Twiddle – "Beethoven and Greene" (2011)

A cool breeze makes you

Think about the situation

Walking forwards, moving backwards

Here’s a photo I took earlier today at my local McDonald’s with my iPhone 16 (i.e., “The Official Smartphone of 2 or 3 Lines”):

Springfield and Sacramento stand out in that photo, but you may have trouble making out the other city names printed on the wall – which include Atlanta, Columbus, Denver, Nashville, Phoenix, and several other large cities. 

But the names of a number of smaller cities also appear on that wall – Augusta, Carson City, Concord, Dover, Frankfort, Jefferson City, Pierre, and Salem among them.

If you’re a denizen of trivia competitions like 2 or 3 lines is, you’ll immediately recognize what all those cities have in common: they are all state capitals.

But there’s one city on that wall that doesn’t belong there.  I’ll zoom in a little closer and you see if you can figure out which one of those cities is not like the others:

Still not sure which city I’m talking about?  Let’s zoom in even closer:

That’s right – I’m talking about Montpelier, which is the state capital of Vermont.

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Did you know that Montpelier is the smallest state capital in the United States?  According to the 2020 census, only 8074 souls live in Montpelier.

Montpelier is also the only state capital in the United States to not have a McDonald’s.  That may be because Montpelier prides itself on favoring locally-owned farm-to-table restaurants over national fast-food chains like Mickey D’s.  Or it may be because a town with only 8074 people doesn’t consume enough Big Macs and Chicken McNuggets to make a McDonald’s profitable.

If you were thinking about moving to Montpelier but are not sure that you can live without McDonald’s, fear not – there may not be one in Montpelier, but there’s one just three miles away in Barre.

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Montpellier, France – the third-largest city on France’s Mediterranean coast – is the city that gave Montpelier, Vermont its name.

(Did you notice that the French city has one more “L” in its name than the Vermont city?  Perhaps you assumed that was a typo.  No way, José – 2 or 3 lines doesn’t have typos!  It’s the folks in Vermont who made the mistake!)

Here are a few other fun facts about Vermont:

1.  In addition to boasting the smallest state capital in the country, Vermont also has the smallest biggest city of any state.  (Burlington, the most populous city in Vermont, has only 44,743 residents.)

2.  Vermont is not quite the least-populated state in the country, but it probably will be in the relatively near future.  (Wyoming currently has fewer residents than Vermont, but Vermont had a hundred-year head start – Wyoming is catching up.)

3.  Vermont is the least diverse American state – 94% of its residents are white, while only 1.3% are black.  (The mixed-race population is about 2%.)  

4.  The country that supplies the most immigrants to Vermont is Canada – not surprising given that Vermont borders Quebec.  But you’ll never guess which countries rank next highest when it comes to the number of immigrants going to Vermont: Nepal, Jamaica, the Philippines, and Bosnia and Herzegovina.  

5.  Vermont has only 26 McDonald’s – the fewest of any state in the country.  (Alaska has 27, while Wyoming, North and South Dakota have 29 apiece.)

6.  Did you know that Vermont claimed to be an independent republic from 1777 until it became a state in 1791?  If you didn’t know that, you’re not alone.  In fact, very few people outside Vermont were aware of during the 14-year existence of the so-called “Vermont Republic,” which never received diplomatic recognition as an independent nation by any country.  

7.  The constitution of the Vermont Republic prohibited adult slavery, but allowed the enslavement of males below the age of 21 and females below the age of 18.  Doesn’t that seem backwards to you?

8.  During the Revolutionary War, Vermonters negotiated with the British in hopes of becoming part of Canada.  They withdrew from those negotiations when it became apparent that the British were going to lose to the Americans.

9.  Finally, Vermont is one of only three states that 2 or 3 lines has never visited.  I’d love to see Alaska someday.  And while I’m not sure that I’ll ever make it to North Dakota, I wouldn’t mind going there.  But I have no plans to ever set foot in Vermont.  (The dearth of McDonald’s restaurants in Vermont is bad enough, but the treachery to the fledgling United States during the Revolutionary War is even worse.)

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According to Wikipedia, the most prominent recording artists hailing from Vermont include The Cancer Conspiracy, Drowningman, Noah Kahan, Mellow Yellow, Phish, Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, RAQ, Rough Francis, and Twiddle.

Until recently, the only name on that list that I had heard of was Phish, the Grateful Dead wannabe jam band that has been a plague on our nation for over four decades.

Last week, Noah Kahan was the answer to this trivia question: “Who was the first recording artist to ever sell out four consecutive nights at Boston’s Fenway Park?”  That was literally the only thing I knew about Noah Kahan.  Today I learned that he’s from Vermont and wears ridiculous clothes:

Photo

I have no intention of featuring something by Phish or Noah Kahan just because this post is about Vermont.  So I’m going to feature a Twiddle track instead.

The bad news about Twiddle is that they are a jam band like Phish.  (There must be something in the water in Vermont.)

The good news is that Twiddle went on indefinite hiatus in November 2023 “to explore their individual creative pursuits and spend more time with their families.”  So it’s possible that we’ve dodged the bullet of ever having to hear Twiddle perform again.

By the way, the page on the Twiddle website explaining that the band is on hiatus closes with this sentence:

Twiddle’s music and mission, however, will continue to live on in the hearts of every frend [sic] who ever embraced the movement that captured so many purple & green hearts across the country.

When I asked Gemini what the reference to purple and green hearts meant, here’s the reply I got:

In the LGBTQ+ community, green is the color for the aromantic flag, and purple is the color for the asexual flag. Using these heart emojis together often signifies being on both the aromantic and asexual spectrums.

I consider myself neither aromantic nor asexual.  But if those words apply to you, Twiddle’s music might be just what you’ve been looking for.

I decided to feature “Beethoven and Greene” – a track that was released in 2011 on Twiddle’s second studio album, Somewhere on the Mountain – after reading the following description of it on the Bearded Gentlemen Music website:

The song begins as a catchy rock tune with some infectious lyrics, which after a few minutes transitions into a Sublime-sounding reggae affair (Sublime is an obvious influence on this band), then back to the original song structure. Moments later the floodgates open and the band rips into a “zydeco-esque,” rock-jazz jam (does this make any sense?) for nearly the remainder of the cut, until they slow it down again returning to the reggae riff to finish up the piece. 

Click here to listen to the studio recording of “Beethoven and Greene.”

Click here to buy the recording of a 2018 live performance of “Beethoven and Greene” on Amazon.

Barrier – "Dawn Breaks Through" (1968)

Rough waves beating

Fish jump the air

Clouds are crawling

I . . . I don’t care

The New York City subway – which opened for business in 1904 – isn’t the world’s oldest.  (That honor goes to the London Underground, which started moving passengers in 1890.)  

And it isn’t the world’s longest – not by a long shot.  (London, Moscow, and no fewer than eleven Chinese metropolises have systems that exceed New York City’s 248 miles in length.) 

While the New York City subway transports more people than any other subway system in the Western Hemisphere, the subways in Seoul, Tokyo, Delhi, Moscow, and five Chinese cities carry even more passengers. 

The New York City system does take home the “Most Stations” prize with 424.  (Second-place Beijing’s system has 20 fewer stations despite being over twice as long as New York City’s.)

More importantly, the New York City subway gave the world subway tiles.  The bathroom showers and kitchen backsplashes of America wouldn’t be the same without the ubiquitous 3-inch by 6-inch tiles placed in a “half offset” pattern).

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The white subway tiles used in the New York City subway system were the brainchild of architects George C. Heins and Christopher Grant LaFarge, who were also responsible for designing the colorful ceramic plaques and tile mosaics that decorate many of the stations.

2 or 3 lines took a half-dozen or so subway rides on my recent New York City trip.  Most of the stations I visited were dimly lit, poorly ventilated, and grimy – but the adornments created by Heins and LaFarge are often striking and beautiful.

The original mosaics are primarily functional – for example, they simply identify station names:

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In addition to the mosaics, some of the stations feature ceramic bas-reliefs somewhat reminiscent of the works of Renaissance artist Andrea della Robbia:

That ceramic beaver plaque is one of several that decorates the Astor Place subway station honors John Jacob Astor, the first American multi-millionaire, who made his initial fortune importing beaver pelts from Canada and exporting them to Europe.

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I first heard The Last’s “She Don’t Know Why I’m Here” in 1980, but I wasn’t able to identify it until many years later.  (If you’ve never heard it, click here right now!)

“She Don’t Know Why I’m Here” was the reason I started writing 2 or 3 lines in 2009 – it was the very first record ever featured on my wildly successful little blog.  I assumed that even if I lived to be as old as Methuselah, I would never hear a record that had as singular an effect on me.

That assumption held true until last Saturday morning, when I just happened to be listening to the Sirius/XM “Underground Garage” channel when DJ Palmyra Delran played today’s featured song.  (Coincidence?  I think not.  Some things are just too much of a coincidence to be a coincidence.)

The Barrier’s “Dawn Breaks Through” is an obscure 1968 B-side by an obscure British psychedelic group that was released on an obscure record label. It’s also the only record I’ve ever heard that compares to “She Don’t Know Why I’m Here.”

Thank God I didn’t die before I stumbled across “Dawn Breaks Through.”  Now that I’ve heard it, I’m ready to meet my maker.  (If I should die before I wake in the morning, I . . . I don’t care!)

Click here to listen to “Dawn Breaks Through” by the Barrier (who originally called themselves the Purple Barrier).

Click here to buy “Dawn Breaks Through” from Amazon. 

Meri Wilson – "Telephone Man" (1977)

Hey, baby, I’m the telephone man

You just show me where you want it

And I’ll put it where I can

(I figure that if I’m going to phone in a 2 or 3 lines post, that post should feature a phone-themed record – right?)

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Meri Wilson Edgmon was born on a U.S. Air Force base in Japan  in 1949, but grew up in Georgia.  She later moved to Dallas, where she sang jingles for radio commercials as well as performing in clubs and restaurants.

“Telephone Man” was inspired by a brief affair that Meri had with the telephone company tech who installed the phone in her Dallas apartment.  

“I swore for years that I’d never admit in public that I dated that telephone man,” Meri later revealed.  “But the truth is, yes, I did and wrote a song about it.  I don’t want to say anymore because I’m now happily married, but not to the telephone man.”

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“Telephone Man” was co-produced by Owen “Boomer” Castleman (a singer-songwriter who played with John Denver and Michael Nesmith before they were famous and later moved to Nashville and became a prominent studio guitarist) and Jim Rutledge (the lead singer for Bloodrock, whose 1971 hit, “D.O.A.,” was one of my favorite records when I was in college).  

Castleman took the record to 17 different record companies, none of which were interested in releasing it.  So he created his own label, pressed a few hundred copies of “Telephone Man,” and drove around Texas handing out copies to radio stations and record stores. 

The record took off, peaking at #18 on the Billboard “Hot 100” chart, and making it into the top ten in the UK.

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Meri followed up “Telephone Man” with a few other double entendre novelty records – “Dick the DJ” and “Peter the Meter Reader” among them – but none of them had much success.  She later moved back to Georgia and taught high school music.

“I wish my claim to fame had been a serious one rather than with a novelty song,” she told an interviewer years after “Telephone Man” was released.  “It was fun to have a hit record but in my heart I was disappointed that I couldn’t have had a real piece of music out there.”

Sadly, Meri Wilson died in 2002 when she lost control of her car while driving in a freak ice storm in Americus, Georgia.  She was only 53.

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Click here to listen to “Telephone Man.”

Click here to listen to “Internet Man,” an updated version of “Telephone Man” that Meri Wilson recorded in 1999.

Barrett Strong – "Money (That's What I Want)" (1959)

Money don’t get everything, it’s true

But what it don’t get, I can’t use

In the previous three 2 or 3 lines posts, I gave you a detailed itinerary for a perfect three-day trip to New York City.  (That itinerary is highly recommended for you rubes who have never been to the Big Apple.) 

I know exactly what you’re thinking right now.  “That does sound like the perfect three-day trip to New York City,” you’re saying to yourself.  “But am I going to have to take out a second mortgage to pay for everything?”   

Here’s a detailed breakdown of how much everything on the trip will cost you and a companion (rounded to the nearest dollar) if you follow my suggested itinerary exactly.  (You do have a companion to travel with you, don’t you?  Surely you’re not some loser who goes to New York City all by yourself?)     

Day One:

  $14    Breakfast en route to BWI   

$135    Amtrak from BWI to NYP 

    $6    Subway to hotel      

  $87    Lunch at P. J. Clarke’s                  

    $6     Subway to 230 Fifth Ave              

  $28    Drinks at 230 Fifth Ave          

     $6    Subway to theatre                  

$208    Tickets to Chicago      

   $19    Post-Chicago slices           

     $6    Subway to hotel                    

$206    Blue Angel Hotel                                                                     

Day Two:

  $26     Breakfast at Modern Bread & Bagel

    $6    Subway to Circle Line pier   

  $78    Circle Line cruise tickets 

   $41    Lunch at Pret A Manger  

   $15    Beer and iced tea at pier 55  

   $25   Drinks at Corner Bistro  

     $6    Subway to hotel       

   $49   Dinner at Kung Fu Little Steamed Buns 

$206    Blue Angel Hotel 

Day Three:

   $26    Breakfast at Avo 

     $6    Subway to Metropolitan Museum of Art

   $44    Tickets for the Met

   $10     Snack at the Met

     $6     Subway to hotel$6  

     $6     Subway to Penn Station  

   $40    Food and drink at Penn Station

 $135     Amtrak from NYP to BWI

   $36     Parking at BWI  

That adds up to $1482 – or just under $500 per day.

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The 96-year-old Berry Gordy is best known as the founder of Motown Records, but he was a pretty good songwriter back in the day. 

Among the songs that Gordy wrote or co-wrote are “Lonely Teardrops” (Jackie Wilson), “Shop Around” (the Miracles), “Do You Love Me?” (the Contours), and today’s featured song, which was originally recorded by Barrett Strong in 1959 and later covered by the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Supremes, and many others.

Strong claimed that he co-wrote “Money (That’s What I Want)” but his name is absent from the song’s official copyright registration – no soup for you, Barrett!

Strong later co-wrote several Motown classics, including “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” (Marvin Gaye), “Just My Imagination’ (the Temptations), and “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone” (which was originally recorded by the Undisputed Truth, but was a much bigger hit for the Temptations).

Click here to listen to “Money (That’s What I Want).”

Click here to buy “Money (That’s What I Want)” from Amazon.