New York Dolls – "Trash" (1973)

Trash, won’t pick it up

Take them lights away

In 1950, James Hampton rented an unheated brick stable in downtown Washington, DC, for $50 a month.

Hampton – a black man who had grown up in rural South Carolina – eked out a living as a short-order cook and janitor.  When he died in 1964, his landlord came to the stable intending to clean out whatever Hampton had left behind so he could rent the space to a new tenant.

But when the landlord opened the door to the stable, he found more than 180 pulpits, lecterns, altars, and other items that Hampton had constructed from thrown-out furniture, burned-out light bulbs, used aluminum foil, and other discarded items.

James Hampton with his creation

Hampton had hoped to found a church where his creation would be housed, but he died before he was able to do so.  He also had hoped to find a “holy woman” to assist him in his labors, but he was unsuccessful in that quest.  (Been there, done that!)

It’s surprising that Hampton’s creation survived his demise.  The landlord thought about just hauling it all away to the dump, but he felt that would be wrong.  “You can’t just destroy something a man devoted himself to for 14 years,” he later told a newspaper reporter.

  

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Hampton’s “The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly” was eventually acquired by the Smithsonian Institution, and it has been displayed in the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum since 1970:

The government agency where I went to work after graduating from law school in 1977 was only a few blocks from that museum.  I saw Hampton’s work soon after I started that job, and I’ve been taking visitors to view it ever since.

I think that the author Shelley Pearsall put her finger on what makes Hampton’s “Throne” so special: 

[F]or more than a decade, Hampton had labored alone, without fanfare, to create art for art’s sake – a nearly impossible concept to grasp in today’s world of rampant social-media sharing and instant celebrity.

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There’s a scene in the television series Daisy Jones & the Six where a talented young musician who is visiting a Greek island talks to an award-winning poet at a party.

She has just heard the poet say that he is still composing poetry but has stopped publishing it.  That shocks her – “Isn’t the whole point of making stuff for it to be seen, heard . . . you know, shared?” she asks the poet and his friend – an artist.

“No, no, the point is in the making, my dear,” the artist answers.  “That’s where the joy is.  Everything else is just applause.”

The poet agrees with him.  “He’s right, you know,” he tells the young musician.  “Never let other people tell you whether your work has value because then they own you.  Now I write for myself – for my friends . . . . It’s more pure.”

I’m not as pure as the poet.  I’m eager to hear words of praise for 2 or 3 lines from my friends and family members.  I think I’d continue to write it even if only a very few people read it. 

But if no one at all read my blog, would I continue to churn out 2 or 3 lines posts every week?  I’m not sure.

  

(If you write a blog and post it to the internet and no reads it, does it make a sound?  I suspect not.) 

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I took my grandson Tommy to see “The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly” a few days ago. 

Tommy is only six, but he’s spent a fair amount of time in museums looking at paintings and sculpture.  Before we saw Hampton’s magnum opus, Tommy’s concept of what art is didn’t include an alcove crammed full of items constructed from flotsam and jetsam plucked out of trash cans.  

But by the time we left the museum to head home, Tommy was beginning to understand that just about anything can be made into art . . . and that just about anyone can be an artist.

Click here to learn more about James Hampton and “The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly.

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Our last stop before hopping on the subway was the museum gift shop, where I bought a large postcard of “The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly” for Tommy to take home and show to his father.  (Tommy didn’t know that I had taken his dad – my oldest child – to that same museum to see Hampton’s “Throne” thirty-odd years ago.)

Tommy, who is fascinated (if not obsessed) with American presidents, also asked me to buy a postcard of “Shimomura Crossing the Delaware,” a 2010 painting by Japanese-American artist Roger Shimomura that's based on the famous depiction of George Washington's crossing that river on Christmas night, 1776:

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“Trash” was the first track on side two of the New York Dolls’ eponymous debut album:

It was also released (along with “Personality Crisis”) as a double A-side single.

Dolls frontman David Johansen is the subject of “Personality Crisis: One Night Only,” a new documentary by Martin Scorsese.  It’s an odd little movie, but interesting.  I just wish it had included more footage of the Dolls performing.

