Bee Gees – "Lonely Days" (1970)

I see you every morning

Outside the restaurants

The music plays so nonchalant

Twenty-five years ago, I was a busy lawyer and had four kids living at home.  My life was busy and somewhat complicated.

But now that I’m retired and my kids are grown up and living on their own, things should be a lot simpler.  But I’ve worked hard to keep my life busy and complicated!

One way I’ve accomplished that is by applying for a lot of credit cards in an effort to take advantage of the dizzying array of discounts and other benefits that different credit cards offer these days.

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Twenty-five years ago, I was good with a couple of Visas or Mastercards.  I didn’t have to pay attention to how much interest the different cards charged because I paid my balances in full every month – which meant the interest rate was irrelevant.

Then the airlines began to push their branded credit cards by offering you a ridiculous number of miles to sign up.  I remember when Southwest Airlines used to have a couple of people manning a kiosk at BWI airport. “Would you like 60,000 free miles and a T-shirt?” they would say as you walked by on your way to your departure gate.  “All you have to do is apply for our no-fee credit card.”

At one point, I had credit cards from Southwest, American, United and US Air.  I did a lot of flying in those days, and you got miles not only for flying, but also if you used the card to pay for your hotel and rental car.  But the key was the free miles you got just for signing up – usually enough miles for a round trip on that airline.

Eventually you had to start paying a fee to have the card.  The first year would be free, but after that the card might cost $99 a year.  I usually cancelled the card at that point.

I figured out that you could cancel, wait a couple of years, and then reapply for airline-branded credit cards – you’d get the free miles again, and the cards were free for the first year.

It turns out that I never had to truly cancel my American Airlines card.  That’s because when you called up to cancel at the end of the year – when they were about to hit you with the $99 fee – they would bend over backwards to talk you out of cancelling.  “Sir, would you keep the card if we offered you a $100 statement credit next month?” the rep would ask me.

“Let me get this straight,” I would answer.  “I pay the $99 fee now, and you’ll credit me $100 against my balance next month?”

This seemed unnecessarily complicated.  Why didn’t they just waive the fee?   

In any event, I went through this little dance with whatever bank issued the American Airlines credit card every year, just like clockwork.

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Eventually banks started to offer credit cards that rebated 1% of the amount you charged on the card.

In other words, if you charged $2500 in a given month, the card issuer would reduce your balance due by $25 – or even mail you a check for $25.

I picked up a couple of those cards – 1% isn’t a lot, but every little bit helps, especially when you use your credit card for just about all your purchases.  (“Cash”?  What’s that?)

Then several years ago, a large bank started offering a “double cash” Mastercard that rebated 2% of your purchase amount back to you.

You best believe that got my attention.  I applied for that card toot sweet, and started using it almost exclusively.

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I say “almost exclusively” because I also had several niche credit cards that offered me more than a 2% discount on certain purchases.

I’ll tell you about them in the next 2 or 3 lines.

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Here’s how one critic described the Bee Gees’ 1970 hit, “Lonely Days”:

The song incorporated the innovative structure and knack for changing tempos exemplified by the second side of The Beatles’ Abbey Road album, released the previous year and a clear influence on this single. 

The Bee Gees circa 1970

I don’t know about that.  But I do know that “Lonely Days” consists of two brief verses plus a chorus that consists of the following two-line catchphrase (which is repeated mucho times):

Lonely days, lonely nights

Where would I be without my woman?

The Gibbs boys obviously learned a lot from Sir Paul McCartney, who was the master of bolting together verses and choruses that sound like they belonged in two different songs and then using repetition in order to make a three-minute hit single from a ninety-second songlet.

Click here to listen to “Lonely Days.”

Click here to order the record from Amazon.

Bee Gees – "Lonely Days" (1970)

Lonely days

Lonely nights

Loneliness is associated with a greater risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia, depression, and anxiety.  One British expert has said that loneliness is more harmful to one’s health than smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

According to a recent report, nine million British adults – some 14% of the population – are often or always lonely.  

