Fortunes -- "You've Got Your Troubles" (1965)

You need some sympathy?

Well, so do I

You've got your troubles, I've got mine

So you've think you've got problems, huh?  Just remember what the famous self-help author, Tony Robbins said:  "Every problem is a gift.  Without problems we would not grow."

Tony Robbins

Feeling a little better now?  Here's a quote for you from motivational speaker Dr. Steve Maraboli: "The universe is so well balanced that the mere fact that you have a problem also serves as a sign that there is a solution."

That's very comforting, isn't it?  Here's one more quote, from children's author Wendelin Van Draanen:  "Sometimes I get so caught up in my own problems that I forget how amazing the world is." 

I'm guessing you're feeling pretty damn good about things now.  However, if you're still feeling anxious about your problems, there are about a million more pearls of wisdom like these online.  

But please don't expect me to find them for you -- you're on your own, boys and girls.  To quote today's featured song, "Forgive me if I seem unkind -- you've got your troubles, I've got mine."

Perhaps I can make my point more clearly by telling a story.

Many years ago, popular singer Eddie Fisher was a guest on the television show, This Is Show Business.  

Fisher did OK with the ladies.  He had three wives, all of whom were major babes: Debbie Reynolds, Elizabeth Taylor, and Connie Stevens.

Liz, Eddie, and Debbie

(I'm guessing that he also had a few extracurricular dalliances, if you catch my drift.)

But he told the show's panel of regulars that some women his own age refused to date him because he was so young-looking.  (Poor guy!)

George S. Kaufman

One of the panelists on This Is Show Business was the Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist, George S. Kaufman, who was not all that sympathetic to Mr. Fisher's "problem."  Here's how he responded to Fisher's complaint:

"Mr. Fisher, on Mount Wilson there is a telescope that can magnify the most distant stars up to twenty-four times the magnification of any previous telescope.  This remarkable instrument was unsurpassed in the world of astronomy until the construction of the Mount Palomar telescope, an even more remarkable instrument of magnification.  Owing to advances and improvements in optical technology, it is capable of magnifying the stars to four times the magnification and resolution of the Mount Wilson telescope.  Mr. Fisher, if you could somehow put the Mount Wilson telescope inside the Mount Palomar telescope, you still wouldn't be able to detect my interest in your problem."

Mr. Kaufman sort of took the long way around the barn to make his point, but I know exactly what he meant.  I feel pretty much the same way about Eddie Fisher's problems, except when I say "Eddie Fisher's problems," I really mean "your problems and everyone else's problems except my own."

Like this guy, for example, who ran aground on Lake Needwood in a paddleboat today.  Sucks to be him, but his predicament provided me with a humorous photo for 2 or 3 lines.  It's an ill wind, etc.

Speaking of ill winds . . .

About a year ago, those of us who live in the Washington, DC, area learned a new word: derecho, which is defined as a long-lived, straight-line wind storm that can carry hurricanic or tornadic force and deliver torrential rains and flash flooding.  

One of the most powerful and destructive derechos in North American history got started as a relatively small thunderstorm cell in central Iowa on the morning of June 29, 2012.  It became a derecho as it tracked eastward into Indiana around noon.  It moved across Indiana and Ohio at about 60 mph, hitting Columbus around 5 pm.  The storm continued to expand after it crossed the Appalachians, hitting the Baltimore-Washington area with winds as high as 87 mph.



In Maryland, 1.6 million customers (including me) lost power.  I spent most of the weekend cleaning up the tree limbs that had come crashing down, smashing our patio table and tearing up our gutters.

This was a common sight in our neighborhood

Almost a year to the day later, we got nailed again.  

We have a bunch of big-ass trees in our backyard, as this photo shows.  We didn't lose any of these bad boys, but some pretty big pieces of them came down as a result of the storm.

