Interesting, isn't it, that so many of the most beautiful Christmas songs were written by jews? And isn't it just as interesting that gentile lyricists and composers haven't written any songs for jewish holidays? Until Holiday For Heretics, that is. HFH showed the world what goyim songwriters could do, if given the chance. Dedicated to the memory of Allan Sherman, a true genius. (Note: when the gold bar reaches the right side of the Hipcast bar following the completion of a song, it should automatially return to begin the next song (give it a few seconds). If it doesn't, you should be able to drag it with your mouse or keypad.)
Monday, December 26, 2005
Volatility
Jimmy van Heusen has always been my favorite composer. Personality, co-written by van Heusen and lyricist/poet Johnny Burke and introduced by Dorothy Lamour in one of the Hope/Crosby Road movies, proved a perfect vehicle for this parody. I recorded it in 1998 at the request of the then-fiancee of finance guru Myron Scholes. If I remember correctly, her name was Francine. She's seen an article about me in the New York Times in which I'd mentioned that I had recently written a song about the Black/Scholes option pricing model. She thought the song would make a nice wedding gift for a guy who had everything. A few months later Scholes' hedge fund, Long Term Capital Management, blew up in public view, but I'd bet ol' Myron and Francine are still doing more than a bit of OK.
WNEW, WQEW, RIP
WNEW, WQEW, R.I.P
From 1999, I think.
______________________________________________
THE SONG WAS YOU
Help, there’s a hole in my radio.
From 1999, I think.
______________________________________________
THE SONG WAS YOU
Help, there’s a hole in my radio.
This morning, while driving my sons to their respective playdates, I instinctively pushed preset three and waited for the voice of Sinatra to fill the van. Fooled again! For the ninth or tenth time in the past few weeks, the sounds of the Disney Radio Channel—obnoxious announcers, bubblegum tunes, smart-bomb commercials (they’ll only kill your kids)---woke me from my self-deception. WQEW was gone, and with it Sinatra Saturday, the latest victims of demographics and Disneyfication. For me, it was as if Ol’ Blue Eyes died twice in one year.
I’m a Disney shareholder myself, have been for a long time, and I’m going to continue to be one. Michael Eisner, notwithstanding his lukewarm ’98 season, is one of a handful of CEOs I’m comfortable entrusting with my risk capital. I’ve been making money for years off the schmaltzy culture he’s so good at manufacturing, and I don’t intend to stop now just because Mickey’s invading my backyard. (I know, evil triumphs when good men do nothing, but let’s not get carried away with ourselves here—we’re talking about disappointment, not tragedy.)
WQEW (and its predecessor, WNEW) was, as it never tired of telling you, the “home of American popular song”. Not the “pop” that runs up and down the Billboard charts today, but the songs we call “standards”—the incredible catalog created by maybe a hundred men (and a few women), largely between 1920 and 1960, for Broadway, Hollywood, and Tin Pan Alley. It is a body of work which provided the raw material for thousands of vocal recordings and countless jazz interpretations and which found its highest expression in the performances of Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday, Tony Bennett, Nat Cole and Ella Fitzgerald. The authors of these songs were brilliant, meticulous artisans who cared how words scanned, and who knew whether they rhymed or whether they only came close—who could paint the whole spectrum of emotion and humanity with notes and chords, rarely falling back on the musical cliché--who could tell a story and make you care deeply about that story and its characters in the time it takes to boil an egg, and who did so within a framework of rules that most of today’s practitioners would find difficult and confining, both musically and lyrically.
But these were writers who refused to sacrifice craft on the altar of expression; they proudly served both masters and thereby didn’t just produce entertainments, but invented an art form. The quality of their work is remarkable especially in view of its enormous quantity; considered in its totality their output is, arguably, the high watermark of American popular culture.
And 1560 on the AM dial was where they lived in New York. There are great jazz stations that serve up much of the same material (mostly as instrumentals), but on QEW it wasn’t just the music that mattered---the song itself was king. Sure, you were listening to Clooney or Sarah Vaughan or Jo Stafford or Joe Williams (or, of course, Sinatra), but they were merely delivering the message. The station belonged to Arlen, Berlin, Porter, Mercer, Loesser, Lane, Lerner, Loewe, Rodgers, Hart, Mancini, Mandel, Coleman, the Bergmans, Shire, Maltby, LeGrand, Burke, Van Heusen, Parrish, Schwartz, Dietz, Kern, Fields, Hammerstein, Carmichael, Leigh, Sondheim,Youmans, Ellington, Warren, McHugh, and the Gershwins. (Not a small part of Sinatra’s genius, of course, was his ability to pick material.)
QEW, unfortunately, wrestled with its own demographic demons, and spent much of the average broadcast day pinned to the mat. Mid-century pop kitsch (and why pick on anyone here?) can be ear candy in small doses, but many a WQEW afternoon was the musical equivalent of Trick-Or-Treat --you pay the price later. (The sucking sound you heard in the fifties was Elvis filling the vacuum left by this stuff.)