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The British government isn’t ignoring the U.K.’s loneliness epidemic, as this attention-getting headline from the New York Times demonstrates:

U.K. Appoints a

Minister for Loneliness

I don’t mean to split hairs, but that headline is a bit misleading.

What actually happened is that British Prime Minister Theresa May assigned the Right Honorable Tracey Crouch, the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Sport and Civil Society in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport, to lead a government working group that has been tasked with establishing the scale and consequences of loneliness in the U.K. and establish policies to deal with the problem.

It seems odd to me that the British government’s war on loneliness is being waged by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport, whose main policy areas are arts and culture, broadcasting, gambling and horse racing, libraries, museums and galleries, sport, telecommunications, and tourism.   I would think loneliness would come under the purview of the Department of Health and Social Care, but what do I know?

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I’m not sure why Ms. Crouch in particular was assigned to lead the British government’s efforts to beat loneliness.  Her official biography describes her as a “keen sports enthusiast” and a FA-qualified soccer coach.  That’s all well and good, but doesn’t indicate that she is qualified to deal with loneliness. 

The Right Honorable Tracey Crouch

In addition to heading up the anti-loneliness initiative, Crouch’s primary areas of responsibility include sport, gambling, horse racing, and the National Lottery.  Perhaps the Times headline should have read as follows:

U.K. Appoints a Minister for Sport, Gambling, Horse Racing, the National Lottery, and Loneliness

Ms. Crouch’s boss, the Right Honorable Matt Hancock, is also quite the sporting type.  From his biography:

He is the first [member of Parliament] in modern times to win a horse race, having raced to victory at the Newmarket July Course in August 2012.  He is an avid cricketer and plays for the Lords & Commons Cricket team.  Matthew once played the most northerly game of cricket on record, and succumbed to frostbite en route to the Pole.  He retains all his fingers.

The Right Honorable Matt Hancock

“He retains all his fingers.”  So do I – and hopefully you do as well – but does that really qualify one to oversee efforts to overcome loneliness?

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Henry David Thoreau didn’t see loneliness as a big problem.  When it came to being alone, Thoreau couldn’t get enough: 

I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time.  To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating.  I love to be alone.  I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.

I agree with Thoreau.  I’ve got 99 problems, but loneliness ain’t one.

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Barry Gibb claims that he wrote “Lonely Days” in ten minutes.  

Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees

The song (which was released in 1970) was the group’s biggest U.S. hit to date, climbing all the way to the #3 spot on the Billboard “Hot 100.”  

It’s a very Abbey Road-ish song.  (Side two, of course.)

Here’s “Lonely Days”:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Bee Gees – "Stayin' Alive" (1977)

Feel the city breaking

And everybody shaking, people

Stayin' alive, stayin' alive

President Trump recently made what law professors and students are fond of calling a “slippery slope” argument when he questioned the wisdom of taking down statues of famous Confederate figures:

So, this week it's Robert E. Lee.  I notice that Stonewall Jackson is coming down.  I wonder is it George Washington next week, and is it Thomas Jefferson the week after?  You know, you really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop? . . . George Washington was a slave owner. . . . So will George Washington now lose his status?  Are we going to take down statues to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson? . . . Because he was a major slave owner.  Now are we going to take down his statue?

Law professor Ilya Somin believes that it’s easy to distinguish between Confederates like Lee and Jackson and figures like Washington and Jefferson:

There are two big distinctions.  One, nobody honors George Washington precisely for the fact that he owned slaves, whereas the Confederate leaders, when they're honored, are honored almost entirely for their service to the Confederacy, which was created for a purpose of perpetuating and extending slavery.

Second, while I think it's very much correct to criticize the Founding Fathers for owning slaves, those of them who did, they also had great achievements in other areas which do legitimately deserve honor.  By contrast . . . very few of [the Confederate leaders] would be remembered today but for what they did in the Civil War to protect slavery.

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In the last 2 or 3 lines, I introduced you to Albert Pike and James Bevel.

