Sonic Youth -- "Shoot" (1992)

I won't be asking your permission to leave

I won't be asking not to have this baby please

Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon (the founders of Sonic Youth) have been married since 1984.  But a lot of Gordon's songs -- including this one -- don't sound like they were written by a happily married woman.  

I like Gordon's singing, but there are times -- "Shoot" is an example -- when there is only a distant relationship between the key in which the band is playing and the key in which she is singing.  (I don't think this is by accident.)

Kim Gordon

I would have loved to get up into the mountains when I was in Denver last month, but I was occupied by business until about 5 p.m. each day I was there.  That limited how far away from my hotel I could drive and still have time for a nice long hike.  

After hiking along the High Line Canal my first two evenings in Denver, I decided to get out of the city my third day there.  I drove about 30 miles west to Matthews/Winters Park, which covers about 1000 acres in Jefferson County, Colorado, just south of Golden (the home of Coors beer).

The trail I decided to hike there -- the "Red Rocks Trail" had plenty of ups and downs to provide a good workout, especially given that I was never below 6000 feet.

I started at F1 on this map and followed the Red Rocks Trail to F6.  I covered about 5 miles in a little less than two hours.

Near the beginning of the trail, there's a small pioneer cemetery:

The outbound part of the hike was mostly uphill:

There were some nice views of red rock formations:

There were plenty of wildflowers, of course, like this blanket flower (Gaillardia aristata):

There will be plenty of Colorado wildflower photos for you to enjoy a little later.

Here's "Shoot" -- and here's a link to the complete lyrics for this song.  I'd suggest you follow along as you listen to the music:

Here's a link you can use to order this song from Amazon:

Sonic Youth -- "100%" (1992)

But I've been around the world a million times

And all you men are slime

I admit it. Sonic Youth's music was an odd accompaniment for hiking on a perfect June day in Colorado.  

Colorado wild
sunflower

Sonic Youth was formed in 1981 by Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon, who got married in 1984 and are still married today.  The band has always been based in New York City.  

They started out as a post-punk "noise rock" group -- their early music was heavy on dissonance and guitar feedback.  (Actually, their later music is pretty heavy on dissonance and feedback as well, but the early music really made your ears bleed.)

By 1990, their music had become marginally more accessible, although it was still located on the experimental, avant-garde portion of the alt rock/indie rock spectrum.   

Thurston and Kim

Sonic Youth's natural habitat is a dark, smoke-filled, spilled-beer-smelling basement club somewhere in lower Manhattan.

It's hard to visualize them performing live on a balmy summer evening at an outdoor venue like Red Rocks Amphitheater, which is nestled in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains just west of Denver and which was visible from one of the trails I hiked while in Denver recently on business.  

Red Rocks Amphitheater (near Denver, CO)

But when I was programming my trusty iPod for that Denver trip, I realized I hadn't listened to any Sonic Youth music in some time.  (I have nine of their CDs -- including the somewhat tongue-in-cheek album they released under the name Ciccone Youth.  Ciccone is Madonna's real last name, of course.)  So I loaded  up the iPod with five of their CDs and a bunch of hip-hop and headed for the airport.

Canal milepost

When I arrived at my hotel, I asked if there was a park with trails nearby.

I hit the jackpot -- I was only a couple of blocks away from a 60-mile-long hiking/biking trail that followed the course of the High Line Canal, an irrigation canal that was dug in the 1880's.  

High Line Canal

The canal is not wide or deep enough for boat traffic.  It averages 30 feet in width (but didn't look that wide to me) and only 2 feet deep.

But the trail that paralleled it was a perfect place to get some exercise after my business for the day was concluded.

You would think that a paved hiking trail through a busy residential/commercial neighborhood in a major metropolitan area would be a pretty tame place to take a walk.  The scariest things I expected to encounter when I started my walk were mosquitos, yappy little dogs, and sweaty, unattractive people.

Boy, was I wrong.  Check out this sign, which was right there on the trail:

"If attacked, fight back" -- are you kidding me?

"100%" was the first song I heard when I hit the canal trail because it is the first track on Sonic Youth's 1992 album, Dirty -- which was alphabetically the first of the Sonic Youth albums on my iPod.

