D's Notebook

Month: February 2023 (Page 2 of 2)

Reaching for the Stars, Vol. 82

February 14, 2023 /

Chart Week: February 9, 1980
Song: “I Wanna Be Your Lover” – Prince
Chart Position: #20, 11th week on the chart. Peaked at #11 for two weeks in January and February.

It started here. This was the very first Prince single to crack the Top 40. It took a few years, but eventually just about everyone around the world who owned a radio knew the name Prince.

But in 1980, even the great Casey Kasem got his name wrong.

In this week’s countdown, Casey shared the story of how Prince signed his first record contract. He went back to Prince’s childhood, explaining how the young phenom taught himself to play 27 different instruments. The artist took that audaciousness to the studio and recorded a demo completely on his own, playing every instrument and producing every track, and then shopped those demos to record companies in LA. Four big labels were interested, but he turned them all down when each company refused to give him the freedom to stick to that DIY recording process.

Eventually Warner Brothers saw that his talent was worth the risk. In return for letting Prince loose in the studio, Warner Brothers would retain the rights to his music. Foreshadowing!

The point of this post is how Casey got a few things wrong in his biographical sketch of this exciting new artist. He said Prince was 19 and had graduated from high school the previous year. In fact Prince was 21 and had graduated from Central High in Minneapolis in 1976.

The AT40 host made a far bigger flub, though.

In the minute or so that he related Prince’s path to stardom, Casey kept referring to him as “Roger Nelson,” closing by saying that “… he doesn’t use his real name, though. He bills himself as Prince.”

I’ve heard several countdowns from 1980 where Casey refers to Prince as Roger Nelson. It drives me crazy every time. Because, as every music geek should know, Prince’s real name was Prince. His birth certificate read Prince Rogers Nelson. Rogers. Not Roger.

I’ve always wondered who made this mistake. Did Warner Brothers accidentally call him “Roger” Nelson in their promotional material? Did Prince register his music and lyrics under that name? Did someone at Billboard or AT40 decide to call him that after digging into his biographical details? While promoting this song, Prince was indeed telling people that he was just 19 (see in the video below). Was he also telling people that his real name was “Roger” Nelson? For a man who hated being honest with the media, especially about his personal life, you can never be sure if it was all part of some scheme he dreamed up. Again, foreshadowing!

By mid–1983 everyone at AT40 had figured it out, and soon Prince’s given name was a mainstay on the countdown.

Of course, well after Casey left AT40, Prince’s name became a problem again. When Warner Brothers refused to release his new music as quickly as he wanted, or give him full control of his back catalog, Prince changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol. Thus began The Artist Formerly Known As Prince era.

The song is an absolute jam. It is joyous, cocky, and funky as hell. He’s pleading, but he’s not begging. What makes it all work is the vulnerability that Prince attempts to hide with his swagger. He’s young, he doesn’t have a lot of the material things other dudes might have. But he guarantees that he will rock a lady’s world if she just gives him the chance.[1]

I wanna turn you on, turn you out
All night long, make you shout
“Hey, Lover!”

It is loaded with the innuendo that Prince would become (in)famous for.[2] And while the androgyny that would play a bigger role in his persona in the coming years was a bit muted here, it was still present enough that you couldn’t be sure exactly who he was singing to, or who he was singing as.

Put all that together and it’s remarkable this nearly cracked the Top 10 in 1980. It was certainly well ahead of his time. But Roger Nelson, errr, Prince, was always ahead of his time. 10/10

Totally a coincidence, but “I Wanna Be Your Lover” reached its peak when Michael Jackson’s “Rock With You” held down the top spot. A little preview of how a pretty good chunk of the coming decade would be, with Prince and Michael dominating the pop charts.

I’m sooooo glad that Prince performing this song on American Bandstand is back on YouTube again. Dick Clark said the interview in the middle of this segment was the most difficult of his career. Over the years I’ve heard different explanations for Prince’s behavior. He was super nervous to be on national TV for the first time. He was pissed they wouldn’t let him play live and forced him to lip-sync.[3] He was upset about Clark’s crack about Minneapolis. A bandmate claimed Prince did it intentionally to get more publicity. Whatever the explanation, this appearance is absolute gold. Put it in the time capsule, my friends.

  1. He later said the song was written both for and about singer Patrice Rushen, who he had a “mad crush on.”  ↩

  2. “I wanna be the only one you come for…”  ↩

  3. Which could also explain how bizarre the performance is.  ↩

Weekend Notes

February 13, 2023 /

HS Hoops

I ended up going to the Cathedral game Friday night after C and a friend decided at the last minute that they wanted to go. Amazingly this is the first boys game I’ve attended in my four years as a CHS parent.