My son and I performed triage in our backyard the next morning, but barely made a dent in the tree debris covering our backyard and garden.  I was prepared to do battle with all those limbs over the weekend, but my wife hired one of the landscapers who was roaming through the neighborhood, and he cleaned up the mess for us:

A couple of days later, there were cut-up trees all over the neighborhood:

Our primary loss was a redbud tree that I had planted soon after we moved into the house.  I assumed there was nothing to do but cut it down, but the landscaper assured me it would survive -- although it would probably never look the same.

Here's what left of that tree:

A couple of weeks after the storm, there are some tiny leaves starting to grow, but you have to look very close to see them:

"You've Got Your Troubles" was a top ten hit for the Fortunes in the United States and the UK in 1965.  The song was written by Roger Greenaway and Roger Cook, who also wrote "Long Cool  Woman in a Black Dress" for the Hollies and "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing," a hit single that was originally a Coca-Cola jingle.  

The Fortunes didn't do that jingle, but did record another famous Coke jingle, "It's the Real Thing":

The Fortunes were managed by Reginald Calvert, who also owned a pirate radio station called Radio City, which was housed in some abandoned World War II forts that stood in the Thames estuary.

The Maunsell forts, home of Radio City

The owner of a rival pirate station, Major Oliver Smedley, hired a group of henchmen to steal Radio City's transmitter crystals.  When Calvert went to his rival's home on June 21, 1966, to demand the return of the crystals, he and Smedley began to fight.  Smedley killed Calvert with a shotgun, but claimed self-defense and was acquitted at trial.  

Click here to read a fascinating history of Radio City.

Here's "You've Got Your Troubles":

Click here to buy the song from Amazon:

Grateful Dead -- "U. S. Blues" (1974)

Red and white, blue suede shoes

I'm Uncle Sam, how do you do?

Today, 2 or 3 lines celebrates the Fourth of July – one day ex post facto, thanks to the retards and spazzes at Comcast, who are my home internet service provider.

(Wow, I haven't used those words since eighth grade.  I know that is really politically incorrect stuff, but don't blame me – blame Comcast!  They drove me to it!)

Actually, Comcast became my internet service non-provider beginning last Friday, when a fast-moving derecho storm bitch-slapped the Washington, DC area.  Unlike at least one million people in the DMV (the District of Columbia, Maryland, and northern Virginia), I and the other good people in my neighborhood never lost electricity.  But that didn't stop Comcast from blaming the local electric utility for our service outage.  

It's funny that no one in our 'hood who had Verizon internet/cable TV lost service for even a minute.  Maybe Verizon doesn't use electricity – maybe their servers and routers and whatnot run on natural gas, or solar power, or old cooking grease.

I second that emotion

Or maybe the people at Comcast are retards and spazzes.  That's where I'm placing my bet.

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When I was a senior in college, I remember my girlfriend asking me why we had never been "into" the Grateful Dead.  (We were at a party at the time, and the host was playing a Grateful Dead song, and we probably somewhat impaired – which is almost a necessary condition to being into the Dead.)  She was almost as big a music fan as I was, but I don't think either of us owned a single one of their albums.

Chick magnet Jerry Garcia (circa 1974)

I did buy a Jerry Garcia solo album (Garcia) when I was in college on the strength of a couple of tracks I had heard on the radio, but I'm not sure I was even aware that Jerry Garcia was in the Grateful Dead.  (Hey, we didn't have the internet back then.)

I still have never listened to an entire Grateful Dead album straight through, and I'm not conversant with very much of their prolific recorded oeuvre.  But that won't stop me from expressing authoritative-sounding opinions about their body of work.

My impression was then (and remains today) that the Grateful Dead produced a few really good songs, but that life is too short to listen to much of their music.

I would say the same thing about Bruce Springsteen and Elton John – and Paul McCartney and John Lennon as solo artists.  Each of them produced a little gold but a lot more dross.  I don't think any of them has produced a CD's worth of worthwhile music.

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Along with "Bertha," "Truckin'," "Casey Jones," and a few others, "U. S. Blues" is a Grateful Dead keeper.  The song (which was the first track on the group's seventh studio album, From the Mars Hotel) is peppier than the usual Grateful Dead dirge -- the honky-tonk piano makes all the difference -- and the lyrics are clever and funny and not too political.  

The song's lyrics really remind me of rap lyrics – it's more about the way the words sound and fit together than their meaning:

Gimme five

I'm still alive

Ain't no luck

I learned to duck

The singer seems to be some kind of hustler, but he's a charming, lovable hustler – think Professor Harold Hill in The Music Man – and he's very, very cool under pressure:

Check my pulse

It don't change

Stays seventy-two

Come shine or rain

Saying "shine or rain" instead of the more familiar "rain or shine" to make the line rhyme is a very hip-hop thing to do – the rhyme is paramount, and inverting the usual word order gets your audience's attention.  (It's certainly true to say that the Grateful Dead's pulse "don't change" – it may get up to 72 in this song, but it's usually much lower than that.  Much of the time, it's barely perceptible.)

Wave the flag

Pop the bag

Rock the boat

Skin the goat

Now we're really rolling – that verse is 100% sound and . . . not fury, exactly . . . but it sure signifies nothing.  (Which is OK with me.)

I'm Uncle Sam

That's who I am

I hear a hint of Popeye's "I yam what I yam, and that's what I yam" in that line.

Shake the hand

That shook the hand

Of P. T. Barnum

And Charlie Chan

P. T. Barnum began his career as a showman in 1835, when he bought and put on display a slave who claimed to be 161 years old (and George Washington's nurse to boot).  He went on to exhibit General Tom Thumb (a midget who was less than three feet tall) and Chang and Eng, the original Siamese (conjoined) twins, and organized "The Greatest Show on Earth."

P. T. Barnum with Tom Thumb

Given Barnum's history as a mountebank and his utter contempt for the common man – his famous catchphrase was "There's a sucker born every minute" – it's no surprise that he went into politics, becoming mayor of Bridgeport, Connecticut, and then entering the Connecticut legislature.  

I'll drink your health

Share your wealth

Run your life

Steal your wife

Of course he'll drink your health – especially if you're picking up the tab – because there's no better way to make a sucker out of you than by getting you drunk.

And of course he'll share your wealth – Uncle Sam shares your wealth every time you get a paycheck, but especially on April 15.

(Don't worry if he steals your wife.  If she's anything like most of the wives I know, he'll probably insist on giving her back to you very soon.)

We're all confused

What's to lose?

Wave that flag

Wave it wide and high

I hope none of you find it offensive that this song portrays Uncle Sam as a bit of a con man.   As the saying goes, patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.

That certainly doesn't mean all patriots are scoundrels, of course.  But it does mean that scoundrels often exploit patriotism – or religion, or economics, or science – so they can pull the wool over your eyes.  When all else fails, wave that flag!

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The Grateful Dead has to have been one of the most overrated live bands in history.  

Click here to see a 1978 performance of "U. S. Blues" at Cameron Indoor Stadium at Duke University.  It was included on a live Dead album – an official one, not a bootleg – so the group must have thought that performance was a particularly good one.  Plus it appears to be the closing song of that show, so you would think the boys would have pulled out all the stops.

Despite all that, this is a pretty ho-hum rendition of the song.  Jerry Garcia keeps forgetting to sing into the microphone, and the band reduces the volume when they get to the chorus instead of belting it out – just the opposite of what they should have done.  (The verses are sung by Garcia, but the the backup singers join in for the chorus – usually, more voices equal more volume, but not here.)  

I'm not the first person to come to this conclusion: the popularity of the Grateful Dead as a live band can only be explained by the fact that about 90% of their typical audience was as high as a kite.  (Have you heard the old joke about the Dead?  What does a Deadhead say when the drugs wear off?  "This music sucks!")

Click here to listen to "U. S. Blues."  (The animated part of this video was produced by the U. S. Information Agency around the time of the Bicentennial, and it's very trippy – it will remind you a little of Yellow Submarine, but patriotic.)

Click here to buy "U. S. Blues" from Amazon.