I was in the car today, listening to Allan Sherman with a friend. The last song on Sherman's second album, My Son the Celebrity, is "Shticks of One and a Half a Dozen of the Other." It's a medley of bits, kind of like "Shticks and Stones," the medley that closed out his first album, My Son, the Folk Singer.
Give a listen:
That first bit, a partody of "Molly Malone" (AKA "Cockles and Mussels" or "In Dublin's Fair City"), contains the line "My Molly stands out 'cos she weighs eighteen stone" followed by the parenthetical comment, "That's 256 pounds." Problem is, it's not. A stone is (or, more precisely, was when the song was written) 14 pounds. So 18 stone is equal to 252 pounds.
I am guessing that Sherman's mistake came about by assuming that (x+a) × (x-a) = x × x and therefore that 18 × 14 = 16 × 16 = 256. That's an error that's common among the inumerate. I remember when I was in college, working on the campus newspaper. A friend enlarged a photo to 125% of its original size. Then shrank the enlarged copy to 75% of its size. He was puzzled that the final version was smaller than the original.
I know it's not really a big deal. But it still hurts my ears every time I hear that line.
As a consolation prize, let me share with you a video I found while looking for the one posted above:
If you want this to be relevant to this year's presidential election, note the bit that starts at about 1:05.
I got an invitation to a house concert at the end of this month. Not big news in and of itself, except that the performer will be Janey Street. To most people that might not mean anything. "Janey who?" But to me...
It was my sophomore year of college, and I was the music editor for a campus newspaper. One of the review albums I received from Arista Records was Heroes, Angels and Friends, the debut album by Janey Street. I still remember the letter from the publicist -- it noted that Janey was a Queens native (which was a tie-in because I was at Queens College).
I loved that album from the first spin. There was no getting-to-know-you period, or it-has-to-grow-on-you phase. This was a consciousness-changing reaction I had. I've only reacted that way to records a handful of times at most. Dave Edmunds' D.E. 7th and the Beat Farmers' Tales of the New West are the only ones that readilly come to mind.
I haven't heard the record in quite a while, but I still can remember lyrics (forgive me if I make a mistake -- this is from memory):
From "Say Hello to Ronnie":
Say hello to Ronnie. Send my love to Sue. Give my best to Bobby. And here's a kiss for you. I'm working on the night shift. I need to survive. Living from day to day Keeping my dreams alive.
From "Jimmy (Lives in the House Down the Street)":
Jimmy lives in the house down the street He's got a smile and a hold on me (yeah) Jimmy's got a girl for each day of the week. I know he's kissing them. Why not me?
Street's songs reminded me of Springsteen, in that she sang of ordinary blue-collar folks and their lives, coaxing drama out of the humdrum. Her songs did show more optimism than Springsteen's, and her music didn;t quite have the same power as his. But I saw her as a female Springsteen. It also didn't hurt that I developed a bit of a fanboy crush on her.
There was a single, "Under the Clock," that dented the Billboard charts, and a video:
I was a little surprised at the choice, since I thought "Under the Clock" was the weakest song on the album.
Anyway, time went by and there was no followup album.
Years later, I tried to get a copy of HA&F on CD, but couldn't find it. I tried to copy my vinyl to CD, but found a skip in one of the tracks. So I really wanted to get an official CD. I found Janey on CDBaby, as she had recorded and (I assume) self-released another album. I listened to a few samples. The music was more mature. But it didn't move me the way the first album did. I didn't buy it, but I emailed Janey through CDBaby to ask if I could somehow get the first album on CD. She wrote back, but to say that the first album wasn't on CD. Oh, and I should buy the new album. She's sure I'll like it.
So that's been that for a few years. I keep toying with the idea of copying my vinyl onto CD, but the issue of that scratch keeps holding me back.
So now I got this invitation. The natural question is how? Well, I was, for one year, a member of Nashville Songwriters Association International (NSAI). And I still get occasional emails related to the group. Janey, at this point (in addition to performing and songwriting) does a variety of music-related jobs -- running songwriting workshops, lecturing, and working as a song evaluator for NSAI.
Well, the latest NSAI-related e-mail was a notice that she will be in New York, offering mentoring sessions for songwriters, and performing at this house concert. I don't think I'll sign up for a mentoring session, but I'll definitely go to see her perform.
In yesterday's post, I talked about the first record review I wrote. I explained that I was unfair to the band, in lare part because of a subtle form of peer-pressure.
A more blatant example of that occurred later in that semester, when the paper got a review copy of The Smiths debut album. For some reason, the editor decided that we should all gang up on the record. So the whole music staff (or a large part of it anyway) struggled to outdo each other in negativity. We each wrote a review, and they all appeared under a defaced press photo of the band.
The fact is that some of my criticisms were actually accurate. Morrissey's vocals were a bland monotone. But (as did the others) I went over the top, looking for anything to nitpick, and refusing to acknowledge anything good. That was probably my low point as a music journalist.
Now, the fact is I never did get into the Smiths, and I have no real interest in their music. But still...
The first record review I wrote was for Bon Jovi's first album.
It was not a well-written review. Worse, it was unfair in its negativity. I won't say I was being dishonest, but I was allowing myself to be unduly influenced by the opinions of others. I was a freshman in college, eager to ingratiate myself with the older students who ran the paper. I was given the album to review, and with it came plenty of snide references to how awful it was. The music editor who I was dealing with was not into any of the new stuff that was popular then. Hair-metal? Synth-based new wave? All bad. He was extremely closed-minded about musical styles (though, of course, he didn't see it that way). I let his taste influence me too much, and didn't give the record a fair shake.
I did acknolede that there were two decent songs -- "Runaway" (which managed to hit the Top 40) and "She Don't Know Me." Actually, looking them up on Wikipedia, I am surprised to see that those two singles peaked at 39 and 48 (respectively) on the Billboard chart. I thought they did better -- probably because the video for "Runaway" got a lot of play on MTV.
At any rate, while I did acknowledge that those two songs were good, I also said that the rest of the album is a bunch of undistinguishable sound-alike tracks. I wrote that the guitar lead from "Love Lies" sounds like "a video game having its program violently mistreated." And, of course, I also asked if they used the same recorded guitar lead on every track or bothered to rerecord it for each.
Now, I can't at this time go over my review point by point. For one thing, I don't still have the album -- it was on vinyl, I got rid of most of my vinyl records in the last ten years or so, and that is one of the records I never bothered to replace with a CD copy. But suffice to say the album, even at its weakest, was much better than I gave it credit for.
But I don't think my negative review really hurt Bon Jovi's career much.
My intention, right now, is to blog about music -- that means any aspect of music and my relationship to it. That's kind of vague, I admit. But the simple rule is that I decide what's acceptable. I'll probably touch on other topics -- politics and religion for example -- but for the purpose of getting at whatever music or music-related point I am trying to make. I have no intention of writing about politics for the purpose of debating politics.
So, I may as well describe the role music plays and has played in my life.
To star with, I enjoy music (duh). Generally speaking, I like most forms of rock (and rock-related) music, with special attention to British pub rock of the 1970s (and related acts), early new wave, C&W, and cowpunk. Oh, I also love the Monkees, even though they don't fit into any of those categories.
In college, I wrote for the music sections of a few campus newspapers -- mostly record reviews, but there were a couple of essays, interviews and concert reviews. At one point I was Music Editor for one of those papers. In grad school (at a different college), I wrote a couple of record reviews for the campus paper. I have also done some freelance music journalism (most notably for the now-defunct Tower Records' Pulse!). I toyed with the idea of pursuing a career in music journalism, but realized that, for a variety of reasons, that's not for me.
I also do a little songwriting on the side, At this point I have exactly three songs that I think are worthy of trying to sell. By contrast, I have written many, many songs that (how shall I put this delicately?) aren't worthy of trying to sell. As a songwriter, I have made about $20 in royalties (which isn't enough for me to quit my day job) and gotten into ASCAP.
I also collect CDs. I haven't really embraced the new digital reality of buying music as downloads. For me, it's got to be on a physical CD or it doesn't feel right.
I can play a little bit of guitar, enough to support my songwriting. But I'm not particularly good at it. As a singer, I'm an excellent guitarist.
UPDATE: I should have mentioned that in college I was also a DJ for the campus radio station. I did a show called The Alternate Version Show, in which I played, back to back, two versions of one song by two different performers.
