Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Jody Reynolds performing the classic Endless Sleep.
Markin comment:
This space is noted for politics mainly, and mainly the desperate political fight against various social, economic and moral injustices and wrongs in this wicked old world, although the place where politics and cultural expression, especially post-World War II be-bop cultural expression, has drawn some of my interest over the past several years. The most telling example of that interest is in the field of popular music, centrally the blues, city and country, good woman on your mind, hard working, hard drinking blues and folk music, mainly urban, mainly protest to high heaven against the world’s injustices smite the dragon down, folk music. Of late though the old time 1950s kid, primordial, big bang, jail-break rock and roll music that set us off from earlier generations has drawn my attention. Mostly by reviewing oldies CDs but here, and occasionally hereafter under this headline, specifically songs that some future archeologists might dig up as prime examples of how we primitives lived ,and what we listened to back in the day.
*********
JODY REYNOLDS
"Endless Sleep"
(Jody Reynolds and Dolores Nance)
The night was black, rain fallin' down
Looked for my baby, she's nowhere around
Traced her footsteps down to the shore
‘fraid she's gone forever more
I looked at the sea and it seemed to say
“I took your baby from you away.
I heard a voice cryin' in the deep
“Come join me, baby, in my endless sleep.
Why did we quarrel, why did we fight?
Why did I leave her alone tonight?
That's why her footsteps ran into the sea
That's why my baby has gone from me.
I looked at the sea and it seemed to say
“I took your baby from you away.
I heard a voice cryin' in the deep
“Come join me, baby, in my endless sleep.
Ran in the water, heart full of fear
There in the breakers I saw her near
Reached for my darlin', held her to me
Stole her away from the angry sea
I looked at the sea and it seemed to say
“You took your baby from me away.
My heart cried out “she's mine to keep
I saved my baby from an endless sleep.
[Fade]
Endless sleep, endless sleep
**********
I want the iPhone number and e-mail address of the person who wrote this one. Whoever that person is (or they are, as the case may be) should be made to run the gauntlet, or put on a lonely desert isle, or, and this would be real justice in this case made to follow Socrates, who also corrupted the morals of the youth of his time. Why all the hubbub? Well, read the heart-breaking teen angst lyrics here on Endless Sleep. Old Lee (let’s call him that, although as in most cases with these 1950s teen lyrics, frustratingly, the parties are not named except things like teen angel, earth angel, etc.) and his honey, Laura (again name made up to give some personality to this sketch) had a spat, a big one from Laura’s reaction, and now she has flipped out and, as teenagers often will in a moment of overreaction to some slight, gone down to the seaside to end it all. Lee in desperation, once he hears from some unnamed third party apparently what she has done, frantically tries to find her out in the deep, dark, wave-splashed night. All the while the “sea” is calling out for him to join her.
And that last part, the part that practically begs for a joint teen suicide pact is where every right thinking person, and not just enraged parents either, should, or should have put his or her foot down and gone after the lyricist’s scalp, to speak nothing of the singer of such woe begotten lines. Ya, I know old Lee saved his honey from the endless sleep but still we cannot have this stuff filling the ears of impressionable teen-agers. Right?
Of course, from what I heard third-hand, this quarrel that old Lee speaks of , and that Laura went ballistic over, was about whether they were going to go bowling with Lee’s guy friends and their girls down the old Bowl-a-drome on Saturday or to the drive-in theater for the latest Elvis movie. Lee, usually a mild-mannered kid, reared up at that thought of going to another bogus Elvis film featuring him, the king, riding around in a big old car, having plenty of dough in his pocket and plenty of luscious young girls ready and waiting to help him spent that dough. Of such disputes the battle of the sexes abound, and occasionally other battles, war battles as well. However, after hearing that take on the dispute I think old Lee had much the best of it. And, also off of that same take I am not altogether sure I would have been all that frantic to go down to the seaside looking for dear, sweet Laura. Just kidding.
But that brings something up, something that I am not kidding about. Now I love the sea more than a little. But I also know about the power of the sea, about old Uncle Neptune’s capacity to do some very bad things to anything that gets in his way. From old double-high storm-tossed seawalls that crumble at the charging sea’s touch to rain-soaked, mast-toppled boats lost down under in the briny deep whose only sin was to stir up the waves. And Laura should have too. So I am really ticked off, yes, ticked off, that Laura should tempt the fates, and Lee’s fate, by pulling a bone-head water's edge stunt like that.
It reminds me , although in contrast, of the time that old flame, old hitchhike road searching for the blue-pink great American West night flame Angelica, old Indiana-bred, Mid-American naïve Angelica, who got so excited the first time she saw the Pacific Ocean, never having seen the ocean before, leaped right in and was almost carried away by a sudden riptide. It took all I had to pull her out. And that Angelica error was out of sheer ignorance. Laura had no excuse. When you look at it that way, and as much as I personally do no care a fig about bowling, would it really have been that bad to go bowl a couple of strings. Such are the ways of teen angst.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Out In The Be-Bop 1950s Night- A Breathe Of Fresh Air Hits The Radio Airwaves – When Elvis Was Young And Hungry And Billie Was A Madman
CD Review
Sunrise: Elvis Presley, Elvis Presley, 2 CD set, BMG Records. 1989
“I hate Elvis, I love Elvis,” I can still hear the echo of my old “the projects” boy, William James Bradley, also known as Billie, Billie from the hills, a mad demon of a kid and my best friend down in the elementary school. We grew apart after a while, and I will tell you why in a minute, but for a long time, a long kid time long, Billie, Billie of a hundred dreams, Billie of fifty (at least) screw-ups made me laugh and made my day when things were tough, like they almost always were, at my beat down broke down family house.
You know fifty some years later Billie was right. We hated Elvis, especially at that time when all the girls, the young girls got weak-kneed over him and he made the older girls (and women, some mothers even) sweat and left no room for ordinary mortal boys, “the projects boys” most of all, on their “dream” card. And most especially, hard as we tried, for brown-haired, tow-headed, blue-eyed ten, eleven and twelve year old boys who didn’t know how to dance, or sneer. We both got pissed off at my brother because, he looked very much like Elvis and although he had no manners, and no time for girls, they were all following him. Christ there really is no justice in this wicked old world.
And we loved Elvis for giving us, at least as far as we knew then, our own music, our own "jump' and our own jail-break from the tired old stuff we heard on the radio and television but did not ‘”speak” to us. And for the songs that he left behind. Not the goofy, Tin Pan Alley or somewhere like that, inspired “happy” music that went along with his mostly maligned, and rightly so, films but the stuff from the Sun Records days, the stuff from when he was from hunger. That, as we also from hunger, was like a siren call to break-out and then we caught his act on television and that was that. I probably walk “funny”, knees and hips out of whack, today from trying way back then to pour a third-rate imitation of his moves into my body to impress the girls.
But enough of Elvis’ place in the pre-teen and teen rock pantheon this is after all about Billie, and Elvis’ twisted spell on the poor boy. Now you know Billie, or you should, from another story, a story about Bo Diddley and how Billie wanted to, as a change of pace break from the Elvis rut create his own “style.” Well, in hard, hard post-World War II Northern white "the projects" racial animosity poor unknowing Billie got blasted away by one of the older, more knowing boys about wanted to emulate a n----r for his troubles.
That sent Billie, Billie from the hills, back to Elvis pronto. See, Billie was desperate to impress the girls way before I was aware of them, or their charms. Half, on some days, three-quarters of our conversations (I won’t say monologues because I did get a word in edgewise every once in a while when Billie got on one of his rants) revolved around doing this or that, something legal something not, to impress the girls. And that is where the “hate” part mentioned above comes in. Billie believed, and he may still believe it today, that if only he could approximate Elvis’s looks, look, stance, and substance that all the girls would be flocking to him.
Needless to say, such an endeavor required, requires money, dough, kale, cash, moola whatever you want to call it. And what twelve year old project boys (that’s the age time of this story, about late 1957, early 1958) didn’t have, and didn’t have in abundance was any of that do-re-mi. And no way to get it from missing parents, messed up parents, or just flat out poor parents. Billie’s and mine were the later, poor as church mice. No that‘s not right because church mice (in the way that I am using it, and as we used it back then to signify the respectable poor who “touted” their Catholic pious poorness as a badge of honor in this weaselly old world) would not do, would not think about, would not even breathe the same air of what we were about to embark on. A life of crime, kid stuff crime but I'll leave that to the readers judgment.
See, on one of Billie’s rants he got the idea in his head, and, maybe, it got planted there by something that he read about Elvis (Christ, he read more about that guy that he did about anybody else once he became an acolyte), that if he had a bunch of rings on all his fingers the girls would give him a tumble (a tumble in those days being a hard kiss on the lips for about twelve seconds or “copping” a little feel, and if I have to explain that last in more detail you had better just move on). But see, also Billie’s idea is that if he has all those rings, especially for a projects boy then it will make his story that has set to tell easier. And that story is none other than he wrote to Elvis (possible) and spoke man to man about his situation (improbable) and Elvis, Elvis the king, Elvis from nowhere Mississippi like we were from the nowhere projects, Elvis bleeding heart, had sent him these rings to give him a start in life (outrageously impossible.) Christ, I don’t believe old Billie came up with that story even now when I am a million years world-weary.
But first you need the rings and as the late honorable bank robber, Willie Sutton, said about robbing banks-that’s where the money is-old Billie, blessed, beatified Billie, figured out, and figured out all by himself, that if you want to be a ring stealer that you better go to the jewelry store because that is where the rings are. Now the reader, and rightly so, now, might ask where was his best buddy during this time and why was he not offering wise counsel about the pitfalls of crime and the virtues of honesty and incorruptibility. Well, when Billie got off on his rant you just waited to see what played out but the real reason was, hell, maybe I could get a ring for my ring-less fingers and be on my way to impress the girls too. I think they call it, or could call it, aiding and abetting.
But enough of that superficial moralizing. Let’s get to the jewelry store, the best one in the downtown of the working class town we were appendaged to (literally so because it was located on a one road in and out peninsula). We walked a couple of miles to get there, plotting all the way. Bingo the Acme Jewelry Store(or some name like that) jumped up at us. Billie’s was as nervous as a colt and I was not far behind, although on this caper I am just the “stooge”, if that. I’m to wait outside to see if John Law comes by. Okay, Billie, good luck. And strangely enough his luck is good that day, and many days after, although those days after were not ring days. That day though his haul was five rings. Five shaky rings, shaky hands Billie, as we walked, then started running, away from the down town area. When we got close to home we stopped near the beach where we lived to see up close what the rings looked like. Billie yelled, “Damn.” And why did he yell that word. Well, apparently in his terror (his word to me) at getting caught he just grabbed what was at hand. And what was at hand were five women’s rings. Now, how are you going to impress girls, ten, eleven or twelve year old girls, even if as naïve as us, and maybe more so, that Elvis is you bosom buddy and you are practically his only life-line adviser with five women’s rings? Damn, damn is right.
Sunrise: Elvis Presley, Elvis Presley, 2 CD set, BMG Records. 1989
“I hate Elvis, I love Elvis,” I can still hear the echo of my old “the projects” boy, William James Bradley, also known as Billie, Billie from the hills, a mad demon of a kid and my best friend down in the elementary school. We grew apart after a while, and I will tell you why in a minute, but for a long time, a long kid time long, Billie, Billie of a hundred dreams, Billie of fifty (at least) screw-ups made me laugh and made my day when things were tough, like they almost always were, at my beat down broke down family house.
You know fifty some years later Billie was right. We hated Elvis, especially at that time when all the girls, the young girls got weak-kneed over him and he made the older girls (and women, some mothers even) sweat and left no room for ordinary mortal boys, “the projects boys” most of all, on their “dream” card. And most especially, hard as we tried, for brown-haired, tow-headed, blue-eyed ten, eleven and twelve year old boys who didn’t know how to dance, or sneer. We both got pissed off at my brother because, he looked very much like Elvis and although he had no manners, and no time for girls, they were all following him. Christ there really is no justice in this wicked old world.
And we loved Elvis for giving us, at least as far as we knew then, our own music, our own "jump' and our own jail-break from the tired old stuff we heard on the radio and television but did not ‘”speak” to us. And for the songs that he left behind. Not the goofy, Tin Pan Alley or somewhere like that, inspired “happy” music that went along with his mostly maligned, and rightly so, films but the stuff from the Sun Records days, the stuff from when he was from hunger. That, as we also from hunger, was like a siren call to break-out and then we caught his act on television and that was that. I probably walk “funny”, knees and hips out of whack, today from trying way back then to pour a third-rate imitation of his moves into my body to impress the girls.
But enough of Elvis’ place in the pre-teen and teen rock pantheon this is after all about Billie, and Elvis’ twisted spell on the poor boy. Now you know Billie, or you should, from another story, a story about Bo Diddley and how Billie wanted to, as a change of pace break from the Elvis rut create his own “style.” Well, in hard, hard post-World War II Northern white "the projects" racial animosity poor unknowing Billie got blasted away by one of the older, more knowing boys about wanted to emulate a n----r for his troubles.
That sent Billie, Billie from the hills, back to Elvis pronto. See, Billie was desperate to impress the girls way before I was aware of them, or their charms. Half, on some days, three-quarters of our conversations (I won’t say monologues because I did get a word in edgewise every once in a while when Billie got on one of his rants) revolved around doing this or that, something legal something not, to impress the girls. And that is where the “hate” part mentioned above comes in. Billie believed, and he may still believe it today, that if only he could approximate Elvis’s looks, look, stance, and substance that all the girls would be flocking to him.
Needless to say, such an endeavor required, requires money, dough, kale, cash, moola whatever you want to call it. And what twelve year old project boys (that’s the age time of this story, about late 1957, early 1958) didn’t have, and didn’t have in abundance was any of that do-re-mi. And no way to get it from missing parents, messed up parents, or just flat out poor parents. Billie’s and mine were the later, poor as church mice. No that‘s not right because church mice (in the way that I am using it, and as we used it back then to signify the respectable poor who “touted” their Catholic pious poorness as a badge of honor in this weaselly old world) would not do, would not think about, would not even breathe the same air of what we were about to embark on. A life of crime, kid stuff crime but I'll leave that to the readers judgment.
See, on one of Billie’s rants he got the idea in his head, and, maybe, it got planted there by something that he read about Elvis (Christ, he read more about that guy that he did about anybody else once he became an acolyte), that if he had a bunch of rings on all his fingers the girls would give him a tumble (a tumble in those days being a hard kiss on the lips for about twelve seconds or “copping” a little feel, and if I have to explain that last in more detail you had better just move on). But see, also Billie’s idea is that if he has all those rings, especially for a projects boy then it will make his story that has set to tell easier. And that story is none other than he wrote to Elvis (possible) and spoke man to man about his situation (improbable) and Elvis, Elvis the king, Elvis from nowhere Mississippi like we were from the nowhere projects, Elvis bleeding heart, had sent him these rings to give him a start in life (outrageously impossible.) Christ, I don’t believe old Billie came up with that story even now when I am a million years world-weary.
But first you need the rings and as the late honorable bank robber, Willie Sutton, said about robbing banks-that’s where the money is-old Billie, blessed, beatified Billie, figured out, and figured out all by himself, that if you want to be a ring stealer that you better go to the jewelry store because that is where the rings are. Now the reader, and rightly so, now, might ask where was his best buddy during this time and why was he not offering wise counsel about the pitfalls of crime and the virtues of honesty and incorruptibility. Well, when Billie got off on his rant you just waited to see what played out but the real reason was, hell, maybe I could get a ring for my ring-less fingers and be on my way to impress the girls too. I think they call it, or could call it, aiding and abetting.
But enough of that superficial moralizing. Let’s get to the jewelry store, the best one in the downtown of the working class town we were appendaged to (literally so because it was located on a one road in and out peninsula). We walked a couple of miles to get there, plotting all the way. Bingo the Acme Jewelry Store(or some name like that) jumped up at us. Billie’s was as nervous as a colt and I was not far behind, although on this caper I am just the “stooge”, if that. I’m to wait outside to see if John Law comes by. Okay, Billie, good luck. And strangely enough his luck is good that day, and many days after, although those days after were not ring days. That day though his haul was five rings. Five shaky rings, shaky hands Billie, as we walked, then started running, away from the down town area. When we got close to home we stopped near the beach where we lived to see up close what the rings looked like. Billie yelled, “Damn.” And why did he yell that word. Well, apparently in his terror (his word to me) at getting caught he just grabbed what was at hand. And what was at hand were five women’s rings. Now, how are you going to impress girls, ten, eleven or twelve year old girls, even if as naïve as us, and maybe more so, that Elvis is you bosom buddy and you are practically his only life-line adviser with five women’s rings? Damn, damn is right.
Friday, January 28, 2011
* Once Again From The Free-Form Butterfly Breeze Lady- Joni Mitchell’s "Hejira"
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Joni Mitchell performing Coyote.
CD Review
Hejira, Joni Mitchell, Asylum Records, 1976
The last time that I reviewed a Joni Mitchell album in this space I noted that I actually knew her work before I was aware of her as a performer, from her songs covered by other artists. And before that angel-edged voice linked to those 1960s wistful lyrics were introduced to me in the late 1960s how did I know Joni? Well, thanks to folk song singer/songwriter Tom Rush who covered her Circle Game and Urge For Going. Hardly an angel-edged introduction. But there is more. I also knew her work from Dave Van Ronk’s gravelly-voice cover of that same Urge For Going. Again, no angel-edged voice. No way. Sorry brother Van Ronk. So when I heard her Ladies Of The Canyon I already knew some things about. Except that trilly, echo in the night, voice of her’s put those songs, and others, on another, more ethereal level. Just the right voice for the mystic-seeking, dream-vision floating, and, ah, dope-addled 1960s.
I would argue, moreover, that if the average male “hippie”, and maybe, females as well, although I am not as sure about that, into folk and folk rock in those days was asked to give his opinion of his vision of what a 1960s folk-singing “chick” (that was one of our artless terms for women in those days, although not the most artless) should look and sound like that composite would come out to very much the Botticelli-like Joni Mitchell. That said, her work here on this album, Hejira, which is from the tail-end, the very tail-end, of the folk-rock boom and just before the 1960s dreams died, and died hard, and reflects a little harder edge, both lyrically and vocally, and a little more sense of the down side of this wicked old world. Stick outs are: Coyote, Song For Sharon, and Refuge On The Roads. Still nice.
CD Review
Hejira, Joni Mitchell, Asylum Records, 1976
The last time that I reviewed a Joni Mitchell album in this space I noted that I actually knew her work before I was aware of her as a performer, from her songs covered by other artists. And before that angel-edged voice linked to those 1960s wistful lyrics were introduced to me in the late 1960s how did I know Joni? Well, thanks to folk song singer/songwriter Tom Rush who covered her Circle Game and Urge For Going. Hardly an angel-edged introduction. But there is more. I also knew her work from Dave Van Ronk’s gravelly-voice cover of that same Urge For Going. Again, no angel-edged voice. No way. Sorry brother Van Ronk. So when I heard her Ladies Of The Canyon I already knew some things about. Except that trilly, echo in the night, voice of her’s put those songs, and others, on another, more ethereal level. Just the right voice for the mystic-seeking, dream-vision floating, and, ah, dope-addled 1960s.
I would argue, moreover, that if the average male “hippie”, and maybe, females as well, although I am not as sure about that, into folk and folk rock in those days was asked to give his opinion of his vision of what a 1960s folk-singing “chick” (that was one of our artless terms for women in those days, although not the most artless) should look and sound like that composite would come out to very much the Botticelli-like Joni Mitchell. That said, her work here on this album, Hejira, which is from the tail-end, the very tail-end, of the folk-rock boom and just before the 1960s dreams died, and died hard, and reflects a little harder edge, both lyrically and vocally, and a little more sense of the down side of this wicked old world. Stick outs are: Coyote, Song For Sharon, and Refuge On The Roads. Still nice.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Out In The Be-Bop 1950s Night- Out In The Adventure Car Hop Night - A CD Review
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Dubs performing the classic Could This Be Magic? to set the mood for this piece.
CD Review
The Rock ‘N’ Roll Era: 1957: Still Rockin’, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1988
Now 1957 was a good year for rock, for "boss" cars, and for car hops if you could keep them, at least that was what some of the older guys told me later. In 1957 my drive-in restaurant experiences were limited to, when we had a car, a working car in our family which was an iffy proposition at best, sitting in the back seat of some beat up sedan waiting during the daytime (the night belonged to the teens and no self-respecting or smart parent would bring tender children to such a place at night) for some cold plastic hamburger with fries. Jesus.
But the music was on fire as the breakout of the previous couple of years hit the pre-teen audience that was just as starved for its own not parent-seal-of-approval music as the older kids. Elvis, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and a ton of other talent was hitting the airwaves so that if you tired of hearing one song after the one thousandth consecutive playing you could move right on.
In this The Rock ‘n’ Roll Era series some years, I believe reflecting banner years, have two CDs dedicated to the greatest hits for that year. For 1957, which has the magic two, I think that the other 1957 CD is a bit better but this one covers the rest of what should have been preserved. Stick outs here include Chuck Berry’s Rock & Roll Music (Christ, he had about ten hits in those years and most of them still crank up the teen-memory dark night air with their electricity); The Platters’ classic last dance, school dance I’m Sorry (oh, please, please save that last dance for me certain she that I have eyed until my eyes got sore all night, and she, certain she, peeked at me too); Little Richard’s Jenny, Jenny (another guy who had a ton of hit in a short period, although they haven't worn as well as Chuck's); and Fats Domino’s Blue Monday (ya, back to school days Monday blahs, except for Monday morning boys' "lav" bragging rights if that certain she I just mentioned really did mean to look my way for that last dance, otherwise why have a Monday anyway).
CD Review
The Rock ‘N’ Roll Era: 1957: Still Rockin’, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1988
Now 1957 was a good year for rock, for "boss" cars, and for car hops if you could keep them, at least that was what some of the older guys told me later. In 1957 my drive-in restaurant experiences were limited to, when we had a car, a working car in our family which was an iffy proposition at best, sitting in the back seat of some beat up sedan waiting during the daytime (the night belonged to the teens and no self-respecting or smart parent would bring tender children to such a place at night) for some cold plastic hamburger with fries. Jesus.
But the music was on fire as the breakout of the previous couple of years hit the pre-teen audience that was just as starved for its own not parent-seal-of-approval music as the older kids. Elvis, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and a ton of other talent was hitting the airwaves so that if you tired of hearing one song after the one thousandth consecutive playing you could move right on.
In this The Rock ‘n’ Roll Era series some years, I believe reflecting banner years, have two CDs dedicated to the greatest hits for that year. For 1957, which has the magic two, I think that the other 1957 CD is a bit better but this one covers the rest of what should have been preserved. Stick outs here include Chuck Berry’s Rock & Roll Music (Christ, he had about ten hits in those years and most of them still crank up the teen-memory dark night air with their electricity); The Platters’ classic last dance, school dance I’m Sorry (oh, please, please save that last dance for me certain she that I have eyed until my eyes got sore all night, and she, certain she, peeked at me too); Little Richard’s Jenny, Jenny (another guy who had a ton of hit in a short period, although they haven't worn as well as Chuck's); and Fats Domino’s Blue Monday (ya, back to school days Monday blahs, except for Monday morning boys' "lav" bragging rights if that certain she I just mentioned really did mean to look my way for that last dance, otherwise why have a Monday anyway).
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Those Oldies But Goodies…Out In The Be-Bop ‘50s Song Night-Mark Dinning's "Teen Angel"
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Mark Dinning performing Teen Angel.
Markin comment:
This space is noted for politics mainly, and mainly the desperate political fight against various social, economic and moral injustices and wrongs in this wicked old world, although the place where politics and cultural expression, especially post-World War II be-bop cultural expression, has drawn some of my interest over the past several years. The most telling example of that interest is in the field of popular music, centrally the blues, city and country, good woman on your mind, hard working, hard drinking blues and folk music, mainly urban, mainly protest to high heaven against the world’s injustices smite the dragon down, folk music. Of late though the old time 1950s kid, primordial, big bang, jail-break rock and roll music that set us off from earlier generations has drawn my attention. Mostly by reviewing oldies CDs but here, and occasionally hereafter under this headline, specifically songs that some future archaeologists might dig up as prime examples of how we primitives lived ,and what we listened to back in the day.
************
First off, get used to hearing ad finitum about angels, earth-bound, heaven-sent, hell-sent, angelic, yes, angelic, heart-broken, heart-breaking angels, and how many angels can fit on the head of a pin, Enough angels to make old revolutionary Puritan poet John Milton's angel fights in Paradise Lost seem, well, punk by comparison. That is if you really want to know about 1950s rock subject matter, all of the above, naturally being teen angels (as if there were any other kind), maybe even Milton's, and that brings us to the heart of this Mark Dinning teen angst classic, Teen Angel.
Frankly, I am bewildered by the bizarre lyrics and story line here, although it rates high, very high on my newly constructed teen song angst-o-meter. Peggy and Billy, okay I know they are not named, or maybe nameable, in the universal teen night but let’s call them that to give name to the kinds of fools we are dealing with, were stranded out on railroad tracks in old Billy’s apparently dead-ender car, probably his father’s hand-me-down. That should have been the first tip-off to Peggy. There were a million guys in town with “boss” cars, including Linc with his ’57 cherry red Chevy by the look on his face every time you passed by, who would have been more than happy to give you a tumble.
Or maybe Billy just didn’t have gas dough and the clunker ran out, unfortunately, ran out on that old dreaded isolated track with all those signs saying don’t stop, please don’t stop, on the tracks because even if trains were going out of style in the big 1950s freeway car exodus they still ran every now and again. No dough Billy, christ I knew seven guys (although not Linc) who had plenty of dough , or could get it, to show you a good time, including Frankie (and Frankie, supposedly only had eyes for his ever lovin’ sweetie, Joanne).
Okay, the ways of love are strange, no question, so Billy it was. But, jesus, he pulled you out, you were safe and then you went ballistic over some f-----g, cheapjack ring, some cheapjack fake gold (like about four carat gold filigree, maybe) with fako diamond and barely legible stuff written on it class ring. And you knew, since you had been out with Billy for a while by then that it was cheapo. Come on you couldn’t have been that naïve. Now you have left Billy all choked up over his teen angel lost, and I know for a fact that he stayed that way, for a while. But just recently he seems to be on the mend because didn’t Tommy T. see him and Linda Lou, ya, sweet “hot stuff’ Linda Lou, walking hand and hand into Kay’s jewelry store, the upscale jewelry store. I wonder what they were looking for?
Markin comment:
This space is noted for politics mainly, and mainly the desperate political fight against various social, economic and moral injustices and wrongs in this wicked old world, although the place where politics and cultural expression, especially post-World War II be-bop cultural expression, has drawn some of my interest over the past several years. The most telling example of that interest is in the field of popular music, centrally the blues, city and country, good woman on your mind, hard working, hard drinking blues and folk music, mainly urban, mainly protest to high heaven against the world’s injustices smite the dragon down, folk music. Of late though the old time 1950s kid, primordial, big bang, jail-break rock and roll music that set us off from earlier generations has drawn my attention. Mostly by reviewing oldies CDs but here, and occasionally hereafter under this headline, specifically songs that some future archaeologists might dig up as prime examples of how we primitives lived ,and what we listened to back in the day.
************
MARK DINNING
"Teen Angel"
"Teen Angel"
Teen angel, teen angel, teen angel, ooh, ooh
That fateful night the car was stalled
upon the railroad track
I pulled you out and we were safe
but you went running back
Teen angel, can you hear me
Teen angel, can you see me
Are you somewhere up above
And I am still your own true love
What was it you were looking for
that took your life that night
They said they found my high school ring
clutched in your fingers tight
Teen angel, can you hear me
Teen angel, can you see me
Are you somewhere up above
And I am still your own true love
Just sweet sixteen, and now you're gone
They've taken you away.
I'll never kiss your lips again
They buried you today
Teen angel, can you hear me
Teen angel, can you see me
Are you somewhere up above
And I am still your own true love
Teen angel, teen angel, answer me, please
************That fateful night the car was stalled
upon the railroad track
I pulled you out and we were safe
but you went running back
Teen angel, can you hear me
Teen angel, can you see me
Are you somewhere up above
And I am still your own true love
What was it you were looking for
that took your life that night
They said they found my high school ring
clutched in your fingers tight
Teen angel, can you hear me
Teen angel, can you see me
Are you somewhere up above
And I am still your own true love
Just sweet sixteen, and now you're gone
They've taken you away.
I'll never kiss your lips again
They buried you today
Teen angel, can you hear me
Teen angel, can you see me
Are you somewhere up above
And I am still your own true love
Teen angel, teen angel, answer me, please
First off, get used to hearing ad finitum about angels, earth-bound, heaven-sent, hell-sent, angelic, yes, angelic, heart-broken, heart-breaking angels, and how many angels can fit on the head of a pin, Enough angels to make old revolutionary Puritan poet John Milton's angel fights in Paradise Lost seem, well, punk by comparison. That is if you really want to know about 1950s rock subject matter, all of the above, naturally being teen angels (as if there were any other kind), maybe even Milton's, and that brings us to the heart of this Mark Dinning teen angst classic, Teen Angel.
Frankly, I am bewildered by the bizarre lyrics and story line here, although it rates high, very high on my newly constructed teen song angst-o-meter. Peggy and Billy, okay I know they are not named, or maybe nameable, in the universal teen night but let’s call them that to give name to the kinds of fools we are dealing with, were stranded out on railroad tracks in old Billy’s apparently dead-ender car, probably his father’s hand-me-down. That should have been the first tip-off to Peggy. There were a million guys in town with “boss” cars, including Linc with his ’57 cherry red Chevy by the look on his face every time you passed by, who would have been more than happy to give you a tumble.
Or maybe Billy just didn’t have gas dough and the clunker ran out, unfortunately, ran out on that old dreaded isolated track with all those signs saying don’t stop, please don’t stop, on the tracks because even if trains were going out of style in the big 1950s freeway car exodus they still ran every now and again. No dough Billy, christ I knew seven guys (although not Linc) who had plenty of dough , or could get it, to show you a good time, including Frankie (and Frankie, supposedly only had eyes for his ever lovin’ sweetie, Joanne).
Okay, the ways of love are strange, no question, so Billy it was. But, jesus, he pulled you out, you were safe and then you went ballistic over some f-----g, cheapjack ring, some cheapjack fake gold (like about four carat gold filigree, maybe) with fako diamond and barely legible stuff written on it class ring. And you knew, since you had been out with Billy for a while by then that it was cheapo. Come on you couldn’t have been that naïve. Now you have left Billy all choked up over his teen angel lost, and I know for a fact that he stayed that way, for a while. But just recently he seems to be on the mend because didn’t Tommy T. see him and Linda Lou, ya, sweet “hot stuff’ Linda Lou, walking hand and hand into Kay’s jewelry store, the upscale jewelry store. I wonder what they were looking for?
Friday, January 21, 2011
Once Again, From The Time Of Radio Days- Sentimental Journey- The Fifties-They Shoot Record Players Don’t They? - A CD Review
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Dinah Washington performing What A Difference A Day Makes.
CD Review
Sentimental Journey, Volume 4 (1954-1959), Rhino Records, 1993
As I noted in a recent review of an earlier volume of this series (1942-1946) I am a child of rock ‘n’ roll, no question. I also noted that I have filled this space with plenty of material about my likes and dislikes from the classic period of that genre, the mid-1950s, when we first heard that different jail-break beat, a beat our parents could not “hear,” as we of the generation of ’68 earned our spurs and started down that long teenage process of going our own way. And further I noted , as much as we were determined to have our own music on our own terms, wafting through every household, every household that had a radio in the background, and more importantly, had the emerging sounds from television was our parents’ music.
In that review I also noted that some the World War II era music “spoke” to me, or at least it did not offend my ear (especially a classic like Lena Horne on Stormy Weather). This volume, however, as it intersected my generation’s jail-breakout rock beat, or should I say interfered with that breakout, is something else again. This material is nothing but a rearguard action, for the most part, to keep everything quiet, to be nice and, to hope, hope to high heaven that they (and you know, if you are of a certain age, who the they were) didn’t drop the bomb and ruin a Saturday chaste date. The cover art featured here of boy and girl sitting dreamily in a car (maybe dad’s, maybe in discretionary dollars new teen America, his own, but his, one way or another) looking out at the expanse says it all. The ain’t some reckless little rock ‘n’ roll scene, not even sweet, beatified be-bop. This is the music of older, "square" brothers and sisters caught in between “jump” forties and “rock” mid-fifties.
It is almost impossible to pick stick outs here and apologies to someone like Tony Bennett who actually did some better stuff later but here is all I can even come close to advising anyone under the age of one hundred (today) to hear:
Memories Are Made Of This, Dean Martin (martini, or whatever, in hand, Dino ain’t rocking, he’ll leave that for his son); Just In Time, Tony Bennett (already noted above); What A Difference A Day Makes, Dinah Washington (Jesus, what is a serious, be-bop jazz singer, “torch” too, and with great phrasing doing in this thing-except to prove my overall point as the exception).
CD Review
Sentimental Journey, Volume 4 (1954-1959), Rhino Records, 1993
As I noted in a recent review of an earlier volume of this series (1942-1946) I am a child of rock ‘n’ roll, no question. I also noted that I have filled this space with plenty of material about my likes and dislikes from the classic period of that genre, the mid-1950s, when we first heard that different jail-break beat, a beat our parents could not “hear,” as we of the generation of ’68 earned our spurs and started down that long teenage process of going our own way. And further I noted , as much as we were determined to have our own music on our own terms, wafting through every household, every household that had a radio in the background, and more importantly, had the emerging sounds from television was our parents’ music.
In that review I also noted that some the World War II era music “spoke” to me, or at least it did not offend my ear (especially a classic like Lena Horne on Stormy Weather). This volume, however, as it intersected my generation’s jail-breakout rock beat, or should I say interfered with that breakout, is something else again. This material is nothing but a rearguard action, for the most part, to keep everything quiet, to be nice and, to hope, hope to high heaven that they (and you know, if you are of a certain age, who the they were) didn’t drop the bomb and ruin a Saturday chaste date. The cover art featured here of boy and girl sitting dreamily in a car (maybe dad’s, maybe in discretionary dollars new teen America, his own, but his, one way or another) looking out at the expanse says it all. The ain’t some reckless little rock ‘n’ roll scene, not even sweet, beatified be-bop. This is the music of older, "square" brothers and sisters caught in between “jump” forties and “rock” mid-fifties.
It is almost impossible to pick stick outs here and apologies to someone like Tony Bennett who actually did some better stuff later but here is all I can even come close to advising anyone under the age of one hundred (today) to hear:
Memories Are Made Of This, Dean Martin (martini, or whatever, in hand, Dino ain’t rocking, he’ll leave that for his son); Just In Time, Tony Bennett (already noted above); What A Difference A Day Makes, Dinah Washington (Jesus, what is a serious, be-bop jazz singer, “torch” too, and with great phrasing doing in this thing-except to prove my overall point as the exception).
Thursday, January 20, 2011
*Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- Frankie Out In The Adventure Car Hop Night
Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- Frankie Out In The Adventure Car Hop Night
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Dubs performing the classic Could This Be Magic? to set the mood for this piece.
CD Review
The Rock ‘N’ Roll Era: 1957: Still Rockin’, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1988
Markin comment:
Okay, you know the routine by now, or at least the drift of these classic rock reviews in this space. The part that starts out with a tip of the hat to the fact that each generation, each teenage generation that is makes its own tribal customs, mores and language. Then the part that is befuddled by today’s teenage-hood. And then I go scampering back to my teenage-hood, the teenage coming of age of the generation of ‘68 that came of age in the early 1960s and start on some cultural “nugget” from that seemingly pre-historic period. Well this review is no different, except, today we decipher the drive-in restaurant, although really it is the car hops (waitresses) that drive this one.
See, this series of reviews is driven, almost subconsciously driven, by the Edward Hopper Nighthawk-like illustrations on the The Rock ‘n’ Roll Era CDs of this mammoth set of compilations. In this case it is the drive-in restaurant of blessed teenage memory. For the younger set, or those oldsters who “forgot” that was a restaurant idea driven by car culture, especially the car culture from the golden era of teenage car-dom, the 1950s. Put together cars, cars all flash-painted and fully-chromed, “boss” cars we called them in my working class neighborhood, young restless males, food, and a little off-hand sex, or rather the promise or mist of a promise of it, and you have the real backdrop to the drive-in restaurant. If you really thought about it why else would somebody, anybody who was assumed to be functioning, sit in their cars eating food, and at best ugly food at that, off a tray while seated in their cherry, “boss" 1959 Chevy.