We only stayed for three quarters, as C’s back started acting up around halftime. We saw a very tense game in front of a packed gym. The #8 Irish were playing Fishers, who aren’t ranked but seem to have some good, young talent and gave Cathedral fits on defense all night.

Xavier Booker barely played because of foul trouble, and wasn’t very effective when he was in. Two other key CHS players struggled with fouls as well. Still, their backups went on a run before half and built an 8-point lead. Fishers countered with something like a 14–2 run to take the lead in the third. That spurt ended when they got a T for a player dunking after a foul was called at midcourt. The foul was legit but the T was a little suspect.

It flipped the entire game. CHS had a three point lead when we left, got it up to six, and survived three last minute 3-point attempts by FHS to win by three. I guess Booker had a nice alley-oop dunk after we left but didn’t do much else.

I was not super impressed by CHS. They have a lot of athletic talent but do not play together well, make bad decisions, and don’t take advantage of Booker, who likes to roam outside the lane rather than use his size inside. They have been missing their best shooter, who is another D1 recruit, for about a month. I’ve watched them on TV with him this year and they don’t play much smarter when he’s on the court.

They are now 15–4, with two of those losses to out-of-state teams. They kind of coasted last season and kicked it in when the tournament began, so maybe they’ll do the same this year. It sure helped that they had two guards now playing at D1 schools who could steady the team when things went sideways, and I think those guys not being on the roster hurts more than Booker’s development helps.

But I’m not a coach, what do I know.

Jayhawk Talk

Another slow start in a Saturday game. I’m not sure why these seem to plague KU so much, but you can pretty much count on it happening if they play at 11 or noon central.

Fortunately Oklahoma did not play nearly as well as they did a month ago in Lawrence and the Jayhawks used two huge runs to blow the Sooners out.

Ernest Udeh continued his remarkable development. He’s just doing simple stuff on offense. Screening, rolling hard, and dunking. I had to listen to part of the game on SiriusXM and the KU guys were calling him “Diet Doke” after his third dunk. Not sure he deserves to be compared to Udoka Azubuike quite yet. Smart coaches are going to begin pressuring him when he gets the ball in handoffs on the perimeter, because he clearly is not comfortable and passes it back as quickly as he can.

The real revelation was his defense. He was only credited with two blocks but I know he had at least one more and challenged several other shots. When Tanner Groves started throwing his old man fakes at Ernest, he just stood still, kept his arms straight up, and forced Groves to pass.

You can’t read too much into these late season surges by freshmen. He has put together several solid games in a row, though, and I think KU fans can safely assume he will be in the rotation going forward.

Former Villanova coach Jay Wright did the game for CBS, his second KU game this year. I really like him. He needs to polish his delivery some, but he gives really good insights. Some of that is based on just being a year removed from coaching and his familiarity with what both Bill Self and Porter Moser do. So far, though, he’s much better with Bill Raftery than Grant Hill was. It helps that he clearly really gets along and respects Self and enjoys watching KU play.

Kid Hoops

One game this Saturday, against a team we lost to by four three weeks ago. We were missing our best player, though, and you are never sure who else will show up. Plus L’s knees took a turn for the worse last week and she was going to be a step slow.

Oh, and the team we played had three girls they didn’t have in our first meeting. One of them is the daughter of a former NBA player. I wouldn’t say she’s a star, but she’s better than anyone we have. Another is the big girl L has played against in CYO ball for the last three years. Those two got pretty much every rebound all day. Their guards kept our offense from doing anything. We had three turnovers before we got the ball across the half court stripe for the first time.

In short, it was a disaster. We lost 57–16 and the game honestly wasn’t that close. The other team hit six 3’s (two of them banked in), didn’t miss a free throw, and while I wouldn’t say they were super gifted on offense, they played super smart and made the easy shots their offense gave them.

About that big girl from CYO. She just joined this team, which is through the Catholic high school in Hamilton County, two weeks ago. We had heard her parents were shopping her around, visiting three Catholic and two other private high schools asking the coaches if they would run their offenses around her.[1] This girl is over six feet tall – and has been since 5th grade – her mom had a chance to play in the WNBA and her dad did play in the NFL. But she’s stopped growing, can’t jump, and is slow. She is a beast on defense and rebounding in middle school age-group ball. I’m not sure she’s going to be a stud in high school.

The real key is she has a younger sister who will absolutely be a star. The parents and grandparents are royal pains, but I can see how you take Big Sis and deal with them to get the younger sister in three years.

L had two measly points and was pissed about her play after. I told her not to sweat it. She was playing on a bad knee, against a really good team, and with her usual weird mix of teammates. Chalk it up to a bad day and move on, hoping to do better next week.

Super Bowl

So close to a classic, ruined by a terrible last two minutes.

