featured acts that rarely got television exposure, and he had a great gospel group performance (thanks to the Statlers) at the end of each episode. But real country fans weren't real Cash aficionados. All his songs sounded the same, with their thump-thudda-thump beat, over and over.
And speaking of overplayed songs, what could top this?
These last two will get all the kudos, naturally undeserved, but I choose to remember the LP's that touched me as a fourteen-year-old kid, newly seeping herself in country music.
In my quest to isolate the top one hundred songs of all time, I solicited feedback ~ got none. But it's never too late; you can still comment here.
I may have started with a false premise. I tried to simplify the process by listing the best, or most famous artists and asking for a favorite song by each. Maybe the top one hundred is not composed of the world's most renowned artists. Maybe every single one of the top songs is a one-hit wonder. It could be true. After all, everybody's got one great song inside them; am I right?
In fact, here's one:
In the cold light of reality, I started my own list.
Here's a category:
Any Instrumental
I have three:
Admittedly, this is difficult. I can't even land on one instrumental.
But it's not impossible.
Slowly, we'll get there. And by "we", I apparently mean "me". But don't be shy ~ try it; it's fun!
Some asshat at an event called the Du Quoin State Fair in Illinois decided to fire the band Confederate Railroad from its grandstand lineup (after signing a contract with them) because of their name. The band was scheduled to perform with Restless Heart and Shenandoah under the banner “90s Country Reloaded Day” (one of my all-time favorite country eras).
The "woke" imbecile went on to state:
“While every artist has a right to expression, we believe this
decision is in the best interest of serving all the people in our
state.”
Confederate Railroad was formed in 1987and hit its stride in the early nineties with country hits like "Queen of Memphis", "She Took It Like a Man", and "Trashy Women" (not a personal favorite). While not by any means one of my preferred bands, they were innocuous; and you know, I never gave the band's name a second thought. Every band needs a name, after all.
In the case of the Blah Blah Blah State Fair, apparently some annoying political blogger (is there any other kind?) complained that someone's (his) fragile feelings would be hurt by a band he'd never in his life heard of taking the stage in front of...you know, people. And who reads blogs anyway? Apparently only beta boys from the Illinois Ag Department.
Here's the deal, Ag Dude: It's just a name.
Coming up with a band name can be a tedious process or a spur-of-the-moment one. Sure, you could use a random word generator, which would produce a result like Fungus Quarry; or you could fret about it for months and quibble with your band mates until the resulting animus causes the group to break up. And if you do decide to stay together and ultimately land upon a name that everyone is okay with, then hit the big time, how could you know that some thirty years later a quivering mouse will pull the covers over his head and sob because your moniker has triggered infantile PTSD?
Sure, it starts with Confederate Railroad, but where does it end? We could dissect every country band name and find something to enrage us.
For instance, did you know that Oak Ridge, Tennessee was the place where in 1942 the first atomic bomb was built? Bye bye, Oak Ridge Boys. Sorry.
The name Asleep At The Wheel offends me because it promotes drowsy driving. Ray Benson, you had a great run. Now it's over.
I suppose you didn't know that The Statler Brothers were named after a brand of facial tissue. Is tissue bio-degradable? The environment is too precious to risk it. Harold, Don, et al ~ you've gotta go.
Restless Heart? Making fun of cardiac patients? Real sensitive.
Don't even get me started on Alabama. Roy Moore? Come on...
When it comes to Diamond Rio, I'm stringently opposed to sullying the earth to mine precious stones for the top one per cent to flash.
Oh, so you call yourselves Highway 101? I'd suggest Bike Lane 101 as an alternative. Need I explain?
The Judds ~ I don't know what "Judds" are, but I'm pretty certain I'm opposed to them.
Soon all the billboards will advertise, "Band ~ Your Name Here ~ Coming Soon!", and one can roll the dice on purchasing tickets for the show.
I'd vent my rage at the dolts who work for the Illinois Department of Agriculture, but it's all so silly (except not silly for the band, who lost a crucial paycheck).
In a previous post, as I bemoaned the current state of music, as all old people are required to do, I made a rather audacious statement:
Give me a lined tablet numbered one through one hundred, and I could sum up the entire essence of popular music.
