Tuesday, December 29, 2020

Purple Hearts – "Can't Help Thinking About Me" (1980)


I can’t help thinking ‘bout me!

I can’t help thinking ‘bout me!

I CAN’T HELP THINKING ‘BOUT ME!

David Bowie wrote today’s featured song and was the first to record it.  But I had never heard the David Bowie with The Lower Third version of “Can’t Help Thinking About Me” until a few weeks ago.

I’ve been familiar with the Purple Hearts’ cover of the song since 1980, the year that it was released.  I have to think that I heard it on the late, great “Mystic Eyes” radio program.  But when I went through the songs on the two dozen-plus cassette tapes of “Mystic Eyes” programs that I recorded off the air in 1980, “Can’t Help Thinking About Me” was nowhere to be found.


It’s a mystery.


*     *     *     *     *


Bowie’s recording of the song has grown on me since I first heard it on what may be my second favorite radio program of all time – “Chris Carter’s British Invasion,” which airs weekends on the Sirius/XM “Underground Garage” channel.  


Ringo Starr with Chris Carter

Carter is also the longtime host of “Breakfast with the Beatles,” which also airs on Sirius/XM. 


I just learned that Chris Carter the DJ is the same Chris Carter who was a founding member of Dramarama, whose 1991 Vinyl album was one of the first CDs I ever owned.  (“I Got Spies” was a silly song!)


Chris Carter the DJ shouldn’t be confused with Cris Carter the NFL Hall of Famer, who caught 1101 passes and scored 130 touchdowns in his 16-year NFL career.  


Cris Carter

Nor should he be confused with Chris Carson, who’s the Seattle Seahawks running back I decided to start over Jeff Wilson of the 49ers in my fantasy league championship game last weekend.  (BIG MISTAKE!)  


*     *     *     *     *


But I still prefer the Purple Hearts’ cover of the song – which may be the case simply because I’m more familiar with it.


I can point to one small thing the Purple Hearts did that represents a clear improvement over the original version.


The Purple Hearts don’t sing “I can’t help thinking about me.”  Instead, they sing “I can’t help thinking ’bout me.”


The Purple Hearts

Dropping the “a” from “about” makes the chorus work much better.  It’s a small thing, but a small thing – or a few small things – is often all it takes to turn something that’s pretty good into something great.


Click here to listen to the Purple Hearts’ cover of “Can’t Help Thinking About Me.”




Friday, December 25, 2020

David Bowie with The Lower Third – "Can't Help Thinking About Me" (1965)


I can’t help thinking about me!

I can’t help thinking about me!

I CAN’T HELP THINKING ABOUT ME!

(I know just how the singer feels.)


*     *     *     *     *


I know how much my loyal followers love it when the great and powerful wizard of 2 or 3 lines pulls back the curtain and reveals some of my secrets.  And that’s exactly what I’m going to do in today’s very special Christmas post.


Another great and powerful wizard

(Speaking of wizards, did you know that the Wizard of Oz’s real name was Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkle Emmannuel Ambroise Diggs?  I didn’t either.)


*     *     *     *     *


I can’t tell you how often I’ve been out and about, driving my car and minding my own business, when a 2 or 3 lines-worthy song comes on my Sirius/XM radio.  But by the time I get home, I’ve forgotten what that song was. 


If you’re the creator of a wildly popular music blog like me, I bet the same thing has happened to you. 


Recently, I came up with a fix for this problem.  I simply take a photo of my car’s multimedia screen, which shows the title of the record that’s playing and the name of the artist who recorded it.


For example:



(You worrywarts out there would probably say that taking my eye off the road and steering with my knees while I use both hands to take a photo is a suboptimal driving technique.  But I haven’t crashed yet!)


About once a week, I scroll through my photo folder and write down all the songs whose titles I’ve captured.  That way, I don’t forget them.


*     *     *     *     *


The only problem with my system is that it works too well.


It takes very little effort to snap a photo of every mildly noteworthy record I hear, so that’s exactly what I’ve been doing.