Listen, the holding call against the Eagles on the Chiefs’ game-winning drive likely did not change the KC’s final score. The Chiefs almost certainly would have made the field goal that won the game from a slightly longer distance.

The penalty did rob us of a potentially amazing ending. Philly would have had the ball one more time, with a chance for another lengthy drive to tie or win. The Chiefs defense, which had made some tremendous plays all night, would have one last chance to contain Jalen Hurts. Maybe the game ends in a whimper with the Eagles turning the ball over on downs. I like to think something special would have happened, one way or the other, had that flag not been thrown.

Instead we got a call that hadn’t been made all night, the Chiefs intentionally falling down at the one, and then letting the clock run down while everyone stood around doing nothing. It took all the drama out of what had been a really good game.

I guess that’s more a critique of how modern football is played in general than last night specifically.

I thought Rihanna’s halftime show was pretty flat. Part of that was the presentation. I bet that whole scene was amazing to watch in person. However, it felt like something was lost in the translation to TV. You couldn’t get the whole perspective of the physical layers or size of the performance. The color choices – bright reds and shocking whites – combined with big differences between light and dark in the stadium was too much for the dynamic range of Fox’s cameras. Most of the colors looked blown out and were hard to look at.

My biggest old man beef was how Rihanna lip synced so much of the show. Props to her for being up on those platforms; I have no idea how they weren’t swaying a lot more than they did. And for doing so while pregnant! But this is the Super Bowl. Show some life, belt out your biggest jams instead of casually riding in-and-out over the recorded track.

I’m sure the Fox News crowd how some other critiques of her performance.

Favorite commercials, in no particular order:
Will Ferrell for GM/Netflix
The Breaking Bad guys for Pop Corners
The Bud Light hold music ad
The Farmer’s Dog piece that apparently made everyone cry. I’m not a dog person so I just thought it was a nice piece.

  1. Petty, CYO sports rumors are the best.  ↩

Friday Playlist

February 9, 2023 /

I have a couple appointments in the morning, so posting this late Thursday night.

“Anyway I Find You” – The Men
A pretty solid song on its own. But the vocals remind me of an old-school classic…

“Old White Church” – Arthur Dodge & The Horsefeathers
One of the most distinctive, if not necessarily famous, voices that came out of the Lawrence, KS music scene in the ’90s.

“Crisis” – Elizabeth M. Drummond
The terrific debut single from the latest in the long line of amazing Australian female indie rockers. (Worth noting this song came out last summer, and she’s released plenty more since then. But I just discovered it.)

“Motherland” – Julia Jacklin
Speaking of amazing Aussie indie rockers, one of my very favorites by Ms. Jacklin, from way back in 2016.

“The Weakness” – Ruston Kelly
This week’s “Country or Not” entry. I’ve shared some of Kelly’s music before. His more indie stuff sure sounds good to my ears.

“I’m So Tired” – Deserta
This song has all kinds of cool, ’80s layers to it. It belongs in a Michael Mann movie.

“Wishing (If I Had a Photograph of You)” – A Flock of Seagulls
I heard this twice last week, which means I had to include it. It is an absolute jam, and a good reminder these lads weren’t just one hit wonders. OK, they kind of were, as this song only hit #26 and “Space Age Love Song” hit #30. But they still charted!

“I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself” – The White Stripes
Burt Bacharach, who died aged 94 on Wednesday, wrote a shit-ton of classic songs. For my money, this is the best interpretation of any of them.

“Love Songs on the Radio” – Mojave 3
Happy Valentine’s Day to all the lovers out there.

“Serpents” – Sharon Van Etten
This week SVE announced an expanded, anniversary edition of her 2012 album Tramp. Included with that announcement was the release of this video, filmed back then but never seen until now. Sharon said after reviewing the final product, she was too insecure in how she looked to allow it to be released. Which makes it all-the-more incredible that she released the video for “Porta” last year in which she performed pilates.

“Serpents” was my #4 song of 2012.

NBA Trade Deadline Insanity

February 9, 2023 /

I have a couple posts in various states of readiness that I figured I would focus on for today.

Until I turned on the local news at 7:00 AM this morning to catch the weather – storms were blowing through at the time – and saw a blurb on the crawl at the bottom of the screen saying Kevin Durant had been traded to the Phoenix Suns.

WHAT?!?!

I jumped over to ESPN and got the details.

Holy shit!

There are several NBA podcasts in my queue and I try to listen to at least a few each week. There had been rumblings that maybe the Suns would look into getting Durant. It seemed like more of a “Here’s something that conceptually could happen, but the odds against it are pretty high” type of rumor, though.

Then the damn thing happened! And I love it.

I don’t love it because I’m a fan of the Suns or KD or the Nets. Rather, I love the chaos and the jaw-dropping, HOLY SHIT-edness of it. This is one of those sports moments that I will remember for a long time and that will reverberate around the league for years.