Either Thurston Moore or Kim Gordon is the lead vocalist on most Sonic Youth songs.  The lyrics to "100%" were written by Gordon but sung by Moore.  (The man-hating lines quoted above would sound very natural coming from Gordon -- she's got a mouth on her, as you will see).

Here's the "100%" music video, which was directed by our old friend (and skateboarding enthusiast) Spike Jonze -- it features actor Jason Lee when he was just a teenager:

Here's a link you can use to order "100%" from Amazon:

Beastie Boys -- "Hey Ladies" (1989)

Words are flowing out 
Just like the Grand Canyon
And I'm always out looking 
For a female companion


Those lines could apply to any number of rap artists, who are rarely at a loss for words and who are usually in pursuit of the fairer sex.  But there's no one they describe better than the rappers who wrote them -- the Beastie Boys.

You "Hip Hop 101" students are fortunate indeed today.  I must admit that I am largely unacquainted with Paul's Boutique, the Beastie Boys album that "Hey Ladies" appears on.  But today's guest lecturer (we'll call her Professor "Linda," because that is her name) did her thesis on this seminal rap classic.

"Paul's Boutique" cover

A Beastie Boys song may seem like an odd choice for a middle-aged woman from middle America to write about, but "they" say women are always attracted to men with a sense of humor.  This band of merry pranksters from Brooklyn certainly has that going for them.

[Editor's note:  I feel bad to be interrupting Professor Linda after just one paragraph, but I just had to comment on that "middle-aged woman" comment.  I can't tell you how relieved I was to learn that Professor Linda was middle-aged.  I'm only about 6 months older than she is, so I must be middle-aged, too.  What a relief!  That might not sound like a big deal to some of you, but it's much better than the alternative.]  

You were introduced to the Beastie Boys a few months ago, when your regular "Hip Hop 101" professor lectured on "(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party), so I will skip the usual biographical details."  I will simply note that the three Beasties -- Michael Diamond ("Mike D"), Adam Yauch ("MCA"), and Adam Horowitz ("Ad-Rock") -- have been together since 1982, making them probably the longest-lived hip-hop act in the world.

Paul's Boutique, their second album, was released in 1989, three years after their hugely successful Licensed To Ill.  Brimming over with samples, Paul's Boutique is now considered to be one of their best and most innovative albums. 

"Hey Ladies," the most successful single from the album, has the distinction of being the first single in history to chart in the Top 20 of both the Billboard "Hot Rap Singles" and "Modern Rock Tracks" charts.

Paul's Boutique wasn't nearly as popular with album-buying masses as the first Beastie Boys album.  Some thought it was too sophisticated compared to the raucous Licensed To Ill. 

Too sophisticated?  Had those people ever listened to it?!  The rhymes are unquestionably clever, but there's some pretty sophomoric stuff in here:

I met a little cutie
And she was all hopped up on zootie 

I liked the little cutie
But I kicked her in the bootie.

(By the way, a "zootie" is a joint laced with crack.)

There are numerous references to people and characters from the 1970 -- Sadaharu Oh (who hit 868 home runs while playing professional baseball in  Japan), game show host Chuck Woolery, and Chachi from "Happy Days."

I've got to give credit where credit is due.  There are a lot of words in this song with no repetition of verses and it took a great deal of thought and effort to string together that many words and come up with a reasonably cohesive and coherent lyric.

I'm not sure I ever heard the song on the radio, but the first time I saw the video, I was hooked.  It's a series of vignettes with mainly 70's themes.  Mike D acts out his version of Saturday Night Fever. There's also a nod to "blaxploitation" films of that era (like Shaft and Super Fly).  

The disco theme is carried out through the entire video, with a mariachi band thrown in for added visual interest.  For me, one of the best parts of the video is the brilliant use of cowbell by various characters.

There are at least 16 samples used in the song.  Some you'll quickly recognize, while others are more obscure.  The main musical sample is from "Machine Gun" by the Commodores.  James Brown is sampled at least twice.  At around 3:28 in the video, you'll hear "uh, good God" from Edwin Starr's "War."  And if you were paying attention during a previous "Hip Hop 101" class, you'll remember and recognize our old friend, Afrika Bambaata.  (You weren't expecting a pop quiz, were you?)

One sample in particular is worthy of special mention -- the "She thinks she's the passionate one" line from "Ballroom Blitz" (at about 0:46 in the Sweet video below, and at 3:11 of the Beastie Boys video that comes a little later).  That song was released in 1973 by the English glam rock band Sweet.  It's been covered by at least 30 other artists and was used in Wayne's World as well as the video games Rock Band and Guitar Hero.