As a result, I have a list containing the names of 159 records . . . which is enough for roughly a year and a half of 2 or 3 lines posts. 


Of course, that’s assuming that I don’t add any new songs to the list over the next year and a half.  And we all know that ain’t happening.


*     *     *     *     *


Last Saturday morning, I drove to the local Dunkin’ Donuts for a large coffee and a maple-frosted donut – not as good as the legendary maple bars from Dude’s Daylight Donuts in Joplin, Missouri, but not bad – and then continued to my local farmers market.  After making my usual purchases, I drove back home. 


I was in the car for about an hour, but used my phone to take note of no fewer than a baker’s dozen of the records I heard while driving that morning.


Here’s that baker’s dozen:


“Baby I Love You” – Andy Kim


“That’s Why God Made the Radio” – Beach Boys


“Jerk It Out” – Caesars


“He’s a Whore” – Cheap Trick


“Can’t Help Thinking About Me” – David Bowie and the Lower Third


“Groovin’ Is Easy” – Electric Flag


“Oliver’s Army” – Elvis Costello


“Hot You’re Cool” – General Public


“Out of My League” – Harlequin Ghost



“Last Train to Trancentral” – The KLF


“Que Vida” – Arthur Lee and Love


“Everlasting Love” – Robert Knight


“Girlfriend in a Coma” – Smiths


There’s obviously no rhyme or reason to that collection of records – it’s about as motley a group of songs as I can imagine.


*     *     *     *     *


It’s possible that I’ll end up featuring two or three of those songs in future 2 or 3 lines posts, but you best believe that most of them will never see the light of day.


But I doubt that I’ll be able to stop myself from capturing ten times as many record titles as I’ll ever need.  After all, it doesn’t cost a thing to take a photo with a phone.  


And if I put the brakes on my picture-taking profligacy, the title of a record that would have made a dandy 2 or 3 lines post might slip my mind.


You don’t want to take a chance of that happening, do you?  (Horribile dictu!)


*     *     *     *     *


“Can’t Help Thinking About Me” is a notable record for more than one reason.


For one thing, it was the first David Bowie record to be released in the U. S. of A.


For another, it was the first record he released after abandoning his real name – David or Davy Jones – in order to avoid being confused with the Monkees’ Davy Jones.


The Lower Third was the fourth of the six groups that Bowie was a member of before achieving fame and fortune as a solo artist.


David Bowie with the Lower Third

I had never heard The Lower Third’s recording of “Can’t Help Thinking About Me” – which Bowie wrote – until that day I was driving home from the farmers market.


But I was very familiar with a 1980 cover of the song by the Purple Hearts, an English mod revival band.


I heard the Purple Hearts’ version of the song on Steven Lorber’s legendary “Mystic Eyes” radio program, which I’ve written about incessantly over the years.


Bowie’s original is good, but I like the Purple Hearts’ cover even better.  Is that because it is better, or because I’m more familiar with it?


Click here to listen to David Bowie and the Lower Third’s 1965 recording of “Can’t Help Thinking About Me.”


Click on the link below to buy the record from Amazon:


Tuesday, December 22, 2020

Blink-182 – "All the Small Things" (2000)


Keep your head still

I’ll be your thrill

The night will go on

My little windmill


(“My little windmill”?  Don’t worry – I’ll explain that line later.)


*     *     *     *     *


Have you heard about Blinkist?


Blinkist is a $99-a-year subscription service that provides summaries of best-selling nonfiction books to people who don’t have a lot of time on their hands.


The idea behind Blinkist is that a subscriber can get the benefits of reading an entire book in just 15 minutes – which is how long it takes to read or listen to a typical book summary, or “blink.”



Blinkist’s book list is dominated by self-improvement tomes – it has blinks on how to be more successful in your career, or how to be more successful in your relationship.


So if you’re a person who not only wants to have a better life, but wants to have a better life in just 15 minutes, Blinkist may be for you.