You have Phoenix, with a new, aggressive ownership group who are only in place because their previous majority owner was a really bad guy, wasting no time in giving the franchise, which was in the NBA Finals two years ago but faltered in last season’s playoffs, a massive jolt for another chance to win a title.

You have Brooklyn, who went all-in with the highly combustable trio of KD, Kyrie Irving, and James Harden, throwing in the towel, now trading all three away in about a year. We will learn more about their motivation in the coming hours and days, but it sure seems like the majority owner grew tired of that group’s lack of commitment and love of drama and decided to do a hard reset as quickly as possible. I love that he was super petty and refused to send Kyrie to the Lakers, his preferred destination.

And you have Durant, who orchestrated bringing that group together in Brooklyn, also realizing it wasn’t going to work and agreeing to do what he did when he left Oklahoma City for Golden State and join an established group as the gun hired to put them over the top.

None of this seemed likely or even possible until late last week, when Kyrie requested a trade. A request which came just a couple days after he said the Nets were in great shape because there were no guys on the roster who were “half-in.” Good luck with that time bomb, Dallas!

I had been keenly awaiting this year’s trade deadline since the fall, figuring the Pacers would move veterans to augment their rebuild. Then they won a lot more than expected until Tyrese Haliburton got hurt, re-signed Myles Turner, and chose to only make some minor deals.

It was still a monumentally entertaining trade window, with a number of pretty significant trades that were then overshadowed by Brooklyn cleaning house.

Well, done, NBA! A+!

Jayhawk Talk: Bouncing Back

February 7, 2023 /

I admit I was dreading Monday’s KU-Texas game.

Normally, coming off a terrible loss like Iowa State’s destruction of the Jayhawks Saturday, I would be fired up for a Big Monday home game. It would be a chance to wash away the bad taste of the loss with a big, loud crowd and a W.

But I also watched a big chunk of the second half of the Longhorns’ come-from-behind win at Kansas State over the weekend. That got me super worried.[1]

Texas is long, athletic, and tough. Like they usually are. But they play with a confidence and swagger I hadn’t seen in a Texas team in years. I could tell from their body language that they were going to win, no matter what K-State did.

I figured the combination of a team that is a bad physical matchup for KU and also the hottest team in the conference with a KU team that is injured both physically and psychologically would equal a Longhorns win and end to KU’s Big 12 title hopes.

Thus I was both surprised and pleased that KU jumped out to a quick lead, weathered multiple Texas runs, and eventually won by eight.

There was a lot to be happy about. KU scored 88 points despite only hitting two 3 pointers and with the Big 12’s leading scorer only scoring two points. Joseph Yesufu finally had a game where he contributed enough that you wanted him on the court. Ernest Udeh continued his growth. Gradey Dick is still struggling to get open from behind the arc, but battled to tally a team-high 21 points. The Jayhawks out-rebounded the bigger Longhorns.

Perhaps most importantly DaJuan Harris was turned up, or turnt up as the kids say, from the beginning. He’s generally pretty steady in demeanor. Lately he had seemed low energy. I still think that knock to the head he took three weeks ago had some long term effects. Anyway, last night he was as fired up as I’ve seen him, and from the jump. He was a demon on defense and hit some huge shots late.

Oh, and he threw this ridiculous pass.

It was a very good team performance on a night when Jalen Wilson was totally shut down. Anything less would have ended with a loss.

The stats ESPN flashed after the game were staggering. Bill Self is now 36–0 in Big Monday home games. He is also 11–1 against top 5 opponents at home, the highest win percentage in the history of the game.[2]

I told some friends yesterday that this felt like one of those games that would require Self to find the right strings to pull and the right mental buttons to push to get a wounded team focused and able to win. It reminded me of the Baylor game two years ago, when a mercurial KU team ended the Bears’ hopes for an undefeated season. Or the Texas game back in 2016 when Cliff Alexander had just been suspended and Perry Ellis was injured, yet KU hammered a Longhorns squad that had three seven footers.

I think Self did do some smart things sticking with a small team late that put Texas’ bigs in bad spots defensively. But that was more a function of his guards playing well than something strategically brilliant Self did.

It was mostly Harris being aggressive and finishing. Kevin McCullar looking to get to the rim instead of bricking 3’s. And the bench turning in their best collective game of the year.

Ah, the bench. That was huge. Yesufu has maddened KU fans since he arrived because we all saw his highlight reels from his years at Drake, and he’s never played anything like that at KU. Even when he had a chance to show his raw physical gifts he looked like he was wearing a weight vest. Last night he was 5–9 from the field with five rebounds and zero turnovers. He still mixed in a dumb play or two, but he was a huge positive.