Well, that's just insane. How many recordings have exploded into the world's ears since the advent of recorded music? Some say 97 million, but I think that's low-balling it. Shoot, my band alone has released maybe fifty, and that's an independent band. Regardless, even if the ninety-seven million number is somewhat accurate, how does one whittle those multiple millions down to a measly hundred?
And no two people would ever agree. Who is the arbiter of such things? Nobody. The glorious thing about music is that it's personal. It's mine. And it's yours. If my husband and I compared lists, we would be lucky to share one, maybe two songs. But I'm guessing probably one. And I have no idea what that one song could possibly be.
So, an exercise:
Let's pick a few famous artists and try to isolate the one song (one song!) by each of them we like the best.
I will begin the list of artists arbitrarily, with whomever happens to spontaneously flash into my flabby skull. Comments welcome and encouraged! And I haven't decided anything on my end, since I don't even know which artists I'm going to pick.
Let's go...
The Beatles (duh)
The Beach Boys
Dwight Yoakam
George Strait
The Glenn Miller Orchestra
Any Instrumentalist
Elton John
Merle Haggard
Any One-Hit Wonder
Anyone Outside Your Comfort Zone
Roy Orbison
Patsy Cline
Gordon Lightfoot
Buck Owens
Buddy Holly
Little Richard
Prince
U2
Chuck Berry
The Bee Gees
Creedence Clearwater Revival
Rosanne Cash
Jerry Lee Lewis
Emmylou Harris
Led Zeppelin
The Doors
The Rascals
Randy Travis
The Everly Brothers
The Rolling Stones
Ray Price
Bruce Springsteen
Bob Dylan
Dion/Dion and The Belmonts
Hank Williams
Elvis
Tom Petty
Marty Robbins
ABBA
Tammy Wynette
Sam Cooke
Lynn Anderson
Tommy James and The Shondells
The Eagles
The Judds
Steve Earle
You Name 'Em
Whew! What was I thinking? That's a lot of names that won't necessarily make my top one hundred. Somehow I'm thinking The Beatles probably will.
Since this is a video blog, I'm going to feature Someone Outside My Comfort Zone:
Help! I need to know the 100 best songs of all time, and I don't know if that's an attainable goal.
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.
Most people get sentimental at Christmas time. For me it's the Fourth of July. It's the time when I miss my mom and dad the most. So many of my memories are tied up in Independence Day. It didn't start out that way. As a little kid, I vaguely remember my dad lighting a sparkler with a red-tipped punk once darkness had settled across our homestead, and me gingerly waving it around as my parents offered suggestions like, "Make a circle with it!" I was scared to death of sparklers and only appeased my mom and dad because they seemed so invested in the experience. I much preferred the strips of red caps that one could snap with a toy gun or explode simply by stomping one's foot atop them.
On the farm we didn't have access to a wondrous fireworks display. My big brother managed to secure a stash of fountains and cones that he set off in the middle of the yard. I did like those, but the experience was short-lived and then I went to bed.
It wasn't until we moved and my brother, indulging his love of all things explosive, set up his own fireworks stand that I began to take an interest. I was at that odd age, twelve, when I was all legs, and didn't know that guys were beginning to ogle me; as I padded barefoot across the asphalt between my brother's stand with my baby brother and his best friend hanging across the counter trying to talk my brother into giving them free bottle rockets, and the swimming pool, where I slathered myself with Coppertone, dropped white-framed plastic sunglasses over my eyes and stretched out on a chaise.
In my state fireworks were legal and folks didn't feel compelled to don a suit of armor to touch them, so all manner of Camaros and Pontiacs whipped into our driveway and their owners made a mad dash to my brother's stand to purchase their Deluxe Assortments. My brother hit upon an idea to increase business ~ he'd hold a drawing for a jumbo-pack. All one had to do was scribble their name and phone number on a slip of paper and drop it in the box. Like most giveaways (I suspect), no prize was ultimately awarded. In those days, the independent businessman had lots of competition. Little wooden stands were cropping up everywhere ~ there was even one directly across the highway. My brother trash-talked that other stand at every opportunity. "They sell duds," he'd murmur to potential customers who were eying the plastic-flag festooned plywood sarcophagus on the other side of the road.
KFYR played songs by Procol Harum and Scott McKenzie and The Rascals, and mostly by The Doors:
The thermometer outside my mom's kitchen window read 83 degrees. My chubby five-year-old sister and her best friend toddled down the concrete steps to the pool in their one-pieces and flip-flops, and proceeded to annoy me, while I did my best to ignore them. Mom was minding the motel office and surveyed the entire scene through the vast picture windows.