"Ballroom Blitz" seems to me to be sort of a hybrid; it goes along at the manic pace of of a punk song, but singer Brian Connolly's increasingly empassioned screeching in the choruses borders on bad English cabaret music.  Considering that glam rock was a bit of a tongue-in-cheek genre anyway -- sorry to burst the bubble of any of you who take Queen seriously -- maybe that was the intent.  In any case, it's a great song and the sample from it was perfect for "Hey Ladies."

If you're looking for depth of feeling or philosophical introspection, early Beastie Boys is not going to be your source.  This was way before Adam Yauch discovered the Dalai Lama and Buddhist enlightenment.  But if you're in the mood for a hilarious goof on the 70's disco era and some pretty darn good beats and rhymes, click "play" and enjoy.

2 or 3 lines is grateful to Professor Linda for teaching today's class.  As you might have guessed, Professor Linda is the same person as Linda, the Chief Executive Senior Contributing Editor, or "C.E.S.C.E."  But because I am always forgetting that acronym, I have decided to call Linda our "A.B.C.X.Y.Z." -- not because it stands for anything, but because I know I will be able to remember it.

One final note:  2 or 3 lines set a new high in visits and page views last month largely because I added a rather random shot of ex-model Paulina Porzikova-Ocasek to my post on the J. Geils Band's "Centerfold."

That explains why this photo of Kim Kardashian appears here:

Kim Kardashian

Hey, it's your own fault.  If you people clicked on my ads and ordered from Amazon through the search box that appears on the right-hand side of every 2 or 3 lines post, I wouldn't have to stoop to cheap tricks like this to get my click numbers up.

Here's "Hey Ladies":

Here's a link you can use to buy "Hey Ladies" from Amazon.  (Remember -- order stuff through 2 or 3 lines or you'll be seeing more of Kim Kardashian's backside!)

10cc -- "Silly Love" (1974)

Make up your own rhyme

Don't rely on mine

'Cause it's . . . s-s-s-s-s-s-silly!

I bought four 10cc albums when I was in law school.  Think about that – four 10cc albums!

Obviously, I was not in my right mind – the pressure, the boredom, the horrible food and living conditions and climate, the assh*les that surrounded me in the law school dorm where I lived . . . it was a miracle that the craziest thing I did was buy four 10cc albums.

My law school dormitory

In trying to decide what 10cc song to feature in this "Records I Listened To in Law School" post, I sampled nearly all the songs on those albums.  OMG, what a bunch of crap!  (My apologies to the law students who lived on the first floor of good ol' Shaw Hall with me – I think I played those albums a lot.)

To be fair, not all of it is crap – there were a few reasonably good songs on each LP.  But even the good songs were often very uneven, consisting of two or three different song fragments unnaturally combined into a single song that was sometimes less than the sum of its parts.

10cc

As I've noted, I had (have?) a weakness for silly, tongue-in-cheek rock songs full of puns and odd rhymes and pseudo-intellectual nonsense.  Think Sparks . . . or City Boy . . . but most of all, think 10cc.  (It's surprising that I wasn't a big Queen fan, too, but I did have some standards.)  Let's face it – part of the band's appeal to me was probably the story behind their name.

Occasionally, 10cc played it straight instead of camping it up.  When they did, they produced sappy, girly love songs that made Chicago sound a little rough around the edges.  

By far the worst songs on the albums I own – "I'm Not in Love" and "The Things We Do for Love" – fit in that category.  Of course, they were the band's two biggest singles in the U.S. because most people have no taste!  I thought they were awful songs then, and they haven't gotten one bit better over the past 35 years.

(I'm sorry if you've always just adored those songs, and I've hurt your feelings.  But give me a break . . . those songs blow . . . I refuse to provide a spoonful of sugar to make that medicine go down more easily.)

*     *     *     *     *

Before I chose "Silly Love" to feature in this post, I thought about using "The Worst Band in the World."  I also considered "The Second Sitting for the Last Supper," and "Life Is a Minestrone" and "Une Nuit á Paris" and "Art for Art's Sake" and "Honeymoon With B Troop" and "I Bought a Flat Guitar Tutor."