Pike was a 19th-century Renaissance man – a lawyer, orator, philosopher, poet, scholar, and soldier.  He grew up in Boston, then moved to Arkansas – where he served briefly as a general in the Confederate Army.  After the Civil War was over, he settled in Washington, DC, where he dedicated the rest of his life to the cause of Freemasonry.

Albert Pike in Masonic regalia

Bevel worked closely with Martin Luther King, Jr., and planned several of the most memorable civil rights initiatives of the 1960s.  But he later became an ally of Lyndon LaRouche and then Louis Farrakhan, and was convicted late in his life for committing incest with his young daughter.

So what’s the connection between Pike and Bevel?

James Bevel and Martin Luther King, Jr.

In 1901, the Scottish Rite Masons – with the blessings of Congress – erected a statue commemorating Pike’s work on behalf of that fraternity on a plot of federal land in Washington, DC.

The dedication of the Pike statue was preceded by a procession of what a Washington newspaper called “probably the most distinguished body of Masons ever assembled in this country,” followed by band music and a speech by the head of the District of Columbia government, who noted one important distinction between Pike’s statue and most of the statues in Your Nation’s Capital: it “honor[s] the victories of peace rather than [those] of war.” 

In 1992, Bevel led a band of protestors who alleged that Pike had been a Ku Klux Klan leader before moving to Washington – an allegation that Pike’s biographer says is false – and that his statue should be taken down.

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The Bevel-led protests were unsuccessful, and nobody paid much attention to the Pike statue for the next 25 years.  

The Albert Pike statue

Demonstrations against statues of more famous Confederates like Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis are getting most of the headlines today.  But despite Pike’s relative obscurity – by which I mean that 99.99% of Americans have no clue who the dude was – his statue hasn’t gone unprotested by the residents of Washington, PC.  (Oops! I meant to say “DC,” not “PC.”)  

And those protests haven’t been ignored by local politicians.  Several D.C. Council members have written to the National Park Service, the agency that’s in charge of the Pike monument, to demand that it be taken away.  “Albert Pike was a proponent of slavery and a brigadier general in the Confederate Army,” their letter said.  “[T]he presence of a statue honoring Albert Pike only serves to perpetuate and incite hate, violence, and oppression.”

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The obvious difference between Pike’s statue and those of Lee, Jackson, and other more prominent Confederate generals is that you would never know from Pike’s statue that he had ever served in the Confederate army.

Pike’s bronze statue, which is about eleven feet tall, depicts him wearing civilian clothing – not a Confederate uniform.  In his left hand, he holds a book – presumably his Morals and Dogma tome.   

A modern edition of Pike’s magnum opus

In addition, the intent of those who erected the Pike statue was to honor his many years of dedicated service to Scottish Rite Freemasonry – not his brief service in the Confederate Army.

The logic of those who believe that we should pull down the statues of Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and other Confederate leaders is that those statues are monuments of white supremacists that were erected by white supremacists and for white supremacists.

That’s not true of the Pike statue.  

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Some people might argue that the Pike statue should come down anyway because Pike did something bad: he fought to defend slavery.

If you start taking down all the statues of men who did bad, you’re going to find yourself sliding down the mother of all slippery slopes.

All those Washington and Jefferson statues are going to have to go, because each of those iconic figures owned hundreds of slaves.  That certainly qualifies as a bad thing.

Should this Jefferson statue
stay, or should it go?

So does committing incest with your daughter.  So if there are any monuments honoring James Bevel for his contributions to the civil rights movement, they need to be hidden away.

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So far, that big-ass statue of Albert Pike – which stands just a few blocks from the U.S. Capitol – is stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive.  (By the way, the National Statuary Hall  in the Capitol – which has two statues chosen by each of the 50 states – includes ten Confederate statues.)

But what will be the ultimate fate of Albert Pike’s statue?  I’m not sure, but I am sure of one thing: it’s fate won’t depend on logic and reason, but on politics.

If it were up to the District of Columbia’s government, it would already be hidden away.  (That’s not surprising given that African-Americans outnumber whites in D.C., where Clinton voters outnumbered Trump voters by an astonishing 90% to 4%.)