When QEW was bad, though, it was just bad, but when it was good it was terrific, even sublime. Self-absorption aside, program host Jonathan Schwartz (his style was once described to me as “All Jonathan, All The Time”) is an exceptionally intelligent critic, a compellingly listenable raconteur, and a walking encyclopedia of the songs and their creators. You didn’t have to like him; if you cared about the songs, you listened to him anyway. His voice and demeanor suggested an aging prep school wiseguy fighting off laryngitis, but he cultivated an intimacy with his audience that enabled him to enter the microphone at his end and emerge from your radio at the other, Captain Kirk-like, plopping himself onto your car’s back seat or the recliner in your living room and holding forth. He invested “Sinatra Saturday” with an authority that made his arrogance not only tolerable, but necessary--he knew more than you did, much more. On his rambling Sunday morning show he often told the same story more than once, treating the names of the celebrated as Hansel did breadcrumbs, but you stayed with it to the end even after the umpteenth telling. These were stories, by and large, about the people who created the great songs and great recordings. One of my favorites is of the lyricist Howard Dietz who, upon being asked how quickly he could write, tossed off in a flash this parody of “Jealousy”:
Cyd Charisse
Get down off that mantelpiece
You’re quite a shock there
I think we need a clock there
I think that’s right, but I’m not sure—I only heard it twice.
Cyd Charisse
Get down off that mantelpiece
You’re quite a shock there
I think we need a clock there
I think that’s right, but I’m not sure—I only heard it twice.
Schwartz could be sanctimonious and overbearing, but he knew his stuff. And if he dropped a lot of names, so what? He had not only met most of those people (they hung out in his living room when he was growing up, the son of composer Arthur Schwartz), he loved them, and he loved their songs as much as we did. You could hear it.
And you could hear the love of the songs in morning man Bob Jones’ voice when, after playing a cut, he’d repeat a line from the lyric (“ ‘Hide your heart from sight, lock your dreams at night, it could happen to you’ ”, Jones might opine after listening with you to Jo Stafford’s take on Burke and Van Heusen, a discreetly seductive lilt creeping in on “could”.) And you could hear it when Stan Martin interviewed Julie Wilson or Mary Cleere Haran. Or when Les Davis said just about anything. In the old days (the 70s and 80s), you could hear it in Bob Haymes and Ted Brown and Jim Lowe and Jazzbeaux Collins and William B., and in the really old days you could hear it, as my mother did, in Martin Block.
And now they’re gone, having failed to pull off another death-defying jump to a different frequency (they landed at 1560 in 1992 after WNEW-AM 1130 was acquired by Bloomberg, another really smart Mike that I’d put my money with). So now a small but dedicated group of enthusiasts for a sound and a feeling that’s totally out of step with America at the millennium no longer has a place to turn when they sit in front of a radio. A new NPR station, anyone? Count me out. I don’t want to quench my thirst for elegance and refinement at the public trough. A Disney boycott? Not, I repeat, for my money. In the great scheme of things, this is really a tiny matter, surely smaller than Kosovo or teenage drug-use or Y2K or even the conversion of a Civil War battlefield into a theme park. Business is business, and art is art. When the twain meet it’s beautiful, but it doesn’t happen often and we shouldn’t come to expect it.
In the end we get the face and the culture we deserve. So don’t blame a rich guy named Mike, even if next week a newly retired basketball icon acquires your favorite station and changes it to an all-hoop format. If you love the songs, buy the records and listen. Over and over.
Stupidest Lyrics Ever
1. Yellow Submarine
"And our friends are all aboard
Many more of them live next door"
Listen, if your friends are all aboard, then you can't have any other friends who live next door. Period.
2. What's Goin' On
"Tell me what's goin' on, and I'll tell you what's goin' on"
A great Marvin recording, but if you tell me what's goin' on, why would I bother telling you what's goin' on? You'd already know, right? That's why you were able to tell me in the first place.
3. Piano Man
"Son can you play me a memory, I'm not really sure how it goes
But it's sad and it's sweet and I knew it complete
When I wore a younger man's clothes"
OK, pal, that should be enough to go on. Seriously....HOW THE FUCK is the piano player supposed to know what song this drunken cocksucker is talking about? And what about the line "I knew it complete"? COMPLETE?
Other question: What was the "younger man" wearing when the creepy old drunk was wearing the younger man's clothes?
4. I Am, I Said
Yep, no-one heard at all, not even the chair. Wow---you're thinking, "How do you top that?" But I'm inclined to give Neil a pass on that bit of stupidity, and not just because he's already been nailed dozens of times for it, but also because, technically, he's right: the chair didn't hear him. Any argument?
But wait---Neil isn't finished just yet:
Did you ever read about a frog who dreamed of being a king
And then became one
Well, except for the names and a few other changes
If you talk about me, the story's the same one
Except for the names and a few other changes? A few other changes? A few???? Like just a couple of smallish details, right, Neil? No big deal, some minor stuff. Like, uh, that the frog is a palm-sized amphibian and you're a jewish kid from Brooklyn. That's all, right?
Oh, and the frog has a fucking name????? Sure.
5. Everything I Own
This is hard for me to do, because David Gates intended this sweet song as a tribute to his Dad. But when you sing:
" I would give everything I own
Give up my life, my heart, my home
I would give everything I own
Just to have you back again"
then I'm sorry, you're fair game. How, if you give up your life, could you have ANYTHING back again? And how big a sacrifice is your home once you give up your life?
6. Midnight Train To Georgia
Check the Amtrak schedules. I did. There isn't any such train; in fact, there is no way to get by rail from LA to Atlanta except by going through somewhere else.
7. California Dreaming
In the third chorus, we hear this line:
"If I didn't tell her, I could leave today."
Her? Who the fuck is "her"? What is the singer talking about? Go back and listen to the first two choruses, and see if you can find a reference to "her". And what did he tell "her" that made it impossible for him to leave today?
8. The Most Beautiful Girl In The World
"It's goodbye care
When my slippers are next to the ones that belong
To the one and only beautiful girl in the world."