(Look it up, folks – those are all real 10cc songs.  Some of them are good, but most of them are just a waste of time.)

"Silly Love" was originally released in 1974 on the band's second album, Sheet Music.  I never owned that album, but I did own a compilation album titled 100cc: The Greatest Hits of 10cc, which features 10 songs (including "Silly Love") chosen from the band's first two albums.  (I'm sure you can do the math.)

I was inspired to buy that compilation album because I was absolutely besotted with 10cc's third studio album, The Original Soundtrack.  The cover to that album features a detailed black-and-white drawing of a "Moviola" film editing machine, and most of the songs on the album are movie-related.  I plan to post about a couple of those songs in the future, so I won't get into the lyrics now.

*     *     *     *     *

"Silly Love" is a pretty silly song (in both senses of that word).  But it does feature some kick-ass guitar playing, and the words – which poke fun at traditional love-song lyrics and include some outrageous puns and other wordplay – are pretty clever. 

For example:

Oooooh, you know the art of conversation

Must be dying

Oooooh, when a romance depends on

Clichés and toupées and "threepées"

(That last word is a play on "toupées," of course.) 

Later there are some lines that allude to the lyrics of "By the Light of the Silvery Moon" ("To my honey I'll croon love's tune/Honey moon, keep a-shinin' in June"), which Bing Crosby did, in fact, record:

We're up to here with moonin' and June-in'

If you want to sound sincere

Don't rely on Crosby's croonin'

Take a little time

Make up your own rhyme!

Click here to listen to "Silly Love."

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros -- "Home" (2009)

Alabama, Arkansas,

I do love my ma and pa,

Not the way that I do love you.

Holy Moly, me oh my,

You're the apple of my eye,

Girl, I've never loved one like you

I'm posting about this song because it has whistling.  (Go to the embedded music video at the end of the post and listen to it -- it's OK, I 'll wait.  Hear that whistling right at the beginning?)

You may not appreciate this, but I don't just write these posts off the top of my head.  I do a lot of research first.   

When I was researching my J. Geils Band's "Centerfold" post a few months ago, I came across the All Whistling Songs blog.

As the title suggests, All Whistling Songs is all about songs that feature whistling.  It debuted in July 2009, and has posts about some 270 different songs, including 113 from the US, 41 from the UK, 25 from Brazil (which is where the creator of the blog resides), and one each from Finland, Moldova, Nepal, and Norway (among others).

The man behind All Whistling Songs is Gustavo de Souza, a 24-year-old government worker from São Paulo.

Gustavo provided me with this brief bio:

I'm not married, I live alone.  I'm not a musician, nor play any instruments.

I only have this blog.  If I make another in the future, it won't be about music.

I drink a lot.

That's it! 

I wanted to know more, and I bet you do, too.  

São Paulo

So I e-mailed Gustavo some questions, and got these responses, which I am posting pretty much verbatim.  (And before you laugh at Gustavo's occasionally shaky command of English, let me ask you a question:  how good is your Portuguese?)

Q:  Why did you decide to write about only songs with whistling?

A:  I started to write about songs with whistling because I realized that in the whole internet (!) there wasn't anything like that.  There are only top 10 lists or one page in this or that forum that has numerous replies with names of a few of these songs (which are one of my main sources, by the way).  My thoughts were that it would exist a “compendium” about songs with whistling — one place where everyone could go to look for them (that disco song from 80's that someone cannot remember the name, that fresh new indie one that was played in some commercial on TV) and find out any sort of information about the song (for instance, its meaning, when it was released, why and even who whistles).  Later, I discovered that there was one website that did the job I do now, “The Online Guide to Whistling Records,” but it is offline since 2008.

Q:  What kind of comments do you get from your readers?  Have you ever been contacted by any of the performers you write about?

A:  Well, because it's not a blog about personal views or even about music criticism, the few people who comment usually give me tips of songs that haven't yet been posted or solely thank me for doing it.  But there is the other hand: I have been contacted by two musicians.  The first time occurred when I was going to post about “Tea Break” by the obscure duo called Omo.  The thing was that I couldn't find its lyrics, so I decided to send them an email.  Hours later they answered . . . it amazed me!  The latest (because of the same lack) was the Brazilian folk singer Nelo Johann, whose whistling song had appeared in an national independent film.

Q:  Are you a good whistler yourself?