Dad kept cool in his own particular manner, by moseying up to the bar next door and downing copious glasses of whiskey sevens. Around six o'clock he'd stagger home and want to play a round of lawn darts with whoever'd agree to take him on. My entire family was essentially together in one spot, albeit lost in their individual endeavors, so it all felt comfortable...like home.
But I was by then crispy-red from the July sun and in no mood to witness
the potential sharp-pointed dart injuries, so I'd grab my striped bath towel and ascend the steps
back to my air-cooled room, dodging hot rockets that zipped over the motel roof.
By the mid-eighties, I had children of my own and shorter legs. Dad was many-years sober and his drink of choice was coffee slurped from a white-handled mug. He and mom had sold the motel to save their sanity (and marriage) and retired to a colonial split-level in the city. The white house with its black roof was "our" house. Everybody showed up willy-nilly and walked in. Family reunions occurred around the Fourth of July ~ one or two sisters and assorted kids arriving from Texas; my second oldest sister and her husband having long ago ensconced themselves in the same town showing up fashionably late for any gathering. My big brother had kids of his own and only a tiny remnant of pyromania. My little brother, too, had young boys; and he schooled them in the finer points of firing up the by-now puny Roman candles and comets.
All that occurred long after the requisite Fourth of July activities and long past sundown.
The ultimate highlight of July 4 was the Mandan parade. The parade was an enormous undertaking, and that was just for the attendees. The day would begin around nine a.m. when sundry family members would congregate at Mom and Dad's house with their coolers and sunscreen and dicker over who would ride with whom. By ten, wedged into a distant parking space, we'd disembark with our essentials and trudge down to Main Street to claim our viewing spot on the grassy berm. We'd generally end up smack-dab in front of McDonald's, where my sister-in-law worked behind the counter. Our group generally consisted of my dad, two brothers, my little sister and me, and all our assorted kids. Mom couldn't take the heat, so she stayed back to mix up potato salad, toast dinner rolls, and whip cream to top her home-baked pies. Once my sister-in-law's shift ended, she'd stroll out to join the family gathering. My sister and I parked ourselves on a curb with our cameras, the men would loll behind us, and we'd throw out an occasional arm to stop our kids from traipsing out into the street.
(This is my school!)
The parade was a cornucopia of horses, marching bands, military veterans, kitschy polka bands atop floats, all manner of business establishment representation, and of course, farm implements. "I had one of those," Dad would exclaim so often that it became a running joke. We'd all stand for the American flag as it passed, and no one threw a tantrum about it.
Getting home was a mini-nightmare, but we'd turn around and do it again the next year. Mom and Dad's house was an oasis to our sweaty bunch of wayfarers. In her recliner, Mom snorted awake at the sound of the first pack of rag-tag parade revelers returning. My sister and I would ensconce ourselves in front of the basement television and watch MTV videos.
Like these:
Our kids played outside...and inside...and back outside...then inside (they were boys and had indefatigable energy). My brothers dozed in their living room chairs and Dad smoked out in the garage. Mom fretted over when to send someone to KFC to pick up a bucket of original recipe ~ my second oldest sister and her brood still hadn't shown up (we guessed that their regular wake-up time was sometime around noon). Everyone was starving and someone broached the notion of simply eating without them, but Mom wouldn't hear of it. Finally around five p.m. the lost travelers would appear and we'd chow down like we'd never in our lives tasted food.
When dusk finally settled, we straggled outside to sit on the concrete front step, nurse a cup of coffee and await the mini-show. My big brother, the long established expert, set up various explosives in the middle of the street and tried to coax the boys of the next generation to run out, barefoot, and fire them up. My little brother, not to be outdone, dragged out his purchased stash and started a parallel display. No sparklers made an appearance.
I wasn't all that impressed ~ been there ~ but I cherished the nearness of my family and their familiar scents.
I didn't know how soon it would all end. Too soon.
The Fourth of July is so different now. Somebody's lighting firecrackers outside my window as I write this. And I don't actually care, although I wonder where they laid their hands on them, since this is a scaredy-cat state.
My family (those that remain) won't read this, but I want to say that I love you and I miss you.
And my heart aches today for those ordinary, precious times.
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