  

But the Pike statue was erected on land owned by the federal government. 

As noted above, the National Park Service is the federal entity with jurisdiction over the Pike monument, and that fact alone ensures that it will some time before anything happens to it.

The Virginia State Monument at Gettysburg
is topped by a statue of Robert E. Lee

I say that not because our current President has expressed doubts about the wisdom of tearing down statues depicting Confederate figures, although that  doesn’t hurt Albert Pike's cause.

No, I say that because the National Park Service has an institutional bias in favor of preservation regardless of who is in the White House.  (That agency has already said there is no chance that it will be removing any of the many Confederate statues and monuments located at Gettysburg and the other national military parks it administers.)

And there’s one other thing: no matter who is President, federal agencies almost never move quickly.  They are world-class procrastinators.  

So my money is on the survival of the Albert Pike statue – at least for the time being.

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Of course, it’s always possible that a mob will show up one day, throw a rope around old Albert’s neck, and pull his ass to the ground.

That’s what happened in Durham, North Carolina recently, when a mob wrecked a statue of a generic Confederate soldier that stood outside the old county courthouse.

Mob rule in Durham, NC

Local police stood by and watched the statue being toppled because it stood on county property, not city property, and because county sheriff’s deputies were present at the time.

Sheriff’s deputies stood by and watched the statue being toppled because . . . frankly, I have no idea why they stood by and watched.

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According to the American Heart Association, the tempo of “Stayin’ Alive” is perfect for  performing hands-only CPR:

Here’s “Stayin’ Alive”:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Bee Gees – "Words" (1968)

It's only words

And words are all I have

Actually, words are NOT all that 2 or 3 lines has.

I have pictures as well . . . like this one:

You’re probably wondering why I’m sharing a photo of Old Spice Swagger™ body wash with you.  I guess I've got some ’splaining to do!

During a recent visit with one of my children, I was assigned to use a shower that was equipped with a 32-ounce container of the aforementioned body wash.  I personally use a simple, old-fashioned bar of soap when I shower at home.  But when in Rome, one does what the Romans do . . . n’est-ce pas?

Like many consumer products, Swagger™ is labeled in both English and French – presumably because it is shipped to stores in Canada as well as those in the U.S., and Canadian law – in particular, Quebec law – requires bilingual labeling.

(I see cars with Quebec license plates every so often.  I think the motto on those license plates is Je me souviens or some such saying – I can’t remember.)

In case there was any doubt in your mind concerning the superiority of English to French, just look at this closeup of the Swagger™ container:

The product’s identity statement in English is BODY WASH.  Only two words and eight letters, and you have a clear and unambiguous statement concerning what the product is and what it does.

The product identity statement in French is NETTOYANT POUR LE CORPS.  That’s four words and twenty letters.  And even if you get rid of the superfluous “pour le” – leaving “corps nettoyant” – you’re still using 14 letters when eight is perfectly adequate.

Look a little further down on the label, and you’ll see that this 32-ounce package of Swagger™ is described as MAN SIZED.  (Damn straight!)  Once again, two words and eight letters get the job done.

In French, “man sized” becomes À LA HAUTEUR DE L’HOMME.  A language that requires so many words to communicate the concept of “man sized” is an undisciplined language . . . a language with no self-control . . . a language in desperate need of being whipped into shape!

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The Bee Gees owe a lot to Robert Stigwood, who produced Saturday Night Fever.  The soundtrack album from that 1977 movie – which was the best-selling album in the U.S. for 24 consecutive weeks –  includes six songs by the Bee Gees that reached number one on the Billboard “Hot 100.”  

But before the Bee Gees became the biggest disco act of the seventies, they were a very good pop group in the sixties.

“Words,” which was released in 1968, isn’t my favorite Bee Gees song – I’d rank “New York Mining Disaster 1941,” “Holiday,” “I’ve Got to Get a Message to You,” and “Lonely Days” ahead of it.  But I’ll take “Words” over “Massachusetts,” “I Started a Joke,” and especially “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart,” which is a really poopy song.