A:  No!  I'm not a good whistler!  In fact, I envy the good whistlers!  HAHAHA.  Because I'm a huge fan of whistling!  Only for you to sense it, there is a passage in “The Catcher in the Rye” where Holden Caulfield says that he envies his roommate because he could whistle charmingly and confidently.  I have the exact feeling!  Some of my friends have fun with the idea that I only maintain the whistling blog because I can't whistle very well.  I'm still struggling with this idea.

Q:  Is there anything you can say about the types of songs or types of performers that include whistling?  For example, it is most common among American or non-American songs?  Old songs or new songs?  Certain types of songs?

A:  I think pop bands/performers are the ones who most “abuse” of whistlings.  And when I say “pop,” I mean pop rock, pop indie, techno pop, etc.  But it can only be because pop music is more embracing and notorious than others less known styles.  And I go with the pop wave: I prefer to post about “The Lazy Song” by Bruno Mars than about some unknown old jazz group from Eastern Europe (much more people will want to know about the first example of whistling song).  In fact, there are so many bands and artists with at least one song with whistling in their discography that we can figure out that making use of this device is a commonplace in music.  Do you know that Elvis Presley whistled in one song of his first album? Michael Jackson, Jay-Z, The Clash, Björk, Helloween and even the Simpsons also recorded sometime some whistling song!  One interesting thing is that hip hop performers predominantly use to do wolf whistles.

Q:  What are the most well-known songs to feature whistling?  What are your favorite songs that feature whistling?

A:  Hmmm . . . so it's my turn to do my top 10 list?  LOL.  Okay, there is goes:

"Jealous Guy,"  John Lennon

"MX Missiles," Andrew Bird

"After It All,"  Cat Power

"One in a Million," Guns 'n' Roses

"Punky's Dilemma," Simon & Garfunkel

"Home," Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros

"Chicken Pox," I'm From Barcelona

"Esotérico," Gilberto Gil

"Dream River," The Mavericks

"Mellow Doubt," Teenage Fanclub 

The most well-known songs to feature whistling are these ones which are already established in our culture, I think:

"Patience," Guns 'n' Roses

"Wind of Change," Scorpions

"Don't Worry, Be Happy," Bob McFerrin

"Me and Julio Down By Schoolyard," Paul Simon

"Dream a Little Dream of Me," Mamas and the Papas

"The Stranger," Billy Joel

"(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay," Otis Redding

  

And from movies:

"Twisted Nerve," Bernard Herrmann

"The Good, the Bad and the Ugly," Ennio Morricone

"Always Look On The Bright Side of Life," Monty Python (from "Life of Brian")

Bravo, Gustavo!  Well done, my 24-year-old, single, alcoholic Brazilian friend!

I want all of you to click on this link and visit All Whistling Songs at least once.  You might discover a whistling song you really, really like.  More importantly, if enough of you do this, it will prove to Gustavo (who will no doubt tell all his Brazilian friends) that 2 or 3 lines is a force to be reckoned with in the online world!

The oldest whistling song that is featured on Gustavo's blog is from 1905 and is titled "The Whistler and His Dog."  If you are as old as me, you might remember it because Buckwheat lipsynched (whistle-synched?) to it on "The Little Rascals."

Speaking of "The Little Rascals," I wish I had a watermelon.  And I wish Cotton was a monkey.

The Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros song featured in this post, which was released on the "Up From Below" album in 2009, is one of the newer songs featured on All Whistling Songs.  

Before Gustavo's e-mail, I have never heard of this band or this song.  It's an appealing little ditty, and I'm a sucker for oddball songs that mention Arkansas, like "What'd I Say" by Ray Charles:  

Tell your mama

Tell your pa

I'm gonna send you back to Arkansas

"Up From Below"

Here's what Wikipedia has to say about Alex Ebert, the main creative force behind Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros.  (You can't make this stuff up, folks.)

After years of the Los Angeles party lifestyle and subsequent drug addiction, Ebert wanted to make a change.  He broke up with his then-girlfriend, moved out of his house, and did a couple of stints in rehab.  He spent a year sleeping on a blow-up mattress in a tiny apartment, disconnected from the world.  This time alone left him to contemplate Edward Sharpe, his alter ego.  