I wondered if MJ Rice would ever play again after he failed to get back on an Iowa State break Saturday and gave up two offensive rebounds and a basket on the play when Zach Clemence may have destroyed his knee to try to stop one of those layups. Rice wasn’t great last night, but at least he could stay on the court for more than 30 seconds at a time. If the ESPN box score is right, he played 15 minutes, which has to be the most for him in a conference game.

With Clemence out, Bobby Pettiford injured again, and Zuby Ejiofor unable to play for a few more weeks, it was imperative that Yesefu, Udeh, and Rice be, at worst, net neutrals in the minutes they got. They each contributed big time to the dub.

It was kind of fun to see some bad blood developing late in the game. Timmy Allen never stops talking and does his best to get under everyone’s skin. He and Jalen Wilson had to be separated after Allen drew Wilson’s fourth foul on a charge. Gradey Dick and Sir’Jabari Rice had words late, and then Tyrese Hunter got involved. It would benefit everyone if the season finale between these teams in Austin was the deciding game for the Big 12.

I also loved that, after the ESPN sideline reporter shared that Allen told his teammates in a late-game huddle that they just needed two stops and two buckets and they would win because “(KU) will fall apart,” Harris immediately scored and then Allen missed two straight and KU was suddenly ahead by 10 again.

KU went through the toughest stretch of their schedule 4–4. When it began I told friends I would be thrilled with 5–3. There was a one-point loss in overtime in Manhattan in there, so I’m calling it a success. Still that one game could be the difference if Texas, Baylor, Iowa State, or KSU don’t mix in a 4–4 stretch of their own.

And KU can’t fuck it up by going 0–2 in Oklahoma next week. Even though those are road games, losing both would be a killer.

As the Big 12 title seems like a bit of a stretch at the moment, my hope for February is that KU can get, and stay, healthy; keep developing the bench; and find a way to get Gradey Dick more open looks from deep. He hasn’t shot poorly from a mechanical standpoint. To my eye his shot has gotten a little quick, but his core mechanics still look good. Many of his misses at Iowa State were in-and-out, so more luck than anything else. Still, you want a guy feeling comfortable so when he does get looks he’s just relaxing and firing instead of having that mental pressure of “I better hit this because I may not get another chance for 10 minutes.”

I think a lot of KU’s issues right now are more because the Big 12 is so strong and knows them so well. Get to March healthy and there’s no reason to think they can’t beat just about anyone they play. They are also so reliant on two guys offensively, struggle to guard at a couple spots, and lacking in size that they will be vulnerable in every NCAA game they play.

That’s looking too far ahead. I’m going to enjoy the Texas win for the next four days.

Rock Chalk, bitches.

  1. I was constantly switching between that game and the Purdue-Indiana game. Same when I had to run L over to a friends, but on SiriusXM.  ↩

  2. Twitter was later saying it is actually 10–1. I don’t know which is right. I just know both are pretty good.  ↩

Monday Links

February 6, 2023 /

We had a pretty boring weekend and I’m saving the Jayhawk Talk for tomorrow, so a good day so share the latest stack of links I’ve accumulated.

Simply the best accounting of what Tech Karen has done to Twitter.

Extremely Hardcore

It’s pretty amazing how many of the people who came out of Toronto’s Second City are still culturally relevant. This is a terrific history of how they came together and built the group. Real OG’s stayed up super late to watch SCTV in the ‘80s.

Funny People

I love so much that the whole King of Kong thing just keeps going.

Donkey Kong cheating case rocked by photos of illicit joystick modification

St P’s moved their school play to Butler’s auditorium this year. Because of that, they had to sell tickets through Ticketmaster. Thus a $13 ticket turned into a $24 ticket. For a freaking middle school play. Ticketmaster is a perfect example of how lobbying hurts the consumer.

This piece dive’s into Ticketmaster’s history of manipulating both the market and legislation to protect their monopoly. There’s a big focus on Pearl Jam’s battle with the company in the mid–90s.

It’s funny how that conflict has been painted, even by PJ loyalists, as a futile and silly effort, a modern example of tilting at windmills. As this piece lays out, much of that view is thanks to Ticketmaster’s controlling of the narrative.

Ticket Master’s Dark History

This is one of the most creative and clever examples of sports journalism I’ve come across in a long time.

Choose Your Own Adventure: 2023 Indianapolis Pacers Trade Deadline

Could the astronauts on the doomed space shuttle Columbia have been rescued before they had to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere with a hopelessly compromised vehicle? It was unlikely, but NASA explored the possibilities while investigating the explosion of Columbia, which occurred 20 years ago last week.

The audacious rescue plan that might have saved space shuttle Columbia

Friday Playlist

February 3, 2023 /

Generally my focus in these weekly playlists is on sharing new music, the stuff I have time to dig up that I know most of you are unable to. I’m going to tweak that recipe going forward.

