The other day must have been Diana Ross‘ birthday, or something, as our local AAA station played a block of her music, from The Supremes through the excellent “Upside Down” single she did with the Chic crew. The penultimate track in the block was a song that, when it started out, I’d forgotten about, “Love Hangover.” While driving around and digging this unexpected block, I turned up the volume once more and as this forgotten hit from my early teen years started up. Then it happened: the song suddenly shifted to a Why Bother? disco jam that never let up for the rest of the song. It kicks in about 90 seconds into this live version.
“Why bother,” those who like to dance may say, “because we like to dance, Cement Hips!” I don’t know, even if I could dance, what’s there to get out the tacked-on disco exercise that that song turns into. I might as well be strapped into a massage chair. Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
It made me think of the classic Mel’s Rockpile episode on SCTV, where Richard Harris performed his new stylings on “MacArthur Park.” That bit said it all about the moment when disco went from a fun, innovative, cultural celebration to an impersonal Happy Ending.
Perhaps a few of you also suffer from a “hard drive” cluttered with weird pop culture knowledge gathered from sudden dives into rabbit holes. I forget a lot of important things, I am pretty sure, because my brain retains so much pointless information that only interests me. Here’s the latest case in point.
I was watching this excellent episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show the other night, and in the middle of an already top-shelf episode involving the possible firing Sally or Buddy and Rob getting an offer from a puppet, who should show up but Laugh-In cast member and Philadelphia native Henry Gibson. I always get a kick out of that guy!
At the following point in the show, he stands up and recites a poem. For the next few days, I kept thinking, “Where have I heard that before?” See if it rings a bell for you.
Last night, while washing the dishes, out of nowhere, I finally made the connection…after the jump! It goes without saying that as soon as I finished my chore, I jumped down a rabbit hole and eventually forgot to tell my wife something important.
My dad (left), about age 23 with a 12-year-old Bobby Rydell. Dad had taken Bobby to see Johnny Ray. The photo appeared in an A&E Biography of Bobby.
My Dad died last night. He was a month shy of 90, lived a good life, his passing was neither unexpected nor drawn-out nor painful. I’m not writing this to look for condolences or sympathy but because one of Dad’s greatest gifts to me was a love of music and where better to acknowledge that and celebrate it than Rock Town Hall.
Not that Dad was much of a rock & roll fan. He did have broad tastes though and music was always playing at our house. Roger Miller to Tom Jobim to Chet Baker to Frank Sinatra, I heard a lot and loved it all and still do.
For a first-generation Italian-American in South Philly, Sinatra was of course number one for my father (and my mother). That was passed on to me. I like to say that I’ve loved Sinatra for 66 years even though I’m only 65 years old since I know I heard plenty of Frank in utero.
Dad saw so much live music back in the day and had so many stories to tell me. Chatting with Ella Fitzgerald before a show and buying her a drink at the bar of the club. Being the only person at another gig with Rosemary Clooney, telling her she didn’t have to do the show just for him (although she did). Hanging with Bobby Darin at a bar in Philly when Keely Smith called looking for him (and Darin telling the bartender – my uncle – to tell her he wasn’t there and if she ever called, he was never there, although his language was more colorful). “Managing” Bobby Rydell early on in his career (which mostly consisted of him collecting money at the Jersey shore while Bobby performed on the beach and taking him up to New York to audition for Red Skeleton).
Me and Bobby with the photo above. He was very happy to have a copy again.
The list of people he saw multiple times in little jazz clubs in Philly and NYC is staggering – Miles, Monk, Chet Baker, Ahmad Jamal, Anita O’Day, Astrud Gilberto, and countless others. And Dad wasn’t shy and the times were such that it was okay to talk to all these people, buy them a drink. One story he loved to tell was about chatting with Chet Baker before a show and asking him to play the song “Trickleydidlier” which was Dad’s favorite. Chet had no idea what the song was and apologized to Dad, saying “I don’t know these songs; they put the charts in front of me in the studio and I play.”
And, of course, seeing Sinatra at a restaurant after one of Frank’s shows and striking up a conversation with him.