“I don’t want to put too much weight on it, because in some ways it’s just a name that I came up with.  But I guess if I look deeper, I do feel like I had lost my identity in general.  I really didn’t know what was going on or who I was anymore.  Adopting another name helped me open up an avenue to get back.”  Ebert developed Sharpe into a messianic figure, saying "He was sent down to Earth to kinda heal and save mankind, but he kept getting distracted by girls and falling in love."

Alex Ebert and Jade Castrinos

One such girl was the singer Jade Castrinos, whom he saw sitting on an outdoor bench and immediately knew he needed to have a relationship with her. Their resultant affair formed the seeds of what would become Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes.  They started writing music together, and became a part of the art and music collective The Masses, which was partially started by some seed money from the late Heath Ledger.  While their relationship did not last, the group took off in a big way, and their group soon swelled to more than 10 members, some of whom had been Alex's friends since he was young. By the summer of 2009, they were touring the country.

Here's the official music video for "Home":

Click here to buy this song from Amazon:

Amy Winehouse -- "Stronger Than Me" (2003)

You should be stronger than me

You been here seven years longer than me . . .

Why'd you always put me in control? 

Amy Winehouse joined "The 27 Club" yesterday.  

Amy Winehouse

"The 27 Club" (or "Club 27") is the name that has been given to the group of rock/pop musicians who died at age 27.  The most famous members of "Club 27" are Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones (drowned in a swimming pool), Jimi Hendrix (asphyxiated on his own vomit after consuming sleeping pills with wine), Janis Joplin (heroin overdose), Jim Morrison ("heart failure"), and Kurt Cobain (suicide with a shotgun).  

There have been numerous stories in the last couple of years about Winehouse showing up impaired and incoherent for concerts.

In June of this year, she kicked off a European tour in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia.  It was widely reported that she was so loaded when she took the stage that forget the lyrics to the songs she attempted to sing, the name of the city she was in ("Hello, Athens" was her greeting to the audience), and the names of her band members.  A few days later, the remainder of the tour was cancelled. 

Click here to view a "Good Morning, America" piece on the Belgrade disaster.

Until I heard the news about Winehouse's death, I don't think I had ever heard one of her songs.  She was just a cliche to me -- a pop star who was a major hot mess, covered with tattoos, and a veteran of rehab clinics who was still seemingly addicted to multiple dangerous substances who was always in the news.

But she was also an enormously talented and popular performer.  Here's how James Montgomery described Winehouse on www.mtv.com:

There was a darkness to Winehouse, a quality that went beyond the tabloid pages or her low-cut dresses or her frequent binges on drugs and alcohol.  It was most apparent in her voice, smoky and smoldering and, at times, savage, but always imperceptibly pained too, just like Billie Holiday or Janis Joplin or even Kurt Cobain.  It's no wonder then that like those talents, she found solace — and, ultimately, escape — in controlled substances.  Anything to numb the pain.

With Tony Bennett

Winehouse recently recorded a duet with the legendary Tony Bennett for a forthcoming album of his, and Bennett described her as "a lovely and intelligent person" who gave a "soulful and extraordinary performance."  He went on to praise her "rare intuition as a vocalist."

"Stronger Than Me" came from Winehouse's first album, Frank, which was released in 2003.  In the music video, Winehouse's boyfriend has gotten hopelessly drunk at a club.  She plays the responsible one in the relationship, shaking her head at his stupidity and lack of self-control.  In other words, the video is an example of art not imitating life.

Winehouse's only other album, Back to Black, was released in 2006.  It was a hugely successful record internationally, and was the best-selling album of 2007 in the UK.

The first single from that album, "Rehab," which was a top-10 hit in the US and UK, begins this way:

They tried to make me go to rehab 

But I said no, no, no 

And even when she said "yes" to rehab, it didn't stick -- as this photo demonstrates:

One of the first things I thought about when I learned of her death was how her father must feel.  (I have a son who was born the same week as Amy Winehouse, and her father and I are about the same age.)  

Mitch Winehouse was an aspiring singer who became a London cab driver to support his family.  He sang Frank Sinatra songs to Amy when she was a child, and encouraged her musical pursuits.

Winehouse was able to revive his musical career after his daughter's success.  He released a jazz-crooner-type album earlier this year.  In fact, he was scheduled to perform at the Blue Note jazz club in New York City this coming Monday before canceling his appearance and returning to London.