Here’s “Words”:

Click below to buy that song from Amazon:

Bee Gees – "Night Fever" (1978)

There is movement all around

There is something goin' down

And I can feel it

In a post that appeared almost exactly one year ago, 2 or 3 lines featured an e-mail written by the coach of my law firm’s coed slow-pitch softball team on the occasion of the team’s season-opening game.  Click here if you missed that post.

That e-mail was a stream-of-consciousness monologue like something out of a Samuel Beckett play.  It barely touched on the softball game itself.  

By the way, I’ve never actually read a Samuel Beckett play, so who knows if that comparison is even remotely accurate.  (Have you ever read a Beckett play?  I didn’t think so.),

Recently our coach circulated an e-mail about this year’s season-opening contest, which he titled “You Can Bet Your Last Money, It's Going To Be a Stone Gas, Honey!  Oh, and We Opened the Season With a Win if You Care.”

(NOTE: The first sentence quoted above was the catchphrase with which the late Don Cornelius closed every episode of Soul Train:)

Here’s the e-mail, which has been scrubbed of all names and other identifying details:

Hard to believe that it’s Opening Day of the softball season again.  Another year of sweating it out in the heat trying to figure out what the “narrative” to each game will be.  (Which, depending on how the game turns out, can be a Herculean task.)  

While the team gathered in the dugout I sat in the stands . . . and just sort of looked around, keeping an eye on my watch since I had a prior engagement to get to at 9PM (which prior engagement I had no intention of missing). 

It was obvious to this writer that our team was going to win this game when the first batter swung away on a ball that went through the infield, and then was flubbed by some bewildered rightfielder.   So the batter just kept running, like a lunatic, until he scored.  

I’ve not seen this batter hit a single that turned into a home run in over eight years.  To me this was an omen, and also the moment I heard the song “Night Fever” by the Bee Gees off in the distance from a car that was passing by which brought back a few memories.  

One in particular was when I was in the second grade and our teacher loved to pass around copies of “Cricket’”magazine, which styles itself as “the New Yorker for children.”  

(NOTE: Cricket was first published in 1973 by the Carus Publishing Company, which publishes 15 different children’s magazines, including Cobblestone and Ladybug.)

The November 1979 issue of "Cricket"

In one issue of “Cricket,” I read that disco was no longer in style – that “disco was dead.”  This caught me as surprise since that was pretty much all we were listening to in Northeast Ohio in the spring of 1981, which was long after the disastrous “Disco Demolition Night” at Comiskey Field in Chicago, which took place on July 12th, 1979. 

Who says baseball is boring?  A radio disc jockey by the name of Steve Dahl (who hated disco music)  got all of Chicago worked up about blowing up disco records in the infield in between games at a White Sox doubleheader.  What resulted was an all-out riot, all because of the fact that a number of people thought that a particular genre of music sucked.  

(NOTE: “Disco Demolition Night” drew a huge crowd of anti-disco fans, thousands of whom ran on to field after Dahl blew up a big pile of disco records.  The explosion and the ensuing riot left the field unplayable.  The White Sox grounds crew spent an hour trying to clean up the mess, but the umpires thought that the playing field was still unsafe and postponed the second game.  The American League president later forfeited the game to the visiting Detroit Tigers.  Here's an ESPN piece about "Disco Demolition Night":)

Why I am thinking about “Cricket” magazine and disco at a time like this?  It’s beyond me.  Let’s focus instead on the subject at hand: Lawyer League Softball.

(NOTE: I’ve deleted the incredibly boring inning-by-inning account of the game, and cut to the chase.)

The final score?  12 to 10 in favor of the good guys. 