Writers of standards from the Golden Age don't get a pass, and just because you wrote more than a few great ones doesn't mean you're not capable of throwing out a real clunker every now and then. And Dick Rodgers' little buddy Larry Hart threw out more than his share of clunkers, so don't get me started, but this one takes the cake. I mean, not to get too Wittgensteinian, but if she's the "one and only beautiful girl in the world" can she also be the "most beautiful girl in the world"? In fact, she couldn't even be "the more beautiful girl in the world". I wouldn't let a rock-era writer get away with that kind of laziness, and Hart shouldn't be able to get away with it either.
9. My Old Flame
Another Tin Pan Alley standard, I'm afraid, and a beautiful tune ruined by an insipid lyric. Co-written by Sam Coslow and Arthur Johnston in the thirties, the song begins:
"My old flame
I can't even think of his name
But it's funny now and then
How my thoughts go flashing back again
To my old flame"
OK, she can't even think of his name, and her thoughts go flashing back to him only "now and then". The kind of stuff we all think about after a drink or two, and then we move on. But not this broad, who mid-way through her melodic reverie has begun to remind us of Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. Talk about obsessive---by the end of the song, a mere three minutes from when she barely remembered him, finding this forgettable guy has become her life's work. Makes you want to hide your rabbit while there's still time. Anyhow, too bad for her they didn't have Google in 1934.
"My old flame
I can't even think of his name
But I’ll never be the same
Until I discover what became
Of my old flame"
Sorry, I don't buy it.
10. THE STUPIDEST LYRIC EVER WRITTEN: In The Year 2525
Mary McCarthy once said of Lillian Hellman: Every word she writes is a lie, including "and" and "the".
Well, every word of In The Year 2525 is monumentally stupid. This isn't just another drunken Billy Joel scribble or a scrap pulled from the wastebasket after John and Paul dropped some bad acid. No....this one's too good to quote from; the lyric must be seen, read, sung, listened to in its entirety. And then seen, read, sung, and listened to again.
(Comments in parentheses.)
In the year 2525
If man is still alive
If woman can survive they may find
(In the second line, "man" denotes "humankind", which obviously includes men and women. So why that third line? Just for a rhyme, I guess. Which makes it one of the few true rhymes in the whole song, by the way. Read on. And since when is "woman" a generic? Since this song, I suppose.)
In the year 3535
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies
Everything you think, do and say
Is in the pill you took today
(Well, not everything. The pill couldn't make me take the pill before I took it. I had to think about taking the pill, right? And then I had to do it, right? And if I say anything at all, unless it's just nonsense, it's either the truth or a lie. Rhyme Watch: "3535" doesn't even come close to rhyming with "lies".)
In the year 4545
Ain't gonna need your teeth, won't need your eyes
You won't find a thing to chew
Nobody's gonna look at you
(So now, 1,010 years later, they've made that pill from 3535 non-chewable. And of course you won't find a thing to chew because you have no eyes. And nobody's gonna look at you because they won't have their eyes either. And by the way, why would you be looking for a thing to chew in the first place if you don't have teeth? Rhyme Watch: "4545" and "eyes".)
In the year 5555
Your arms hanging limp at your sides
Your legs got nothing to do
Some machine's doing that for you
(So now you've presumably stopped taking that pill from 3535, because the machine's doing it for you. You probably should've stopped taking it earlier now that you know what it's done to your arms and legs, but no sense looking backward. And that machine: what else could that machine be doing for you besides what your legs used to do? Not looking; you haven't done that in centuries. Not chewing, ditto. Not telling the truth. Not telling lies. It's just a leg machine.
Rhyme Watch: "5555" and "sides".)
In the year 6565
Ain't gonna need no husband, won't need no wife
You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too
From the bottom of a long glass tube, whoa-oh
(So now you don't need a husband or wife, but you needed one in 5555 or 4545 when the machine was doing everything for you? Huh? And your wife didn't care that you had no teeth? Of course not, because she wasn't looking at you. And you weren't looking at her, either, or anywhere else for that matter. You're still not. So how do you pick your son and daughter?
Rhyme Watch: "6565" and "wife"; "too" and "tube")
In the year 7510
If God's a-comin' He oughta make it by then
Maybe He'll look around Himself and say
Guess it's time for the judgment day
(Judgment Day? OK, Lord, tell me---how bad is it gonna be? 'Cause I think I can handle whatever you've got. Here's why: before you even show up, I can't see. I can't chew. I'm married to a woman whose arms are hanging limp by her sides and whose legs have nothing to do. So bring on your judgment, Big Guy.
Rhyme Watch: Nice job here, guys.)
In the year 8510
God is gonna shake His mighty head
He'll either say I'm pleased where man has been
Or tear it down and start again, whoa-oh
(Damn right, God is gonna shake his mighty head. And he won't be the least bit pleased. Why? Here's why---some one-hit-wonder from the 60s tried to rhyme "10" with "head". If I were God, that would give Me all the excuse I'd need to rain down eternal hell-fire.)
In the year 9595
I'm kinda wonderin' if man is gonna be alive
He's taken everything this old Earth can give
And he ain't put back nothin', whoa-oh
(OK, back to generic "man". If you are woman, I guess I no longer hear you roar. And I can't see you chew, either, even if you could chew---which you can't---because I don't look. I haven't looked in, oh, eight thousand years or so. Nothing personal. Rhyme Watch: "give" and "nothin'")
Now it's been ten thousand years
Man has cried a billion tears
For what he never knew
Now man's reign is through
(Idiotic. Of course "man" knew why he cried, assuming he could cry, which he couldn't. He (and/or "she")cried because he couldn't chew, couldn't look, and was married to Stephen Hawking with the brains removed.)