*     *     *     *     *


I know about Blinkist because they run the following commercial constantly on Sirius/XM radio:


Female (with awe in her voice): It’s such a beautiful night.  Look at the stars!


Male: They’re amazing.  Did you know twenty percent of stars have planets orbiting them capable of sustaining life?


Female: How did you know that!?  You must spend a ton of time reading.


Male: Not at all!  I use Blinkist.


Female: Blinkist?


Male: It’s an app that takes key insights from over 4000 non-fiction bestsellers and gathers them into 15-minute “blinks” for you to read or listen to!  With Blinkist, you can learn the main points of an entire book in just 15 minutes.


FVO: What kind of books?  


MVO: Nonfiction books in over 27 categories, from personal development to history, management, investing, philosophy, and more!  Blinkist makes it easy to learn about pretty much anything.


Female (teasing): Like the stars?  (She giggles.)


Male: Even the stars. (He laughs.)


You really need to hear the Blinkist commercial – you don’t get the full effect from the printed page.


But trust me – it’s obvious that the young lady in that commercial is simply ga-ga over the guy’s astronomical expertise.  Forget whether he drives a fancy car, or is a snappy dresser, or looks like a young Brad Pitt.  The fact that he knows how many solar systems have planets that are capable of sustaining life gets her all hot and bothered.



You’d better believe that I’m kicking myself today that I never shared my deep knowledge of astronomy with my dates.  I had no idea what a turn-on it would have been!     


*     *     *     *     *


I’ve decided to launch a service that will compete with Blinkist.


It’s better than Blinkist in two important ways:


First, IT’S FREE!


Second, unlike Blinkist, you don’t have to decide which book summaries to read or listen to – I do the work for you!


Here’s how it works.  You call me up, and I talk for 15 minutes or so about something that interests me.  I might tell you about a book I just read, or a movie or TV I just watched – or tell a long, convoluted story about a girl I knew in high school that I’m still obsessed with.  


Or I might just go on a rant about politicians, or robocalls, or something else that annoys me.



Trust me – if my topic is something that interests me, it is something that will interest you!


(Did I mention that my service is FREE?)


*     *     *     *     *


Blink-182 co-founder Tom DeLonge wrote “All the Small Things” for his longtime girlfriend, Jenna Jenkins, who he referred to as “my little windmill”:


I had to write her a song, because I wrote songs about other girls, but I haven’t written one for her.  So I was kinda getting some heat for that.  Not really though, because I love my girlfriend, so I was like, “I need to write a rad song” because I was scared – if the song came out bad, my girlfriend would be pissed.  So I kinda warned her that it would come out bad.  Then it came out good, so I was happy.


“All the Small Things” was released in 2000, and it seems to have worked – Tom and Jenna got married in 2001.


“My little windmill”

But in 2019, they got divorced.  (I guess he should have written her another song.)


Click here to see the official music video for “All the Small Things.”  (After watching it, I have to believe that Blink-182’s members are a bunch of tools.)


Click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon:


Friday, December 18, 2020

Laura Nyro – "Save the Country" (1969)


Gonna wash you up, and wash you down

Gonna lay the devil down

GONNA LAY! THAT! DEVIL! DOWN!

Every so often, I come across a record that is so extraordinary that I feel compelled to tell the world about it.

Unfortunately, I am almost never up to the task of putting into words what it is that makes such a record so special.


I give it my best – honest I do.  I write, and I rewrite, and flail around until I decide that my efforts are utterly futile, and I need to just delete everything and start all over – usually more than once.  But there comes a point where I realize that it’s not going to happen.


That’s when I just give up, and hope that the music will speak for itself.


*     *     *     *     *


If you were looking at the November 29, 1969 issue of Billboard magazine right now, you’d see that three of the records listed in the top ten that week were covers of Laura Nyro songs.


Three Dog Night’s recording of “Eli’s Coming” held down the #10 spot.  The 5th Dimension’s version of “Wedding Bell Blues” – which had reached #1 the week before – sat as #3.  And the Blood, Sweat & Tears cover of “And When I Die” was the #2 single in the U.S.


