Patti Smith Group – "Dancing Barefoot" (1979)

Some strange music

Draws me in

I’ve just finished watching Daisy Jones & the Six, a new Amazon television series whose name refers to the fictional seventies rock band that is the subject of the show.

I don’t think the series is very good.  It’s biggest failing is probably its predictability – the plot is quite clichéd.  (A friend of mine objected in particular to the ending, and the ending is a little too pat.  Since I’m not sure I could have come up with a better one, I’m going to give the writers a break on the ending.)

But I had to watch it.  After all, how could 2 or 3 lines resist a series about sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll, baby?

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Daisy Jones & the Six focuses on the relationship between Daisy and Billy – the band’s frontwoman and frontman, respectively.  

Both Daisy (who is portrayed by the oldest granddaughter of Elvis Presley, Riley Keough) and Billy are very talented singer-songwriters.  But it’s when their producer forces them to write songs together that things really take off for their band.  

The songs they wrote individually were good, but the songs they write together are much better.  And when they perform together on stage, their chemistry is obvious and irresistible to audiences.   

But while the Daisy-Billy whole is exponentially greater than the sum of its parts, their personal relationship is troubled – to say the least.

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As Elie Wiesel famously wrote, “The opposite of love is not hate – it’s indifference.”  

Daisy and Billy are never indifferent to one another.  To the contrary: they have a love-hate relationship – or (perhaps more accurately) a love-HATE! relationship – almost from the moment they first meet.  (At one point, Daisy tells a TV interviewer, “We had to work together.  We didn’t have to like each other.  And we didn’t.”)

But don’t overlook the love part of the equation.  The love between Daisy and Billy is often obscured by the hate, but it is always there.

Riley Keough as Daisy Jones

Daisy and Billy love each other because each understands the other more completely than any other person in the world.  That’s because Daisy and Billy are essentially the same person – they are mirror images of one another.

For one thing, both had serious issues with their parents – Billy’s father left the family when Billy was young, while Daisy’s mother made it clear that if she had had her druthers, Daisy would have never been born.  And both abuse drugs and alcohol rather spectacularly.  

The word Billy uses over and over to describe both himself and Daisy is “broken.”

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There were about two dozen original songs written for the series. 

According to one newspaper article, “While the television series has had mixed reviews from critics, most agree that the songs sound like real hit records.”

If that’s accurate, then most critics need to have their ears checked.

I think the songs that Daisy Jones & the Six perform in the series are universally meh.  I can’t imagine that any of them would have been hits back in the seventies – much less huge hits.

Nonetheless, the Aurora album – which consists of the songs from the series – immediately went to #1 on iTunes when it was released a few months ago.  Such is the power of a heavily promoted TV series.

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I am not a big Patti Smith fan, but I can’t get enough of her 1979 song, “Dancing Barefoot,” which is played during the Daisy Jones & the Six opening credits sequence.

“We talked about wanting to kick off the series with something that represents the show but is outside the show,” showrunner Scott Neustadter said in an interview. “That was the song that I thought would work the best.  I came up with it really early and then spent the next six or seven months trying to beat it.  I could never beat it.  It's too perfect.”

Works for me!

Click here to listen to “Dancing Barefoot.”

Click here to buy the song from Amazon.

Three Dog Night – "Circle for a Landing" (1969)

Circle for a landing

It’s time to come on down 

YouGovAmerica, a market research firm, recently asked thousands of adults this question:

How confident are you that you could safely land a passenger airplane in an emergency situation, relying only on the assistance of air traffic control? 

46% of the males surveyed but only 20% of the females said they were either “very confident” or “somewhat confident” of their ability to bring a plane down safely in an emergency. 

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The only surprising thing about this finding is that the male number isn’t a lot higher than 46%.  

You can chalk that up to the modesty that is so characteristic of the male sex, because males clearly have a big edge when it comes to God-given airplane-handling aptitude.

46% of men disagree

If you don’t believe me, let’s consider the facts.

The Wright brothers were male – right?

Charles Lindbergh was male, too – as was famed test pilot Chuck Yeager.  

Not to mention astronauts Alan Shepard, John Glenn, and every one of the 12 astronauts who have walked on the moon.

“Sky” King, Han Solo, Pete “Maverick” Mitchell – the list of great male pilots goes on and on! 

Of course, not all famous pilots were men – there’s Amelia Earhart, for example.

I don’t know about you, but if I was to be seated next to Amelia Earhart on a plane and the pilot of that plane suddenly became incapacitated, I’d start saying my prayers.

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In closing, let me quote a recent Washington Post article:

Last May, a Florida man was returning home from a fishing trip in the Bahamas when the pilot of a single-engine Cessna 208 fell ill. With the guidance of an air traffic controller and flight instructor, Darren Harrison safely touched down at Palm Beach International Airport.

Darren Harrison was a male.  (Just sayin’.)

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Three Dog Night was a very underrated group – possibly because they didn’t write their own songs.  (Neither did Frank Sinatra or Dusty Springfield, of course.)

Instead, Three Dog Night covered songs by accomplished songwriters like Hoyt Axton, Dave Mason, Joni Mitchell, Randy Newman, Harry Nilsson, Laura Nyro, Robbie Robertson, and Neil Young – to name just a few.

“Circle for a Landing” was written by Don Preston, a session guitarist who toured and recorded with Leon Russell, Joe Cocker, and others.  He and Russell co-wrote “Stranger in a Strange Land” – a truly great song.

Click here to listen to Three Dog Night’s recording of “Circle for a Landing,” which was released in 1969 on the group’s second (and best) album, Suitable for Framing.

Click here to buy the recording from Amazon. 

Elton John – "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting" (1973)

My old man’s drunker 

Than a barrel full of monkeys

And my old lady, she don’t care

The New Yorker once had a three-panel cartoon that depicted three people.  

The person in the first panel was captioned “More fun than a barrel of monkeys.”

The second person was captioned “Less fun than a barrel of monkeys.”

The third and final person was captioned “Exactly as much fun as a barrel of monkeys.”

I think we all know that third person, right?

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I always thought the phrase “More fun than a barrel of monkeys” originated with my grandmother.  But apparently she didn’t coin that expression.  

Some of the other expressions I learned from her were “She’d cut off her nose to spite her own face,” “He’s too pretty to be a boy” (which was her comment about my younger son when he was was a toddler), “If it was a snake, it would have bit you,” and “Why buy the cow when you’re getting the milk for free?”  (Actually, she never said that last one.  But it’s a question I often ask myself.)

We know that “more fun than a barrel of monkeys” goes back to at least 1895, when the Chicago Daily Tribune ran a story about the Republican Convention in Syracuse, New York, that described the event using those words.  That was 13-plus years before my grandmother was born.

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Did you ever play the “Barrel of Monkeys” game when you were a kid?

“Barrel of Monkeys” was first sold in 1965.  Today it’s marketed by Milton Bradley.

You might think that “Barrel of Monkeys” is a really dumb game, which it is.  But it’s not just a really dumb game.  From Wikipedia:

[“Barrel of Monkeys” monkeys] have been used for the modeling of polyhedral structures, including virus particles and other protein structures. . . . A pair of monkeys can hook around each other in more than eighty different ways, forming quite stable links.  The links may be either symmetrical or asymmetrical.  Repetition of an asymmetric link generates a helix.  A symmetric link is self-limiting, so that the structure cannot grow further unless a new link is used to join symmetric pairs.  It is possible to generate structures with point, line, 2D or 3D symmetry by choosing two or three different links (from the 80 or more possibilities) and repeating them systematically.  An enormous number of compatible combinations can be found by trial and error. . . .

[Each monkey’s] arms, legs, hands and feet are able to twist around each other to form many stable links.  In this, they resemble protein molecules which can also link together in many ways.  The resulting assemblies simulate biologically important structures, but their symmetry follows general geometric principles.  The monkeys provide a “hands on” approach to understanding these principles. 

Did you know that in 2012, Dartmouth College student Parker Phinney led a fundraising group that built a record chain of 5990 “Barrel of Monkeys” monkeys.  (Parker’s parents must be soooo proud!)

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Click here to listen to Elton John’s “Saturday Night’s Alright (for Fighting),” which was the first single to be released from his 1973 album, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.

Click here to buy the record from Amazon.

Pink Floyd – "Money" (1973)

Money, it’s a hit

Don’t give me that 

Do-goody-good bullsh*t

Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon made its first appearance on the Billboard 200 albums chart on March 17, 1973 – exactly 50 years ago today.

One way to celebrate that anniversary would be to plop down on your sofa and listen to the album on your favorite music streaming service – perhaps open a bottle of wine to enhance the experience.  (You 420-friendly types might prefer a different means of enhancing your experience.)

The Dark Side of the Moon album cover

Or you could drive an hour to a neighboring city and pay $33 to hear a group of anonymous Canadian musicians recreate the album note-for-note live on stage.

Before now, I usually chose the stay-at-home-and-listen-to-the-album option – I rarely went to live concerts even when I was younger and had a lot of friends who went to live shows all the time.  

When a group I liked toured in support of a new album, I usually just bought the album instead of seeing them live.  In my mind, I was avoiding a lot of expense and hassle – and a live performance is rarely as perfect as a studio recording.

But this time, I chose to go to the live show – and that was the right decision.

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In 2003, Craig Martin founded the “Classic Albums Live” series of concerts in Toronto.

Each concert in that series features a live performance of a classic rock album that eschews costumes and other gimmicks and simply attempts to replicate the sound of the original recording.  

A Classic Albums Live performance

The rotating group of Canadian musicians who perform at Classic Albums Live shows have played the entire Beatles catalog, five different Led Zeppelin albums, four different Rolling Stones albums, Who’s Next, A Night at the Opera, Purple Rain, London Calling, and many, many other albums.

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As noted above, I recently went to hear the Classic Albums Live performance of The Dark Side of the Moon.

I was never a big Pink Floyd guy, but you’d best believe I owned a copy of The Dark Side of the Moon.

Of course, just about everyone I knew owned a copy of The Dark Side of the Moon.  The album held the #1 spot on the Billboard 200 for only one week, but remained on that chart for a staggering 736 consecutive weeks – from March 17, 1973 until July 16, 1988.

The Recording Industry Association of America has certified it as a 15x platinum album – meaning it has sold 15 million copies in the United States alone.

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“Money” (which is the first track on side two of the album) is most notable for its unusual 7/4 time signature.

Most musical compositions are written in 3/4 or 4/4 – meaning they have either three or four beats per measure.

Most songs that have a 7/4 time signature can be broken down into a four-beat unit followed by a three-beat unit, or vice versa.  But “Money” doesn’t follow that pattern.

To my ears, the first beat of the “Money” is what we music experts call an anacrusis – an unaccented introductory note at the very beginning of a song.  

After that first anacrusis note, each measure of “Money” can be broken down into a two-beat unit followed by a five-unit.

Click here to watch a video that tells you everything you wanted to know (and more) about music with a 7/4 time signature.

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“Money” is interesting and original, but I’m glad that 7/4 songs are the exception and not the rule – there’s really no way a 7/4 song can grab you rhythmically like a song with a more conventional meter (like 4/4 or 6/8) can. 

Click here to listen to “Money.”

Click here to buy that record from Amazon.

Bonnie Raitt – "Just Like That" (2022)

I lay my head upon his chest

And I was with my boy again

In what most people considered to be a stunning upset, Bonnie Raitt’s “Just Like That” won the “Song of the Year” Grammy last month.

“Just Like That” was one of the least-well-known “Song of the Year” winners in recent memory.  In fact, each of the other nominees had at least 60 times more Spotify streams.

But as Andrew Chow of Time magazine noted, Raitt’s connection with the Grammys is “long and deep.”  She won the first of her 13 awards in 1990, and has been a frequent onstage presence at the annual Grammy awards ceremony ever since.  She took home a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award just last year.

Bonnie Raitt with her newest Grammy

Chow believes that Raitt won the award not only for her “overflowing musical talent,” but also because “she’s the kind of artist that the Grammys want to honor.”  

“Grammy voters tend to be old and white,” Chow wrote.  “They like it when artists play their own instruments, write their own songs, and uphold long-held traditions.”

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“Just Like That” tells a story of a fictional mother who is still grieving the death of her young son many years ago.

Her grief is particularly sharp because she feels responsible for her boy’s death:

If I hadn’t looked away

My boy might still be with me now

He’d be twenty-five today

One day, a young man knocks at her front door.  She’s not the kind of woman who ordinarily trusts strangers, but something in the young man’s expression makes her open her door to him.

After she invites him in, he explains that he is the recipient of her son’s heart:

I’ve spent years just tryin’ to find you

So I could finally let you know

It was your son’s heart that saved me

The mother has lived in darkness since losing her son – “I never thought the night would end,” she tells her visitor.  But when she lays her head upon his chest and hears her son’s transplanted heart beating, she feels that she is with her boy.  

The visitor has brought her the peace and grace that she thought she would never find.

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The woman in “Just Like That” was consoled by the knowledge that her son’s heart had saved the life of another mother’s son.  

The friend who brought “Just Like That” to my attention lost her husband to cancer several years ago.  The nature of her husband’s fatal illness meant that his organs were not suitable for transplantation.  So she wasn’t able to enjoy the consolation that the woman in the song felt when she lay her head on the young stranger’s chest.

“The song evoked the sadness I felt when told that none of my husband’s organs could be donated,” she told me.  “A double loss.”

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Registering as an organ donor is easy.  You can drop by your local department of motor vehicles or sign up online.  (If you have an iPhone, it’s as easy as opening your “Health” app.)

If you’re one of the 54% of Americans who are registered organ donors, good for you.

If you’re one of the 46% who aren’t, what in the world are you waiting for?  Please – register as a donor right now.

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Click here to listen to Bonnie Raitt’s Grammy-winning “Just Like That.”

Click here to buy that record from Amazon.

New Colony Six – "Things I'd Like to Say" (1969)

I was hoping that with our love

We would get married someday

I love this record.  I’ve always loved this record!  (I’m just a big softie at heart.)

That’s pretty much all I have to say today.  I’m VERY overscheduled these days, so I’ve gotten way behind on posting to 2 or 3 lines.  I’m sorry, but I really needed to phone one in to help myself get caught up.

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The New Colony Six formed in Chicago in 1964.  “Things I’d Like to Say” – which reached #16 on the Billboard “Hot 100” in 1969 – was their biggest hit.

The New Colony Six

Click here to listen to “Things I’d Like to Say.”

Rare Earth – "(I Know) I'm Losing You" (1970)

It’s all over your face

Someone’s taken my place

Ooh baby, I’m losing you

February is in the rear-view mirror, but I’m not ready to say sayonara to the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” COVER RECORDS HALL OF FAME just yet.

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Rare Earth – which began life as the Sunliners in Detroit in 1960 – wasn’t the first all-white group signed to a record contract by Motown.

But they were the first all-white band signed to a record contract by Motown to have a hit.

Both of Rare Earth’s first two hit singles – “Get Ready” and “(I Know) I’m Losing You” – were covers of Temptations hit.  And both charted higher than the originals.

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We could argue until we’re blue in thew face whether the Rare Earth or Rod Stewart covers of “(I Know) I’m Losing You” is better.

But life is very short, and there’s no time for fussing and fighting, my friend.  So let’s just agree they’re both great, and leave it at that. 

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Click here to listen to the album version of Rare Earth’s cover of “(I Know) I’m Losing You.”

Click here to listen to the single version, which peaked at #7 on the Billboard “Hot 100.”

Click here to view a rather bizarre video of the group performing the song on The Ed Sullivan Show.

Click here to buy the album version of “(I Know) I’m Losing You” from Amazon.