But through eternal night
The twinkling of starlight
So very far away
Maybe it's only yesterday
(Whatever.....)
11. Can't leave the Boss out of this.....but picking the stupidest Springsteen lyric is quite a challenge. Howzis:
"Like a river that don't know where it's flowin'
I took a wrong turn and I just kept goin'"
So....are there rivers that DO know where they're goin'?
"And our friends are all aboard
Many more of them live next door"
Listen, if your friends are all aboard, then you can't have any other friends who live next door. Period.
2. What's Goin' On
"Tell me what's goin' on, and I'll tell you what's goin' on"
A great Marvin recording, but if you tell me what's goin' on, why would I bother telling you what's goin' on? You'd already know, right? That's why you were able to tell me in the first place.
3. Piano Man
"Son can you play me a memory, I'm not really sure how it goes
But it's sad and it's sweet and I knew it complete
When I wore a younger man's clothes"
OK, pal, that should be enough to go on. Seriously....HOW THE FUCK is the piano player supposed to know what song this drunken cocksucker is talking about? And what about the line "I knew it complete"? COMPLETE?
Other question: What was the "younger man" wearing when the creepy old drunk was wearing the younger man's clothes?
4. I Am, I Said
Yep, no-one heard at all, not even the chair. Wow---you're thinking, "How do you top that?" But I'm inclined to give Neil a pass on that bit of stupidity, and not just because he's already been nailed dozens of times for it, but also because, technically, he's right: the chair didn't hear him. Any argument?
But wait---Neil isn't finished just yet:
Did you ever read about a frog who dreamed of being a king
And then became one
Well, except for the names and a few other changes
If you talk about me, the story's the same one
Except for the names and a few other changes? A few other changes? A few???? Like just a couple of smallish details, right, Neil? No big deal, some minor stuff. Like, uh, that the frog is a palm-sized amphibian and you're a jewish kid from Brooklyn. That's all, right?
Oh, and the frog has a fucking name????? Sure.
5. Everything I Own
This is hard for me to do, because David Gates intended this sweet song as a tribute to his Dad. But when you sing:
" I would give everything I own
Give up my life, my heart, my home
I would give everything I own
Just to have you back again"
then I'm sorry, you're fair game. How, if you give up your life, could you have ANYTHING back again? And how big a sacrifice is your home once you give up your life?
6. Midnight Train To Georgia
Check the Amtrak schedules. I did. There isn't any such train; in fact, there is no way to get by rail from LA to Atlanta except by going through somewhere else.
7. California Dreaming
In the third chorus, we hear this line:
"If I didn't tell her, I could leave today."
Her? Who the fuck is "her"? What is the singer talking about? Go back and listen to the first two choruses, and see if you can find a reference to "her". And what did he tell "her" that made it impossible for him to leave today?
8. The Most Beautiful Girl In The World
"It's goodbye care
When my slippers are next to the ones that belong
To the one and only beautiful girl in the world."
Writers of standards from the Golden Age don't get a pass, and just because you wrote more than a few great ones doesn't mean you're not capable of throwing out a real clunker every now and then. And Dick Rodgers' little buddy Larry Hart threw out more than his share of clunkers, so don't get me started, but this one takes the cake. I mean, not to get too Wittgensteinian, but if she's the "one and only beautiful girl in the world" can she also be the "most beautiful girl in the world"? In fact, she couldn't even be "the more beautiful girl in the world". I wouldn't let a rock-era writer get away with that kind of laziness, and Hart shouldn't be able to get away with it either.
9. My Old Flame
Another Tin Pan Alley standard, I'm afraid, and a beautiful tune ruined by an insipid lyric. Co-written by Sam Coslow and Arthur Johnston in the thirties, the song begins:
"My old flame
I can't even think of his name
But it's funny now and then
How my thoughts go flashing back again
To my old flame"
OK, she can't even think of his name, and her thoughts go flashing back to him only "now and then". The kind of stuff we all think about after a drink or two, and then we move on. But not this broad, who mid-way through her melodic reverie has begun to remind us of Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. Talk about obsessive---by the end of the song, a mere three minutes from when she barely remembered him, finding this forgettable guy has become her life's work. Makes you want to hide your rabbit while there's still time. Anyhow, too bad for her they didn't have Google in 1934.
"My old flame
I can't even think of his name
But I’ll never be the same
Until I discover what became
Of my old flame"
Sorry, I don't buy it.
10. THE STUPIDEST LYRIC EVER WRITTEN: In The Year 2525
Mary McCarthy once said of Lillian Hellman: Every word she writes is a lie, including "and" and "the".
Well, every word of In The Year 2525 is monumentally stupid. This isn't just another drunken Billy Joel scribble or a scrap pulled from the wastebasket after John and Paul dropped some bad acid. No....this one's too good to quote from; the lyric must be seen, read, sung, listened to in its entirety. And then seen, read, sung, and listened to again.
(Comments in parentheses.)
In the year 2525
If man is still alive
If woman can survive they may find
(In the second line, "man" denotes "humankind", which obviously includes men and women. So why that third line? Just for a rhyme, I guess. Which makes it one of the few true rhymes in the whole song, by the way. Read on. And since when is "woman" a generic? Since this song, I suppose.)
In the year 3535
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies
Everything you think, do and say
Is in the pill you took today
(Well, not everything. The pill couldn't make me take the pill before I took it. I had to think about taking the pill, right? And then I had to do it, right? And if I say anything at all, unless it's just nonsense, it's either the truth or a lie. Rhyme Watch: "3535" doesn't even come close to rhyming with "lies".)
