It’s time for a music quiz.
Are you salivating, Glo?
Here it goes:
1. In a 1973 hit by
Deep Purple, they are singing about “smoke” and “water”. What song?
What smoke? What water? What famous group of the time is mentioned in
the song?
2. Who won the 1971
World Series and what was their theme song?
Who performed it?
3. Who sang “Diamond
Girl”? Name the year within three years. (Extra credit if you hit it exactly)
Janice Joplin (1943-1970). She was
quite a "swill" singer!
4. What band did Rick
Derringer start with at age 17? What was
their huge hit of 1965 and who did they knock out of #1 on the Hit Parade with
it?
5. Who sang “Raindrops
Keep Falling on My Head” and in what movie was it featured? It became Billboard’s number 1 hit of what
year?
6. Name the 1975
disco hit by The Silver Convention.
7. Name Janice Joplin’s favorite booze.
8. Who was Carly
Simon singing about in her 1973 hit “You’re So Vain”?
9. What brand of car
is mentioned in a 1981 hit by Blondie that has been considered by many to be
the first successful rap song? Who is
the lead singer?
10. Name three hits
from the J. Geils Band.
Extra credit question:
Who the hell was Kay Kyser?”
This is NOT an open book test. Anyone caught cheating will have to wash the
blackboards after class and beat the chalk dust out of the erasers.
Good luck! I’ll give
you a reasonable amount of time to complete the quiz. While you’re working on it, I’ll be hanging
around the teacher’s lounge trying to find out more about the good looking babe
who is the new English teacher!
“The parallel between
Benghazi and the IRS story is amazing.
(It’s) lying about lying, then lying about the fact that they are
lying. Then seeking to apologize for
lies that they claim they didn’t tell.
This pattern is a culture of big government who believes that it is more
important than the American people.”
……….Newt Gingrich.
I doubt if Obama had any inkling of what 2013 might bring to
his table after his easy re-election in 2012.
He even started off the New Year with a bang by beating the Republicans
into an embarrassing cave in on tax hikes for the fiscal cliff.
Wow! How rosy it
looked for the guy who brings new meaning to “superego.” At his State of the Union speech, he proposed
a “left wing dream factory” according to columnist Charles Krauthammer with a
declaration of war on global warming (even though temperatures are the same as
16 years ago and CO2 emissions are at a 20 year low).
House Rep Jason Chaffetz is talking of
possible impeachment proceedings.
Also on the list was universal pre-school for 5 year olds in
a country already drowning in debt. He
also felt confident in the Democrats re-gaining the House in 2014.
Gosh, this being the President isn’t hard after all; except
that it is, especially when you are, as Edward Klein called Obama in his book, The Amateur.
When confronted by the lack of his intimidation on sequester
by Republicans, he panicked like a schoolyard brat with silliness like airline
delays and the cancellation of White House tours. Looking foolish, he eventually caved in.
Need we discuss his embarrassment over the loss of his gun
control bill? Sure, why not? I wonder how much gas he burned up at our
expense to fly all over hell posing with grieving relatives of those slain by
guns. He lost 60-40 in a Senate that had 55 seats belonging to his own party.
Want more? How about
the Benghazi hearings? The IRS/Tea Party scandal? The AP wire tapping by Obama’s buddy Holder
(“Who, me? Yes, you!”), and the
latest: HHS Secretary Sibelius trying to
illegally get funds to prop up Obamacare. Hell, as long as we are airing out this guy,
how about a SECOND court ruling against his illegal appointment of members to
the National Labor Relations Board while the Senate was off? It’s like endlessly listening to Sonny and
Cher sing “And the beat goes on.”
The Republicans have a great opportunity here if they just
don’t blow it. In the 1948 film The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,
Humphrey Bogart (as Fred C. Dobbs) and Tim Holt (as Curtin) have been stiffed
on
their wages by their boss McCormick as played by Barton Mac Lane.
When they see McCormick walking down the street dressed in a
nice new suit with a young senorita, Dobbs says “Let’s get him….and get him
HARD!”
That’s exactly what Republicans need to do. Get Obama and get him hard. I may add that they need to do it soon. These types of opportunities have a way of
disappearing if not quickly acted upon!
I was browsing through Drudge and Fox News this morning and
besides airing my disgust about how screwed up this country has gotten under
the power of Obama and his crooked cronies (Benghazi? IRS scandal with the Tea
Party? Gun control? Immigration? and more), I managed to notice a piece from Entertainment Weekly.com about eighteen TV shows that have been
cancelled.
Before I looked at the list I wondered if there would be
even one show that I have ever heard of, much less watched. All of these shows were on “over the air”
channels like ABC, CBS, ABC and since 99% of my viewing habits come from cable
broadcasts, the chances were between slim and none that I knew the programs.
TV has deteriorated badly over the years. It has basically become a place for the
younger crowd that enjoys programming a lot less sophisticated than we of a
more advanced age enjoy. The accent
today is on more sex and violence and, of course, the shows stretch profanity
as far as possible with plenty of double entendre attempts at humor. Personally, I always like to perform my sex
and violence at home and didn’t need any TV show to show me how it’s done!