After the game I meet up with a buddy down the street (who was a solid four National Bohemian tallboys in) and I mentioned the “Cricket” magazine memory that was triggered by hearing the Bee Gees doing “Night Fever,” in response to which he said (and I quote):

“I do hereby decree 2016 the official summer of disco!  It’s coming back – we’ve waited too long.  Ever since ‘Disco Demolition Night’ in 1979 put the final nail in disco’s coffin, we have suffered through many horrible summers. . . like ‘Cruel Summer’ summer, ‘Macarena’ summer,  ‘Barbie Girl’ summer, ‘La Vida Loca’ summer, ‘Abercrombie and Fitch Girls’ summer,– worst of all – Richard Marx’s ‘Endless Summer Nights’ summer (1988).” 

After this diatribe I walked over to the juke box and played these songs in no particular order: Silver Convention’s “Get Up and Boogie”; Jesse Green’s  “Nice and Slow”; Olivia Newton-John’s “Xanadu,” and “More More More,” by Andrea True Connection. 

[NOTE:  Andrea True was a porn star before she was a disco singer.  Click here to read what 2 or 3 lines had to say about “More, More, More” and Andrea True.]

The summer of softball and disco starts today.  So bust out your roller skates and tube socks because I’m ALL IN!!!!

You can bet your last money, it’s going to be a stone gas, honey,

Signed, Raoul Duke

(NOTE: “Raoul Duke” was the name given to the antihero of Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.  Duke was clearly based on Thompson himself.)

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“Night Fever,” which was released in 1978 on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack album, was the third of six consecutive #1 hits for the Bee Gees.  Only the Beatles have had as many consecutive #1 singles.

Here’s the music video for “Night Fever,” which was filmed in 1978 but not released until 2004:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Bee Gees – "Holiday" (1967)

Millions of eyes can see

Yet why am I so blind?

A couple of weekends ago, I went to my hometown (Joplin, Missouri) for my high-school reunion.  

My father was celebrating his 90th birthday the following weekend, and I thought it was important for me to be in Joplin for that as well.

I could have flown back to my home (Washington, DC) on the Monday after the reunion and returned to Joplin the following Friday.  But it takes so long so travel back and forth that it hardly seemed worth it.  So I decided to stay in Missouri and take a brief holiday instead.

My plan was to spend the weekdays between my two Joplin weekends seeing old friends, visiting a few of the numerous wineries and breweries in central Missouri, and riding parts of the Katy Trail, a bike trail that follows the former Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad right of way.  At 240 miles from end to end, the Katy Trail is the longest rail trail in the United States.

The day after the reunion was over, I headed east towards St. Louis on Interstate 44, which roughly parallels old Route 66.    

I saw a number of billboards on I-44 inviting travelers to visit Uranus, Missouri, which is supposedly the home of the Uranus Fudge Factory.  (Its slogan: "The Best Fudge Comes From Uranus.")

(I don't know about you, but I think the folks in Uranus are pulling our collective pud.)

I didn't stop in Uranus, but I did stop at a Route 66-themed rest stop east of Springfield.  

I was planning to meet several of my high-school friends in St. Louis for dinner that night.  But first I stopped in nearby St. Charles (Missouri's first capital city) to rent a bike and spend a couple of hours riding the eastern part of the Katy Trail.

The old St. Charles train station

I rented my bike just across the street from Frontier Park, where William Clark, Meriweather Lewis, and 40 other brave souls camped before embarking on their famous expedition up the Missouri River in May 1804.  

Clark had one hell of a big hat:

(You'll be hearing much more about Lewis and Clark in a future 2 or 3 lines.)

After my ride, I headed to the nearby Trailhead Brewing Company for a bargain pint:

That's right – three bucks (including tax)

Fortunately, the rental car I had picked up at the Kansas City airport came equipped with a Sirius/XM satellite radio.  I drove about 1300 miles during my nine-day Missouri sojourn, and the satellite radio was my only companion for most of those miles.

The Bee Gees are best known for the songs they contributed to the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack.  But before they became a disco act, they were a somewhat Beatles-ish pop group, with hits like "To Love Somebody," "I've Gotta Get a Message to You," and "I Started a Joke."

The Bee Gees (circa 1967)

Here's "Holiday," which made it to #16 on the Billboard "Hot 100" in 1967:

(Wow – those lyrics don't make any sense at all, do they?)

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: