Bands of Your Life / The Muser's Ticket Segment

It has been the best new segment for sports radio, The Ticket (96.7FM / 1310AM) in the last couple of years. All thanks to the Covid, I guess, because this Bands of Your Life segment replaced the popular pre-Covid weekly segment, Best Act Coming to Town, which was shelved because, post-Covid, no acts are coming to town.

Bands of Your Life ranks with E-brake and Gay or Not Gay (now on the shelf) as far as my favorites. I have other favorites including Dan-Paul's Pig Pen, Why Today Doesn't Suck, and Marge the swim coach. I miss What's on Mike's Mind, and for that matter, I miss Mike. The Compound was the best radio in the last 25 years, in my opinion, right up there with Corby's interviews with Shaq. Filling sixteen hours daily of airtime for a sports radio station is no small task when there's no sports. 

But back to this segment, The Bands of Your Life. Morning host Craig Miller pulled the idea from a website called Sosh(?) The idea is simple. Answer a list of questions about bands that have been a part of your life, and why. The only rule is that a band can only be used once. Besides the Ticket hosts going through the Bands of Your Life on air they've had local celebrities as well, Mike Doocy and Lisa Loeb, to name just two. It's all good radio, in my opinion. I've listened to most of the lists more than once on podcast. For the younger guys, like Gen-X Davy and to a lesser extent Danny, I didn't know many of the songs or even the bands. But the kind of music a person likes is still of interest to me.

August 2020 update:

Since first writing this three more Ticket hosts have presented their "Bands," Bob Sturm, Dan McDowell, and Julie Dobbs. All of them very interesting and worth listening to.

But to Dan I have to say: the BeeGees...? ...Whoa..

September 2020 update:

This week singer/songwriter Pat Green presented his "Bands of Your Life." I think it's my favorite so far, partly because I liked his selections and partly because of the stories he told along with his selections, including personal anecdotes of Willie Nelson and Jerry Jeff Walker. That was a great segment.

The Unticket has the complete list of questions, the podcasts of each person and their choices. Here:  https://www.theunticket

Here are the questions:

1. Band that you hate?
2. Band that you think is overrated?
3. Band you think is underappreciated?
4. Band that you love?
5. Band you can listen to over and over again?
6. Band that made you fall in love with music?
7. Band that changed your life?
8. Band that surprised you?
9. Band that is your guilty pleasure?
10. Band that you should have seen by now?
11. Greatest band to see live?

Maybe I should add that in my answers to the first two questions there is a little bit of blog-rant which I will leave un-edited because this is an opinion piece and there's no sense equivocating when asked your opinion. Then again, no one asked my opinion. 

But and nevertheless, in the spirit of Misters Doocy and Rhyner whose bands and songs I did know, here's my list. I'll start with the question found difficult by everyone.  My choice will be criticized by many, but it's true...

1. The Band That I Hate is . . . the Rolling Stones. (in my head the headline is read in Ribby Paultz voice)

Hold on a minute Junior and fellow-Muses. Put the brick down. I recognize the talent. But their bit bugs me and has bugged me ever since I was thirteen and my father and I, sitting in the den, watched them perform Satisfaction on the Ed Sullivan show. Jagger's tongue thing annoys me, their tongue album cover grossed me out when I was around sixteen, and their involvement with the Hell's Angels at Altamont which turned violent and caused the death of a young black man iced the cake. I don't like them or their act. I'll grant that it's cool that they were influenced by Muscle Shoals and American soul and country music. Respectfully, I think Mr. Doocy is wrong about them, they are kind of a one-tracked band with a few exceptions, in the way that the Beatles weren't. The Beatles vision and scope was much broader. I'm just not into the Stones. Sorry. 

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2. The Band I think is Over-rated: The Eagles

According to the magazine Business Insider, The Eagles Greatest Hits is the #1 selling album of all time. If they sell that many albums and are so popular how can I say they are over-rated? I guess it's just too pop for me. And back in the day I thought, not counter-culture enough. I don't doubt the talent or the lyrics in songs like Desperado but they just generally wear me out. I'll light myself on fire if I'm stuck hearing Hotel California. In my view, the Eagles and other 70s bands are the beginning of the end of the Bob Dylan to the Beatles era of rock and roll. And if that's not enough to convince you they're over-rated, consider this drivel, The Greeks Don't Want No Freaks :

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Band That is Under Appreciated: Cream / Blind Faith

I loved the Clapton, Winwood, Baker combination, which got recognition but wasn't respected as much as I think they deserve. 

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3. The Band That I Love Right Now: Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band.

Actually, it's the Ticket that got me listening more closely to Springsteen. Corby Davidson did a review of the movie, Dancing in the Street which is about a young Pakistani boy living in London whose life was changed by Bruce's music. My wife and I went to the movie and I was hooked. Before that I knew him for hits like Born in the USA.  But I didn't appreciate him as a lyricist in the tradition of Dylan, Prine, Petty, Lennon and McCartney until recently. The Streets of Philadelphia written for the movie is a beautiful and haunting piece of music. His lyrics are authentic in the way of  60's music even though he's not a 60's guy. He's criticized for lyrics like Racing in the Streets because he's not really a racing guy, or a working class guy, or a guy without a place, but his songs are about the universal qualities of love, longing, and loss, and like every good lyricist he uses what he knows or what he has observed closely. A southerner writes about the south, a boy raised in the shadows of Philadelphia sees the world through a city.

As in the following tunes:

In somewhat of a contradiction to my last statement, Springsteen went Western in his last production. It shows his ability to change with his age and experience in life, and with his interests, much like Bob Dylan and Paul Simon did. In his latest album, Western Stars he departs the street lights of Philadelphia for the night lights of the big western sky and produces songs in the style of the Western Ballad. 

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4. I Love Music because of: The Temptations and Motown

When I was fourteen in 1966 the Beatles hadn't yet cracked (or should it be "written") the code of the emerging counter-culture rock music scene. For those of us living in the shadows of Philadelphia, music was Motown. And the Temptations were Motown's kings. Not far behind was Smokey, the Four Tops, Aretha, Marvin Gaye, and the Supremes. I saw the Temps live with five of my buddies when I was sixteen in Philadelphia. The Convention Hall was packed. There were six white boys. It was magic.

The album I wore out the most was probably The Temptations in a Mellow Mood. I never heard any of these songs on the radio and I don't know how well it did commercially but my buddies and I loved it. We tried to dance, sing, and perform like this but never quite got close. 

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5. The Band that Changed My Life: The Beatles

Then the Beatles produced Rubber Soul, and a couple years later Sergeant Peppers, and in those short years the world changed right before our eyes and me with it. The White Album followed, and in my view, the beginning of the end of the good times. Despair was seeping into the music (Helter Skelter and Revolution No.9). But there's no doubt that the White Album took the young generation by storm. Nothing came close to its influence and popularity except possibly another Beatles album like Sergeant Peppers, Abbey Road, or Let It Be, all of which were produced in the late 60s early 70s.  In 1969 the Beatles were at the top of the heap and no one was near them.

The following song has some nostalgic significance for me. One, I loved the song, but also, my religion teacher at the Catholic school was a bit of Marxist, and a lover of the 60's peace and love religion that bands like the Beatles were promulgating. Fr. Burns would explicate the meanings of contemporary songs to us boys and Blackbirds was one of his favorites. I think they canned him the following year. 

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6. The Band That I Listen to Over and Over? Crosby, Stills, Nash (and Young)

I had all the CSN and CSN plus albums. They brought something different, more melodic, to the music.  And the lyrics expressed the thoughts of a generation. My buddies and I spent many a night with CSN music playing in the background of whatever it was we were doing. I still listen to them.

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7. Band that you should have seen by now? Anita Baker

I love listening to Anita Baker but never saw her perform live. Her voice captivates me. Give me a Texas-summer Saturday night, about 9:00 after working in the yard, a cold six-pack of Miller Lite, a pack of Marlboro Lights, my porch swing, quiet, and a little Anita Baker playing in the background and all God's chillin' are happy. She can belt it out with the best of them including Diana, Whitney, and Aretha, but, to my ear she has something else, something maybe a little more human. Sexy. I don't know, but I like it, and her. And she's a performer, par excellence. 

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Band that is your guilty pleasure? Jason Mraz "I'm Yours"

I'm a sucker for the catchy, upbeat tune. This was popular and deservedly so. Would I go to a live show? No, but I've listened to this song hundred times on YouTube.

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Greatest Band to See Live... Dave Matthews (Apologies to Mr. Wilonsky and Mr. Miller)

The fact is I never saw him live. I wanted to and I guess I could have but my wife isn't really interested. My daughter and sons attended Dave's concerts, more than once I should add, and I thought eventually they'd invite old dad to tag along. You know the guy that got them listening to music. Silly of me, I know. The truth is I wasn't invited because of their lingering thought that Frank the Tank would emerge from the person they knew as their father. They were right, of course. Still, in my mind, this is great 60's rock and roll interpreted 30 years later. I love it and would love to see him live.

The hell with Junior and Wilonsky. Hit play. Crank that baby up.

