Sultans of Swing

Interesting.  Mary Spender has covered this before, with a different guest.  The one above is quite true to the original.

The one below departs from it significantly. Still, I like it.

I still prefer this cover, overall, better:

The Animals - House of the Rising Sun (1964) HQ/Widescreen ♫♥ 58 YEARS AGO

The Jimi Hendrix Experience - All Along The Watchtower (Official Audio)

Spotify don't need him around anyhow*

I don't think Joe Rogan should be posting crap about COVID 19 on Spotify, but I have to be somewhat amused by Neil Young's actions and what has followed, including Joni Mitchell following in his wake.  I suspect it's largely:

Boomers:  What's Spotify?

Generation Jones:  Oh, thank goodness, at last we don't have to hear Neil Young and Joni Mitchell. .  . any chance James Taylor will pull his music too?

Millennials, Gen X, and Gen Y:  Neil who?

Footnotes:

*Apologies to Lynryd Skynyrd whose anthem Sweet Home Alabama contained these lyrics, regarding Neil Young:

Well I heard Mister Young sing about her

Well I heard ol' Neil put her down

Well I hope Neil Young will remember

A southern man don't need him around anyhow.

FWIW, I like the ballad Sweet Home Alabama, and Neil Young actually acknowledged that he himself thought he'd gone too far with his song Southern Man, but Neil was on the right side of history on that one for sure, and he probably is here too.  I can't actually imagine Sweet Home Alabama being released today, and like most songs, probably nobody really pays very much attention to its lyrics.

Boston - Peace of Mind (Audio)

December 4, 1971. Smoke On the Water

Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention.

This day in history is recalled for a tragedy, that being the destruction of the Montreux Casino in Switzerland during a Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention concert. 

The event was the topic of Deep Purple's song, Smoke on the Water.

We all came out to Montreux
On the Lake Geneva shoreline
To make records with a mobile
We didn't have much time
Frank Zappa and the Mothers
Were at the best place around
But some stupid with a flare gun
Burned the place to the ground

Smoke on the water
A fire in the sky
Smoke on the water

They burned down the gambling house
It died with an awful sound
Uh, Funky Claude was running in and out
Pulling kids on the ground
When it all was over
We had to find another place
But Swiss time was running out
It seemed that we would lose the race

Deep Purple in 1968.

Deep Purple had planned to record there, but had to find another venue.

On the same day, McGurk's Bar, a Catholic tavern in Belfast, was bombed, killing fifteen people, including two children.  And the Indian Navy attacked the Pakistani Navy at Karachi.

Movies In History: American Graffiti, and other filmed portrayals of the Cultural 1950s (1954-1965).

American Graffiti

Like The Wonder Years, I've made frequent reference to this film recently.  I was surprised, when I started doing that, that I'd never reviewed it.

American Graffiti takes place on a single night in Modesto, California in 1962.  It's the late summer and the subject, all teenagers, are about to head back to school or already have, depending upon whether they're going to high school or college. Some are going to work or already working.  They're spending the summer night cruising the town.  That's used as a vehicle to get them into dramatic situations.

The story lines, and there are more than one, in the film are really simple.  One character, played by Richard Dreyfus, is about to leave for college and develops a mad crush, in a single night, for a young woman driving a T-bird played by a young Suzanne Summers.  Another plot involves a young couple, played by Ron Howard and Cindy Williams, who are struggling with his plan to leave for college while she has one more year of school.  Another involves an already graduated figure whose life is dedicated to cars, even though it's apparent that he knows that dedication can't last forever.  The cast, as some of these names would indicate, was excellent, with many actors and actresses making their first really notable appearances in the film.