There will still be plenty of new music. In addition, though, I’m going to start throwing in more classic tracks. I don’t know that I’ll ever get these up to the size of my old podcast playlists, but that does mean as my schedule allows, I’ll be sharing a little more music each week than I traditionally have. Good news for those of you who follow along on Spotify!

“Nothing Ever Changes” – Ibex Clone
If Bob Mould had led a British postpunk band, it would probably have sounded like this.

“F***” – Laveda
When I saw the title of this song, I was expecting something aggressive and angry. There is anger in this song, but it is served up with some absolutely gorgeous music and vocals that cushion its impact.

“Local Hero” – EggS
This song had my Aussie Indie Pop senses tingling big time. So I was super surprised when I found out this band is from Paris. As in France. I guess the spelling of their name should have been a clue that they were weird Frenchies.

“Radio” – Margo Price featuring Sharon Van Etten
This week’s entry in the “Country or Not” category. I normally find Price’s music far too twangy for my tastes. I recently read that her newest album leans hard towards pop. You certainly hear some country DNA in this track. But the guitars are more George Harrison than Nashville and the whole thing is more indie pop than country. Queen Van Etten’s presence certainly helps. I may have to give that album a spin.

“Aagal” – Nick Bampton, Maanyung
The Need Essentials surf films I watch periodically always have great music. My January movie, Slow Lane, featured this fantastic track, which just showed up on Spotify. Put it on your next mix tape and impress your friends.

“Tainted Love” – Gloria Jones
One of the fun things about being a music geek is either surprising your fellow geeks with pieces of music trivia, or being surprised by trivia they share with you. Years ago I blew the mind of a buddy of mine, who is several years older than me and should have been more in-tune with ’60s music, when I told him that Soft Cell’s 1982 classic “Tainted Love” was a cover. Tom Breihan mentioned that in Wednesday’s Number Ones entry about Rihanna’s “SOS,” so it seemed like a good week to blow some more minds. How many of you have heard this before? Please give me full credit if it’s your first time.

“Everything’s Gone Green” – New Order
At some point in the late ’90s a couple of my friends and I decided that New Order might be the perfect music to play when you are picking up a date. Their songs always sounded cool, had good grooves, had some depth to them so you could pretend to be smart, and had a healthy dose of hipster cred since New Order was known but never super famous here in the US. “True Faith” is my favorite NO song, and one of my favorite songs ever. But this track probably got the most play in my car in those Dating Years.

“Given to Fly” – Pearl Jam
Today is the 25th anniversary of the release of Pearl Jam’s fifth and poppiest studio album, Yield. While their first three albums were bigger in my life, this one ranks not too far below them. That’s mostly because of how I listened to it. In February 1998 I was unemployed. When my roommate, brother-in-music John N, would leave for his jobby-job each morning, I would crank up Yield and play over-and-over as I flipped through the want ads, typed up cover letters, and sent off resumes. I listened to it yesterday and I realized it is the last Pearl Jam album that I can recall almost every word to every song.

This song was very important in my musical life, too. It’s the first song I ever downloaded. The song was set to be released to radio on December 22, 1997, but someone got a copy and posted it to the Internet. I read about this on a Pearl Jam board and then spent a couple days figuring out how to download music and then how to play it. And then I had to find the file. I’m pretty sure the first one I found was encoded at the lowest bitrate that was audible to human ears. I might as well have been back in 1984, listening to it on my shortwave radio from halfway around the world. A day or two later I found a slightly better file. And after that I found a version someone had ripped from a radio station in Buffalo, complete with a little bit of DJ talk immediately after, much like pretty much every song I recorded from radio to tape in the ’80s. Of course it was like two days later I began hearing it regularly on the radio in Kansas City. But the process was fun. And it helped that this was a great song. Maybe Pearl Jam’s last GREAT song.

(I had an excellent live version of “GTF” in my original post, but YouTube does not allow it to be played on outside pages. If you want to check that performance out, go here.)

“Come to the City” – The War on Drugs
YouTube suggested this last week. I’ve literally listened to it at least 25 times since then.

Reader’s Notebook, 2/2/23

February 2, 2023 /


Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story – Bono
One of my sisters-in-law received this book from her employer awhile back and passed it along to me. I wasn’t super excited to read it, since I’m not much into U2 anymore. But when brother-in-music E$ told me he was reading and liking it, I pulled it from the shelf.

I was surprised how much I enjoyed it. Bono is a very good writer. There are times when he gets a little over-ambitious with his words, something that has plagued his songwriting over the years, too. But in the end he tells a very compelling story about his life, the career of U2, and lots of stuff he has encountered along the way.