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The Band I Would Go See if I Could Time Travel: the painter,  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

If I could time-travel and could choose a seat at any performance in history, I'd take Antonio Salieri's seat at the opening performance of The Marriage of Figaro (1786). Mozart was the greatest and still is the greatest composer of all time. Period. My view of him is not unlike Salieri's in the movie, Amadeus.

When I listen to the Overture to The Marriage of Figaro or the Contessa Perdonne, or the Lacrimosa from the Requiem I wonder if God Himself wrote this music. It is the sound of beauty. So thought Salieri (above) and Red (Morgan Freeman, below), the prisoner friend of Andy Dufresne in Shawshank Redemption. He said as much while one of the world's most beautiful arias (Canzonetta Sull'aria) is played over the prison yard's loudspeakers:

I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don't want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I'd like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can't be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away...

 

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I can't make a list of music in my life without mentioning  the man who was the soundtrack for my childhood, and our family. He was my father's favorite and the man my father loved to see live back in the day before I was around. In later years, Philadelphia radio aired a Sinatra station. 24 hours a day. I can remember walking into my father's room and he'd be half-snoozing, eyes closed in his Laz-y-Boy, and Sinatra singing lightly in the background.

I thought his music was old-fashioned and out of touch when I was a teenager. I love it now. Love it. 

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Just about everyone said that they had a hard time narrowing down their list and would add names of people they thought should be included even though that's kind of against the rules. Today, I was driving down the road thinking that I should have included X.

So, I'm going to do what everyone else did and add people that could have been included:

• Luciano Pavarotti: in a league by himself. Saw the 3 Tenors at Dodger Stadium many years ago with a friend of mine. Truly a highlight of my life.
• Tom Petty: Listen to him frequently.
• Jackson Browne: Wish I had seen him live in Philly. (Thanks to Rhyner for getting me back into Petty and Browne)
• Jimi Hendrix: All Along the Watchtower? Is there anything more representative of 60's rock?
• Santana: Live at Woodstock greatness.
• Tom Waits: Right up there with Dylan, Springsteen, Lennon, Prine, Petty
• Beethoven: Is the Moonlight Sonata the most beautiful piece of music ever written? 
• Emmy Lou Harris: The best in her field and still as beautiful as ever, if it's allowable to still say things like that. I saw her live three times. Twice in Fort Worth, Texas at small venues. One in Dallas at SMU where she sang with Linda Ronstadt and Dolly Parton. All great.
• I've included no country music, I guess because I didn't become a listener until I was over 40. My daughter got me listening to Lyle Lovett, Robert Earl Keen, Willie Nelson and a few others. Some guys I worked with introduced me to Merle Haggard, Jerry Jeff Walker and Joe Ely.  I converted to Texas-country-music after a beer-soaked pilgrimage to Gruene Hall for a live performance from Joe Ely. Good times. Saw Jerry Jeff live but never Merle Haggard. His Kern River is in my top ten favorite songs all time.

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Talkers and Listeners

There are two kinds of people in the world: talkers and listeners.

On a scale of one to ten, ten being your great-uncle after three martinis and zero being the cloistered Sister Mary Frances, I’m around a three, maybe a two and half.

There’s a one physical reason I maintain silence over speech and it is simply that my vocal cords are slightly damaged; talking loud enough for the other party to hear me is difficult. And there’s my feeble attempt to honor the Benedictine Order’s preference for silence. And then there’s the real reason, which is, when I am talking I get the impression that the listener doesn't give a rat's you-know-what about what I have to say, which is understandable because I don’t either most of the time.

And I might as well add that I have an electro-mechanical defect, that is, my brain and my mouth are not synchronized very well. It seems there’s a delay between the thought of a word and speaking the word. A spoken sentence for me is like a four cylinder Volkswagen Beetle sputtering down the road on two cylinders. Add to that a healthy portion of what is now called “inner dialogue” and I’m just annoying to listen to.

The golden-tongued have no such delay. My beloved wife, for an example, can go from zero to sixty words per minute faster than a Tesla Model S at a drag strip. Thought and spoken word weave into one coherent sentence, paragraph, and story.

Not that talkers don’t have their difficult members. Who wants to endure the monologue of the over-talker? Whole paragraphs reside in his mind waiting to be unloaded on the unsuspecting. He is the proverbial mouth looking for an ear.

I love a good conversation when I can really listen to what the other person thinks and why. I enjoy hearing words formed into sentences. I like the sound of voices. I can listen to National Public Radio's fund-raising segments even though I am not concentrating on the words being said. There is a pleasant cadence to the voices. The same with baseball games broadcast on the radio. There is nothing quite like the sound of a good baseball play-by-play man talking you through the game, moving in and out of the silence.