What's of interest here is the films' portrayal of the automobile culture of American youth after World War Two. This has really passed now, but it's accurately portrayed in the film.  Gasoline was relatively cheap and access to automobiles was pretty wide, which created a culture in which adolescents spent a lot of time doing just what is depicted in this movie, driving around fairly aimlessly, with the opposite sex on their minds, on Friday and Saturday nights.  This really existed in the 1960s, when this film takes place, it dated back at least to the 1950s, and it continued on into the very early 1980s. At some point after that, gasoline prices, and car prices, basically forced it out of existence.

For those growing up in the era, this was a feature of Fridays and Saturdays, either to their amusement or irritation.  As a kid, coming into town on a Friday or Saturday evening from anything was bizarre and irritating, with racing automobiles packed with teenagers pretty much everywhere.  Grocery store parking lots were packed with parked cars belonging to them as well.  "Cruising" was a major feature of teenage life, and nearly every teenager participated in it at least a little big, even if they disavowed doing it.  While they did this, in later years they listened to FM radio somewhat, but more likely probably cassette tape players installed after market in their cars.  In the mid 1970s, it was 8 track tape players.  In the 50s and 60s, it was the radio.

So, as odd as it may seem to later generations, this movie is pretty accurate in terms of what it displays historically.  And, given that the film was released in 1973, a mere decade after the era it depicts, it should be.  The amazing thing here is that by 1973 American culture had changed so much that a 1973 film looking back on 1962 could actually invoke a sense of nostalgia and an era long past.

The music and clothing are certainly correct, as is the cruising culture.  I somewhat question the automobiles in the movie, as most of those driven by the protagonists are late 1950s cars that wouldn't have been terribly old at the time the movie portrays, but a person knowledgeable on that topic informed me once that vehicles wore out so fast at the time that people replaced them fairly rapidly, which meant that younger people were driving fairly recent models.  Indeed, looking back on myself, I was driving early 1970s vintage vehicles in the late 1970s.

The music, which is a big feature of the movie, is also correct, which ironically often causes people to view this as a movie about the 1950s, rather than the early 1960s.  The music of the early 60s was the same as that of the late 50s, and music from the 50s was still current in the early 1960s, so this too is correct.

This movie was a huge hit, and it remained very popular for a very long time.  It's justifiably regarded as a classic.  More than that, however, it's one of the few movies that influences its own times.

Already by the 1970s, there was some nostalgia regarding the 1950s.  Sha Na Na, the 50s reprisal do wop band, actually preformed at Woodstock, as amazing as that seems now.  By the late 1960s, seems felt like such a mess that people were looking back towards an earlier era which they regarded as safer, ignoring its problems.  American Graffiti tapped into that feeling intentionally, although it has some subtle dark elements suggesting that not all is right with the world it portrays (the film clearly hints that a returned college graduate student is involved with his teenage female students).  George Lucas, when he made the film, couldn't have guess however that it would fuel a nostalgia boom for the 1950s like none other.

Happy Days

The first filmed progeny of American Graffiti was televisions Happy Days, which even featured Ron Howard, who had featured in American Graffiti.  Happy Days took the nostalgia boosted by American Graffiti and really ran with it in a super sanitized fashion.  Set in the mid 1950s through the mid 1960s, that ran from 1974 until 1983.  It was hugely popular.

Many of the same themes portrayed in American Graffiti were again portrayed in Happy Days, but in a lighter manner.  The show picked up the nostalgia for cars and music and ran with it.  No really serious themes were portrayed, which isn't to say that American Graffiti did much with serious themes. They are different, however, in that American Graffiti is a warm, but somewhat sad, look back at a lost era with some longing, whereas Happy Days is an outright televised sock hop.  In American Graffiti, some characters really are edgy.  In Happy Days, none of them are, not even the leather clad motorcycle riding Arthur Fonzerelli, "the Fonz".

Happy Days was a beloved series, so I hate to criticize it too much, but it fails in terms of a realistic portrayal of its era.  If American Graffiti succeeds, it's because it portrays such a narrow slice of it. Even American Graffiti, however, brings home the era in its concluding shot, which summarizes the fates of the characters.  In contrast, we'd never know that Happy Days takes place during an era when concerns about a war with the Soviet Union were constant and that many of the male figures would have been drafted and served a hitch in the Army.  Where the series succeeds is probably in its minor material detail elements, such as in clothing and music.

Laverne and Shirley

Laverne and Shirley was a spinoff of Happy Days, which also featured one of the actors from American Graffiti, Penny Marshall.  Running from 1976 to 1983, thereby concluding in the same year that Happy Days did, it portrayed two single women working as blue-collar bottle cappers in Milwaukee.  

The interesting thing about Laverne and Shirley is that probably more accurately portrayed the lives of figures of the 50s than Happy Days did.  The two young women share an apartment, they hope to get married and leave their blue-collar lives, and they're working a blue-collar job.  The series, while set in the 50s, feels like it's set in the 1950s of Marty, not Happy Days, and not American Graffiti.  That's actually the world a lot of young people lived in.

Other Efforts

It's probably worth noting that the success of American Graffiti followed by Happy Days spawned a large number of filmed efforts, most of which were pretty bad.  Indeed, I can't think of any others that are actually worth mentioning, except for one, which was made much later and which clearly wasn't inspired by American Graffiti, that being That Thing You Do.  Among the worst is one that bills itself as a "Rock and Roll Fable", Streets Of Fire, which had some notable cast members who must wish that the film would be forever forgotten.

WAR - Low Rider (Official Video) [Remastered in 4K]

Tuesday June 22, 1971. Senatorial Surrender

On this day in 1971 the United States Senate, in an amendment to a bill to continue conscription, voted 57 to 42 to pull American troops out of Vietnam provided that North Vietnam release American prisoners of war in that country.  In effect, the Senate voted to more or less abandon the Republic of Vietnam.

Operation Ranch Hand mission in 1971.

As much with this late stage of the war, Congress was behind the curve in any event as the US was already withdrawing under the program of "Vietnamization". While there had been heavy fighting in the war in 1971, it had been largely undertaken by the Army of the Republic of Vietnam with US support.  Having said that, the ARVN had not done wall, although part of that was due to grossly over optimistic South Vietnamese offensive deployments that year.

The House of Representatives rejected the amendment six days later.\

Joni Mitchell, whom I feel so so about, released her well know album "Blue" on this day as well.

Fanny - Ain't that peculiar (1972)

Pioneering "girl group" Fanny, from the early 1970s, when Rock & Roll still was somewhat serious and not all, post Kiss, fluff.

Dire Straits-Sultans Of Swing Gayageum ver. by Luna

We've put up now three different versions, with this entry, of Dire Straits' Sultan's of Swing, without putting up the original.  Perhaps we'll do that next.

Why?

Well, mostly because I like the first two versions I put up quite a lot, better than the original Dire Straits version, which I also like.  I'm not a big Dire Straits fan, but this particular song of theirs is compelling, which apparently they also know, as the lead singer from the band noted that he feels compelled to keep singing it as it means so much to people.

I think it actually does.  It touches something, and one of the things it touches is the nature of some people's work.  Musicians, even ones who have "day time jobs" are working at their vocation when they play, and quite a few work in conditions like those referenced in this song, playing music that isn't really popular, to a limited audience, as its their craft.  An analogy could be made to the work of many other people's work, but we'll leave it at that.

The work connection is why all of these have appeared in our "Mid Week At Work" series.

Sultans of Swing // DIRE STRAITS Acoustic Cover

Am I the only one who finds Korean boy bands to be super creepy?

As in really creepy?

Frankly, I find Korean girl bands to be pretty creepy also.  

The other day an issue of People was laying around and I thumbed through it and found an article on a Korean K Pop girl band.  Really creepy. They're obviously the Bubble Gum of their day in a decade people will look back on them laughingly, with their assembled personalities and westernized pink hair, etc.  Indeed, people will probably find them uncomfortable.

But the boy bands?  Really creepy.