St. Vincent – "Slow Disco (Piano Version)" (2017)

I’m so glad I came

But I can’t wait to leave

The soundtrack for the fourth season of the FX television series The Bear features two variants of St. Vincent’s “Slow Disco,” which was released in 2017 on her Masseduction album.

The 2000-odd records that I’ve featured on my wildly successful little blog include representatives of just about every musical genre you can think of – pop, rock, jazz, country, blues, punk, metal, hip-hop, Broadway, etc.  But the typical 2 or 3 lines post features a record that I first heard on the radio in the sixties or seventies.  

St. Vincent’s Masseduction album

I’m still listening to that music half a century later.  Prospecting for worthwhile new music is hard work, and I’ve always been pretty lazy.  It’s soooo much easier to just listen to the old familiar stuff.

If I do feature a newer record on 2 or 3 lines, there’s a good chance that I  became acquainted with it because it was on the soundtrack of a TV series I watched – for example, The Bear.

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I’ve heard of the artist known as St. Vincent – her real name is Annie Clark – but I don’t think I had ever heard her music before watching the third episode of the fourth season of The Bear a few days ago.

St. Vincent on stage

St. Vincent is kind of a big deal.  Three of her albums have won the Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album – tying Beck and the White Stripes for the most wins in that category – and the critics have gone gaga over her.  (Masseduction was described as “an album that defies explanation and critique, rendering the critic a dead weight in the dust of its ever-accelerating sucker-punch of ideas,” “nothing less than an absolutely towering achievement,” and “a genuine masterpiece: complex, funny, sexy, bleak, uplifting, inspiring and enthralling from start to finish.”)

Of course, St. Vincent is not even close to being the biggest recording artist whose music I know next to nothing about.  That title probably belongs to either Taylor Swift (who is a good friend of St. Vincent’s) or Phish.

A number of years ago, I featured one Taylor Swift record on 2 or 3 lines – but my knowledge of her music is very limited.  (Honestly, my five-year-old granddaughter would be a better source for info about Tay Tay’s records than I would be.)

But I know infinitely more about Swift’s music than I know about Phish’s oeuvre.  I think it would be impossible to know any less about Phish than I do because I’ve never heard a single note of Phish’s music – hard to believe, but true.

The New Yorker recently ran a long piece about Phish that called into question all my preconceived notions about that group.  So I’m going to add “Phish Radio” – Sirius/XM channel 29 – to my car’s presets and dive in.  I’ll let you know how that goes in a future 2 or 3 lines.

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I occasionally get obsessed with a record that doesn’t fit into any of my usual categories.

I’m talking about records like “Guided By Angels” by Amyl and the Sniffers, “Chaise Longue” by Wet Leg, or “Charleston Girl” by Tyler Childers.

But I’m mostly talking about “Fade Into You” by Mazzy Star, a slowcore/dream pop masterpiece that has a curare-like effect on me whenever I allow myself to listen to it.

“Slow Disco (Piano Version)” may become my new “Fade Into You.”  Time will tell, but it’s off to a good start. 

Click here to listen to “Slow Disco (Piano Version),” which is featured in the soundtrack of episode three of season four of The Bear.

Click here to listen to just the piano part of “Slow Disco (Piano Version).”  

Click here to buy “Slow Disco (Piano Version)” from Amazon.

Tom Petty – "Down South" (2006)

Impress all the women

Pretend I’m Samuel Clemens

Wear seersucker and white linens

Here are a few excerpts from a new biography of a famous and beloved American writer.  Let’s see if you can guess who the subject of that biography is:

Always a hypercritical personality, prone to disappointment, [he] often felt exasperated in everyday life.

He was a waspish man of decided opinions delivering hard and uncomfortable truths. . . . Some mysterious anger, some pervasive melancholy, fired his humor . . . and his chronic dissatisfaction with society produced a steady stream of barbed denunciations.

[He was] a hugely popular but fiercely pessimistic man, the scourge of fools and frauds.  On the surface, his humor can seem merely playful . . . but the sources of that humor are deadly serious, rooted in a profound critique of society and human nature. 

Probably no other American author has led such an eventful life. . . . [H]e courted controversy and relished the limelight. . . . [A] shameless self-promoter, he sought fame and fortune without hesitation.

[He] could be implacable in his hatreds and grudges.  A man who thrived on outrage, he had a tendency to lash out at people, often deservedly, but sometimes gratuitously and excessively.

A master of the vendetta, he would store up potent insults and unload them in full upon those who had disappointed him.  He could never quite let things go or drop a quarrel.  

And finally:

To portray [him] in his entirety, one must capture both the light and shadow of a beloved humorist who could switch temper in a flash, changing from exhilarating joy to deep resentment.  He is a fascinating, maddening puzzle to anyone trying to figure him out; charming, funny, and irresistible one moment, paranoid and deeply vindictive the next.

I’m guessing that most of you are saying to yourselves, “That biography must be about 2 or 3 lines – because those quotes fit him to a T!”

But before you lock in your final answer to my question, here’s one additional quote to consider.  You may change your mind after you read it:

[His] late-life fascination with teenage girls presents yet another disturbing topic for contemporary readers. . . . [He] pursued teenage girls with a strange passion that, while it always remained chaste, is likely to cause extreme discomfort nowadays.  Like many geniuses, [he] had a large assortment of weird sides to his nature, and this [biography] will try to make sense of his sometimes bizarre behavior toward girls and women.  

What’s that you say?  “Now I’m SURE that book is about 2 or 3 lines!”

Hmmmm . . . I see why you’re confused.  But the quotes above were taken from Ron Chernow’s new biography of Mark Twain – who was born Samuel Clemens:

Click here to listen to “Down South,” which was released in 2006 on Tom Petty’s Highway Companion album.

Click here to buy “Down South” from Amazon.

Bob Seger – "Fortunate Son" (1986)

It ain’t me, it ain’t me

I ain’t no millionaire’s son

John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival is the guest host on the Sirius/XM “Classic Vinyl” channel this week.

Today, Fogerty told his audience a story about hearing a live version of “Fortunate Son” while doing his weekly grocery shopping many years ago.  

At the time, he and his record company were in the midst of a long-running feud, and he assumed that the bast*rds had released that recording without bothering to tell him.

But later Fogerty found out that the live “Fortunate Son” he had heard at the grocery store was actually a 1986 recording of the song by Bob Seger and his Silver Bullet Band.

John Fogerty and Bob Seger in 2013

Fogerty and Seger – who both turned 80 in May – are old friends, and Fogerty liked Seger’s cover of CCR’s greatest song.  However, when Fogerty combined with a number of other artists to record covers of CCR’s biggest hits, he chose to record “Fortunate Son” with the Foo Fighters rather than Seger.  (Fogerty and Seger did join forces to record a new version of “Who’ll Stop the Rain.) 

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I mentioned above that John Fogerty and Fantasy Records – CCR’s record company – feuded for years.

In fact, Fantasy sued Fogerty in 1987, alleging that “The Old Man Down the Road” – a 1984 hit for Fogerty – infringed Fantasy’s copyright on “Run Through the Jungle.”  (Fogerty had written “Run Through the Jungle” – so the lawsuit essentially accused him of plagiarizing himself – but Fantasy owned the copyright on the song.)

The judge in that case ruled in favor of Fogerty, who then sued Fantasy to recover his attorney’s fees.  That case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which ordered Fantasy to reimburse Fogerty for the money it cost him to defend Fantasy’s copyright infringement lawsuit.  Fogerty v. Fantasy, Inc., 510 U.S. 517 (1993).

By the way, Fogerty recently purchased the publishing rights to his CCR songs from the company that acquired Fantasy Records after Fantasy’s founder, Saul Zaentz, died in 2014.  

Later this year, he will release a new album consisting of re-recordings of 20 well-known CCR songs – including “Fortunate Son.”

Click here to read my 2018 post featuring Creedence Clearwater Revival’s original recording of “Fortunate Son,” a member of the original group of inductees into the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” HIT SINGLES HALL OF FAME.

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Click here to hear Seger’s cover of “Fortunate Son,” which was released on the Like a Rock album in 1986.

Click here to order that recording from Amazon. 

Steve Miller Band – "Take the Money and Run" (1976)

Go on

Take the money and run

Something rather remarkable happened to me last Saturday: the universe presented me with a gift at the precise moment that I needed that gift.

Or maybe not.  Maybe the universe was testing my character instead of giving me a gift.

I’ll tell you what happened, and you tell me what you think.  

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Every Saturday morning, I walk to a nearby farmers market.

One of the vendors that’s been selling at that market for years is Coulter Farms, a family-owned producer of milk, cheese, and other dairy products.

Not true!  (Keep reading!)

Coulter Farms makes wonderful chocolate milk.  I have a couple of grandchildren who are addicted to it, so I usually buy a quart for each of them.

These days, I pay for just about everything with plastic.  But Coulter Farms charges a 50-cent fee to customers who use credit cards.  So I pay cash money for my weekly chocolate milk purchases.

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Unfortunately, I found myself with only $2 in cash when it was time to head to the farmers market last Saturday.  So it looked like I was going to have to cough up the extra 50 cents and use a credit card.

By the way, trying to save 50 cents by using cash instead of a credit card does not mean that I am cheap!  I am NOT cheap – but I hate to waste money for no reason.  

(If you still think I’m cheap, let me point out that a quart of Coulter Farms chocolate milk costs $6 – significantly more than the grocery-store stuff.  But I think it’s worth every penny, and I happily pay the premium price.)

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I grabbed a baseball cap from my car before walking to the market, which meant using the elevator that services the parking garage at the 2 or 3 lines world headquarters building. 

Imagine my surprise when I saw two $20 bills lying on the floor in front of that elevator’s doors!

At first, I was hesitant to pick them up.  It seemed too good to be true – the modern-day equivalent of the manna that God provided the Israelites while they wandered in the desert after escaping from their bondage in Egypt.

I looked around carefully before bending down to pick up the cash, but there was no one in sight.

I stuck the two twenties into my pocket and hit the elevator’s “down” button.  But then I took one of the bills and dropped it on the floor where I had found it.

After all, $20 was more than enough to cover my chocolate milk purchases that day.  No sense in being greedy and inviting bad karma – right?

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What would you have done?  

Would you have picked up the twenties and gone on your merry way without a second thought?

(Maybe you agree.)

Would you have left the cash on the ground in hopes that the person who lost it realized what happened and was able to recover it before some other rando snatched it up?

Or would you have pocketed one of the bills and left the other one where it was – which is what I did?

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Steve Miller’s early records were much better than his later ones, but the later ones were much more popular.  Go figure.

Click here to listen to “Take the Money and Run,” which was released on the Steve Miller Band’s 1976 album, Fly Like an Eagle. 

Click here to buy “Take the Money and Run” from Amazon.