The truth is talkers need listeners and listeners need talkers. Put two listeners together and the silence can be life-sapping. Two talkers together remind me of a high school cafeteria food fight: throw something, duck, repeat.

There is a popular story of two famous non-talking, men of letters, Samuel Coleridge and William Wordsworth that sums up this listener's frame of mind. It goes like this:

"Wordsworth goes to visit Coleridge at his cottage, walks in, sits down and does not utter a word for three hours. Neither does Coleridge. Wordsworth then rises and, as he leaves, thanks his friend for a perfect evening." *

Now that is my idea of a good time.

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* Roger Rosenblott, Time Magazine essay, the Silent Friendships of Men

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(John, give me a number between 1 and 10.)

Don Rickles and the Comedians

The recent passing of the great Don Rickles got me reminiscing about Rickles and the comedians I've enjoyed over the years.

My earliest memory of  Mr. Rickles dates to the summer of 1969.  I got a summer job through a buddy of mine whose father and grandfather worked for a carpet outlet store. We were the company's carpet-hauling muscle for the summer.

My friend's father was kind enough to pick me up every day at the street-corner and we'd drive in together. One day he put a tape into the car's cassette player (very high-tech for the time) and said, "you boys will like this." We did. It was Rickles and he roasted everyone: Jews, Blacks, Catholics, Italians, Irish. My employers were Jewish and they laughed hardest at the Jewish jokes. I was hooked.

My earliest memory of comedians, in general, was watching the Ed Sullivan Show with my father who loved laughter and a good joke. His favorite comic was Alan King. I liked him too, even at that young age, but the first comedian who appealed to me as a boy was Allan Sherman and his album, My Son the Nut, and its chart-topping hit, Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh. That was 1963. My parents owned the album. I would lay on the floor, face up, with my head to the "stereo" and play it over and over again, and even today can follow along with most of the songs.

Jonathan Winters was another old favorite of mine. Winters is rightly called a comic genius and the inspiration to the more widely-known genius, Robin Williams, who could make me laugh as well. In the 60s, I loved Steve Allen and his talk show skits, and Dick Cavett, although the latter wasn't a comedian, per se, but his quick wit as an interviewer appealed to me as did the king of late night interviews, Johnny Carson.

In the early 70s, Steve Martin turned the comic world upside down for the baby-boomers with his satirical skits, Wild and Crazy Guys, and King Tut. Martin and the talented group of Saturday Night Live satirists brought something new to TV comedy. They walk in the footsteps of  Mel Brooks, Norman Lear, and Woody Allen. Billy Crystal combines qualities of both Mel Brooks' satire and the storytelling of Alan King (see the movie Mr. Saturday Night).

I'm not old enough to have seen Charlie Chaplin in silent-theater although I did watch re-runs on television, but never quite got him. I did get his comedic descendants, The Three Stooges. I'm old enough to have seen comedy change from slapstick to joke-telling to satire. And like all art forms, it has its highs and lows.

I was never a big fan of Lucille Ball or Jerry Lewis even though I recognize the talent, it just doesn't make me laugh. The old Dave Letterman shows I thought were funny. I did like some of Carole Burnett's work. I generally don't care for female stand-ups. My favorite female comic is Julia Louis-Dreyfus, although in the TV sitcom Veep, funny she is, but listening to a female use the F word a half dozen times an episode puts me off. Language, humor and everything else that is a part of daily life say something about who we are and what we value, and Veep descends into the banality of street jargon. That being said, her work in Seinfeld is as good as it gets. Hilariously funny.

I probably should add my favorite, more recent sitcoms, Office and Parks and Recreation, which I think are very funny, and cleverly written and performed, and which added another comic element to the sitcom, the acknowledgment of the third-party observer by the actors.

We find something funny for various reasons but it's almost always a "fracture" in reality as in an understated or exaggerated word, expression, or action, or a common frustration, or the accidental minor misfortunes of others. Humor like romance can't be analyzed and enjoyed simultaneously, it can't be commanded, and it's another one of those hard to define qualities that separate the homo-sapien from the lower animals. Cows don't stand around and tell jokes.

Or do they?

THE FAR SIDE, GARY LARSON

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Postlogue

I like the self-deprecating humor of the Jewish comedians: Rickles, Sherman, King, Brooks, Allen, and Crystal, which has its origin, I think, in the Jewish pathos (see the movie Fiddler on the Roof).

The one Catholic boy that fits perfectly into the tradition mentioned above and who I have overlooked is the great Jackie Gleason.

One last song from Sherman which shows his cleverness with words, and which, I think, still stands today as a pretty funny tune (of course, the video's images were added later).

One Hippopotomi


 

The Best Cup of Coffee in Texas.

I've been known to use a little hyperbole from time to time. This is not one of those times.

Fort Worth has a new coffee shop and it's in the Meadowbrook area. I mention the location because we Eastsiders have grown accustomed to driving miles to get a decent cup of fresh coffee. No mas.

Not hyperbole: This is the best cappuccino I've had this side of the Mississippi.

Coffee Folk opened last weekend serving coffee from a beautifully renovated trailer just outside the Firehouse Pottery. Coffee Folk's roaster is Spella Cafe from Portland, Oregon. Of Spella the New York Times wrote, "the best espresso in Portland." I mention that because the Coffee Folk folk are serious about procuring good coffee.

My first visit was today, Saturday, their second weekend open. My wife and daughter had been and reported to me that the coffee was very good, my expectations were high.

I liked it so much I returned an hour later for a second cup.

I'm not a coffee snob but I do appreciate when coffee's done right. For me, the high watermark is a cappuccino from La Colombe in Philadelphia. Every time I order a macchiato, espresso, or cappuccino, it's compared to La Colombe's. If La Colombe is a 10 on a good day everything else in these United States has been less, until today. The Coffee Folk cappuccino was as good and maybe a little bit better than La Colombe's. I'll admit the tipping point in that opinion may be that Coffee Folk is a bicycle ride from my house. And that there is a secondary enjoyment to this coffee bar for those of us in Meadowbrook who have endured less than stellar food and restaurant availability, and that is seeing and conversing with dozens of neighbors who are enjoying good coffee as well.

But the coffee is the centerpiece of this table and the coffee is good.

Thank you Coffee Folk.

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Coffee Folk is just outside at the Fireside Pottery at the corner of Meadowbrook and Oakland Boulevards, Fort Worth, Texas. For now they're open Friday and Saturday only. Coffee Folk also serves a small selection of fresh pastries from Rooster Bakery in Fort Worth and a selection of teas.

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Photo credits
Top: Rebecca Smith
Bottom: Jaime Brabander / The Plumbing Place

Rambling about the Beatles & When I'm 64 . . .

Paul McCartney composed this whimsical love song when he was sixteen years old. Eight years later "64" would become an unexpected hit and take its place in the most significant album in the history of 60's rock and roll.

I refer, of course, to the song, "When I'm 64," and the album, Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band. "When I'm 64" was released in 1966 as the B-side of the juke-box single, featuring "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds."  In 1967 it was placed on the Sergeant Peppers album.

Everyone back then loved the Beatles. They were a sensation that even they couldn't explain. At first it was all fun, a fusion of Buddy Holly, Elvis, Carl Perkins, The Everly Brothers, Chuck Berry and Little Richard by a British guitar-playing quartet and hits like "Twist and Shout."

Then something happened and art imitated and abetted the changing world.*

In 1965, the Beatles produced the transitional album Rubber Soul, the first album where John, Paul, George and Ringo had complete control of the music, and, where the Beatles produced songs like "Norwegian Wood." "Twist and Shout" it wasn't. A year or so later, the Beatles went "all in" with Sergeant Peppers. Everything about it was different from the iconic album cover, to the full orchestra, to songs like "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and with it rock and roll had the permanent imprint of the psychedelic age. Fifteen million albums were sold worldwide. It was a tidal wave.

The White Album followed in 1968, a double album set, and so also the beginning of the end of that short-lived musical era. The despair of John Lennon, and to a lesser degree the other members, permeates the album in songs like "I'm So Tired," "Revolution 1," and "Revolution 9." Notwithstanding, some of their best music is found in the White Album: Harrison's "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" and McCartney's "Blackbird."  (Sidebar: Now,  fifty years later,  the Musak version of "You Say You Want a Revolution" plays in continuous loop on elevators across America, leading me to think that Lennon's despair was not so misguided.)

Abbey Road and Let it Be, released in 1969 and my favorite albums, were the final albums for the Beatles and with few exceptions for 60's music in general. By the time you get to Led Zeppelin and "Stairway to Heaven" in 1971 it's over. Indeed, many of its luminaries were gone: Hendrix, Morrison, and Joplin come to mind, and the Beatles as a band were no more.

Many of us who came of age in 60's were formed in some way by the music of the Beatles. I was 15 when the song "When I'm 64" was released on Sergeant Peppers.

I'm 64 today.

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*Sorry for the gross simplification but you try to explain the 60's in a sentence or two.

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