One weird thing about reading this book was that I had several uncanny coincidences while reading. For example, while reading the chapter where he writes about Band Aid, Live Aid, and Bob Geldof, I suddenly heard “I Don’t Like Mondays.” Not a song I hear very often. Same thing happened when he discussed his relationship with Michael Hutchence; I heard an INXS song. This one might be a stretch, but shortly after reading about his efforts to lobby politicians around the world, a friend stopped by and told us how she is now a registered lobbyist so she can promote the non-profit she runs at the state legislature.

Weird!


Too Bad to Die – Francine Mathews
This has been sitting in the spy section of my To Read list for awhile. It has a fascinating concept, but was met with very mixed reviews. I figured it was worth a shot.

Mathews mixes history with fiction here, following a youngish Ian Fleming during late 1943, as he serves in support for the meeting between Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin in Tehran. British intelligence has informed Fleming that there is a Nazi attack planned on the trio, and a member of their party is a double agent who will lead the attack. Fleming gets into some scrapes but eventually helps to save the day. Along the way he uses a pseudonym that to cover his tracks: James Bond. He also spends time jotting down ideas for a spy novel he has been thinking about. Foreshadowing!

Turns out the real Ian Fleming was actually part of that mission to Tehran. But he fell ill and was stranded in Cairo while the rest of the group traveled to the summit in Iran.

I think the general plot lines are fine, if a little overdone. We keep hearing about how the war will be lost if the assassin succeeds and some combination of the Big Three are killed. I doubt the allies would have stopped fighting the Nazis if their political leaders were all wiped out, although I get that all three were leaders of immense symbolic importance.

The big problem is that we know who the assassin is very early in the story, but it is still laid out like a mystery, as if we are discovering who it is at the same pace that Fleming is. I also felt like Mathews tried too hard to tie Fleming’s fictional actions to those of the Bond we know today.

In the end, it was a weird combination of styles. I like the idea of Fleming’s real life experiences serving as a base for his Bond novels. This failed to make all of Mathews’ ideas work.


The Lemon – S.E. Boyd
This was the book I read in one day, our snow day on January 25. Part of that was because it wasn’t super long, but also because it was extremely engaging.

It is build around the aftermath of the suicide of a famous TV chef. Yes, pretty much everything about this man, named John Doe in the story, is mirrored upon the life, career, and death of Anthony Bourdain. Which is a little weird, especially since the authors (more on that in a sec) casually mention that Doe and Bourdain were friends.

Anyway, Doe kills himself, perhaps accidentally, and several people’s lives are changed. His best friend, the world-famous chef who finds him (this character is pretty clearly based on Bourdain’s real-life friend Eric Ripert). A hotel employee who comes across Doe’s body just as his friend discovers it. Doe’s agent, who must manage the narrative of his death and figure out how to carry on his legacy. A down-on-her-luck blogger who fabricates a story of an encounter with Doe and suddenly becomes the hottest thing in media. A washed-up TV chef, who sees Doe’s passing as an opportunity to get his mojo back. And a few others.

The book is a delightful examination of modern celebrity. It is both deeply cynical and hilarious. And at times kind of gross. Much like fame itself.

I mentioned authors, plural, above. S.E. Boyd is a pen name for journalists Kevin Alexander and Joe Keohane and book editor Alessandra Lusardi. I’m not sure how they divided up the writing here, but you would never guess three different people were involved. It flows, it is well written, and it’s fun as hell.

January Media

February 1, 2023 /

Movies, Shows, etc

Wednesday
This was on constantly in our house over the holidays. I think the girls and S all watched it on their own, then we had several episodes on the main TV while we had guests. I sat and partially watched a few of them. I thought it was funny, clever, and generally good. Doubt I’ll check out the entire series on my own, though.

B+

The White Lotus, seasons one and two
I probably should have taken some time between these seasons, and then written down my thoughts separately for each. However, I knocked them both out in about 10 days and loved just about every second.

It is a genius show for many reasons. You hate the bulk of the cast, who are mostly terrible people, yet are compelled to keep watching. It tackles and critiques so many elements of society: class, wealth, and privilege; parenthood, marriage, and sex; race relations; colonialism. Some of these, and others, are just brushed upon. But there’s some seriously good commentary about the bigger issues.

I think what makes it truly brilliant, though, is you don’t have to dive into any of that if you don’t want to. You can just let the exceptionally compelling and funny mystery captivate you for the six and seven episodes that make up each season, guessing and re-guessing about who that body we see in the first episode will end up being.

Great writing, great acting, great scenery, great show.

A, A

All Quiet On The Western Front
I’m pretty sure I either watched the original 1930 film or read the 1928 novel. Both are pretty heavy accountings of what life was like for German soldiers in the later days of, and time after, World War I, and considered classic anti-war works.