Dad was a baker, a cake decorator. (Back before Cake Boss and any of that stuff, one of Dad’s creations was featured in the Philadelphia Bulletin in 1964, when he iced a cake and made it look like a Beatles mop-top.) He had one job working at a bakery in Wayne. He went to a lot of shows at the Main Point, seeing James Taylor, Janis Ian, even Bruce, and others long before anyone knew who they were.
I can’t meet a person named Luke – or talk to that same Luke for eternity – without thinking of this line from The Band classic “The Weight.” I’ve never met and may never meet an Anna Lee, so for me, the name Anna Lee does not count in this thread.
Is there a name in operation in your life – a name attached to people you actually meet – that you associate specifically with a particular line in a song?
This is NOT a Last Man Standing thread, so don’t start throwing out songs with names in them willy-nilly, like Maybelline. I may have to call bullshit on you if you tell me that you always think of the song “Maybelline” when you meet a Maybelline. If you really know a Maybelline, however, be my guest.
Furry Murray, also known as the Murray Man, nicknames courtesy Kevin Luhpotto, because he most probably didn’t have the equipment upstairs to come up with anything better (just for the record, at age 8, Kevin introduced me to the whole concept of junking via a visit to a car graveyard where we found unopened flat top cans of Budweiser underneath the seats of an early ’60s Ford Falcon. Nice! After that find, we went back to his house where his mother served us pancakes drenched with Ms. Butterworth’s syrup. Being a Log Cabin man, I couldn’t take that, so I called my mom to pick me up asap. I mention all this to let you know that my picky dick credentials were already formed and firmly established)/age 17/plays varsity baseball/musical equipment: Cortez Strat copy/major influences: the Beach Boys, Bruce Springsteen, and Elvis Costello.
Furry’s Cortez Strat. (Photo courtesy of the Rock ‘n Roll Foyer of Fame.)
Jo, also known as Jojo, nicknames courtesy me for no specific reasons whatsoever/age 17/plays varsity basketball/known for his good looks and strut/musical equipment: kick drum, kick pedal, snare, floor tom, and a 16-inch crash cymbal, manufacturer unknown/major influences: the Gap Band and Styx.
E. Pluribus Gergely, also known as Weed, sarcastic nickname courtesy Furry Murray (Why? Call me the cautious Paul McCartney of the power trio. I didn’t want to waste my entry into the world of ganja via a keg party with a bunch of rednecks in a cornfield. I was looking forward to some arty kind of thing I thought might happen when I got to college)/age 17/ class clown/musical equipment: Fender Duo Sonic guitar and Peavey Classic amplifier/major influences: Beatles, Stones, and thanks to the Murray Man, Elvis Costello.
And let it be said that there would be no Vandals if there was no Elvis Costello.
Allow me to illustrate.
Setting: Junior year at Boiling Spring High School, Boiling Springs PA, spring 1982.
While making a pit stop at my locker where the stench is ungodly (within the locker are uneaten paper bag lunches piled under damp gym towels, books, papers, half assed completed projects for art, home economics, industrial arts, etc.), Murray comes up to me with two albums in his hand: Elvis Costello’s My Aim is True and This Year’s Model. Very unsettling. First off, Murray’s a sports guy. Sports guys don’t listen to that stuff. The Cars, Petty, the Greg Kihn Band…that was all fine and dandy, but not Elvis Costello. Elvis Costello was punk rock. Second, Murray doesn’t seem to care one whit about showing the albums to me, even though he’s surrounded by his sports posse. “Weed, ya gotta listen to …”
No way in hell was that going to happen. On the album covers, Costello looked not unlike one of the Sex Pistols, a group I heard about on late night news, who continually threatened the livelihoods of just about everyone in England. “That’s really not for me.”
“Hey man, I always listen to the stuff you give me to…”
He had a point. “Alright, alright, just give me the albums. I’ll call you later tonight.”
Up in my bedroom, around 9 at night or so, after a glass of wine and a chapter of The Case of the Drowning Duck, by Erle Stanley Gardner (my taste for Perry Mason and booze happened around the same time), I give in, flop This Year’s Model on my Dual turntable, crank up the volume on my Pioneer receiver, and get walloped by the sound blasting out of my JBLs. (Money well spent from my first job washing dishes at Rillo’s.) Jesus Christ Almighty! All it took was about 30 seconds of “No Action” and I was ready to begin my new life as Costello’s most devoted apostle.
