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| CRANKY OLD FART'S BROWSER HISTORY #403 [archive] FEB. 4, 2024 |
Behind closed doors, Biden says Trump is a "sick fuck"
We are years past the point where our leaders need to criticize Trump bluntly like this, and on the record, not behind closed doors. Stop treating Republicans as if they're ordinary politicians.
Amazon prime video starts charging extra to avoid ads, as the enshittification of streaming video truly begins
There is nothing on Amazon Prime that can't be easily obtained without ads, and without paying a nickel.
Resist STL infiltrates anti-abortion fundraiser, crashes stage in booty shorts
Internet scumbags make money from fake obituaries
DOJ continues legal harassment of Backpage’s Michael Lacey, after hounding his partner to suicide
Remembering the courage of Fred Korematsu, an American
Appeals Court says FBI violated the Fourth Amendment during its raid of US Private Vaults
In an alternative universe, they never discovered radio
Arizona Republican says state lawmakers, not voters, should pick president
Arizona Republicans move to make Pluto official state planet
Seattle police, King County prosecutors accused of fabricating evidence
• Amusing, Interesting, Outrageous, or Profound
AIOP is my federated page, for anything that's (in my opinion) amusing, interesting, outrageous, or profound. It's mostly a rough draft of this page, but you're invited to stop by.
♫♬ MUSIC ♫
Bloody Well Right — Supertramp
Subterranean Homesick Blues — Bob Dylan
⚰️ OBITUARIES ⚰️
Carl Andre
artist, accused murderer
Hal Buell
director of photo operations, Associated Press
Jose and Daniele Duval
happily married 'sex maniacs'
🖕 Satoshi Kirishima
terrorist, East Asia Anti-Japan Armed Front
Blaine Lacher
hockey player, Boston Bruins
Joe Madison
activist and radio host, The Black Eagle
Sandra Milo
actress, 8½
name unknown
forgotten man
Chita Rivera
actress, West Side Story
Jade Sanders
forgotten woman
Trent Tuttle
forgotten man
Carl Weathers
actor, Rocky
Jimy Williams
baseballer, Boston Red Sox
Melinda Ledbetter Wilson
rock'n'roll manager, wife of Brian Wilson
L. W. Wright
NASCAR prankster
2/4/2024
Cranky Old Fart is annoyed and complains and very occasionally offers a kindness, along with anything off the internet that's made me smile or snarl. All opinions fresh from my ass. Top illustration by Jeff Meyer. Click any image to enlarge. Comments & conversations invited.
Tip 'o the hat to the AVA, BoingBoing, Breakfast at Ralf's, Chuff, Dirty Blonde Mind, It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time, Lemmy.world, Looking for My Perfect Sandwich, Miss Miriam's Mirror, Voenix Rising, and anywhere else I've stolen links, illustrations, or inspiration.
Special thanks to Linden Arden, Becky Jo, Wynn Bruce, Joey Jo Jo emeritus, Jeff Meyer, John the Basket, Dave S, Name Withheld, and always extra special thanks to my lovely late Stephanie, who gave me 21 years and proved that the world isn't always shitty.
It must be Monday because Trump got his ass kicked in yet another judicial proceeding at yet another level of the Federal Court System. But none of these songs is about Trump. One is a derivative murder ballad, one is about a guy who gets fired for fucking up as a ship's mate, and one of them is about -- oh shit -- another brutal murder. I guess they're all about Trump.
ReplyDeleteAfter Bob Dylan forgot how to write songs, he teamed briefly with Jacques Levy and extended his writing career by a few months. The story about how Dylan stumbled across an itinerant violinist and made a couple terrific songs with her is another, longer story. Here is the Dylan Lite band (Dylan wasn't getting paid for the gig) playing and singing Hurricane.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voH11xV4AKI
Here's the Jimi Hendrix Experience singing and playing a song without a writer or with too many writers. Many bands played this song in the day, but only Jimi used the dental approach. Hendrix performing Hey Joe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUPifXX0foU
And here are Brian Wilson and Al Jardine and a few of the real Beach Boys singing and playing one of the singles off an album that all four Beatles listened to the day it was dropped in England, Pet Sounds: Sloop John B.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gx5PVjsRamk&list=RDOZ2RJwTwbzg&index=6
jtb
Being not a sailing man, I never 'got' the Sloop John B. Thought of it as one of their later, lesser hits like "Kokomo". Didn't know it was from Pet Sounds, and also very impressive seeing the old originals perform it for me. I begin to understand the song at last, perhaps.
DeleteThe other two ditties are catchy too, but it's the Sloop John B that kicked me in the keel.
I never got The Beach Boys and I was just the right age: 16 when Pet Sounds was released, and I never bought it. I didn't care about cars or surfing. I cared about girls, but that didn't qualify my as a rarity. I suspect the "Boys" were a victim of their label's (Capitol) P/R machine. Hell, only one of them surfed, and really only one of them wrote, and he didn't give a shit about cars. He cared about harmony and chord changes. Now I listen to Caroline No or God Only Knows, and I understand why the Beatles considered Brian "the competition" -- not the Rolling Stones or any of the other BritPop groups. And the Beatles had George Martin blocking and tackling their label for them so they could focus on music. Brian had Brian: the boy genius who fought the world to create music for the ages and found mostly madness. Paulie must be his biggest fan: he tells anyone who will listen that he and John were writing their asses off just to keep up with a Californian they'd never met who sported a recording studio tan.
ReplyDeleteJohn
I have looked at these words twenty times, and they've terrified me. Several readings I couldn't understand, under my dementia. When it finally made sense, I still couldn't find a reply, and even now this is the best I can do.
DeleteBut jeez what a lifeline, thank you. It seriously helped drag me up out of the swamp.
This guy is deaf in one ear
Deletehttps://youtu.be/iZZ_9IPxyK8?si=MvMBSZmwOmzyvSQJ
https://youtu.be/2GhzpQ16h2M?si=5SEUxLAmn-EJyclm
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Delete"I'd love just once to see you in the nude" — definitely a surprise lyric, Am I a Beach Boy newbie?
DeleteLots here I hadn't heard before, thanks. "Midnight's Another Day" is the one my head and heart like best. Wow.
DeleteAll the Beach Boys are wonderful singers - especially when harmonizing together - but Brian is THE MAN. A completely radical composer, combining folk, classic pop, exotica and experimental musics into something totally new and utterly sincere.
DeleteA lot of hipster doofuses can't handle the "sincere" part of the equation, they think he's "corny." But hey, man, that's part of the American Story, that corniness. It's there in films like The Right Stuff, right next to the awe and mysteries, and that's why it's a necessary part of Wilson's songs, too. The dude believes what he says, when he talks about love and mercy and so on, all you have to do is look at any interviews with him: he's completely damaged, has no room for guile or deception. He wants his songs to heal people as well as entertain them.
One of the most eccentric artists of the century, and one of the most misunderstood. It's like, imagine Stanley Kubrick, but Stanley Kubrick also had two dozen unreleased films as good or better than the big hits - that's Brian Wilson.
Amazing he outlived both his younger brothers, and now his wife. Amazing he survived the 1970s, 400 lbs and bedridden, on every drug imaginable. Lotta people disparage Eugene Landy's influence on Brian, but without Landy, Brian would be dead and gone 40 years ago.
The sincere part is the baseline of art.
DeleteWell put. As a kid, I though Brian was a little corny. As an adult, he seems a little like the musical Robert Frost. I don't agree with all of it, but I marvel at its beauty and clarity. This land was ours before we were the land's. God only knows what I'd be without you.
ReplyDeleteJohn
Imagine combining Phil Spector's Wall of Sound with Carol Kaye's Precision Bass jazz improv with Hal Blaine's eccentric and precise percussion with Glen Campbell's lovely acoustic guitar work with a dozen other Wrecking Crew geniuses, then overlaying six-part vocal, and doing it again and again, each time just a little differently. The idea of playing the bottom of the gravity-fed water cooler on "God Only Knows" just wouldn't come to anybody but Brian Wilson.
DeleteJohn
https://redirect.invidious.io/watch?v=QSFDewh-eN4
DeleteAnd for all the genius ascribed to Brian and Tony (and the Boys for their vocals) in the ensuing years, the album was a flop. That's a quote from Tony Asher (who, like Brian, is still with us) and it's deadly accurate. Yeah, the album reached number 10 briefly on a couple national "top 40" lists, but it dropped fast and faded away. It was too "adult" for AM radio, and too poppy for FM. It was poorly named and the cover art represented the name but not the music. What the fuck is a "pet sound"? Brian spent two thousand hours working on the album and couldn't spend two hours thinking up a catchy (or even appropriate) name. Capitol was only worried about recouping Brian's huge, gigantic (there isn't a big enough word) recording bill, and wanted to make the album universally accessible. They managed to lose the Beach Boys old audience without finding a new one (which was out there listening to the Beatles, Dylan, the Moody Blues, and others) but had never bothered with the Beach Boys. Most of the reviews missed the point of the album and were really about previous albums. Capitol should have thrown a giant rolling rollout party around the world, and did nothing, wanting to not throw good money after bad. Pet Sounds quickly became just another surfing disc by the guys in striped shirts. John and Paul knew better and said so, but they were going a thousand miles an hour with their own work and didn't have time to pimp for Brian and the Boys. There were rumors decades later that John and Paul told George Martin at the time that they couldn't have created Pet Sounds for any price. Private conversations in sound studios are hard to verify. Pet Sounds took thirty years to find its audience. Realistically, Capitol was giving the Boys more like thirty days. Whoever said life isn't fair should try his hand at the record business, where THAT shit is stunningly, staggeringly true.
ReplyDeleteJohn
The backstories of music don't much interest me unless told by you or Mr Reigns, in which case they're riveting.
Delete> What the fuck is a "pet sound"?
Kinda love that line, and the whole piece built around it.
Generally not a 'backstory' guy, myself, and I pray nobody ever tells my backstory, which is certainly not worth being told.
Just an opinion, but the music is the slightly stale bread on the outside. The backstory is the mystery meat between the bread and the bread. The music is somebody else's. The backstory is us: our culture, what turns us on, the motive.
DeleteJohn
Doug, it's just before 4 in the AM and I just got home. I wrote that last reply hurriedly at my sister's, and upon rereading it sounds a little harsh. You get to choose what you like and what interests you. I stand by my comment, but I should have been more respectful.
DeleteHope you're feeling better. I've not seen any medical reports lately, and it's about damn time you got over this crappy illness. And I hope there's no longer crap involved.
best,
John
Can't see anything to apologize for. As often happens, your "slightly stale bread" analogy is insightful and yummy.
DeleteAs for me, I'm mostly just weak and sleepy, taking a week off from life to rebuild myself. Tried writing about some slight cognitive issues, but they're so slight it felt like a complaint where I ought to be giving thanks.