(Nyro wrote “And When I Die” when she was 17 years old.  What, pray tell, had you accomplished when you were 17 years old?)


Laura Nyro

Those aren’t the only three Laura Nyro songs that became hit singles, of course.  The 5th Dimension’s 1968 cover of “Stoned Soul Picnic” went platinum, and their cover of “Sweet Blindness” peaked just outside the top ten in 1970.  Barbra Streisand’s recording of “Stoney End” was a #6 hit in 1971.


Laura Nyro recorded all of those songs, but none of her originals ever charted.  This despite the fact that her recordings of those songs are infinitely better than any of the covers.


*     *     *     *     *


While Nyro was a remarkably gifted performer, she was first and foremost a remarkably gifted songwriter.  


If you don’t want to take my word for it, I understand.  But how can you not take the word of all the hall-of-fame-quality songwriters who have acknowledged her influence on their songwriting – songwriters like Tori Amos, Jackson Browne, Elvis Costello, Elton John, Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Todd Rundgren?  


“I idolized her,” Elton John once said. “The soul, the passion, just the out and out audacity of the way her rhythmic and melody changes came was like nothing I've heard before.”


It’s telling that Nyro’s fans include musicians whose songs bears no resemblance at all to hers – including Alice Cooper, Paul Stanley of KISS, and X’s Exene Cervenka.


*     *     *     *     *


One writer has described Nyro’s songwriting style as “a hybrid of Brill Building-style New York pop, jazz, rhythm and blues, show tunes, rock, and soul.”


He left out gospel, which is the genre that’s at the heart of today’s featured Nyro song, “Save the Country.”



How a white girl from the Bronx whose ancestors were Eastern European Jews was able to capture the essence of gospel – the traditional music of once-enslaved African-American Christians – and combine it with other musical influences to create a song like “Save the Country” is beyond me.  


I could go the rational route and explain Nyro as the product of a particular combination of genetics and environment.  Her innate musical gifts – perhaps inherited from her father (a jazz trumpeter and piano tuner), her mother (who shared her Judy Garland, Billie Holiday, Leontyne Price, and Nina Simone records with the young Laura), or a combination of them both – likely bloomed in such spectacular fashion because she grew up in New York City in the fifties and sixties, exposed to every kind of great music you can imagine.  


But I think there was more going on than that with Laura Nyro.  I think she was a musical glossolalist.


Glossolalia – usually referred to as “speaking in tongues” – is believed by some to be the result of a divine entity taking possession of a human being and speaking through him or her.  I believe that Laura Nyro’s uncanny musical genius – which is demonstrated very powerfully by today’s featured recording – is most likely the result of some form of divine possession.  


I’m only half kidding when I say that.


*     *     *     *     *


Nyro wrote “Save the Country” just after the assassination of Robert Kennedy.  


The song’s third verse refers specifically to the Kennedys:


Come on people, sons and mothers

Keep the dream of the two young brothers

Gotta take that dream and ride that dove

We can build the dream with love!


I have to quote the first and second verses as well:


Come on people, come on children

Come on down to the glory river

Gonna wash you up, and wash you down

Gonna lay the devil down

Gonna lay that devil down!


Come on people, come on children

There's a king at the glory river

And the precious king, he loved the people to sing

Babes in the blinking sun

Sang “We Shall Overcome”!



If that’s not enough to make you a believer, I’m betting the chorus will do the trick:


I got fury in my soul

Fury’s gonna take me to the glory goal

In my mind I can’t study war no more

Save the people!

Save the children!


My family hails from the Ozarks, and I heard a lot of good ol’ country preachers when I was growing up.  But I never heard a better altar call than “Save the Country.”


*     *     *     *     *


“Save the Country” was released as a single in the summer of 1968, a couple of months before Nyro turned 21.


That 1968 single is a very good but fairly conventional two-and-a-half-minute-long, suitable-for-AM-radio record.  The only thing that’s really unusual about it is the ways it ends – the studio musicians and backup singers drop out, leaving Nyro to sing “Save the country” four times, a cappella, and without the expected resolution to the tonic.  It’s quite dramatic, although Nyro is singing so softly that you can barely hear her. 


The next year, Nyro recorded a completely different arrangement for her New York Tendaberry album.  The first half of that 4:36 track features only Nyro’s voice and piano.  The volume and tempo vary, and she occasionally drops in extra beats – it doesn’t exactly sound improvised, but it’s a lot more spontaneous and unconstrained than the typical studio recording of that era.


The second half of the album version of “Save the Country” is an extended coda, with lots of studio bells and whistles – including a bunch of female backup singers and a big horn section that plays louder and faster and faster and louder.  Nyro herself essentially disappears from the song well before the coda ends. 


Have you ever been at a live performance where the singer performs a show-stopping hit as his or her encore, then takes a bow, blows kisses to the audience, and exits stage left while the band keeps blasting along?  That’s the effect of the last minute or two of the album version of “Save the Country.”


*     *     *     *     *


I’ve chosen to feature a different version of the song – a live performance of “Save the Country” on a TV show in 1969.


That version consists of Laura singing her song and accompanying herself on the piano, sans backing singers, sans backing musicians, sans studio tricks.  It’s essentially the first two and a half minutes of the album version of the song without all the Sturm und Drang of the coda.


I’ve listened to a lot of music in my life.  Is there a more compelling two and a half minutes of music by a solo artist performing live out there somewhere?  Maybe, but I haven’t heard it.



This performance contains one of my favorite musical moments of all time.  Listen to the piano chords that accompany “Gonna lay that devil down” at the end of the first verse.  That chord progression is utterly unexpected, and she absolutely hammers those chords as well as slowing down her tempo dramatically to make sure you don’t miss it.  It is attention-getting as all get out.


Nyro’s performance is very odd by the usual standards of sixties network television.  It is as far from the typical lip-synching pop-star TV appearance as it can be.  And it doesn’t look like she’s enjoying herself as she performs – the camera rarely catches her eye, and when it does she has the desperate look of a caged animal. 


Laura speeds up and slows down, goes from a loud and raucous chest voice to a very light head voice (or falsetto?) and back, and seems to come very close to losing control of the song.  


Some of you would probably argue that she does lose control – especially when she shrieks the final “NOW!”  (If you want to say that note has the same effect on you as fingernails on a chalkboard, I won’t dispute it.) 


Love it or hate it, you’ve got to admit that it’s a completely fearless performance. 


*     *     *     *     *


I learned about this particular version of “Save the Country” by watching a video by a British guitarist named Fil Henley, who heads up a band called Wings of Pegasus.  Frankly, I wasn’t expecting a lot from this guy, but I was pleasantly surprised – it’s good.  (His breakdown of that dramatic chord progression I mentioned above saved me from having to do it myself.)


Click here to watch Fil’s video.


*     *     *     *     *


I hate to end this post on such a sad note, but that’s exactly what I’m about to do.  (I thought about leaving out what comes next, but I simply couldn’t get it out of my head.)


Laura Nyro’s mother died of ovarian cancer when she was only 49 years old.


Laura Nyro also died of ovarian cancer when she was only 49 years old.


I’ve tried to imagine how Laura would have felt when she received her diagnosis, knowing what she knew about her mother.  


Would it have struck her as the cruelest joke that an unfeeling universe could play on someone, and left her in despair?  


Or would she have been more philosophical, viewing the coincidence (which was not really a coincidence, of course) as unsurprising – something to be expected?


And did her terrible fate weigh less heavily on her heart and her soul because it was shared with the woman who gave birth to her?


*     *     *     *     *


Click here to view the divinely possessed (and divinely beautiful) Laura Nyro’s live performance of “Save the Country.”


Tuesday, December 15, 2020

Rolling Stones – "It's All Over Now" (1964)


Tables turning now

Her turn to cry


The first thing the Rolling Stones did on their first visit to America in 1964 was to drop in on legendary DJ Murray the K’s “Swinging Soiree” radio show.


Murray the K played a new record titled “It’s All Over Now” for the Stones, and they loved it.  “It’s All Over Now” had been recorded by the Valentinos, whose members included Bobby Womack (who had co-written the song with his sister-in-law Shirley) and his four brothers. 


Murray the K with the Stones

Only nine days later, the Stones recorded “It’s All Over Now” at Chess Records in Chicago.  (Oddly, the Stones didn’t play in Chicago on this tour.  They played in Minneapolis-St. Paul and Detroit, but instead of stopping in Chicago between those two performances, they stopped in . . . Omaha?)


Their record company wasted no time releasing “It’s All Over Now” in the UK as a single.  The record entered the British pop charts on July 2 and became their first #1 hit only two weeks later.


That’s just short of seven weeks from the Stones hearing the Valentinos’ recording of “It’s All Over Now” for the first time to their cover of the song hitting #1.  (Record companies didn’t f*ck around in those days.)


Bobby Womack

Bobby Womack later said in an interview that he had told Sam Cooke – the famous soul singer who had released the Valentinos’ version of “It’s All Over Now” on his record label – that he didn’t want the Rolling Stones to record it.  Cooke persuaded him to let the Stones cover the song, which proved to be a wise move.  After receiving his first royalty check for “It’s All Over Now,” Womack told Cooke that Mick Jagger could have any of his songs that he wanted.


*     *     *     *     *


I’ve been a Rolling Stones fan since I was 12 years old, but I never knew how they came to record “It’s All Over Now” until I heard the story that’s recounted above a couple of weeks ago on Steven Van Zandt’s “Little Steven’s Underground Garage” radio show.


I’ve been listening to “Little Steven’s Underground Garage” off and on for almost 20 years.  The show started out as a two-hour syndicated radio show, which usually aired on Sunday evenings on FM stations throughout the United States, but eventually got a channel of its own on Sirius XM radio – which is where I listen to it these days.


“Little Steven’s Underground Garage” focuses on sixties rock ’n’ roll bands – the various “Underground Garage” DJs mix records by well-known groups like the Beatles and the Stones with music from more obscure one-hit wonders and garage bands.  (Van Zandt has described his playlist as featuring “the bands that influenced the Ramones, the bands that were influenced by the Ramones, and the Ramones.”)  


Van Zandt – a long-time member of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band who for some reason was given a prominent role on The Sopranos – launched his own record label, Wicked Cool Records, in 2004.  The worst thing about “Underground Garage” is that it features a lot of Wicked Cool releases, which are rarely very good.


But I’ve discovered a lot of great sixties records by listening to “Underground Garage,” and I’ve learned a lot about the history of those records and the artists who recorded them from Van Zandt.  Either his knowledge of rock ’n’ roll history is encyclopedic, or he employs some very good researchers.  (I’m guessing it’s the latter.)


“Underground Garage” isn’t as good as Steven Lorber’s late, lamented “Mystic Eyes” radio show was, of course.  (That goes without saying.)  But it’s not bad.


*     *     *     *     *


Click here to listen to the Rolling Stones’ cover of “It’s All Over Now.”  (To paraphrase what Voltaire said about God, if Mick Jagger didn’t exist, it would be necessary to invent him.) 


Click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon:

 

Friday, December 11, 2020

Rice Marching Owl Band – "Rice Fight Song" (2008)


Stand and cheer!

Vict’ry’s near!

You could have knocked me over with a feather when I opened the Washington Post’s sports section yesterday and saw that columnist Chuck Culpepper had named the 2-2 Rice Owls as college football’s team of the year.

From Culpepper’s column:


The gold medal for team of the year goes to Rice, and you may quibble with that [choice], should you have a hankering for being wrong.


Culpeper picked the Owls “not just because Rice just pulled off the upset of the year, one of those occasional football upsets so inconceivable that the score cannot be true” but also because Rice’s 2020 season epitomized college football (and team sports in general) in the year of covid-19.  



You see, Rice was originally scheduled to play on September 3 against Houston, on September 12 against Army, on September 19 against LSU, and on September 26 against Lamar.  But all of those games had to be cancelled. 


After three more football-less Saturdays, the Owls finally took the field for their first game of the 2020 season on October 24.  Their opponent?  The always tough Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders – who were playing in their seventh game of the season.  Middle Tennessee eventually won the game 40-34 in the second overtime.  


Rice had a chance to win the game in the first overtime period, but an attempted field goal hit BOTH uprights and the crossbar TWICE before falling short.  (If it wasn’t for bad luck, the Rice kicker wouldn’t have no luck at all.)  


The Owls travelled to Hattiesburg, Mississippi the next week and dominated Southern Mississippi, 30-6.  The team looked to be on a roll, but the next two scheduled contests were cancelled.


Rice then lost to North Texas on November 21 and had their November 28 game cancelled before flying off to West Virginia to face the undefeated and 15th-ranked Marshall Thundering Herd.  The Las Vegas oddsmakers gave Rice no chance to win – they made Marshall 24.5-point favorites.


To add insult to injury, Rice’s starting quarterback was unavailable for the game, forcing the Owls to start a backup QB who hadn’t thrown a single pass in the entire 2020 season.


Despite all that, David beat Goliath TWENTY TO NOTHING!  (Yes, you read that right – they shut mighty Marshall out!)


“We were exactly who we wanted to be,” the Rice coach said after the game.  “It was intellectual brutality all over the field.”


Speaking of “intellectual brutality”:



Click here to read the entire Chuck Culpepper column.


*     *     *     *     *


Do you remember the “world’s shortest book” joke template?


You’d name a fictional title and say it was the world’s shortest book – for example, Italian War Heroes or Good Reasons to Vote for Democrats.


I don’t think that a book titled Great Moments in Rice University Football History would be the shortest book in the world, but it would be pretty short.


Such a book would definitely have a chapter on the infamous play in the 1954 Cotton Bowl when an Alabama player came off the bench to tackle star Rice running back Dicky Moegle, who was on his way to the end zone.  Click here to see that play.  (The referees awarded a touchdown to Rice, which ended up winning the game easily.)


Alabama needed twelve men
to stop Dicky Moegle

I’d also include the team’s improbable win over Texas A&M in 1974 – not so much for the game (although it was a very satisfying victory) but because the Rice Marching Owls Band’s halftime show so incensed the Aggie fans that they rioted after the game.  (Band members had to be escorted from the stadium back to their dorms by Houston policemen.)  Click here for a video about that game.


Of course, the book would recount Rice’s stunning 19-17 manhandling of the Texas Longhorns in 1994 – a game that was televised to a national audience because the baseball players’ union had gone on strike that year and forced the cancellation of the World Series.  Click here to watch the highlights of that game.  


Rice students celebrating the 1994 win over Texas

(That 1994 upset represents the only one of 43 Rice-Texas contests since 1966 that was won by the Owls, but it provided a small measure of payback to all those Texas fans who used to chant “What comes out of a Chinaman’s ass? Rice, Rice, RICE!” when the Owls and Longhorns faced off on the gridiron.)


Today, thanks to the 2020 Owls and their the-little-engine-that-could performance against fearsome Marshall, Great Moments in Rice University Football History is one chapter longer.  Click here to view  the highlights of that monumental upset.


*     *     *     *     *


Click here to hear a stirring marching band arrangement of the “Rice Fight Song.”


If you’d like to sing along, here are the lyrics:


Fight for Rice!

Rice fight on! 

Loyal sons arise!

The Blue and Gray!

For Rice today!

Comes breaking through the skies!

Fight, fight, fight! 

Stand and cheer! 

Vict’ry’s near! 

Sammy leads the way!

Onward go! 

To crush the foe! 

We’ll fight for Blue and Gray!


(Note: “Sammy” is the name of Rice’s mascot, which is an owl.  Athena’s bird, you know.)