Here's Mitch singing "April in Paris":

Press accounts generally portray Mitch sympathetically -- as a father who did his best to help his daughter deal with her addictions.  "That's what parents are for," he said in one interview.  "Things have been difficult for her, she's not been well and when she needed her family most, we were there."

I wonder if Mitch Winehouse is wishing he never sang to his daughter, never encouraged her musical career.   As proud as he must have been of her great talent and her popular success, he probably feels that it would have been better if she had never become a star.

Amy and her father

Before the tattoos, and the beehive hairdo, and the addictions, and the marriage to an equally out-of-control addict, Amy Winehouse was Mitch Winehouse's little girl.  No matter the circumstances of her death, I'm sure he is blaming himself for what happened and wishing he could turn the clock back and give her an entirely different life. 

I've never known anyone who was as troubled and out of control as Winehouse was -- I thank God that none of my children have ever shown the slightest signs of having the demons that inhabited her.  (Knock on wood.)

Here's the music video for "Stronger Than Me": 

Here's a link you can use to buy the song from Amazon:

Public Enemy -- "Fight the Power" (1990)

Most of my heroes don't appear on no stamps . . .

What we got to say

Power to the people with no delay

Make everybody see

We got to fight the powers that be

Fight the power!

Public Enemy was a groundbreaking hip-hop group.  Their music is relentless and dense -- they usually cram a lot of samples into their tracks -- and always politically charged.  (It's more Louis Farrakhan than Martin Luther King, Jr.)  Listening to a Public Enemy album is not a relaxing experience.    

Chuck D

The genesis of Public Enemy goes back to the meeting of Carlton Ridenhour and William Drayton, Jr., two Long Island boys, at Adelphi University.  Ridenhour had a hip-hop show on the campus radio station, and the two developed their own rap act while working for Ridenhour's father's furniture delivery service.

In 1984, Ridenhour -- who called himself Chuck D -- released a single called "Public Enemy #1" with the help of Drayton -- who called himself Flavor Flav.  Hip-hop pioneer Rick Rubin liked Chuck D's tape and offered him a recording deal with the Def Jam label.

Flavor Flav

In addition to Flavor Flav, Chuck D recruited a DJ named Terminator X, the members of the "Bomb Squad" (a collection of several hip-hop producers and performers that Chuck D had worked with previously) and an ex-MC named Professor Griff (who took on the roles of road manager and "Minister of Information" for the act).  Voilá -- Public Enemy was born.

Flavor Flav -- whose trademark was the large plastic clock he wore around his neck --was one of the first famous rap "hype men."  A hype man is usually a secondary MC who struts across the stage at live performances waving his arms and doing call-and-response chants that demand audience participation.

In 2004, Flavor Flav ended up as a regular on the third season of The Surreal Life, a VH1 reality show.  The other washed-up celebrities on the show included Charo, Full House's Dave Coulier (the man who was the subject of Alanis Morissette's screed, "You Oughta Know"), and the Amazonish Danish actress (and ex-wife of Sylvester Stallone) Brigette Nielsen.

While they were on the show, Flavor Flav and Nielsen got busy.  Their romantic relationship spawned a spin-off reality show called Strange Love.  (That's a fact, Jack!)



Chuck D was a pretty serious dude, and I don't know why he insisted on having a clown like Flavor Flav as part of Public Enemy.  Maybe it goes back to their personal relationship, or maybe Chuck D was just as interested in showmanship as in politics. 

Public Enemy's 1987 debut album was titled Yo! Bum Rush the Show.  Next came It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.  "Fight the Power" comes from Public Enemy's third and most successful album, Fear of a Black Planet.

"Fight the Power" was prominently featured in Spike Lee's 1989 movie, Do the Right Thing.  One of the movie's characters, a young man who is called "Radio Raheem," walks around playing "Fight the Power" constantly on his boombox.  

Radio Raheem

One night, the Italian owner of the pizzeria in the black New York City neighborhood where the movie takes place can't stand the loud music any more and goes after the boombox with a baseball bat.  A fight breaks out, a riot ensues, and the pizzeria is destroyed.

Click here to see the credit sequence from the movie, which features "Fight the Power" and  Rosie Perez in her movie debut.

And click here to see perhaps the most politically incorrect movie scene ever filmed.

Here's "Fight the Power":

You can use this link to buy "Fight the Power" from Amazon: