Saweetie – "Tap In" (2020)

B*tch, I’m from the West Coast

They wanna go down south

2 or 3 lines rarely recommends movies or television shows.  But today I’m going to make an exception and tell you that you MUST watch “Joan Is Awful” – which is episode one of season six of Black Mirror, a Netflix show.

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The first few minutes of “Joan Is Awful” depict a typical day in the life of the title character – an attractive young millennial who works at a high-paying job at a high-tech company.  

One night, while she and her fiancé are looking for a streaming show, they stumbles across something called “Joan Is Awful.”

Joan is horrified to realize that “Joan Is Awful” is essentially a detailed recounting of her day that reveals all her most embarrassing secrets to le tout monde.  

The rest of the show is about her desperate efforts to force the streaming service to stop airing “Joan Is Awful.”  Along the way, she enlists the help of Salma Hayek, who portrays the Joan character in “Joan Is Awful,” and who has her own reasons from wanting to kill the show.

Annie Murphy as “Joan”

It’s a very entertaining show, with a very satisfying ending.  

Also, it makes you think – but it doesn’t make you think too much. 

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A few minutes into “Joan Is Awful,” Joan is shown singing along to today’s featured song as she is driving to work.

I know a lot more about rap than you might think, but I have to admit that I had never heard of Saweetie or “Tap In,” which was released in 2020. 

The record is a winner, boys and girls, but to say that it’s “NSFW” is something of an understatement.    

Click here to watch the official music video for “Tap In.”

Click here to buy the record from Amazon.

Mary Hopkin – "Those Were the Days" (1968)

Once upon a time there was a tavern

Where we used to raise a glass or two

Remember how we laughed away the hours?

Almost two years ago, I wandered into Smoketown Creekside – a craft brewery located in Frederick, Maryland – to check out their weekly trivia game.

I finished in the middle of the pack that night – not bad considering I was competing solo.  When I was young and foolish – as opposed to when I was old and foolish, which is now – I was arrogant enough to think that I might win at trivia all by myself.  But I learned that it’s virtually impossible for a single player to win – you need people of different ages and different backgrounds in order to cover the wide variety of questions that are asked at the typical trivia competition.

I noticed that the three bartenders who were working that night were playing as a team.  Since I didn’t know a soul at Smoketown, I asked the bartenders if I could play with them when I came back for trivia the following week.  They kindly agreed to join forces with them, and – as the saying goes – the rest is history.

One of the bartenders was a thirty-something woman, one was a forty-something woman, and one was a fifty-something woman.  I was a sixty-something man.  That may not sound like anything special, but our whole was somehow greater than the sum of our parts.  Together we were almost unbeatable

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Unfortunately, our reign didn't last long.  One of our bartenders quit her Smoketown Creekside job a few months later and never played again, while another one joined a different team.

We tried recruiting new players to fill our holes, but our results weren’t good.  A number of new teams started playing at Smoketown around that time, and several of those teams were quite good.  We had gotten used to winning two out of every three weeks, but suddenly we were finding it a struggle to win once a month.

But we eventually got our mojo back thanks to a motley group of new recruits who complemented each other well. 

And just like that, we were winning again.  For a few months, we took turns finishing in first place with one other team.  I became more than a little obsessed with beating that team – I didn’t care whether we won as long as we finished ahead of them.  But since the beginning of this year, we’ve dominated our rivals.

In fact, we’ve dominated them to such an extent that I don’t even consider them to be our rivals any more.  As Yankees fan Alec Baldwin famously said to Red Sox fan John Krasinski in a 2011 TV commercial for New Era baseball caps, 

John, for the last time, this is not a rivalry.  Just like fire doesn't have a rivalry with kindling.  Lawn mowers don't have a rivalry with grass.  And America doesn't have a rivalry with Costa Rica!

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Earlier this summer, we learned that the owner of Smoketown Creekside – whose wife was one of those three bartenders I had teamed up with almost two years earlier – had sold the brewery.

Tonight – which was the final weekly trivia competition ever at Smoketown Creekside – marked the end of an era.  Trivia at Smoketown has been a highlight of my week for a long time, and I’m not embarrassed to say how much I’m going to miss it. 

The new owners plan to continue trivia once they’ve finished  redecorating the building.  So my team will have the same players present when the new place opens in a couple of months.  

I was very worried that we might have to play at a different location, or switch to a different night of the week – which might have resulted in the loss of one or more of our team members.  I’m not exaggerating when I say that I would have been very sad if that had happened.  (I never see the people on my team except on Tuesday nights at Smoketown Creekside, and I feel like I have very little in common with them -- but I love each and every one of them just the same.)  

As usual, we scored 20 for 20 on the bonus round this week

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We were riding a three-week winning streak when the final Smoketown Creekside contest kicked off tonight.

That three-game streak became a four-game streak when we correctly answered tonight’s final question and prevailed by one point over the second-place team.

That may sound like we just eked out the victory, but that wasn’t really the case.  We had a y-u-g-e lead going into the final question, so we bet conservatively – after all, a one-point win is as good as a ten-point win.  

By the way, the final question tonight was “Name the fictional character who first appeared in 1989 and was later chosen by Time magazine to be included on their list of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century.”  Not everyone playing tonight knew that the answer to that question was Bart Simpson, but we did.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner!

The winner gets to choose the category of the following week’s first question, and we commemorated our years playing trivia at Smoketown Creekside by choosing “Bart Simpson” as next week’s first category. 

By doing so, of course, we will also be reminding all the also-rans that they lost tonight when our host kicks off the competition next Tuesday by asking a Bart Simpson-related query.  

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Click here to watch Mary Hopkin singing “Those Were The Days” on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1968.  (That’s FIFTY-FIVE years ago, boys and girls.)

Click here to buy “Those Were the Days” from Amazon.

Human League – "(Keep Feeling) Fascination" (1983)

Just looking for a new direction

In an old familiar way

The forming of a new connection

Last week, I took care of my granddog Remington – we call her “Remy” – while my daughter and her family were on vacation.

I have nine grandchildren, but only one granddog.  So Remy – who joined our family almost three years before my first grandson was born – is very special to me.

Here are a few photos of Remy I’ve taken over the years – beginning with a couple of adorable pictures of her as a puppy:

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Here are a few photos of Remy with her aunt Lily – who we said goodbye to earlier this year:

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I hope Remy will be with us for many years to come.  And so do my daughter’s three boys, who have never known a world that doesn’t include Remy:

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I was very pleased when M’s catchy little 1979 record, “Pop Music” popped up on the Sirius/XM “First Wave” channel while I was driving in my car a few days ago.  Click here to watch the official “Pop Music” music video.

I was even more pleased when “(Keep Feeling) Fascination” – Human League’s y-u-g-e 1983 hit – followed “Pop Music.”

Listening to your radio just doesn’t get any better than that, boys and girls!

Click here to watch the offical “(Keep Feeling) Fascination” music video.   

Click here to buy the extended album version of the record from Amazon.

Derek and the Dominos – "Anyway" (1970)

But if you believed in me

Like I believe in you

The Allman Brothers Band had two drummers – and so does the Tedeschi Trucks Band, which I recently saw perform at Wolf TrapNational Park for the Performing Arts.  

In my humble opinion, that’s the best thing about the group – I wish more rock groups had two drummers.

Click here to see the Allman Brothers Band using their twin drummers to very good effect in a 1970 performance of “Dreams.”  (By the way, the key to the Allman Brothers sound wasn’t Duane’s guitar – it was Gregg’s Hammond B3 organ.)

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The Tedeschi Trucks Band takes its moniker from Susan Tedeschi and her husband, Derek Trucks – whose late uncle Butch Trucks was one of those aforementioned Allman Brothers Band drummers. (I find it interesting that Tedeschi is nine years older than Trucks – she was 31 and he was 22 when they got married.)

Tedeschi and Trucks

There’s no doubt that Trucks is a guitar virtuoso of the highest order – the guy can shred with the best of them.  But there’s no there there in his guitar jams.  They’re full of sound and fury, but ultimately they signify nothing.

Did the audience care?  To the contrary – the less there there was in his solos, the more his fans hooted and hollered.

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Trucks’ meandering guitar jams were bad enough.   But the most tedious element of the concert was the joint drum solo by Tyler Greenwell and Isaac Eady during the band’s interminable live rendition of “Pasaquan,” a l-o-n-g instrumental track that’s found on part one of I Am the Moon.  

Click here to see Tedeschi Trucks playing “Pasaquan” at Wolf Trap.  But be aware that doing so will consume 19 minutes and 15 seconds of your life.  (Maybe you’re young enough that you can afford to waste 19 minutes and 15 seconds of your life.  Unfortunately, I’m not.)

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Derek Trucks was recruited by his uncle Butch to join the Allman Brothers Band for their 30th anniversary tour in 1999, and he played with the group through its final live appearance in 2014.  So it’s not surprising that his guitar solos have an Allman Brothers-flavored sound.

That worked when Tedeschi Trucks covered “Statesboro Blues” (which was a staple of the Allman Brothers Band’s repertory) and “Anyday,” a track on the one and only Derek and the Dominoes album, Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs.  (Duane Allman was the primary guitarist on that recording.)

But the group’s cover of the Rolling Stones 1973 single, “Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)” sounded a bit odd with an Allman Brothersesque guitar solo by Trucks.

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Click here to listen to Derek and the Dominoes’ studio recording of “Anyday.”  I don’t think there’s much doubt who did the song better.  

Derek and the Dominos

Of course, it’s not really fair to compare one band’s live version of a song with another’s band’s studio recording of that song, but there doesn’t seem to be a decent live recording of Derek and the Dominoes playing “Anyday.”

Click here to buy “Anyday” from Amazon.

Tedeschi Trucks Band – "Anyway" (2011)

You were talking

And I thought I heard you say

“Please leave me alone!”

Albert Einstein believed that the world was in greater peril from those who tolerated evil than from those who actually commited it. 

The crowd who thronged the Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts recently to hear the Tedeschi Trucks Band not only tolerated evil in the form of lengthy, show-offy, and ultimately pointless guitar jams forced upon them by Derek Trucks, but begged him for more. 

There’s no doubt that Trucks is a guitar virtuoso of the highest order – the guy can shred with the best of them.  But there’s no there there in his guitar jams.  They’re full of sound and fury, but ultimately they signify nothing.

(Sometimes less is more!)

Did the audience care?  To the contrary – the less there there was in his solos, the more his fans hooted and hollered.

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You would think that the creator of a wildly successful music blog like 2 or 3 lines – which has been going strong since 2009 – would be a regular presence at his local live-music venues.

But I’ve never been a big fan of going to concerts – I prefer staying home and playing an artist’s recordings.  The sound quality is better, the arrangements are tighter and more economical, and you avoid a helluva lot of aggravation and expense by staying put and listening to music in the comfort of your own home rather than fighting the crowds, paying inflated prices for parking and concessions, etc.

I attended the recent Tedeschi Trucks Band appearance at Wolf Trap courtesy of a 2 or 3 lines fan who shelled out big bucks to buy  ducats for both of us just to have the opportunity to spend the evening in my company.  (Having fans go ga-ga over one is de rigeur for a suave and debonair celebrity blogger like me.)

I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, but I was rethinking my decision to accompany my adoring fan to the show long before it was over.  

While I enjoyed hearing the band cover songs by the Allman Brothers, Derek and the Dominoes, and the Rolling Stones, I thought the original songs that the group chose to perform – most were from I Am the Moon, a 24-song album that was released in four parts in 2022 – were meh at best.

And for some reason, I could not get comfortable in the seats at Wolf Trap.  By the end of the show, I felt like I had been on a three-hour flight in coach.  

The Tedeschi Trucks Band

To make matters worse, I had sucked down a $14 beer before the show started, and I really needed to drain the lizard by the time Tedeschi Trucks had given the crowd its obligatory two encores.

But the straw that broke this blogger’s back were those tedious Derek Trucks guitar solos.

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It appears I’m in the minority when it comes to the Tedeschi Trucks Band – there are plenty of people out there who think TTB is to die for. 

But I found some online reviews from recent TTB concert attendees who were as unenthusiastic as I was:

There is no question that Derek Trucks is a virtuoso guitarist but there are only so many blistering solos that one can take. . . . The drum solo was excruciating.  (Lynn from San Francisco.)

It seemed like every song Derek had to slow everything down with his five-minute solo.  Don’t get me wrong – he is the best slide guitarist out there, and I do appreciate his talent – [but] not every song has to be about him and his solo performance.  (Bill from Boston.)

Saw them in Clearwater, Florida [with an] enthusiastic audience of geriatrics trying to recapture 1973. . . . The band lacks soul or swing.  Way too polished for my taste. . . . Nauseating long guitar solos and a ten-minute drum solo for those who really miss the seventies.  Pass!  (Byron from St. Petersburg.)

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Click here to watch a Youtube video of the Tedeschi Trucks Band covering “Anyday.”  (That video was posted in 2011, and I assume that’s about when that performance took place.)    

Monkees – "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone" (1966)

The clothes you’re wearing, girl 

They’re causing public scenes

The above lines from today’s featured song weren’t inspired by the dress that actress-singer-model Jane Birkin is wearing in this photo, but they might have been:

Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin

By the way, Jane Birkin is not carrying an example of the handmade and very expensive leather weekend bag that Hermès named for her in that photo.   (My trivia team was shocked when I was able to answer a tricky question about the Birkin bag a few months ago.  They shouldn’t have been.)

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A few years before her death, Bonnie Parker gave a handwritten poem titled “Trail's End” to her mother.  That poem – which became known as “The Story of Bonnie and Clyde” – is the source of the lyrics for Serge Gainsbourg’s 1967 song, “Bonnie and Clyde.” 

Serge Gainbourg – who was one of the most popular and influential French popular music figures of all time – also wrote the infamous “Je t'aime . . . moi non plus.” (That title is usually rendered in English as “I Love You . . . Me Neither.”)  It features very explicit lyrics and ends with the sounds of a woman simulating an orgasm.

Gainsbourg recorded both songs with his then-current girlfriend, Brigitte Bardot.  (The recording engineer reported “heavy petting” by the couple during the recording session.) 

Bardot (who was married at the time to a German businessman) begged Gainsbourg not to release “Je t'aime.”  He later re-recorded it with a new girlfriend, English actress Jane Birkin.  That record was a big hit, although it was banned from the radio in several countries (including Sweden, of all places).

Birkin’s simulation of orgasm on the record was very enthusiastic, and there was a rumor that the couple had been having sex during the recording of the song.  

Gainsbourg denied the rumor, quipping that “it would have been a long-playing record” instead of a single if that had been the case.  (Typical Frenchman.)

Click here to listen to the Gainsbourg-Birkin version of “Je t'aime.”

Click here to watch a video of of Gainsbourg and Bardot singing “Bonnie and Clyde.”  The duo perform the song in a very understated manner, while every so often a guy makes a weird whoop-whoop sound in the background – I have no idea what the hell it means, but the whole thing is très, très cool.

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Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart were a great pop songwriting team.  “(I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone” is possibly the second-best song they ever wrote.  (“I Wonder What She’s Doing Tonight” – which was a top ten hit in 1968 – is without a doubt their best song.)

Paul Revere and the Raiders recorded “(I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone” for their fifth studio album, Midnight Ride, which was released in May 1966.

The Monkees recorded the song as the B-side of “I’m a Believer” (which became their second #1 single) later that year.  It did very well for a B-side, peaking at the #20 spot on the Billboard “Hot 100.”

Click here to watch the Monkees pretending to perform “(I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone.”  Lead singer Mickey Dolenz is the only Monkee who took part in the recording of that song – all the instruments you hear on the record were played by studio musicians.

Click here to buy the record from Amazon.

Rage Against the Machine – "Killing in the Name" (1992)

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

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The last 2 or 3 lines post – which is dated June 27, 2023 – began by quoting the following lyrics from the Rage Against the Machine record, “Killing in the Name”:

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

Click here to read that post.

A few days after that post went live, I stumbled across a December 2, 2022 post that quoted the following lyrics from the Rage Against the Machine record, “Killing in the Name”:

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

Click here to read that post.

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Rage Against the Machine frontman Zack de la Rocha actually sings “F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!” 16 consecutive times on the record – which is why I typed that line 16 times at the beginning of this post.

When it comes to explaining why I typed it only 12 times at the beginning of the June 27, 2023 post and only eight times at the beginning of the December 2, 2022 post, your guess is as good as mine.

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There’s something else mysterious about those posts.  Why did I post about “Killing in the Name” last week when I had featured it in another post only last December?

When disgraced former Senator Al Franken was just a comedian, he did a bit on Saturday Night Live where he suggested that people who got in trouble for failing to pay their income taxes could get off the hook by telling the IRS “I forgot!”  

That’s the explanation here: I simply forgot about that December 2022 post.

You might suspect that I featured “Killing in the Name” in a 2 or 3 lines post only seven months after featuring that record in another post in order to minimize the time required to write that second post.  But you would be wrong.  

You might also suspect me of featuring the record a third time in order to generate a post with minimal effort.  And you would be right.

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Click here to watch a live Rage Against the Machine performance of  “Killing in the Name” in 1993.