Remaking the movie with modern techniques makes for an even more haunting experience. All war is brutal, but World War I was especially terrible as tactics had not yet caught up with technology, and men were sent running into sure death quite often. My assumption is that no cinematic experience can recreate the horrors of war. After all, if your life isn’t in danger and you can’t smell, hear, feel death all around you, you can’t understand what it is like to be in war. This film pulls no punches and has some of the most brutal images of war I can recall in a movie.

While this updated version fails to follow the soldiers after war, an element of the original that emphasized the isolation that came with serving, it is still a powerful experience.

B+

Gone Girl
I read Gillian Flynn’s book when it first came out about a decade ago, but never saw the movie. So I knew what happened, but couldn’t remember the exact details, which always makes for an interesting viewing experience as I try to remember the book and wonder what, if anything, has been changed. Seems like this was pretty faithful to the book, and I certainly enjoyed it.

A-

Perry Mason, season one
I never watched the original Perry Mason, although I remember seeing its black and white reruns on local TV as I flipped past when I was a kid. The only thing that got me interested in this was it being Matthew Rhys’ first big part after The Americans.

This season was a little slow, especially in the middle episodes. While I enjoyed some of the more modern political/societal angles that were included in the story, I wondered how well they fit the times (1931–32). Still Rhys was very good, as was Stephen Root, and the supporting performances were almost all excellent. When the momentum finally picked up in the final three episodes, it became pretty good TV.

B+

Shorts, YouTubes, etc

Frightened Rabbit – ‘The Full Session’ | The Bridge 909 in Studio
Figured I had watched just about all the FR content that is available until I found this. It kicked off a big change in my music listening habits I’ll detail in the next section.

THE VIEW FROM 12 BARRELS AT 12 DIFFERENT WAVES IN ONE YEAR
Nathan Florence is a bad ass surfer. He takes it to the next level by surfing some of the best waves in the world with a GoPro clenched between his teeth to share an unreal perspective.

Slow Lane
It had been awhile since I watched an arty surf video. The second half of the CFP national championship game seemed like a good time to break that slump. As always in Need Essential films, the music is pretty amazing too.

Mach Loop 2022 Highlights!! USAF F–15Eagle V F35Lightning Low Level through the Mountains of Wales
I’ve watched some of these before. Seems like a pretty cool spot to hang out and watch some military jets roar right by you.

The Greatest Low Flybys & Airshow Moments
Others have said it before, but I’ll add my voice to the chorus: if you want medium quality airshow videos, Bobsurgranny is your best source.

The Offensive Action Taking Over Basketball
Zoom zoom.

Why Switzerland Has 374,142 Bunkers (and likely more)
I think I knew a little bit about the concept of Swiss bunkers, but I had no idea they were this common, the logic behind them, and how they are becoming relevant again.

Dropping a GoPro Under a Popular Fishing Pier
Great, my YouTube recommendations are probably going to be overrun with fishing videos since I watched this.

Making Of ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT
Anytime I watch a war movie, I’m always thinking about the logistics that go into filming complex battle scenes. How much planning there is, how many moving parts there are, and the coordination to takes to make it all work. I would have preferred this be a more technical explanation of how things were done.

How were Roman roads made? Roman Road-Construction
Those Romans were crafty.

Alvvays – What’s In My Bag?
This kids are soooo Canadian.

Inside the 40 Year-Long Dungeons & Dragons Game
I got into a little D&D content binge for a couple weeks, both reading articles and watching videos about the game. This was the most interesting of the several vids I watched.
Can You Play Dungeons and Dragons with only things found at the Dollar Store?
I watch a lot of weird stuff, not all of which makes this accounting each month. But I figured since I already outed myself for dabbling in D&D content, I should go ahead and include this one.

Dhaulagiri
I very much enjoyed the perspective of this climbing film, more about the courage to accept when a summit attempt won’t be safe than the courage to climb in the first place.

Anthony Bourdain A Cook’s Tour: Season 2 Episode 5: Elements of a Great Bar
Have I ever seen A Cook’s Tour before? I don’t think so. This popped into my feed and looks like the entire series is on YouTube, so I’ll be checking it out soon.

What Army Snipers Go Through At Sniper School
I figured sniper school would just be a bunch of shooting. Looks like it gets kind of nutty.

Music/Podcasts

90.9 The Bridge
I’ve written about this elsewhere, but it was seeing that Frightened Rabbit video above on New Year’s Day that had me checking The Bridge’s stream, on which I discovered their Z-to-A countdown that I listened to with great frequency over the next couple weeks. I’m still checking in with them, just not as often.

Year-end charts can produce upsets.
Chris Molanphy broke down how Billboard’s Song of the Year is selected, then ranked all the songs of the year in this two-parter.

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