"General" Larry Platt – "Pants on the Ground" (2010)

Lookin’ like a fool

With your pants on the ground

We get a lot of two-part questions at trivia.  

The first part of the question is usually easy enough that most of the teams competing will know the correct answer.  

The second part of the question is usually more challenging – it’s designed to help separate the contenders from the pretenders.  (At one time, I might have said those questions were designed to help separate the men from the boys, and gone on to repeat the tired old joke about how they separate the men from the boys in Greece.  But I’m far too enlightened now to do that today.)

Here’s the first part of a two-part question we had a couple of weeks ago:

The contestants on this reality competition TV show, which first aired 24 years ago, included William Hung, Mary Roach, and General Larry Platt.

Most of the teams playing that night knew that the answer to that question was American Idol.  But the second part of that question was much more difficult:

What was the title of the song performed by General Larry Platt on that show? 

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I occasionally watched American Idol back in the day.  I vaguely remember William Hung, who had his fifteen minutes after butchering Ricky Martin’s “She Bangs” on a 2004 episode of the show.  (Hung quickly gained a cult following.  He appeared on all the late-night talk shows, was parodied on Saturday Night Live, and released an album that made it to #34 on the Billboard albums chart.)

But the other two names didn’t ring a bell, and I had no idea what song “General” Larry Platt might have performed.  And neither did my teammates.

(We didn’t know it at the time, but Larry Platt wasn’t an actual general – “General” was his nickname.  But at our trivia contests, the questions are read aloud – not printed – and you can’t hear quotation marks.)

We assumed that whatever he sang was a cover of someone else’s hit.  We kicked around a few guesses – “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Sharp-Dressed Man,” and “Wanted Dead or Alive” among them – but they were all shots in the dark.

“Didn’t some guy’s pants fall down on American Idol?” I asked my teammates.  “Could this be that guy?”

 “General” Larry Platt performs on American Idol

After pondering that for a moment, our youngest team member said, “There was a song on American Idol called ‘Pants on the Ground.’ Is that what you’re thinking of?”

“Maybe,” I said.  “I just remember something about pants falling down.”

We wrote down “Pants on the Ground” as our answer.  And much to our surprise – and my delight – that turned out to be the correct answer!

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Larry Platt, who was born in 1947, was an African-American civil rights activist who was given the nickname “General” in recognition of his efforts on behalf of the civil rights movement.

(When we heard the American Idol trivia question, we assumed that Larry Platt was an active or retired military officer – we didn’t know that “General” was his nickname.  The questions are read aloud at our trivia contests, not printed – and you can’t hear quotation marks.)

Platt obviously didn’t think much of the younger generation.  “Pants on the Ground” was a jeremiad directed at young black men who walked around “lookin’ like a fool” with sagging pants and sideways baseball caps. 

Larry Platt auditioned for American Idol in 2010.  At that time, the show’s eligibility requirements provided that contestants had to be between the ages of 16 and 28.  The producers obviously recognized a good thing when they saw it and made an exception for the 62-year-old Platt.

The Youtube video of his performance of “Pants on the Ground” on American Idol has been viewed well over eleven million times.  Click here to watch that video.

Click here to listen to the studio recording of “Pants on the Ground” that was released subsequent to Platt’s American Idol appearance.  It reached #46 on the Billboard “Hot 100” singles chart.

Click here to buy that recording from Amazon.

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.