In the year 4545
Ain't gonna need your teeth, won't need your eyes
You won't find a thing to chew
Nobody's gonna look at you
(So now, 1,010 years later, they've made that pill from 3535 non-chewable. And of course you won't find a thing to chew because you have no eyes. And nobody's gonna look at you because they won't have their eyes either. And by the way, why would you be looking for a thing to chew in the first place if you don't have teeth? Rhyme Watch: "4545" and "eyes".)
In the year 5555
Your arms hanging limp at your sides
Your legs got nothing to do
Some machine's doing that for you
(So now you've presumably stopped taking that pill from 3535, because the machine's doing it for you. You probably should've stopped taking it earlier now that you know what it's done to your arms and legs, but no sense looking backward. And that machine: what else could that machine be doing for you besides what your legs used to do? Not looking; you haven't done that in centuries. Not chewing, ditto. Not telling the truth. Not telling lies. It's just a leg machine.
Rhyme Watch: "5555" and "sides".)
In the year 6565
Ain't gonna need no husband, won't need no wife
You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too
From the bottom of a long glass tube, whoa-oh
(So now you don't need a husband or wife, but you needed one in 5555 or 4545 when the machine was doing everything for you? Huh? And your wife didn't care that you had no teeth? Of course not, because she wasn't looking at you. And you weren't looking at her, either, or anywhere else for that matter. You're still not. So how do you pick your son and daughter?
Rhyme Watch: "6565" and "wife"; "too" and "tube")
In the year 7510
If God's a-comin' He oughta make it by then
Maybe He'll look around Himself and say
Guess it's time for the judgment day
(Judgment Day? OK, Lord, tell me---how bad is it gonna be? 'Cause I think I can handle whatever you've got. Here's why: before you even show up, I can't see. I can't chew. I'm married to a woman whose arms are hanging limp by her sides and whose legs have nothing to do. So bring on your judgment, Big Guy.
Rhyme Watch: Nice job here, guys.)
In the year 8510
God is gonna shake His mighty head
He'll either say I'm pleased where man has been
Or tear it down and start again, whoa-oh
(Damn right, God is gonna shake his mighty head. And he won't be the least bit pleased. Why? Here's why---some one-hit-wonder from the 60s tried to rhyme "10" with "head". If I were God, that would give Me all the excuse I'd need to rain down eternal hell-fire.)
In the year 9595
I'm kinda wonderin' if man is gonna be alive
He's taken everything this old Earth can give
And he ain't put back nothin', whoa-oh
(OK, back to generic "man". If you are woman, I guess I no longer hear you roar. And I can't see you chew, either, even if you could chew---which you can't---because I don't look. I haven't looked in, oh, eight thousand years or so. Nothing personal. Rhyme Watch: "give" and "nothin'")
Now it's been ten thousand years
Man has cried a billion tears
For what he never knew
Now man's reign is through
(Idiotic. Of course "man" knew why he cried, assuming he could cry, which he couldn't. He (and/or "she")cried because he couldn't chew, couldn't look, and was married to Stephen Hawking with the brains removed.)
But through eternal night
The twinkling of starlight
So very far away
Maybe it's only yesterday
(Whatever.....)
11. Can't leave the Boss out of this.....but picking the stupidest Springsteen lyric is quite a challenge. Howzis:
"Like a river that don't know where it's flowin'
I took a wrong turn and I just kept goin'"
So....are there rivers that DO know where they're goin'?
"Hey, Hudson, what's new?" "Not much, Connecticut. Still headed south from the Adirondacks to Upper New York Bay, same as always."
Oh, you say: Bruce wasn't suggesting that maybe there's some river that's different from all the other rivers because it doesn't know where it's goin' and the rest of them do; what he meant is that "rivers" as a group don't know where they're goin'.
Oh, you say: Bruce wasn't suggesting that maybe there's some river that's different from all the other rivers because it doesn't know where it's goin' and the rest of them do; what he meant is that "rivers" as a group don't know where they're goin'.
Sorry, no dice. I've heard that plenty, but there's a problem: as completely un-self-aware entities, rivers not only can't know where they're going; they also can't make wrong turns.
Hillary: I'm Still Here!
I wrote this parody about five years ago (I've since updated the lyrics to reflect later events). I snail-mailed a copy to Frank Rich (then still mostly a thoughtful theater critic, and not yet Howard Dean's attack dog) who responded with a really nice note telling me that he enjoyed it so much that he sent it off to Steve (Mr. Sondheim to you). A few weeks later, I got a personal note from Steve who claimed to be "very impressed" by my effort, further complimenting me for my "funny and fresh" rhymes, and for my "rhythmic sense" which, in Steve's opinion, "makes the whole thing very sharp". Let me repeat that: Stephen Sondheim sent me a personal note, pecked out on His own typewriter and signed in His own handwriting, lavishly praising my parody of a song that He Himself had written. (At this point you may, like me, choose to go back and re-read the previous two sentences.) A correspondence of sorts ensued, in the course of which Steve and I discussed, among other things, why Larry Hart is overrated as a lyricist and why I thought that Steve would really enjoy Holiday For Heretics, a copy of which I mailed to him under separate cover. A few days later, a bit of a chill seemed to creep into our relationship, and like Victor Laszlo seeking to chat with Senor Ugarte, I began to find the conversation a trifle one-sided. The smoke signals from Camp Steve were unmistakable: Don't call us, we'll call you.
In the event of a major natural disaster, after making sure that my family is OK, the first thing I'd run back into the house to save are the letters from Steve. I can only hope he feels the same way about mine.
__________________________
Hillary's Still Here
(With apologies to Stephen Sondheim)
Good times and bum times
I’ve seen ‘em all and, my dear
I’m still here
State dinners sometimes
Sometimes just Carville and beer
But I’m here
I made Webb Hubbell
Sing the blues
Got into trouble
With the jews
Kisses with Mrs. Yasir
But I’m here
I've been in limbo
Thanks to that slimeball Ken Starr
And I'm here
Paid off the bimbo
That was one pricey cigar
And I’m here
Sat still while sickies
Called me “bitch”
Helped Harold Ickes
Dig his ditch
Ditto Vince Foster—that was a titch
More severe
Still, no-one knew I was there
So I’m here!
I fought the rumor
I'm into nubile young things
And I’m here
Sucked up to Schumer
Soon started clipping his wings
And I’m here
I’m sorta pretty, not too dumb
Said "New York City
"Here I come!"
Love those Bronx Bombers
Come on chum
Hear me cheer!
I rode a goddamn subway
And I’m here!
They laughed at my “Kids first!” and “It takes a vi-i-ilage!”
Nobody's laughing today
‘Cause once you've said “Kids first!” and “It takes a vi-i-ilage!”
Nothing you say sounds cliché
Chappaqua's cozy
But it's not much of a thrill
So I'm here
Neighbors get nosy
Wondering who's home with Bill
While I'm here
Look at me, mama
I got spunk!
No more high drama
No more funk!
Barack Obama
You two-bit punk
Disappear
Go get yourself a career
I'll be here!
I’ve moseyed over
From the left side of the road
And I’m here
Prayed to Jehovah
Please let John Kerry implode
So I’m here
Don’t like the Senate
So damn small
Two more years then it’s
Time to haul
Back to that house down the mall
Let me steer
This time I get the office
And I’m here!
I've gotten through
"Girl friend, why don't you just leave him
After what he's put you through?"
Or better yet
"Girlfriend, if you ever leave him
You'll just be Hillary who?"
(modulation, crescendo)
Good times bum times
I've seen 'em all and my dear
I'm still here
State dinners sometimes
Sometimes just Carville and beer
And I'm here
Met all the players
Learned the ropes
I've scolded mayors
Told off Popes
Practiced how not to appear
Insincere
Lord knows '08 is my year
And I'm here!
Look who's here!
I'm Still here!
In the event of a major natural disaster, after making sure that my family is OK, the first thing I'd run back into the house to save are the letters from Steve. I can only hope he feels the same way about mine.
__________________________
Hillary's Still Here
(With apologies to Stephen Sondheim)
Good times and bum times
I’ve seen ‘em all and, my dear
I’m still here
State dinners sometimes
Sometimes just Carville and beer
But I’m here
I made Webb Hubbell
Sing the blues
Got into trouble
With the jews
Kisses with Mrs. Yasir
But I’m here
I've been in limbo
Thanks to that slimeball Ken Starr
And I'm here
Paid off the bimbo
That was one pricey cigar
And I’m here
Sat still while sickies
Called me “bitch”
Helped Harold Ickes
Dig his ditch
Ditto Vince Foster—that was a titch
More severe
Still, no-one knew I was there
So I’m here!
I fought the rumor
I'm into nubile young things
And I’m here
Sucked up to Schumer
Soon started clipping his wings
And I’m here
I’m sorta pretty, not too dumb
Said "New York City
"Here I come!"
Love those Bronx Bombers
Come on chum
Hear me cheer!
I rode a goddamn subway
And I’m here!
They laughed at my “Kids first!” and “It takes a vi-i-ilage!”
Nobody's laughing today
‘Cause once you've said “Kids first!” and “It takes a vi-i-ilage!”
Nothing you say sounds cliché
Chappaqua's cozy
But it's not much of a thrill
So I'm here
Neighbors get nosy
Wondering who's home with Bill
While I'm here
Look at me, mama
I got spunk!
No more high drama
No more funk!
Barack Obama
You two-bit punk
Disappear
Go get yourself a career
I'll be here!
I’ve moseyed over
From the left side of the road
And I’m here
Prayed to Jehovah
Please let John Kerry implode
So I’m here
Don’t like the Senate
So damn small
Two more years then it’s
Time to haul
Back to that house down the mall
Let me steer
This time I get the office
And I’m here!
I've gotten through
"Girl friend, why don't you just leave him
After what he's put you through?"
Or better yet
"Girlfriend, if you ever leave him
You'll just be Hillary who?"
(modulation, crescendo)
Good times bum times
I've seen 'em all and my dear
I'm still here
State dinners sometimes
Sometimes just Carville and beer
And I'm here
Met all the players
Learned the ropes
I've scolded mayors
Told off Popes
Practiced how not to appear
Insincere
Lord knows '08 is my year
And I'm here!
Look who's here!
I'm Still here!
Cy Coleman, RIP
Cy Coleman, RIP
Just about the last of the great Broadway tunesmiths has left us. John Kander is still around, as are Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock, but over the past couple of decades we've witnessed the passing of Richard Rodgers, Harold Arlen, Arthur Schwartz, Ira Gershwin, Fred Ebb, Adolph Green, Leonard Bernstein, Jimmy van Heusen, Irving Berlin, and dozens of other great craftsmen of song. Truly the end of an era is unfolding. These guys wrote songs for others to sing, and they were exacting in their execution, harshly self-critical to the point of neurotic perfectionism.
The singer-songwriters who emerged in the sixties (beginning with Dylan and The Beatles) were entertainers first who understood not only that they wanted to tell their own stories, but who also grasped the compelling economics of owning and controlling your own publishing catalog. As performers, it was all too easy for them to make do with less than perfect rhyming, meter, and scanning. If you could squeeze another word into a chorus and it helped to get your point across, why not do it? And while sophisticated harmonies might not have been beyond their musical reach--the later Beatles (and the early Doors!) produced some significant music that you have to listen to more than once to really hear---there is a 1-4-5 sameness that pervades a great deal of folk and rock 'n roll. The production values in the studio and on the tour stage often counted for as much as the basic material. That's why he's Sir George Martin.
The Broadway guys were different. If a lyric didn't fit a melody, they went back to the drawing board (Oscar Hammerstein lamented for the rest of his life settling for the word "divine" in the penultimate phrase of "All The Things You Are", and it is jarring, but he only had two syllables to work with and Jerome Kern was quite happy with the melody exactly the way he'd written it, thank you). The Broadway composers often provided harmonies that surprised the audiences of their day, and many of their tunes sound just as fresh today as they did when they were composed. They wrote songs that, by and large, were meant for delivery by a lone performer with a single accompanying piano. Try doing that with "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" or "Get Off Of My Cloud". (No flames, please; I've got big ears and a very large Stones and Beatles collection).
Sinatra's greatness is only partially explained by his rich baritone, flawless phrasing, and unequalled stage appeal. He also brought to the party an unmatched ear for the great song. Many of the tunes we know as "standards" today might have disappeared but for having been hand-picked for eternal preservation by The Chairman. Cy Coleman gave him two of his greatest hits: "Witchcraft" and "The Best Is Yet To Come", neither of which was originally a show tune.
Coleman also composed the scores for Wildcat (including "Hey Look Me Over"),Sweet Charity ("Hey Big Spender" and "If My Friends Could See Me Now"). More recently, he wrote the songs for the 1990 hit show City Of Angels, which gets my vote as easily the best original Broadway score of the past 20 years or so. And for the red states, Coleman wrote The Will Rogers Follies with lyricists Comden and Green. If you get a chance, listen to the musical setting he provides for "Never Met A Man I Didn't Like", an American anthem if I ever heard one, sappy lyrical flourishes and all.
The remaining great craftsmen (which group includes one of the greatest of them all, the still prolific Stephen Sondheim) can be counted on the fingers of one hand. They continue bravely to soldier on against the cultural onslaught of short attention spans, Andrew Lloyd Webber, musical illiteracy, and MTV. Cy Coleman will be sorely missed.
Just about the last of the great Broadway tunesmiths has left us. John Kander is still around, as are Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock, but over the past couple of decades we've witnessed the passing of Richard Rodgers, Harold Arlen, Arthur Schwartz, Ira Gershwin, Fred Ebb, Adolph Green, Leonard Bernstein, Jimmy van Heusen, Irving Berlin, and dozens of other great craftsmen of song. Truly the end of an era is unfolding. These guys wrote songs for others to sing, and they were exacting in their execution, harshly self-critical to the point of neurotic perfectionism.
The singer-songwriters who emerged in the sixties (beginning with Dylan and The Beatles) were entertainers first who understood not only that they wanted to tell their own stories, but who also grasped the compelling economics of owning and controlling your own publishing catalog. As performers, it was all too easy for them to make do with less than perfect rhyming, meter, and scanning. If you could squeeze another word into a chorus and it helped to get your point across, why not do it? And while sophisticated harmonies might not have been beyond their musical reach--the later Beatles (and the early Doors!) produced some significant music that you have to listen to more than once to really hear---there is a 1-4-5 sameness that pervades a great deal of folk and rock 'n roll. The production values in the studio and on the tour stage often counted for as much as the basic material. That's why he's Sir George Martin.
The Broadway guys were different. If a lyric didn't fit a melody, they went back to the drawing board (Oscar Hammerstein lamented for the rest of his life settling for the word "divine" in the penultimate phrase of "All The Things You Are", and it is jarring, but he only had two syllables to work with and Jerome Kern was quite happy with the melody exactly the way he'd written it, thank you). The Broadway composers often provided harmonies that surprised the audiences of their day, and many of their tunes sound just as fresh today as they did when they were composed. They wrote songs that, by and large, were meant for delivery by a lone performer with a single accompanying piano. Try doing that with "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" or "Get Off Of My Cloud". (No flames, please; I've got big ears and a very large Stones and Beatles collection).
Sinatra's greatness is only partially explained by his rich baritone, flawless phrasing, and unequalled stage appeal. He also brought to the party an unmatched ear for the great song. Many of the tunes we know as "standards" today might have disappeared but for having been hand-picked for eternal preservation by The Chairman. Cy Coleman gave him two of his greatest hits: "Witchcraft" and "The Best Is Yet To Come", neither of which was originally a show tune.
Coleman also composed the scores for Wildcat (including "Hey Look Me Over"),Sweet Charity ("Hey Big Spender" and "If My Friends Could See Me Now"). More recently, he wrote the songs for the 1990 hit show City Of Angels, which gets my vote as easily the best original Broadway score of the past 20 years or so. And for the red states, Coleman wrote The Will Rogers Follies with lyricists Comden and Green. If you get a chance, listen to the musical setting he provides for "Never Met A Man I Didn't Like", an American anthem if I ever heard one, sappy lyrical flourishes and all.
The remaining great craftsmen (which group includes one of the greatest of them all, the still prolific Stephen Sondheim) can be counted on the fingers of one hand. They continue bravely to soldier on against the cultural onslaught of short attention spans, Andrew Lloyd Webber, musical illiteracy, and MTV. Cy Coleman will be sorely missed.
What Do You Know, Kid? The Album
Here it is---the album that invented the genre called "kids' jazz". (Well, at least that's what I called it.) This audio blog is the complete album, not including the karaoke tracks; the individual song tracks appear elsewhere on this site and in the archives as single audioblogs. Song titles are:
What Do You Know, Kid?
E=mc Squared
Antibiotics
Thomas Alva Edison
Photosynthesis
John Maynard Keynes
The Apostrophe's Song
Constants
Gravitation
Albert Einstein
From the original liner notes:
---When I was ten years old, my mother brought home a copy of what would become the most listened-to album of my youth: Allan Sherman's My Son The Folk Singer. Along with his follow-up album My Son The Celebrity, the Sherman genius kept me laughing for hours, though I wasn't always sure why I was laughing. But I knew that the songs were funny (my mother was laughing, too) and that kept me listening. My reward? The records introduced me to a world of people, mostly real people, whose names either rhymed with each other (David Dubinsky, Bo Belinsky) or sounded very interesting on their own (Benjamin Disraeli, Newton N. Minow, Vladimir Horowitz). Sherman's lyrics also referred to places and things that, along with those thought-provoking names, kept my parents busy answering questions: "Where's Shaker Heights? What's a line of plastics? Why did that guy polish all the apples?" Adults, I thought, knew quite a bit that I didn't, and the songs drew me into their world in a way that made me want to find out more.
My primary intent for What Do You Know, Kid? is to get kids to want to find out more by making them aware that there is so much more to find out.The album is offered for enjoyment and as a catalyst--not a substitute-- for real learning. (I am very sympathetic to the notion that we do our kids a disservice when we try to sugar-coat the hard work that goes before true understanding.) I'm attempting to expose kids to difficult concepts and important names by introducing them in a playful framework that will draw out questions, or perhaps encourage a trip to the library. And who knows--maybe hearing and getting used to these words at an early age will make them seem less forbidding years down the road when they matter more (say, during finals week at Princeton or in the development of a Unified Field Theory). I hope that parents or other adults who are listening have some fun along the way, too.
And then there's the music. The mix of instruments varies from track to track, providing broad exposure to the sounds of acoustic jazz--its distinctive harmonies, timbres, and rhythms. The format of most of the songs is similar to that of mainstream jazz recordings of American pop standars--chorus, improvised solo with rhythm section backup, chorus. I'm convinced that all kids have jazz ears waiting to be excited by the music.
What Do You Know, Kid?
E=mc Squared
Antibiotics
Thomas Alva Edison
Photosynthesis
John Maynard Keynes
The Apostrophe's Song
Constants
Gravitation
Albert Einstein
From the original liner notes:
---When I was ten years old, my mother brought home a copy of what would become the most listened-to album of my youth: Allan Sherman's My Son The Folk Singer. Along with his follow-up album My Son The Celebrity, the Sherman genius kept me laughing for hours, though I wasn't always sure why I was laughing. But I knew that the songs were funny (my mother was laughing, too) and that kept me listening. My reward? The records introduced me to a world of people, mostly real people, whose names either rhymed with each other (David Dubinsky, Bo Belinsky) or sounded very interesting on their own (Benjamin Disraeli, Newton N. Minow, Vladimir Horowitz). Sherman's lyrics also referred to places and things that, along with those thought-provoking names, kept my parents busy answering questions: "Where's Shaker Heights? What's a line of plastics? Why did that guy polish all the apples?" Adults, I thought, knew quite a bit that I didn't, and the songs drew me into their world in a way that made me want to find out more.
My primary intent for What Do You Know, Kid? is to get kids to want to find out more by making them aware that there is so much more to find out.The album is offered for enjoyment and as a catalyst--not a substitute-- for real learning. (I am very sympathetic to the notion that we do our kids a disservice when we try to sugar-coat the hard work that goes before true understanding.) I'm attempting to expose kids to difficult concepts and important names by introducing them in a playful framework that will draw out questions, or perhaps encourage a trip to the library. And who knows--maybe hearing and getting used to these words at an early age will make them seem less forbidding years down the road when they matter more (say, during finals week at Princeton or in the development of a Unified Field Theory). I hope that parents or other adults who are listening have some fun along the way, too.
And then there's the music. The mix of instruments varies from track to track, providing broad exposure to the sounds of acoustic jazz--its distinctive harmonies, timbres, and rhythms. The format of most of the songs is similar to that of mainstream jazz recordings of American pop standars--chorus, improvised solo with rhythm section backup, chorus. I'm convinced that all kids have jazz ears waiting to be excited by the music.
Glorify!
An ecumenical gospel tune? Why not? Glorify! took third place, gospel category, in a songwriting contest I entered a few years ago. I think I still have the sunglasses they sent me as a prize.
Shelter Of Peace--Ufros Aleinu
This song is taken from a hebrew prayer. I composed the musical setting and some ancillary english lyrics in 1998, and I was lucky enough to get my cantor at the time, Neil Blumofe, to sing it.
(Full translation of the hebrew: Spread over us Your shelter of peace. Guide us with Your good counsel.)
(Full translation of the hebrew: Spread over us Your shelter of peace. Guide us with Your good counsel.)
All The Good Ones Are Taken
After I wrote this, I learned that Pam Tillis had a hit single called "All The Good Ones Are Gone". She was talking about men, I guess. I like my song better.
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