Click here to listen to “Trash.”

Click here to buy the song from Amazon.  

Alice in Chains – "Rooster" (1992)

Here they come to snuff the Rooster

Yeah, here comes the Rooster

You know he ain't gonna die!

Washington, DC has a number of first-rate art museums.  But I think most art experts would agree that the National Gallery of Art (or “NGA”) has the most impressive collection of any of them.

I wouldn’t necessarily argue that Katharina Fritsch’s Hahn/Cock sculpture – a 15-foot-tall fiberglass rooster that is displayed on the roof of the National Gallery’s East Building – is the greatest work of art at that museum.  But it’s almost certainly the most amusing one:

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Fritsch – who is German – spent two and a half years working on Hahn/Cock, which was originally placed on the empty fourth plinth in London’s Trafalgar Square.

She has described it as a feminist sculpture “since it is I who am doing something active here – I, a woman, am depicting something male.”

“Historically it has always been the other way around,” she went on to say. “Now we are changing the roles. And a lot of men are enjoying that.”

I don’t necessarily disagree with Katharina, but I think she should stop putting words in the mouth of men – womansplaining is just as annoying to men as mansplaining is to women.

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2 or 3 lines saw Hahn/Cock (a/k/a “The Blue Rooster”) for the first time only a few weeks ago.  Here are a few of the other works I saw at the NGA that day:

Alexander Calder – Blue Elephant with Red Ears (1971)

Wassily Kandinsky – Improvisation 31 (1913)

Roy Lichtenstein – Look Mickey (1961)

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I’ve been spending a fair amount of time visiting museums recently.  One of those visits was with one of my young grandsons – I’ll tell you about what we saw in my next post.

Visiting art museums is only one of the time-consuming activities I find myself engaged in these days.  The others include playing trivia, riding my bike – the warm spring weather makes it hard for me to stay indoors – and talking with 2 or 3 lines fans.  (I spend a LOT of time communicating with 2 or 3 lines fans – it’s very hard for me to ignore all the texts, e-mails, and phone calls that I’ve been getting from these devotees of my wildly popular little blog.)

All that has prevented me from spending time writing new 2 or 3 lines posts.  As you’ve probably noticed, the frequency of my posting isn’t what it used to be – to say nothing of the quality of those posts.

My fans tell me that 2 or 3 lines is still the ne plus ultra of narcissistic pop music blogs.  

That may be true.  But it’s a far cry from what it used to be.  (I weep when I go back and read some of my older posts.  They are SO GOOD!)

They are also very long . . . unlike this one.

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“Rooster” was released in 1992 on Dirt – the second Alice in Chains studio album:

It was written by the group’s lead guitarist, co-lead vocalist, and chief songwriter, Jerry Cantrell Jr.  (“Rooster” was the nickname of Cantrell’s father, Jerry Cantrell Sr., who served in the U.S. Army in the Vietnam War.)

I bought Dirt in 1994 at a used CD store in the Manayunk section of Philadelphia.  I also picked up Soundgarden’s Badmotorfinger, Nirvana’s In Utero, and Pearl Jam’s Vitalogy album at the same time – that’s a pretty impressive haul if I do say so myself.

Click here to watch the official music video for “Rooster.”  (Warning!  This video includes some very unpleasant images.)

Click here to buy the record from Amazon.

Donovan – "Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth" (1973)

Don’t pour filth into the air

Air is the best thing that we can breathe

Today’s featured song was released in 1973 on Donovan’s 11th studio album, Essence to Essence, which was produced by Andrew Loog Oldham.  (Oldham is better known as the manager and producer of the Rolling Stones from 1963 until 1967.)

I wasn’t familiar with a single song on Essence to Essence until today, when I heard “Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth” for the very first time.

Essence to Essence failed to chart in the UK and peaked at #174 on the U.S. album charts.

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The inspiration for “Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth” was a similarly-titled 1969 book by the famed architect and futurist, R. Buckminster Fuller:

Fuller envisions Earth as a spaceship flying through space.  As such, it requires regular maintenance in order to keep functioning.

Engine oil needs to be filtered to do its job properly – if it gets dirty enough, the engine will stop working.  Likewise, the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans will be unable to sustain life if air and water pollution get out of control.

Fuller’s main concern about fossil fuels doesn’t appear to have been about global warming – he was more worried about us running out of energy.

So he encouraged specifically the Sun's radiation and Moon's gravity via wind, solar, and water tools. Fuller stated that humans must wean themselves from their dependence on fossil fuels, and instead rely on the energy generated by the Sun’s radiation and the Moon’s gravitational pull.

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 Donovan’s song is kind of a dumbed-down version of Fuller’s book.  To wit:

Don't pour filth into rivers

Rivers are like the blood in our veins

Don't pour filth into the air

Air is the best thing that we can breathe

Here’s another verse:

Do be kind to your vegetable friends

You are the gardener of Earth garden

Do be kind to your animal friends

You are the keeper of Earth zoo

Let’s face it – these lyrics aren’t anything that the average high-school sophomore couldn’t have written.  

The Essence to Essence album cover

But let’s not be hypercritical.  Today’s featured record is a perfectly pleasant little ditty that is perfectly appropriate for Earth Day (which was first observed on this date in 1970).

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Click here to listen to “Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth.”

Jim Pepper – "Witchi-Tai-To" (1971)

Witchi-tai-to, gimee rah

Whoa rah neeko, whoa rah neeko

Hey ney, hey ney, no way

The Washington, DC City Council recently voted to reduce maximum sentences for burglaries, carjackings, robberies, and other crimes as part of a comprehensive revision of that city’s criminal code.

The council considered decriminalizing public urination as part of that criminal code revision.  DC Mayor Muriel Bowser opposed that action, and the council decided to follow her wishes.  So public urination is still a crime in Washington, DC.

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Mayor Bowser is only one of many females who seems determined to take away the constitutional right of American males to urinate when and where they please.

For example, my friend John Alden told me some time ago that his wife makes him sit down to pee because his aim is occasionally less than trustworthy.

“All I know is that God gave me a tallywhacker whose dimensions prevent me from sitting down to pee without said tallywhacker being purt near submerged.” John explained to me recently.  “So I figure he intended me to stand up to drain the lizard.”

Maybe John’s errant aim would be improved if he had a target to shoot at:

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What are the implications of the continued criminalization of public urination in Washington, DC for bicycle riders like me?

The DC law in question reads as follows:

It is unlawful for a person to urinate or defecate in public, other than in a urinal or toilet.

Since I always go behind a tree or bush when I need to relieve myself in the middle of a bike ride, it seems obvious that I have nothing to worry about – after all, it’s not urinating “in public” when I conceal myself behind a tree . . . right?

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If Washington, DC, really wants to stick its nose into male urination practices, perhaps it should follow the lead of Ghent, Belgium.

I saw hundreds of these handy-dandy four-hole devices on the streets when I visited Ghent a few years ago:

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I sometimes ask myself, “What is the best record that’s never been featured on 2 or 3 lines?”  

There are a lot of possible answers to that question.  One of them is most certainly NOT “Witchi-Tai-To,” which was released in 1971 on Jim Pepper’s Pepper’s Pow Wow album.

Click here to listen to the single version of “Witchi-Tai-To.”

Kinks – "Afternoon Tea" (1967)

I take sugar with tea

You take milk if you please 

I please not!  (Milk in tea? Disgusting!)

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The instructions for making hot tea on a box of Harris Teeter’s family-size tea bags are perfectly clear:

Bring fresh cold water to a rolling boil.  Pour 4 cups over 1 tea bag and brew for 3 – 5 minutes.  Remove tea bag.  If desired, serve with lemon and/or sweetener.

The instructions for making iced tea are just as clear:

Bring fresh cold water to a rolling boil.  Pour 4 cups over 1 tea bag and brew for 3 – 5 minutes.  Remove tea bag and pour over ice filled glasses.  If desired, serve with lemon and/or sweetener.

In other words, you prepare hot tea and iced tea exactly the same way – except that if you want iced tea instead of hot tea, you pour the tea into an ice filled glass! 

(Thank goodness for Harris Teeter’s instructions – I probably would have messed up without them!)

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Years ago, I stopped buying soft drinks to have with the sandwiches or leftovers I used to take to work for lunch.  Instead, I started making batches of iced tea in the kitchen at my law firm’s offices.  That not only saved me a little money – the kitchen was kept stocked with free teabags, sugar, etc. – but also significantly reduced my daily high-fructose corn syrup consumption.

I retired in 2017, but I’m still making a big-ass batch of iced tea every few days in the same 96-ounce Tupperware container I used at work:  

Sure, it’s a little stained.  But that just adds to the complex flavor and bouquet of the beverage.

I have to buy my own teabags and sugar now, of course – but making iced tea is still cheaper (and healthier?) than buying bottles of Dr. Pepper. 

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My sister puts me to shame when it comes to iced-tea consumption.  That’s pretty much all she drinks.

She’s pretty finicky when it comes to her tea.  She has some favorite restaurants where she lives that make fresh iced tea that meet her standards.

She also like the tea at McDonalds’s and Panera.  No other fast-food tea is acceptable.

I offer to let her make fresh iced tea from scratch when she visits me.  Oddly, she never takes me up on that offer – she makes do with McDonald’s or Panera.  (Go figure.)

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Something Else by the Kinks is by the Kinks, but you probably would have figured that out without me telling you:

It didn’t sell well in either the U.S. or the UK when it was released in 1967, but it’s a great album with lots of good tracks – most notably, “Waterloo Sunset,” a beautiful and very romantic ballad.

As noted above, “Afternoon Tea” alludes to the curious practice of adding milk to hot tea that some Brits follow.  (Pretentious Americans who want you to think they went to Oxford or Cambridge or some such fancy-pants place also add milk to their tea.)  

Click here to listen to “Afternoon Tea.”  (One writer said the Something Else album “continued the Kinks' trend toward an eccentric baroque pop and music hall-influenced style defined by Ray Davies' observational and introspective lyrics.”  That description fits “Afternoon Tea” – get ready for it – to a “T.” )

Click here to buy the song from Amazon.

Orwells – "Dirty Sheets" (2014)

Take my body till the morning

Now I’m leaving without warning

When I was in law school, I washed my towels at least once a semester – whether they needed it or not!

I never understood why my then-girlfriend expressed shock and dismay when I told her that.  

Dirty towels

After all, your body is clean when you dry yourself after a shower.  So your towel gets wet, but it doesn’t get dirty.  Why would you need to wash it?  

Just hang it up after you use it – it’s good to go the next day.  (You can pop it in the dryer if you’re in a hurry.)

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Apparently there are some nudniks out there who question my reasoning.

“Based on the levels of microbes that can grow on towels, towels should be washed once a week, at the very least,” says microbiologist Jason Tetro, author of The Germ Code and The Germ Files and host of the Super Awesome Science Show podcast. 

“Studies looking into the microbial contamination of towels reveal they can grow into the hundreds of thousands and possibly millions within that time,” according to Tetro. “This may be enough to transfer back to your skin and lead to either odor or possible infection.”

According to Mr. Smartypants Tetro, your towel can transmit not only Staphylococcus aureus but aso its antibiotic-resistant version, MRSA (which can cause pneumonia and sepsis).

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Far be it from me to argue with a guy who hosts the Super Awesome Science Show podcast (which I believe has been nominated for a special Nobel Prize).  He’s obviously legit.

So I’m going to play it safe and start laundering my towels once a week.

But frankly, I’m a lot more concerned about what I would find if I shined a UV light on the bedding of the next hotel I stayed at than I am about my towels.  Click here if you wonder what I’m so worried about.

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The Orwells formed in 2011.  Four of the band’s original five members were classmates at York High School in Elmhurst, Illinois.  (Sounds a little like the origin story of my junior-high-school band, the Rogues.)

“Dirty Sheets” was released on the Orwells’ 2014 album, Disgraceland:

Click here to listen to “Dirty Sheets.”

Click here to buy the record from Amazon.