And beside the food, of course, there was the off-hand girl watching (in the other cars with trays hanging off their doors), and the car hop ogling (and propositioning, if you had the nerve, and if your intelligence was good and there was not some 250 pound fullback back-breaker waiting to take her home a few cars over) there was the steady sound of music, rock music, natch, coming from those boomerang speakers in those, need I say it, “boss” automobiles. And that is where all of this gets mixed in.
Of course, just like another time when I was reviewing one of the CDs in this series, and discussing teenage soda fountain life, the mere mention, no, the mere thought of the term “car hop” makes me think of a Frankie story. Frankie, Francis Xavier Riley, Frankie from the old hell-fire shipbuilding sunk and gone and it-ain’t-coming-back-again seen better days working class neighborhood where we grew up, or tried to. Frankie who I have already told you I have a thousand stories about, or hope I do. Frankie the most treacherous little bastard that you could ever meet on one day, and the kindest man (better man/child), and not just cheap jack, dime store kindness either, alive the next day. Ya, that Frankie, my best middle school and high school friend Frankie.
Did I tell you about Joanne, Frankie’s “divine” (his term, without quotation marks) Joanne because she enters, she always in the end enters into these things? Yes, I see that I did back when I was telling you about her little Roy “The Boy” Orbison trick. The one where she kept playing Running Scared endlessly to get Frankie’s dander up. But see while Frankie has really no serious other eyes for the dames except his “divine” Joanne (I insist on putting that divine in quotation marks when telling of Joanne, at least for the first few times I mention her name, even now. Needless to say I questioned, and questioned hard, that designation on more than one occasion to no avail) he is nothing but a high blood-pressured, high-strung shirt-chaser, first class. And the girls liked him, although not for his looks although they were kind of Steve McQueen okay. What they go for him for is his line of patter, first class. Patter, arcane, obscure patter that made me, most of the time, think of fingernails scratching on a blackboard (except when I was hot on his trail trying to imitate him) and his faux “beat” pose (midnight sunglasses, flannel shirt, black chinos, and funky work boots (ditto on the imitation here as well). And not just “beat’ girls, that liked him, either as you will find out.
Well, the long and short of it was that Frankie, late 1963 Frankie, and the...(oh, forget it) Joanne had had their 207th (really that number, or close, since 8th grade) break-up and Frankie was a "free” man. To celebrate this freedom Frankie, Frankie, who was almost as poor as I was but who has a father with a car that he was not too cheap or crazy about to not let Frankie use on occasion, had wheels. Okay, Studebaker wheels but wheels anyway. And he was going to treat me to a drive-in meal as we went cruising the night, the Saturday night, the Saturday be-bop night looking for some frails (read: girls, Frankie had about seven thousand names for them)
Tired (or bored) from cruising the Saturday be-bop night away (meaning girl-less) we hit the local drive-in hot spot, Arnie’s Adventure Car Hop for one last, desperate attempt at happiness (ya, things were put, Frank and me put anyway, just that melodramatically for every little thing). What I didn’t know was that Frankie, king hell skirt-chaser had his off-hand eye on one of the car hops, Sandy, and as it turned out she was one of those girls who was enamored of his patter (or so I heard later). So he pulled into her station and started to chat her up as we ordered the haute cuisine, And here was the funny thing, now that I saw her up close I could see that she was nothing but a fox (read: “hot” girl). The not so funny thing was that she was so enamored of Frankie’s patter that he was going to take her home after work. No problem you say. No way, big problem. I was to be left there to catch a ride home while they set sail into that good night. Thanks, Frankie.
Well, I was pretty burned up about it for a while but as always with “charma” Frankie we hooked up again a few days later. And here is where I get a little sweet revenge (although don’t tell him that).
Frankie sat me down at the old town pizza parlor and told me the whole story and even now , as I recount it, I can’t believe it. Sandy was a fox, no question, but a married fox, a very married fox, who said she when he first met her that she was about twenty-two and had a kid. Her husband was in the service and she was “lonely” and succumbed to Frankie’s charms. Fair enough, it is a lonely world at times. But wait a minute, I bet you thought that Frankie’s getting mixed up with a married honey with a probably killer husband was the big deal. No way, no way at all. You know, or you can figure out, old Frankie spent the night with Sandy. Again, it's a lonely world sometimes.
The real problem, the real Frankie problem, was once they started to compare biographies and who they knew around town, and didn’t know, it turned out that Sandy, old fox, old married fox with brute husband, old Arnie’s car hop, Sandy was some kind of cousin to Joanne, second cousin maybe. And she was no cradle-robber twenty-two(as if you could rob the cradle with Frankie)but nineteen, almost twenty and was just embarrassed about having a baby in high school and having to go to her "aunt's" to have the child. Moreover, somewhere along the line she and cousin Joanne had had a parting of the ways, a nasty parting of the ways. So sweet as a honey bun Arnie's car hop Sandy, sweet teen-age mother Sandy, was looking for a way to take revenge and Frankie, old king of the night Frankie, was the meat. She had him sized up pretty well, as he admitted to me. And he is sweating this one out like crazy, and swearing everyone within a hundred miles to secrecy. I’m telling you this is strictest confidence even now. Just don’t tell Joanne. Ever.
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Dubs performing the classic Could This Be Magic? to set the mood for this piece.
CD Review
The Rock ‘N’ Roll Era: 1957: Still Rockin’, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1988
Markin comment:
Okay, you know the routine by now, or at least the drift of these classic rock reviews in this space. The part that starts out with a tip of the hat to the fact that each generation, each teenage generation that is makes its own tribal customs, mores and language. Then the part that is befuddled by today’s teenage-hood. And then I go scampering back to my teenage-hood, the teenage coming of age of the generation of ‘68 that came of age in the early 1960s and start on some cultural “nugget” from that seemingly pre-historic period. Well this review is no different, except, today we decipher the drive-in restaurant, although really it is the car hops (waitresses) that drive this one.
See, this series of reviews is driven, almost subconsciously driven, by the Edward Hopper Nighthawk-like illustrations on the The Rock ‘n’ Roll Era CDs of this mammoth set of compilations. In this case it is the drive-in restaurant of blessed teenage memory. For the younger set, or those oldsters who “forgot” that was a restaurant idea driven by car culture, especially the car culture from the golden era of teenage car-dom, the 1950s. Put together cars, cars all flash-painted and fully-chromed, “boss” cars we called them in my working class neighborhood, young restless males, food, and a little off-hand sex, or rather the promise or mist of a promise of it, and you have the real backdrop to the drive-in restaurant. If you really thought about it why else would somebody, anybody who was assumed to be functioning, sit in their cars eating food, and at best ugly food at that, off a tray while seated in their cherry, “boss" 1959 Chevy.
And beside the food, of course, there was the off-hand girl watching (in the other cars with trays hanging off their doors), and the car hop ogling (and propositioning, if you had the nerve, and if your intelligence was good and there was not some 250 pound fullback back-breaker waiting to take her home a few cars over) there was the steady sound of music, rock music, natch, coming from those boomerang speakers in those, need I say it, “boss” automobiles. And that is where all of this gets mixed in.
Of course, just like another time when I was reviewing one of the CDs in this series, and discussing teenage soda fountain life, the mere mention, no, the mere thought of the term “car hop” makes me think of a Frankie story. Frankie, Francis Xavier Riley, Frankie from the old hell-fire shipbuilding sunk and gone and it-ain’t-coming-back-again seen better days working class neighborhood where we grew up, or tried to. Frankie who I have already told you I have a thousand stories about, or hope I do. Frankie the most treacherous little bastard that you could ever meet on one day, and the kindest man (better man/child), and not just cheap jack, dime store kindness either, alive the next day. Ya, that Frankie, my best middle school and high school friend Frankie.
Did I tell you about Joanne, Frankie’s “divine” (his term, without quotation marks) Joanne because she enters, she always in the end enters into these things? Yes, I see that I did back when I was telling you about her little Roy “The Boy” Orbison trick. The one where she kept playing Running Scared endlessly to get Frankie’s dander up. But see while Frankie has really no serious other eyes for the dames except his “divine” Joanne (I insist on putting that divine in quotation marks when telling of Joanne, at least for the first few times I mention her name, even now. Needless to say I questioned, and questioned hard, that designation on more than one occasion to no avail) he is nothing but a high blood-pressured, high-strung shirt-chaser, first class. And the girls liked him, although not for his looks although they were kind of Steve McQueen okay. What they go for him for is his line of patter, first class. Patter, arcane, obscure patter that made me, most of the time, think of fingernails scratching on a blackboard (except when I was hot on his trail trying to imitate him) and his faux “beat” pose (midnight sunglasses, flannel shirt, black chinos, and funky work boots (ditto on the imitation here as well). And not just “beat’ girls, that liked him, either as you will find out.
Well, the long and short of it was that Frankie, late 1963 Frankie, and the...(oh, forget it) Joanne had had their 207th (really that number, or close, since 8th grade) break-up and Frankie was a "free” man. To celebrate this freedom Frankie, Frankie, who was almost as poor as I was but who has a father with a car that he was not too cheap or crazy about to not let Frankie use on occasion, had wheels. Okay, Studebaker wheels but wheels anyway. And he was going to treat me to a drive-in meal as we went cruising the night, the Saturday night, the Saturday be-bop night looking for some frails (read: girls, Frankie had about seven thousand names for them)
Tired (or bored) from cruising the Saturday be-bop night away (meaning girl-less) we hit the local drive-in hot spot, Arnie’s Adventure Car Hop for one last, desperate attempt at happiness (ya, things were put, Frank and me put anyway, just that melodramatically for every little thing). What I didn’t know was that Frankie, king hell skirt-chaser had his off-hand eye on one of the car hops, Sandy, and as it turned out she was one of those girls who was enamored of his patter (or so I heard later). So he pulled into her station and started to chat her up as we ordered the haute cuisine, And here was the funny thing, now that I saw her up close I could see that she was nothing but a fox (read: “hot” girl). The not so funny thing was that she was so enamored of Frankie’s patter that he was going to take her home after work. No problem you say. No way, big problem. I was to be left there to catch a ride home while they set sail into that good night. Thanks, Frankie.
Well, I was pretty burned up about it for a while but as always with “charma” Frankie we hooked up again a few days later. And here is where I get a little sweet revenge (although don’t tell him that).
Frankie sat me down at the old town pizza parlor and told me the whole story and even now , as I recount it, I can’t believe it. Sandy was a fox, no question, but a married fox, a very married fox, who said she when he first met her that she was about twenty-two and had a kid. Her husband was in the service and she was “lonely” and succumbed to Frankie’s charms. Fair enough, it is a lonely world at times. But wait a minute, I bet you thought that Frankie’s getting mixed up with a married honey with a probably killer husband was the big deal. No way, no way at all. You know, or you can figure out, old Frankie spent the night with Sandy. Again, it's a lonely world sometimes.
The real problem, the real Frankie problem, was once they started to compare biographies and who they knew around town, and didn’t know, it turned out that Sandy, old fox, old married fox with brute husband, old Arnie’s car hop, Sandy was some kind of cousin to Joanne, second cousin maybe. And she was no cradle-robber twenty-two(as if you could rob the cradle with Frankie)but nineteen, almost twenty and was just embarrassed about having a baby in high school and having to go to her "aunt's" to have the child. Moreover, somewhere along the line she and cousin Joanne had had a parting of the ways, a nasty parting of the ways. So sweet as a honey bun Arnie's car hop Sandy, sweet teen-age mother Sandy, was looking for a way to take revenge and Frankie, old king of the night Frankie, was the meat. She had him sized up pretty well, as he admitted to me. And he is sweating this one out like crazy, and swearing everyone within a hundred miles to secrecy. I’m telling you this is strictest confidence even now. Just don’t tell Joanne. Ever.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
From The Time Of Radio Days- Sentimental Journey- The Forties-A CD Review
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Lena Horne performing Stormy Weather. Wow!
CD Review
Sentimental Journey, Volume 1 (1942-1946), Rhino Records, 1993
I am a child of rock ‘n’ roll, no question. And I have filled this space with plenty of material about my likes and dislikes from the classic period of that genre, the mid-1950s, when we first heard that different jail-break beat, a beat our parents could not “hear,” as we of the generation of ’68 earned our spurs and started that long teenage process of going our own way. Still, as much as we were determined to have our own music on our own terms, wafting through every household, every household that had a radio in the background, and more importantly, had the emerging sounds from television was our parents’ music- the music, mainly of the fighting World War II period. And that is what this Sentimental Journey volume evokes in these ears.
These are songs, not jitter-bugging songs like when Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Duke Ellington or Harry James and their orchestras started to “jump” to high heaven but the midnight mood songs, the songs of soldiers leaving for wherever and uncertain futures, the songs of old-fashioned (now, seemingly, old-fashioned) boy meets girl love, the songs of lonely nights waiting by the fireside, waiting for Johnny to come home. A very different waiting sound than rock, be-bop or hip-hop. A sound driven more by melody in synch with the Tin Pan Alley lyrics than anything later produced.
Some of these tunes still echo way back in my young teenager brain, some don’t, but here are the stick outs:
Swing On A Star, Bing Crosby (a much underrated, by me, singer, especially before I heard him do his rendition of Brother, Can You Spare A Dime? on the fly); Paper Doll, The Mills Brothers (this one I heard endlessly in the background radio and has great harmonics by these guys); There I’ve Said It Again, Vaughn Monroe (old Vaughn was the prototype, even more than Frank Sinatra, for the virile male singer who carried the “torch”); Stormy Weather, Lena Horne (I was mad for this song even in my “high rock” days and if you get a chance watch the late Lena Horne do her thing with this one on YouTube, Wow!); Night and Day, Frank Sinatra (classic Cole Porter, although I like Billie Holiday’s version better, Frank’s phrasing is excellent). Now if we just had Stardust Memories we really would be back in the 1940s.
CD Review
Sentimental Journey, Volume 1 (1942-1946), Rhino Records, 1993
I am a child of rock ‘n’ roll, no question. And I have filled this space with plenty of material about my likes and dislikes from the classic period of that genre, the mid-1950s, when we first heard that different jail-break beat, a beat our parents could not “hear,” as we of the generation of ’68 earned our spurs and started that long teenage process of going our own way. Still, as much as we were determined to have our own music on our own terms, wafting through every household, every household that had a radio in the background, and more importantly, had the emerging sounds from television was our parents’ music- the music, mainly of the fighting World War II period. And that is what this Sentimental Journey volume evokes in these ears.
These are songs, not jitter-bugging songs like when Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Duke Ellington or Harry James and their orchestras started to “jump” to high heaven but the midnight mood songs, the songs of soldiers leaving for wherever and uncertain futures, the songs of old-fashioned (now, seemingly, old-fashioned) boy meets girl love, the songs of lonely nights waiting by the fireside, waiting for Johnny to come home. A very different waiting sound than rock, be-bop or hip-hop. A sound driven more by melody in synch with the Tin Pan Alley lyrics than anything later produced.
Some of these tunes still echo way back in my young teenager brain, some don’t, but here are the stick outs:
Swing On A Star, Bing Crosby (a much underrated, by me, singer, especially before I heard him do his rendition of Brother, Can You Spare A Dime? on the fly); Paper Doll, The Mills Brothers (this one I heard endlessly in the background radio and has great harmonics by these guys); There I’ve Said It Again, Vaughn Monroe (old Vaughn was the prototype, even more than Frank Sinatra, for the virile male singer who carried the “torch”); Stormy Weather, Lena Horne (I was mad for this song even in my “high rock” days and if you get a chance watch the late Lena Horne do her thing with this one on YouTube, Wow!); Night and Day, Frank Sinatra (classic Cole Porter, although I like Billie Holiday’s version better, Frank’s phrasing is excellent). Now if we just had Stardust Memories we really would be back in the 1940s.
Monday, January 17, 2011
Those Oldies But Goodies…Out In The Be-Bop ‘50s Song Night- The Teen Queens’ “Eddie My Love” (1956) - A 55th Anniversary, Of Sorts-An Alternate Take-For Those Who Waited By The Midnight Phone
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Teen Queens performing the classic Eddie My Love.
Markin comment:
This space is noted for politics mainly, and mainly the desperate political fight against various social, economic and moral injustices and wrongs in this wicked old world, although the place where politics and cultural expression, especially post-World War II be-bop cultural expression, has drawn some of my interest over the past several years. The most telling example of that interest is in the field of popular music, centrally the blues, city and country, good woman on your mind, hard working, hard drinking blues and folk music, mainly urban, mainly protest to high heaven against the world’s injustices smite the dragon down, folk music. Of late though the old time 1950s kid, primordial, big bang, jail-break rock and roll music that set us off from earlier generations has drawn my attention. Mostly by reviewing oldies CDs but here, and occasionally hereafter under this headline, specifically songs that some future archaeologists might dig up as prime examples of how we primitives lived,and what we listened to back in the day.
EDDIE MY LOVE
(Aaron Collins / Maxwell Davis / Sam Ling)The Teen Queens - 1956
The Fontane Sisters - 1956
The Chordettes - 1956
Dee Dee Sharp - 1962
Also recorded by:
Lillian Briggs; Jo Ann Campbell; The Sweethearts.
Eddie, my love, I love you so
How I wanted for you, you'll never know
Please, Eddie, don't make me wait to long
Eddie, please write me one line
Tell me your love is still only mine
Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long
You left me last September
To return to me before long
But all I do is cry myself to sleep
Eddie, since you've been gone
Eddie, my love, I'm sinking fast
The very next day might be my last
Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long
You left me last September
To return to me before long
But all I do is cry myself to sleep
Eddie, since you've been gone
Eddie, my love, I'm sinking fast
The very next day might be my last
Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long
Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long
(Transcribed from the Teen Queens
recording by Mel Priddle - May 2006)
**********
Come closer will you, because I have got a story to tell, come on away from that midnight phone waiting and maybe put on The Teen Queens’ Eddie My Love like I have on right now or some other teen trauma tune, sad, sad tune to help drown your sorrows while I’m telling the story,
Yes, get away from that midnight telephone call wait by your bedside table and listen up a minute or two because I’ve got a story to tell, a 1950s teen story to tell, or let’s make it a 1950s teen story, and if it works out for 1960s, 1970s, 2000s teens except the techno-gadgets ways to wait, to wait that midnight call are different, well, well there you have it,
and let’s make it a boy-girl story, although I know, and you know I know, that it could have been a boy-boy, girl-girl, whatever story and that’s okay by me, except that it wouldn’t be okay, okay as a public 1950s story,
and let’s make it a Saturday night, a hard by the phone, waiting Saturday night, maybe midnight, maybe not, maybe you cried or brooded yourself to sleep before that hour, that teen dread hour when all dreams came crashing to the floor, like a million guys and girls know about, and if you don’t then, maybe move on, but I think I know who I’m talking to,
and let’s make it a winter night, a long hard winter night, wind maybe blowing up a little, maybe a little dusting of snow, and just that many more dark hours until the dawn and facing another day without…,
and let’s make it, oh the hell with that let’s make it get to the story and we’ll work out the scenic details as we go along.
I’ll tell you, Betty’s got it bad, yes, Betty from across the way, from the house across the way where right now I can see her in her midnight waiting bedroom window, staring off, staring off somewhere but I know, I know, what ‘s wrong with her. Her Eddie’s flown the coop, and has not been heard from for a while.
Yes, Betty’s got it bad, and it’s too bad because she deserves better. Let me tell you the story behind the story, although I can already see that you might know what’s coming. Yes, I know the story because Betty’s best friend, Sue, gave me the details when I saw Betty moping around, moping around day after day like there was going to be no tomorrow, especially after school with her head down, head moping down after the mailman came.
Yes, I know, I know Sue, old best friend Sue, is nothing but a mantrap and has flirted with more guys in this town than you could shake a stick at, including Eddie (keep that between us, please). Hell, now that I think about it, I’ll get this thing all balled up. Let Betty, old true to Eddie, Betty tell her story herself, or at least through Sue, and I’ll just write it down my way, and you be the judge.
“Last summer, oh sweet sixteen last summer, old innocent girlish sweet paper dream last summer, Eddie, Eddie Cooper, Eddie with the hot cherry red, dual exhaust, heavy silver chrome, radio- blasting, ’55 Chevy (my brother Timmy told me about cars and their doo-dads, I just like to look good in them and the ’55 is the “boss”), that I knew I would be just crazy to sit in, and give the “look”, the superior “I’m with a hot guy, and sitting in a hot car , bow down peasants look,” came rumbling and tumbling into town.
Summer beach time, soaking up the sun down between the yacht clubs beach time, summer not a care in the world time , Sue, my best friend Sue, my best friend Sue and all that stuff they say about her and the boys is just fantasy, men fantasy, and I were sitting just talking about this and that, oh well, about boys, and I was telling her the latest about Billy, Billy from the neighborhood, who I had been going out with for ages, more or less, Billy with the reading too many books and wanting to talk poetry or “beat” stuff, Billy, Billy with the no car, or sometimes car but no “boss” car, never, when Eddie, Eddie, Eddie John Cooper, parked his honey Chevy and came over to us, through all that sand and all,
Eddie gave Sue the once over, like guys will do automatically, even though I secretly thrill to know that that once over is just a game because even as he came over the sand I could see he had eyes, big blue eyes, for me, only me,
We talked, idle talk, sex in the air talk, but don’t talk about talk, still talk a lot for a summer beach day, and I knew, I swear I knew he wanted to ask me out for later, or maybe right there to ride in his car but three’s company, and for once I couldn’t shake Sue, my best friend Sue, Sue with the million boyfriends so she says, who I could see was taken in by his big blued-eyed, black haired, tight tee-shirt, blue jean-ed charm too.
Truce, Sue truce, as we walked home, Eddie-less, a few blocks away. Truce, except that I heard a big engine, a big “boss” car engine, coming up behind me as I hit the sidewalk in front of my house, and dream, dream wake me up, it was Eddie, Eddie John Cooper and that cherry ’57 Chevy. He said, and I will never forget this, “Hop in,” and opened the door. I was suppose to have a “date”, some donk poetry reading date with Billy, ah, Billy who. We were off as soon as I close that cherry door.
And we were off, off for a sweet summer of love, ’55 Chevy love and okay, truth, because I know that Sue probably blabbed it around but I let Eddie take me to the back seat of that warm-bodied Chevy one night, and some nights after that. But let me just tell you this about Sue, my best friend Sue, honest, she’s the one who told me what to do with a boy, ya, she told me everything.
Come late August as summer beach love drew to an end and those damn school bells seemed ready to ring, Eddie, out of school Eddie my love, told me he had a job offer in another state and he needed to take the job to support his mother and his ’57 Chevy.
I started crying, crying like crazy, trying to make him stay, stay with his ever-lovin’ Betty but no he had to go. He didn’t know about a phone, or a phone call, but he said he would write and I haven’t heard from him since even though I wear out the mailman every day.”
Christ my heart bleeds for Betty every time I think about what Eddie has done, and see, I know Eddie, no I don’t know Eddie personally but I know Eddie stuff, stuff that has been going on since Adam and Eve, hell, probably before that.
But Betty, Betty, sweet Betty, I hate to break it to you but Eddie, Eddie John Cooper ain’t coming back. And old Eddie ain’t writing and it ain’t because he doesn’t have the three cents for a stamp, no Eddie, well, enough of that, let's just say Eddie’s moved on.
And Betty, Betty hold onto your Eddie My Love dream for a moment. But Betty, tomorrow, not tomorrow tomorrow but some tomorrow you‘ve got to move on. And Betty then why don’t you call your Billy. I’ll be here by the phone, the midnight phone.
Markin comment:
This space is noted for politics mainly, and mainly the desperate political fight against various social, economic and moral injustices and wrongs in this wicked old world, although the place where politics and cultural expression, especially post-World War II be-bop cultural expression, has drawn some of my interest over the past several years. The most telling example of that interest is in the field of popular music, centrally the blues, city and country, good woman on your mind, hard working, hard drinking blues and folk music, mainly urban, mainly protest to high heaven against the world’s injustices smite the dragon down, folk music. Of late though the old time 1950s kid, primordial, big bang, jail-break rock and roll music that set us off from earlier generations has drawn my attention. Mostly by reviewing oldies CDs but here, and occasionally hereafter under this headline, specifically songs that some future archaeologists might dig up as prime examples of how we primitives lived,and what we listened to back in the day.
EDDIE MY LOVE
(Aaron Collins / Maxwell Davis / Sam Ling)The Teen Queens - 1956
The Fontane Sisters - 1956
The Chordettes - 1956
Dee Dee Sharp - 1962
Also recorded by:
Lillian Briggs; Jo Ann Campbell; The Sweethearts.
Eddie, my love, I love you so
How I wanted for you, you'll never know
Please, Eddie, don't make me wait to long
Eddie, please write me one line
Tell me your love is still only mine
Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long
You left me last September
To return to me before long
But all I do is cry myself to sleep
Eddie, since you've been gone
Eddie, my love, I'm sinking fast
The very next day might be my last
Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long
You left me last September
To return to me before long
But all I do is cry myself to sleep
Eddie, since you've been gone
Eddie, my love, I'm sinking fast
The very next day might be my last
Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long
Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long
(Transcribed from the Teen Queens
recording by Mel Priddle - May 2006)
**********
Come closer will you, because I have got a story to tell, come on away from that midnight phone waiting and maybe put on The Teen Queens’ Eddie My Love like I have on right now or some other teen trauma tune, sad, sad tune to help drown your sorrows while I’m telling the story,
Yes, get away from that midnight telephone call wait by your bedside table and listen up a minute or two because I’ve got a story to tell, a 1950s teen story to tell, or let’s make it a 1950s teen story, and if it works out for 1960s, 1970s, 2000s teens except the techno-gadgets ways to wait, to wait that midnight call are different, well, well there you have it,
and let’s make it a boy-girl story, although I know, and you know I know, that it could have been a boy-boy, girl-girl, whatever story and that’s okay by me, except that it wouldn’t be okay, okay as a public 1950s story,
and let’s make it a Saturday night, a hard by the phone, waiting Saturday night, maybe midnight, maybe not, maybe you cried or brooded yourself to sleep before that hour, that teen dread hour when all dreams came crashing to the floor, like a million guys and girls know about, and if you don’t then, maybe move on, but I think I know who I’m talking to,
and let’s make it a winter night, a long hard winter night, wind maybe blowing up a little, maybe a little dusting of snow, and just that many more dark hours until the dawn and facing another day without…,
and let’s make it, oh the hell with that let’s make it get to the story and we’ll work out the scenic details as we go along.
I’ll tell you, Betty’s got it bad, yes, Betty from across the way, from the house across the way where right now I can see her in her midnight waiting bedroom window, staring off, staring off somewhere but I know, I know, what ‘s wrong with her. Her Eddie’s flown the coop, and has not been heard from for a while.
Yes, Betty’s got it bad, and it’s too bad because she deserves better. Let me tell you the story behind the story, although I can already see that you might know what’s coming. Yes, I know the story because Betty’s best friend, Sue, gave me the details when I saw Betty moping around, moping around day after day like there was going to be no tomorrow, especially after school with her head down, head moping down after the mailman came.
Yes, I know, I know Sue, old best friend Sue, is nothing but a mantrap and has flirted with more guys in this town than you could shake a stick at, including Eddie (keep that between us, please). Hell, now that I think about it, I’ll get this thing all balled up. Let Betty, old true to Eddie, Betty tell her story herself, or at least through Sue, and I’ll just write it down my way, and you be the judge.
“Last summer, oh sweet sixteen last summer, old innocent girlish sweet paper dream last summer, Eddie, Eddie Cooper, Eddie with the hot cherry red, dual exhaust, heavy silver chrome, radio- blasting, ’55 Chevy (my brother Timmy told me about cars and their doo-dads, I just like to look good in them and the ’55 is the “boss”), that I knew I would be just crazy to sit in, and give the “look”, the superior “I’m with a hot guy, and sitting in a hot car , bow down peasants look,” came rumbling and tumbling into town.
Summer beach time, soaking up the sun down between the yacht clubs beach time, summer not a care in the world time , Sue, my best friend Sue, my best friend Sue and all that stuff they say about her and the boys is just fantasy, men fantasy, and I were sitting just talking about this and that, oh well, about boys, and I was telling her the latest about Billy, Billy from the neighborhood, who I had been going out with for ages, more or less, Billy with the reading too many books and wanting to talk poetry or “beat” stuff, Billy, Billy with the no car, or sometimes car but no “boss” car, never, when Eddie, Eddie, Eddie John Cooper, parked his honey Chevy and came over to us, through all that sand and all,
Eddie gave Sue the once over, like guys will do automatically, even though I secretly thrill to know that that once over is just a game because even as he came over the sand I could see he had eyes, big blue eyes, for me, only me,
We talked, idle talk, sex in the air talk, but don’t talk about talk, still talk a lot for a summer beach day, and I knew, I swear I knew he wanted to ask me out for later, or maybe right there to ride in his car but three’s company, and for once I couldn’t shake Sue, my best friend Sue, Sue with the million boyfriends so she says, who I could see was taken in by his big blued-eyed, black haired, tight tee-shirt, blue jean-ed charm too.
Truce, Sue truce, as we walked home, Eddie-less, a few blocks away. Truce, except that I heard a big engine, a big “boss” car engine, coming up behind me as I hit the sidewalk in front of my house, and dream, dream wake me up, it was Eddie, Eddie John Cooper and that cherry ’57 Chevy. He said, and I will never forget this, “Hop in,” and opened the door. I was suppose to have a “date”, some donk poetry reading date with Billy, ah, Billy who. We were off as soon as I close that cherry door.
And we were off, off for a sweet summer of love, ’55 Chevy love and okay, truth, because I know that Sue probably blabbed it around but I let Eddie take me to the back seat of that warm-bodied Chevy one night, and some nights after that. But let me just tell you this about Sue, my best friend Sue, honest, she’s the one who told me what to do with a boy, ya, she told me everything.
Come late August as summer beach love drew to an end and those damn school bells seemed ready to ring, Eddie, out of school Eddie my love, told me he had a job offer in another state and he needed to take the job to support his mother and his ’57 Chevy.
I started crying, crying like crazy, trying to make him stay, stay with his ever-lovin’ Betty but no he had to go. He didn’t know about a phone, or a phone call, but he said he would write and I haven’t heard from him since even though I wear out the mailman every day.”
Christ my heart bleeds for Betty every time I think about what Eddie has done, and see, I know Eddie, no I don’t know Eddie personally but I know Eddie stuff, stuff that has been going on since Adam and Eve, hell, probably before that.
But Betty, Betty, sweet Betty, I hate to break it to you but Eddie, Eddie John Cooper ain’t coming back. And old Eddie ain’t writing and it ain’t because he doesn’t have the three cents for a stamp, no Eddie, well, enough of that, let's just say Eddie’s moved on.
And Betty, Betty hold onto your Eddie My Love dream for a moment. But Betty, tomorrow, not tomorrow tomorrow but some tomorrow you‘ve got to move on. And Betty then why don’t you call your Billy. I’ll be here by the phone, the midnight phone.
Saturday, January 15, 2011
*Out In The Be-Bop 1950s Night- When Billie Fought To Be Church Hall Dance Champ
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Teen Angels performing Eddie, My Love.
Markin comment:
Recently I, seemingly, have endlessly gone back to my early musical roots in reviewing various compilations of a Time-Life classic rock series that goes under the general title The Rock ‘n’ Roll Era. And while time and ear have eroded the sparkle of some of the lesser tunes it still seems obvious that those years, say 1955-58, really did form the musical jail break-out for my generation, the generation of ’68, who had just started to tune into music.
And we, we small-time punk (in the old-fashioned sense of that word), we hardly wet behind the ears elementary school kids, and that is all we were for those who are now claiming otherwise, listened our ears off. Those were strange times indeed in that be-bop 1950s night when stuff happened, kid’s stuff, but still stuff like a friend of mine, not Billie whom I will talk about later, who claimed, with a straight face to the girls, that he was Elvis’ long lost son. Did the girls do the math on that one? Or, maybe, they like us more brazen boys were hoping, hoping and praying, that it was true despite the numbers, so they too could be washed by that flamed-out night.
Well, this I know, boy and girl alike tuned in on our transistor radios (small battery-operated radios that we could put in our pockets, and hide from snooping parental ears, at will) to listen to music that from about day one, at least in my household was not considered “refined” enough for young, young pious you’ll never get to heaven listening to that devil music and you had better say about eight zillion Hail Marys to get right Catholic, ears. Ya right, Ma, like Patti Page or Bob (not Bing, not the Bing of Brother, Can You Spare A Dime? anyway) Crosby and The Bobcats were supposed to satisfy our jail break cravings.
And that pious, quietist, chase the devil and his (or her) devil’s music away, say a million Acts of Contrition, church-bent, Roman Catholic church-bent, part formed a great deal of the backdrop for how we related to that break-out rock music. And why we had to practically form a secret cult to enjoy it. Now you all know, since you all went to elementary school just like I did, although maybe you didn’t attend in the Cold War, red scare, we could-all-be-bombed-dead tomorrow 1950s like I did, that those mandatory elementary school dances where we rough-hewn boys learned, maybe we learned, our first social graces were nothing but cream puff affairs. Lots of red-faced guys and giggling girls. Big deal, right? What you maybe don’t’ know, especially if you were not from a working class neighborhood (or a pubic housing project) made up of mainly Irish and Italian Roman Catholic families like I was is that “cream puff” school stuff was seen by the Church (need I add any more identifying words?) as the devil’s playground. Later, I found out from some Protestant friends that their church leaders felt the same way. No, not those Universalist-Unitarian types who think everything humankind does that is not hurtful is okay but real hard-nosed Protestants, like Episcopalians, Baptists, and Presbyterians. So to counter that secular godlessness, at least in our area, the Church sponsored Friday night dances. Chaste, very chaste, or that was the intention, Friday night dances.
Now these dances from the outward look would look just like those devil-sponsored secular school dances. They were, for example, held in the basement of the church (St. whoever, Our Lady of the wherever, The Sacred whatever, or fill in the blank), a basement, given the norms of public architecture, was an almost exact rectangular, windowless, linoleum-floored, folding chairs and tables, raised stage replica of the elementary school auditorium. That church locale, moreover, when dressed up like on those Friday nights with the usual crepe, handmade signs of welcome, and refreshment offerings also looked the same. And just so that you don’t think I am going overboard they played the same damn (oops) music as at school, except the sound system (donated, naturally, by some pious parishioner, looking for good conduct points from the fiery-eyed "fire and brimstone" pastor) was usually barely audible. The real difference then, and maybe now, for all I know, was that rather than a few embarrassed public school teacher-chaperones drafted against their wills, I hope, or like to hope, every stick-in-the-mud person (or so it seemed) over the age of eighteen was drafted into the lord’s army for the evening. Purpose: to make sure there was no untoward, unnatural, unexpected, or unwanted touching of anything, by anyone, for any reason. So, now that I think about it, this was really the Friday night prison dance. But not always.
Of course all of this remembrance is just so much lead up to a Billie story. You know Billie, Billie from “the projects” hills. William James Bradley to be exact. The Billie who wanted fame and fortune (or at least girls) so bad that he could almost taste it. The Billie who entered a teenage talent show dressed up like Bill Haley and whose mother-made suit jacket arms fell off during the performance and he wound up with all the girls in schools as a consolation prize. Yes, that Billie, who also happened to be my best friend, or, maybe, almost best friend we never did get it straight, in elementary school. Billie was crazy for the music, crazy to impress the tender young girls that he was very aware of, much more aware of than I was and earlier, with his knowledge, his love, and his respect for the music , rock music that is.
During the summer, and here I am speaking of the summer of 1958, these church-held dances started a little earlier and finished a little later. That was fine by us. But part of the reason was that during July (starting after the Fourth Of July, if I recall) and August there was a weekly dance-off elimination contest. Now these things were meant to be to show off partner-type dancing skills so I never even dreamed of participating, although I was now hip to the girl thing (or at least twelve year old hip to it), and gladly. Not so Billie.You know, or if you don’t then I will tell you so you know now, that Billie was a pretty good singer, and a pretty good shaker as a dancer. Needless to say these skills were not on the official papal list of ways to prove you had some Fred Astaire-like talent. What you needed to demonstrate, with a partner, a girl partner, was waltz-like, fox-trot stuff. Stuff you were glad to know when last, slow dance time came around but not before, please, not before.
But see, if you didn’t know before, I will remind you, Billie was a fiend to win a talent contest, a contest that, the way he figured it, was his ticket out of "the projects" and into all the cars he wanted, all the girls, and half of everything else in the world. Ya, I know, but poor boys have dreams too. And I don’t suppose it is too early to remind you, like I did with the lost sleeve teenage talent show, that Billie later spent those pent-up energies less productively, much less productively once he knew the score, his score about life. Today though, this night, this Friday night, at the start of the contest Billie is going for the brass ring. See, Billie, secretly, at least secretly from me, was taking dance lessons, slow dance lessons with Rosalie, Christ Rosalie, the prettiest girl in our class, the girl that if I had known the word then I would have called fetching, very fetching. That was, and is, high praise from me. And, see also, teaching the pair the ropes is none other than Rosalie’s mother who before she became a mother was some kind of dance queen (I don’t know, or don’t remember, if I knew the details of that woman’s prior life before then). It’s almost like the fix was in.
Now you know just as well as I do that I have no story, or at least no story worth telling, if Billie and Rosalie don’t make it out of the box, if they just get eliminated quickly. Sure they made it, and now they are standing there getting ready to do battle against the final pair for the sainted dance championship of the christian world, projects branch. Now my take on the dancing all summer was there wasn’t much difference, at least noticeable difference, between the pairs. I think the judges thought so too, the junior priest, a priest that the pastor threw into this dance thing because he was closer to our ages than the old-timer "fire and brimstone" pastor was, and four ladies from the Ladies' Sodality usually took quite a bit of time before deciding who was eliminated. Rosalie’s mother (and my mother, as well) thought the same thing when we compared notes. See, now with Billie under contract (oh, ya, naturally I was his manager, or something like that) I had developed into an ace dance critic. Mainly though, I was downplaying the opposition to boost my pair's chances, and, incidentally, falling, falling big, for Rosalie. And not just for her dancing.
So here we were at the finals. It was a wickedly hot night in that dungeon basement so the jackets and ties, if wore (and that needed to be worn by the contestant males), were off. Also, by the rules, each finalist couple got to choose its own music and form of dancing. The first couple did this dreamy Fred Astaire-Ginger Rodgers all hands flailing and quick-movement thing that even impressed me. After than performance, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Billie talking to Rosalie, talking fast and talking furiously. Something was up, definitely, something was up.
Well, something was up. Billie, old sweet boy Billie, old get out of the projects at any cost Billie, old take no prisoners Billie decided that he was going to stretch the rules and play to his strength by doing a Bill Haley’s Rock Around The Clock jitterbug thing to show the judges his “moves” and what we would now call going "outside the box." And he had gotten Rosalie, sweet, fetching, deserves better Rosalie, to go along with him on it. See, Rosalie, during all those dance lesson things had fallen for old Billie and his words were like gold. Damn.
I will say that Billie and Rosalie tore the place up, at least I guess Billie did because I was, exclusively, looking at Rosalie who really danced her head off. Who won? Let me put it this way, this time the judges, that priest and his coterie of do-gooders didn’t take much time deciding that the other couple won. Rosalie was crushed. Billie, like always Billie, chalked it up to the "fix" being in for the other couple. Life was against the free spirits, he said, something it took me a lot longer to figure out. Rosalie's family moved away not long after that contest, like a lot of people just keeping time at the projects until their ships to better days came in, and I heard that she was later still furious at Billie for crossing her up. Ya, but, boy, she could twirl that thing.
Markin comment:
Recently I, seemingly, have endlessly gone back to my early musical roots in reviewing various compilations of a Time-Life classic rock series that goes under the general title The Rock ‘n’ Roll Era. And while time and ear have eroded the sparkle of some of the lesser tunes it still seems obvious that those years, say 1955-58, really did form the musical jail break-out for my generation, the generation of ’68, who had just started to tune into music.
And we, we small-time punk (in the old-fashioned sense of that word), we hardly wet behind the ears elementary school kids, and that is all we were for those who are now claiming otherwise, listened our ears off. Those were strange times indeed in that be-bop 1950s night when stuff happened, kid’s stuff, but still stuff like a friend of mine, not Billie whom I will talk about later, who claimed, with a straight face to the girls, that he was Elvis’ long lost son. Did the girls do the math on that one? Or, maybe, they like us more brazen boys were hoping, hoping and praying, that it was true despite the numbers, so they too could be washed by that flamed-out night.
Well, this I know, boy and girl alike tuned in on our transistor radios (small battery-operated radios that we could put in our pockets, and hide from snooping parental ears, at will) to listen to music that from about day one, at least in my household was not considered “refined” enough for young, young pious you’ll never get to heaven listening to that devil music and you had better say about eight zillion Hail Marys to get right Catholic, ears. Ya right, Ma, like Patti Page or Bob (not Bing, not the Bing of Brother, Can You Spare A Dime? anyway) Crosby and The Bobcats were supposed to satisfy our jail break cravings.
And that pious, quietist, chase the devil and his (or her) devil’s music away, say a million Acts of Contrition, church-bent, Roman Catholic church-bent, part formed a great deal of the backdrop for how we related to that break-out rock music. And why we had to practically form a secret cult to enjoy it. Now you all know, since you all went to elementary school just like I did, although maybe you didn’t attend in the Cold War, red scare, we could-all-be-bombed-dead tomorrow 1950s like I did, that those mandatory elementary school dances where we rough-hewn boys learned, maybe we learned, our first social graces were nothing but cream puff affairs. Lots of red-faced guys and giggling girls. Big deal, right? What you maybe don’t’ know, especially if you were not from a working class neighborhood (or a pubic housing project) made up of mainly Irish and Italian Roman Catholic families like I was is that “cream puff” school stuff was seen by the Church (need I add any more identifying words?) as the devil’s playground. Later, I found out from some Protestant friends that their church leaders felt the same way. No, not those Universalist-Unitarian types who think everything humankind does that is not hurtful is okay but real hard-nosed Protestants, like Episcopalians, Baptists, and Presbyterians. So to counter that secular godlessness, at least in our area, the Church sponsored Friday night dances. Chaste, very chaste, or that was the intention, Friday night dances.
Now these dances from the outward look would look just like those devil-sponsored secular school dances. They were, for example, held in the basement of the church (St. whoever, Our Lady of the wherever, The Sacred whatever, or fill in the blank), a basement, given the norms of public architecture, was an almost exact rectangular, windowless, linoleum-floored, folding chairs and tables, raised stage replica of the elementary school auditorium. That church locale, moreover, when dressed up like on those Friday nights with the usual crepe, handmade signs of welcome, and refreshment offerings also looked the same. And just so that you don’t think I am going overboard they played the same damn (oops) music as at school, except the sound system (donated, naturally, by some pious parishioner, looking for good conduct points from the fiery-eyed "fire and brimstone" pastor) was usually barely audible. The real difference then, and maybe now, for all I know, was that rather than a few embarrassed public school teacher-chaperones drafted against their wills, I hope, or like to hope, every stick-in-the-mud person (or so it seemed) over the age of eighteen was drafted into the lord’s army for the evening. Purpose: to make sure there was no untoward, unnatural, unexpected, or unwanted touching of anything, by anyone, for any reason. So, now that I think about it, this was really the Friday night prison dance. But not always.
Of course all of this remembrance is just so much lead up to a Billie story. You know Billie, Billie from “the projects” hills. William James Bradley to be exact. The Billie who wanted fame and fortune (or at least girls) so bad that he could almost taste it. The Billie who entered a teenage talent show dressed up like Bill Haley and whose mother-made suit jacket arms fell off during the performance and he wound up with all the girls in schools as a consolation prize. Yes, that Billie, who also happened to be my best friend, or, maybe, almost best friend we never did get it straight, in elementary school. Billie was crazy for the music, crazy to impress the tender young girls that he was very aware of, much more aware of than I was and earlier, with his knowledge, his love, and his respect for the music , rock music that is.
During the summer, and here I am speaking of the summer of 1958, these church-held dances started a little earlier and finished a little later. That was fine by us. But part of the reason was that during July (starting after the Fourth Of July, if I recall) and August there was a weekly dance-off elimination contest. Now these things were meant to be to show off partner-type dancing skills so I never even dreamed of participating, although I was now hip to the girl thing (or at least twelve year old hip to it), and gladly. Not so Billie.You know, or if you don’t then I will tell you so you know now, that Billie was a pretty good singer, and a pretty good shaker as a dancer. Needless to say these skills were not on the official papal list of ways to prove you had some Fred Astaire-like talent. What you needed to demonstrate, with a partner, a girl partner, was waltz-like, fox-trot stuff. Stuff you were glad to know when last, slow dance time came around but not before, please, not before.
But see, if you didn’t know before, I will remind you, Billie was a fiend to win a talent contest, a contest that, the way he figured it, was his ticket out of "the projects" and into all the cars he wanted, all the girls, and half of everything else in the world. Ya, I know, but poor boys have dreams too. And I don’t suppose it is too early to remind you, like I did with the lost sleeve teenage talent show, that Billie later spent those pent-up energies less productively, much less productively once he knew the score, his score about life. Today though, this night, this Friday night, at the start of the contest Billie is going for the brass ring. See, Billie, secretly, at least secretly from me, was taking dance lessons, slow dance lessons with Rosalie, Christ Rosalie, the prettiest girl in our class, the girl that if I had known the word then I would have called fetching, very fetching. That was, and is, high praise from me. And, see also, teaching the pair the ropes is none other than Rosalie’s mother who before she became a mother was some kind of dance queen (I don’t know, or don’t remember, if I knew the details of that woman’s prior life before then). It’s almost like the fix was in.
Now you know just as well as I do that I have no story, or at least no story worth telling, if Billie and Rosalie don’t make it out of the box, if they just get eliminated quickly. Sure they made it, and now they are standing there getting ready to do battle against the final pair for the sainted dance championship of the christian world, projects branch. Now my take on the dancing all summer was there wasn’t much difference, at least noticeable difference, between the pairs. I think the judges thought so too, the junior priest, a priest that the pastor threw into this dance thing because he was closer to our ages than the old-timer "fire and brimstone" pastor was, and four ladies from the Ladies' Sodality usually took quite a bit of time before deciding who was eliminated. Rosalie’s mother (and my mother, as well) thought the same thing when we compared notes. See, now with Billie under contract (oh, ya, naturally I was his manager, or something like that) I had developed into an ace dance critic. Mainly though, I was downplaying the opposition to boost my pair's chances, and, incidentally, falling, falling big, for Rosalie. And not just for her dancing.
So here we were at the finals. It was a wickedly hot night in that dungeon basement so the jackets and ties, if wore (and that needed to be worn by the contestant males), were off. Also, by the rules, each finalist couple got to choose its own music and form of dancing. The first couple did this dreamy Fred Astaire-Ginger Rodgers all hands flailing and quick-movement thing that even impressed me. After than performance, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Billie talking to Rosalie, talking fast and talking furiously. Something was up, definitely, something was up.
Well, something was up. Billie, old sweet boy Billie, old get out of the projects at any cost Billie, old take no prisoners Billie decided that he was going to stretch the rules and play to his strength by doing a Bill Haley’s Rock Around The Clock jitterbug thing to show the judges his “moves” and what we would now call going "outside the box." And he had gotten Rosalie, sweet, fetching, deserves better Rosalie, to go along with him on it. See, Rosalie, during all those dance lesson things had fallen for old Billie and his words were like gold. Damn.
I will say that Billie and Rosalie tore the place up, at least I guess Billie did because I was, exclusively, looking at Rosalie who really danced her head off. Who won? Let me put it this way, this time the judges, that priest and his coterie of do-gooders didn’t take much time deciding that the other couple won. Rosalie was crushed. Billie, like always Billie, chalked it up to the "fix" being in for the other couple. Life was against the free spirits, he said, something it took me a lot longer to figure out. Rosalie's family moved away not long after that contest, like a lot of people just keeping time at the projects until their ships to better days came in, and I heard that she was later still furious at Billie for crossing her up. Ya, but, boy, she could twirl that thing.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
*Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- Rock ‘n’ Roll Will Never Die- British Style- “Pirate Radio”- A Film Review
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the movie trailer for Pirate Radio.
DVD Review
Pirate Radio, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, directed by Richard Curtis, Focus Film, 2009
First Question: Who put the rock in rock ‘n’ roll? Well, of course, Bo Diddley (okay, okay others too). Second Question: Who brought rock ‘n’ roll to your double-locked bedroom, dank cellar, storage-filled garage, or other secret ear place back in old time battery-operated transistor radio (pre-iPod, alright) days? Well, of course, your local dee-jay who helped you while away your night, your dream-plagued rock ‘n’ roll night, with his (mainly) mile-a-minute-banter, selection of platters (records, pre-CD, DVD, iTune, youtube, you’ve heard about them, right?), and, yes, selected advertising targeted to the newly enriched (maybe) teenager with disposable dollars. Such names as Allan Freed, Wolfman Jack, Murry the K, and Arnie Ginsberg come quickly to mind. And although the music, praise be, outlasted the careers and remembrance of that lot this classic rock period is associated in my mind (and yours too, I bet) with that very dee-jay night. And that, my friends, is the premise behind this very nicely done trip down rock memory land- British version.
In many ways the British 1960s rock explosion paralleled the American classic rock scene, although later than that genre’s American 1950s heyday. The greatest difference, however, is the way that British audiences heard their rock- literally through the pirate radio of the title. Off-shore, out in the ocean depths, white waves splashing against some barnacled old tub of a ship, rock radio. Without getting into the ins and outs of British broadcasting traditions the battle, the age-old battle really, here is between those who wanted to listen to rock and not just in that double-locked bedroom mentioned above, and those nasty governmental officials and their hangers-on who want to outlaw it by shutting down this uncontrolled method. That battle drives the tension and plot line to almost bizarre (by today’s cyberspace standards) ends. But what this film is about is a bunch of guys (mainly, again) who loved to play rock, who loved to present it in their own fashion, and who wanted the fame, fortune (and, incidental sex) that came with heroic dee-jay-dom.
This motley crew is ready to go down with the ship, literally, in order to keep rock freedom alive. Of course there are more than a few gag (British gag, ala Monty Python) scenes that are better left unmentioned but this is a feel good movie with plenty of drugs, sex, and rock and roll on the high seas. Jesus. You might ask what was wrong with that? Ah, come to think of it what was wrong with that? The cast includes Phillip Seymour Hoffman (a very versatile actor when you realize that he also played American novelist Truman Capote in the In Cold Blood execution-driven drama Tru) as the Count, the only American in the lot. But this whole mix of radio personalities is a good out in the seas rock night, late night, early morning and so on. So, here is the drill. Bo (and, yes, others) put the rock in rock ‘n’ roll but the Count and the boys put the bop in the be-bop pirate radio night. See this one.
DVD Review
Pirate Radio, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, directed by Richard Curtis, Focus Film, 2009
First Question: Who put the rock in rock ‘n’ roll? Well, of course, Bo Diddley (okay, okay others too). Second Question: Who brought rock ‘n’ roll to your double-locked bedroom, dank cellar, storage-filled garage, or other secret ear place back in old time battery-operated transistor radio (pre-iPod, alright) days? Well, of course, your local dee-jay who helped you while away your night, your dream-plagued rock ‘n’ roll night, with his (mainly) mile-a-minute-banter, selection of platters (records, pre-CD, DVD, iTune, youtube, you’ve heard about them, right?), and, yes, selected advertising targeted to the newly enriched (maybe) teenager with disposable dollars. Such names as Allan Freed, Wolfman Jack, Murry the K, and Arnie Ginsberg come quickly to mind. And although the music, praise be, outlasted the careers and remembrance of that lot this classic rock period is associated in my mind (and yours too, I bet) with that very dee-jay night. And that, my friends, is the premise behind this very nicely done trip down rock memory land- British version.
In many ways the British 1960s rock explosion paralleled the American classic rock scene, although later than that genre’s American 1950s heyday. The greatest difference, however, is the way that British audiences heard their rock- literally through the pirate radio of the title. Off-shore, out in the ocean depths, white waves splashing against some barnacled old tub of a ship, rock radio. Without getting into the ins and outs of British broadcasting traditions the battle, the age-old battle really, here is between those who wanted to listen to rock and not just in that double-locked bedroom mentioned above, and those nasty governmental officials and their hangers-on who want to outlaw it by shutting down this uncontrolled method. That battle drives the tension and plot line to almost bizarre (by today’s cyberspace standards) ends. But what this film is about is a bunch of guys (mainly, again) who loved to play rock, who loved to present it in their own fashion, and who wanted the fame, fortune (and, incidental sex) that came with heroic dee-jay-dom.
This motley crew is ready to go down with the ship, literally, in order to keep rock freedom alive. Of course there are more than a few gag (British gag, ala Monty Python) scenes that are better left unmentioned but this is a feel good movie with plenty of drugs, sex, and rock and roll on the high seas. Jesus. You might ask what was wrong with that? Ah, come to think of it what was wrong with that? The cast includes Phillip Seymour Hoffman (a very versatile actor when you realize that he also played American novelist Truman Capote in the In Cold Blood execution-driven drama Tru) as the Count, the only American in the lot. But this whole mix of radio personalities is a good out in the seas rock night, late night, early morning and so on. So, here is the drill. Bo (and, yes, others) put the rock in rock ‘n’ roll but the Count and the boys put the bop in the be-bop pirate radio night. See this one.
Monday, January 3, 2011
*Those Oldies But Goodies…Out In The Be-Bop ‘50s Song Night-The Teen Queens’ “Eddy My Love” (1956)- A 55th Anniversary, Of Sorts
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Teen Queens performing the classic Eddie My Love.
Markin comment:This space is noted for politics mainly, and mainly the desperate political fight against various social, economic and moral injustices and wrongs in this wicked old world, although the place where politics and cultural expression, especially post World War II be-bop cultural expression, has drawn some of my interest over the past several years. The most telling example of that interest is in the field of popular music, centrally the blues, city and country, good woman on your mind, hard working, hard drinking blues and folk music, mainly urban, mainly protest to high heaven against the world’s injustices smite the dragon down, folk music. Of late though the old time 1950s kid, primordial, big bang, jail-break rock and roll music that set us off from earlier generations has drawn my attention. Mostly by reviewing oldies CDs but here, and occasionally hereafter under this headline, specifically songs that some future archaeologists might dig up as prime examples of how we primitives lived ,and what we listened to back in the day.
EDDIE MY LOVE
(Aaron Collins / Maxwell Davis / Sam Ling)
The Teen Queens - 1956
The Fontane Sisters - 1956
The Chordettes - 1956
Dee Dee Sharp - 1962
Also recorded by:
Lillian Briggs; Jo Ann Campbell; The Sweethearts.
Eddie, my love, I love you so
How I wanted for you, you'll never know
Please, Eddie, don't make me wait to long
Eddie, please write me one line
Tell me your love is still only mine
Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long
You left me last September
To return to me before long
But all I do is cry myself to sleep
Eddie, since you've been gone
Eddie, my love, I'm sinking fast
The very next day might be my last
Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long
You left me last September
To return to me before long
But all I do is cry myself to sleep
Eddie, since you've been gone
Eddie, my love, I'm sinking fast
The very next day might be my last
Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long
Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long
(Transcribed from the Teen Queens
recording by Mel Priddle - May 2006)
**********
If I said teen angst and teen alienation on this one that is all I need to say, right? We all, one way or the other, went through those emotional turmoils whether we knew enough to know about the words alienation and angst or not. And we related to songs, rock, doo wop, or whatever that spoke to those trials and tribulations. Eddie My Love is a classic in that genre. Not one that you and your sweetie would call a favorite, not one that you prayed to the teen music local school dance record hop dee-jay gods to play for the last dance but one that you keep playing to keep your own blues away.
Now the story line here is classic teen angst. I am right this minute constructing a very complicated instrument, a technological marvel of the ages, an angst-o-meter, to give an accurate reading of how high or low each song in this series ranks. This one, with or without, instrumentation ranks high. Why? Eddie, a summer love apparently, has flown the coop and, ah, let’s call her Betty, Betty and Eddy, ya that sounds right is pining away to no avail. Maybe she is thinking about those words from the song Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? after letting Eddie have his way on that sandy beach last summer. And she is now frantic about being left behind just in case. Just in case, you know, she is as we say, euphemistically, “in the family way.” Hell, we are all adults here and it is 2011 so we need not shilly-shally around, and besides no self-respecting child over the age of about eight would be reading this stuff. She might be pregnant. That would account for the distress, duress, and near suicidal frenzy of her plea.
Betty, Betty forget it. Eddie, old two-timing, love ‘em and leave them, Eddie ain’t coming back. Whether you are sinking fast or not. Truth: old Eddie was last seen down in San Juan, Puerto Rico using the name, Juan Cintron, and, Betty, brace yourself, walking, walking very closely with Linda, and she’s a beauty.
But here is my post hoc advice for what it is worth. Why didn’t you decide to go out with steady as a rock Billy, that sensitive, maybe a little nerdy, soul who was pining away for you while you had nothing but eyes for old fast-moving, sweet dual carb, hot rod-driving, fast-talking speedo Eddie? Now it’s too late, girl. Oh, by the way, you were much better off without old petty larceny, world-owes-him-a-living, lamp-shade-on-his-head life of the party that he turned out to be Eddie. And that ain’t no lie.
Markin comment:This space is noted for politics mainly, and mainly the desperate political fight against various social, economic and moral injustices and wrongs in this wicked old world, although the place where politics and cultural expression, especially post World War II be-bop cultural expression, has drawn some of my interest over the past several years. The most telling example of that interest is in the field of popular music, centrally the blues, city and country, good woman on your mind, hard working, hard drinking blues and folk music, mainly urban, mainly protest to high heaven against the world’s injustices smite the dragon down, folk music. Of late though the old time 1950s kid, primordial, big bang, jail-break rock and roll music that set us off from earlier generations has drawn my attention. Mostly by reviewing oldies CDs but here, and occasionally hereafter under this headline, specifically songs that some future archaeologists might dig up as prime examples of how we primitives lived ,and what we listened to back in the day.
EDDIE MY LOVE
(Aaron Collins / Maxwell Davis / Sam Ling)
The Teen Queens - 1956
The Fontane Sisters - 1956
The Chordettes - 1956
Dee Dee Sharp - 1962
Also recorded by:
Lillian Briggs; Jo Ann Campbell; The Sweethearts.
Eddie, my love, I love you so
How I wanted for you, you'll never know
Please, Eddie, don't make me wait to long
Eddie, please write me one line
Tell me your love is still only mine
Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long
You left me last September
To return to me before long
But all I do is cry myself to sleep
Eddie, since you've been gone
Eddie, my love, I'm sinking fast
The very next day might be my last
Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long
You left me last September
To return to me before long
But all I do is cry myself to sleep
Eddie, since you've been gone
Eddie, my love, I'm sinking fast
The very next day might be my last
Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long
Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long
(Transcribed from the Teen Queens
recording by Mel Priddle - May 2006)
**********
If I said teen angst and teen alienation on this one that is all I need to say, right? We all, one way or the other, went through those emotional turmoils whether we knew enough to know about the words alienation and angst or not. And we related to songs, rock, doo wop, or whatever that spoke to those trials and tribulations. Eddie My Love is a classic in that genre. Not one that you and your sweetie would call a favorite, not one that you prayed to the teen music local school dance record hop dee-jay gods to play for the last dance but one that you keep playing to keep your own blues away.
Now the story line here is classic teen angst. I am right this minute constructing a very complicated instrument, a technological marvel of the ages, an angst-o-meter, to give an accurate reading of how high or low each song in this series ranks. This one, with or without, instrumentation ranks high. Why? Eddie, a summer love apparently, has flown the coop and, ah, let’s call her Betty, Betty and Eddy, ya that sounds right is pining away to no avail. Maybe she is thinking about those words from the song Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? after letting Eddie have his way on that sandy beach last summer. And she is now frantic about being left behind just in case. Just in case, you know, she is as we say, euphemistically, “in the family way.” Hell, we are all adults here and it is 2011 so we need not shilly-shally around, and besides no self-respecting child over the age of about eight would be reading this stuff. She might be pregnant. That would account for the distress, duress, and near suicidal frenzy of her plea.
Betty, Betty forget it. Eddie, old two-timing, love ‘em and leave them, Eddie ain’t coming back. Whether you are sinking fast or not. Truth: old Eddie was last seen down in San Juan, Puerto Rico using the name, Juan Cintron, and, Betty, brace yourself, walking, walking very closely with Linda, and she’s a beauty.
But here is my post hoc advice for what it is worth. Why didn’t you decide to go out with steady as a rock Billy, that sensitive, maybe a little nerdy, soul who was pining away for you while you had nothing but eyes for old fast-moving, sweet dual carb, hot rod-driving, fast-talking speedo Eddie? Now it’s too late, girl. Oh, by the way, you were much better off without old petty larceny, world-owes-him-a-living, lamp-shade-on-his-head life of the party that he turned out to be Eddie. And that ain’t no lie.
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