Many thought TV had gone a bit over the edge in the early
1970s with All in the Family. By “over the edge” I’m referring to the outspoken
opinions of Carroll O’Connor as Archie Bunker and his ability to make the
audience laugh at him while they laughed at themselves for having such silly
sensitivities about the subject that may yet be the downfall of this country: political correctness.
Archie was right.
Whether there is a coincidence or not, many outstanding lawyers are
Jewish and many black guys are outstanding athletes. So what?
Today, anyone saying that would hear a loud gasp and a “You can’t say
that!” If Archie were still here, he
would tell you quickly why you can.
There were other great network shows in those days mainly
because cable was not a factor. My wife
and I had a Saturday night ritual in the early 1970s: We would grill a couple of nice steaks on the
patio of our home in beautiful Shawnee, Kansas; add a baked potato, salad, a
bottle of wine and turn on our 10 inch Magnavox color TV to watch All in the Family, Sandy Duncan, Mary Tyler
Moore (with the great Ted Knight as “Ted Baxter!”) and The Bob Newhart Show.
Afterwards, we would take a shower together (only because it
saved water! Ahem!) then head over to Kansas City, Missouri to do some
clubbing. Those were fun days.
By 1976 we had graduated to a 27” Magnavox floor model. One day, while watching the four channels
available, there was a knock on the door.
The devil had arrived in the form of the guy selling cable! How could I resist Beelzebub when he offered
a chance to see the Atlanta Braves baseball games and non commercial movies
even if the first one we watched was Burt Reynolds in W. W. and the Dixie Dance Kings!
As far as those eighteen shows getting the ax, I have heard
of two; both of which I have never watched.
They are The Office and 30 Rock.
Here is the entire list in case you care.
One of the great scenes from "Frasier" (.48) which ran on NBC from 1993-2004. Niles and Lilith in the sack! OMIGOD!
Music is fun and entertaining to most of us whether it is
from our own memories of pop tunes recorded during our lifetimes or before.
I love the old stuff because the tunes are so great and
supply us with a vision of their times and some of the
lyrics infuriate the
holier than thou liberals of today who don’t understand the era that produced
the songs.
Cole Porter (1891-1964)
A favorite is “Let’s Do it (Let’s fall in love)” written in
1928 by the prolific Cole Porter. The
irony in this song is in the opening chorus where it states that “Chinks do it, Japs do it,up in Lapland little Laps do
it...”
Porter wrote it for the show Paris which was his first Broadway success. With the politically correct world that
evolved, the lyrics were later changed to “Birds do it, bees do it”. I think that is a cop out; I think Porter was
just having fun with the first lyrics and meant nothing harmful with “Chinks do
it, Japs do it” but as we know, tastes change and skin gets thinner (The attached YouTube has the original
lyrics).
I’ve been a music freak forever and still carry a harmonica
around much to the disdain of some but, hey, that’s just me. I’ve been following pop music since I was 6
or 7 and have never tired of it although some of the stuff today makes me glad
I like what are now the oldies.
One favorite from the late 40’s was a regular on the hit
parade from WCKY in Cincinnati: Peggy
Lee and her then husband Dave Barbour doing “Manana”. Peggy was great with any tune.
As the 50s arrived 1955 produced guys like Pat Boone with
“Ain’t That a Shame” and Perez Prado with “Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White”.
Bill Haley and his Comets snuck in that
year with “Rock Around the Clock” which was a portent of things to come.
And come it did in 1956 with some guy named “Elvis” hitting
it big with “Hound Dog” and “Love me Tender.”
Does anyone remember one hit wonder Jim Lowe with “Green Door”?
Can it really be 55 years since I got out of high school?
That would be 1958 when “At the Hop”, by Danny and the Juniors, “Get a Job” by
The Silhouettes, “Tequila” by The Champs, and “Yakety Yak” by The Coasters
ruled.
The 60s were nice. I
spent 4 years in the Air Force; plenty of time to learn things I would never
had learned by staying in Cincy. Also a
time to meet girls and dance and love in clubs from Texas and Missouri to
Germany only to come home in 1965 and find my true love a month later. Isn’t fate great? The young guys today don’t know what they
missed by not having to serve.
Meanwhile, tunes like “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”, “The Twist”,
“The Duke of Earl”, “Surf City”, “Sugar Shack”, All the great British invasion
songs including “Downtown” by Pet Clark; Monday, Monday”, “Crimson and Clover”, and many other great
tunes came along.
Even today, I still like to occasionally turn up the volume
all the way and break off the knob as I am doing while I write this paean to
pop music. So far while writing I have
played The Smithereens, Donnie Iris, “Puttin’ on the Ritz”, Norman Greenbaum,
West End Girls, Jefferson Starship, One
Night in Bangkok, Greg Kihn Band, and Yes.
So many songs; so little time!
For
a good look at Paris of the 1920’s see Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris”
(2011).
4. What band did Rick
Derringer start with at age 17? What was
their huge hit of 1965 and who did they knock out of #1 on the Hit Parade with
it?
