Average White Band -- "Work to Do" (1975)

You might as well get used to me

Coming home a little late

'Cause I got work to do

"One never notices what has been done," Marie Curie wrote in 1894.  "One can only see what remains to be done."

Marie Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, and remains the only person to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences (physics and chemistry).  As the above quote shows, she was not one to rest on her laurels, but was focused on the work that remained to be done.

Madame Curie

When I went to Joplin, Missouri last month, I was very curious to see what had been done since my visit to my hometown a year ago -- only two weeks after Joplin had been hammered by a multiple-vortex EF5 tornado on May 22, 2011 -- and what remained to be done.

While much has been done, it pales in comparison to what remains to be done.  But we've reached something of a tipping point, I think.  

The fact that so much has been done convinced me that someday -- certainly not this year, and probably not next year, but someday -- what remains to be done will be completed.  I feel confident not only that Joplin will survive, but that it will be more than what it was before the tornado struck.

(By an odd coincidence, the night I sat down to start writing this post, the Washington, DC, area was slammed with severe thunderstorms and 75-mph winds.  We had some damage to our patio furniture and gutters and fences from some big-ass broken limbs, and lost internet and cable service, but we didn't lose electricity -- unlike a million others in the area, some of whom had to live without air conditioning for a full week when the high temperature approached or exceeded a hundred degrees every day.  Of course, all that was nothing compared to what happened to Joplin last year.) 

While I was in Joplin, I walked from 26th and Maiden Lane (where the hulk of the destroyed St. John's Hospital is slowly being deconstructed) to 20th and Rangeline (where several big-box stores and a number of restaurants and other businesses were flattened).  That route was the path taken by the tornado, so I was able to see how the areas where most of the serious damage took place were coming along.  

As I've noted before, my parents' house stands on the northeast corner of 24th and Alabama.  Go just two blocks north -- to 22nd and Alabama -- and you are in the zone of total destruction.

There used to be 22 houses in the two blocks of Alabama between 22nd and 20th, including one at 2111 Alabama:

Exactly one of those 22 houses survived, although it needed a new roof and other major repairs.  That lone survivor is the house on the right in this picture.  The other house is a new one:

Today, there are a handful of houses being built on that stretch of Alabama.  They are generally a bit bigger than the houses they are replacing, and probably are filled with modern features that make them greatly superior to the fifties-vintage houses that were destroyed.

The effect is similar to what you would get if you laid a three-foot-wide strip of beautiful, healthy, deep- green sod down the middle of a lawn that was well cared for, but had a few weeds and bare patches here and there.  The new grass would be very noticeable, and its perfection would make you notice the imperfections in the existing lawn.  And the new houses in Joplin might draw attention to the aging of the older ones.

One good piece of news is the return of Dude's Daylight Donuts, a long-established and somewhat eccentric business that probably got more attention after it was destroyed (including a mention in the New York Times) than in all the years of its previous existence.

I hadn't had a Dude's maple bar for many years.  They are utter perfection.

Cunningham Park, where I went swimming as a kid and played tennis with my friends and sister during my college and law school summers, was wiped out by the tornado.  The new tennis and basketball courts are first-rate, and the old and very plain pool has been replaced by one that is start-of-the-art.

A few blocks from Cunningham Park stand seven new houses whose construction was chronicled on the ABC television show, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.  The houses are so distinctive that seeing them is a bit unsettling at first -- walking down the street has the feel of walking down a street in a theme park, or stumbling upon a movie set.  But the overall effect is very pleasant, and the people for whom they were built must feel like they are living in a dream.

Here they are, starting at the southernmost house and moving north:

Click here for short tour videos for each of the seven houses.  The childrens' bedrooms in these houses are especially noteworthy -- most parents would never consider doing anything so over the top as these bedrooms are, but you can bet the ranch that they kids who live here were absolutely delighted by their new rooms.  Can you imagine what a kick it would be if you were 12 years old and could invite a friend over to spend the night in of these bedrooms?

As we were walking back toward where we had parked, my sister and I across a large open space with only a few wide stone steps leading from the sidewalk.  It took us a minute to get oriented, but then we realized that this was the site where South Junior High (where we attended 7th, 8th, and 9th grades) used to stand.  South had survived the tornado, but it had not been in use for several years, and did sustain some damage.  So it was torn down.

That means that none of the schools I attended in Joplin -- Irving Elementary, South Junior High, and Joplin High School (then called Parkwood) -- is still standing.  They were all within a mile of my boyhood home and my grandparents' home (where I spent many nights when I was a kid), and I'm sure that I will never get used to not seeing them when I visit Joplin in the future.

Here's a view of the site of the past and future Joplin High School.  We'll explain the significant of the painted wooden butterflies in a future 2 or 3 lines.

Here's "Work to Do" -- a song that is very appropriate for a post about Joplin.  It's  from the Average White Band's enormously successful (and almost eponymous) second studio album, AWB.  Average White Band was a Scottish funk band whose original members included guys with names like Malcolm Duncan, Alan Gorrie, Owen McIntyre, and Robbie McIntosh -- all of which sound more like characters in Braveheart than guys who play that funky music.

Just before the band hit it big with its huge hit single, "Pick Up the Pieces," band members McIntosh and Gorrie mistook heroin for cocaine at a party in Los Angeles, and helped themselves.  McIntosh died, while Gorrie was kept conscious by fellow party-goer Cher and survived the overdose.

Click here to order the song from Amazon:

Prodigy -- "Firestarter" (1996)

I'm the trouble starter, punkin' instigator

I'm the fear-addicted danger illustrated

I'm a firestarter, twisted firestarter

Tonight is the 83rd Major League Baseball All-Star Game, which is being played at the recently renovated Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City.  (I saw the Yankees play the Royals there in 1975, when it was called Royals Stadium.  That was the same summer I saw the Rolling Stones perform at the adjacent Arrowhead Stadium.  But those are stories for another post.)

Kauffman Stadium

One of the relief pitchers on the American League team in Cleveland Indians closer Chris Perez.  "Firestarter" is the song they play at Indians home games when Perez enters a game.

One nickname for relief pitchers is "firemen" because they are supposed to enter the game and "put out the fire" -- that is, they are supposed to douse the hopes of the opposing team's hitters.  Relievers who fail to do their job are sometimes said to have "added fuel to the fire."  Baseball players are generally quite superstitious, and it would be the furthest thing from most relievers' minds to use a song titled "Firestarter" as entrance music -- they would feel like they were tempting fate. 

But the outspoken, rant-prone Chris Perez (his nickname is "Pure Rage") is not your ordinary baseball player.  Even the Indians' website admits that his "brazenness" and "brutal honesty" has made him a "polarizing figure."

Perez is the star of perhaps the most astonishing piece of baseball video I have ever seen.  Give this clip your close attention, and you'll be as astonished as I was.  (Note how the TV announcer either doesn't see Perez ralph on the mound -- twice -- or he chooses to ignore it.  If it's the latter, you can't blame the guy.)

Let's step back for a moment.

If you've attended a major-league game recently, you know that baseball teams provide their fans with constant aural stimulation.  Any momentary break in the action on the field is quickly filled with rock, pop, or rap music.  For example, although it takes only a few seconds for a batter to stride to the plate from the on-deck circle, even those few seconds are filled with "walk-up music" -- snippets of songs chosen by the hitter to be played over the stadium sound system as he makes his way into the batter's box to hit.  

 In the last decade or so, it has become de rigeur for the home team to present more elaborate musical entertainment during the two minutes or so it takes for the closer to jog in from the bullpen to the pitcher's mound and take his warmup pitches.

For those of you who don't pay much attention to baseball, I should explain that closers (which are a relatively recent phenomenon) are highly specialized relief pitchers who usually appear only for the 9th inning of a game in which their team is clinging to a slim lead.  

The job of the closer is to pound the final nail into the opposing team's coffin.  Closers are the tightrope walkers of baseball -- there's little margin for error when you're a closer.  One misstep can be fatal.

Successful closers usually share two characteristics.  First, they have one dominant pitch -- either a blazing fastball, or a deceptive breaking pitch -- that produces a lot of strikeouts or weak ground balls.  

Second, they have a closer's mentality.  They remain cool in pressure-packed situations, and on those rare occasions where they do cough up the lead, they shrug the failure off and take the mound the next day with no loss of self-confidence.

Today, a major-league closer's entrance into a home game is almost always accompanied by a signature song, and usually there is a scoreboard video to go along with it.  More often than not, the entrance music is an aggressive or ominous metal song played at maximum volume.

It wasn't always that way.

The Yankees may have been the first team to play a signature piece of music for a closer's entrance on a regular basis.  Here's how a 1972 Sports Illustrated article described how Sparky Lyle, the team's star reliever in the mid-1970s, entered the game to the Trio section of Sir Edward Elgar's "March No. 1 in D" -- the music commonly known as "Pomp and Circumstance," which has become the standard processional music for high-school and college graduation ceremonies.  (The music was played by the stadium organist, of course -- this was long before ballparks were equipped with high-definition scoreboards and other electronic audio-video paraphernalia.)

Sparky Lyle in 1977

There is enough ceremony in Lyle's emergence from the bullpen to satisfy a matador.  In the distance, beyond the right center-field fence, there opens the passenger door of a pinstripe-painted Datsun.  A man enters.  He is carrying a Yankee warmup jacket and is presumably stuffing his face with Red Man chewing tobacco.  The fans rustle.  Can it be?  Their murmuring is the sound of a giant engine.  It seems to propel the little car to a designated spot before the Yankee dugout.  Some expectant applause.  Then stadium organist Toby Wright solemnly plays Sir Edward Elgar's "Pomp and Circumstance."  It is Lyle's theme song.  He steps out of the car, handing the jacket to a batboy lackey.  As he marches with rolling gait to the mound there is . . . PANDEMONIUM!

Cardinals' closer Al Hrabosky was another 1970s-era closer who entered the game to classical music.  Hrabosky -- who was known as the "Mad Hungarian" -- used Franz Liszt's "Hungarian Rhapsody #2" as his entrance theme. 

In the 1989 movie, Major League, fictional closer Ricky "Wild Thing" Vaughn (who was portrayed by Charlie Sheen) entered to X's cover of the Troggs' "Wild Thing" -- a particularly suitable choice for Vaughn, whose uncorrected vision was so poor that he rarely threw pitches anywhere near the strike zone.  Here's a clip from the movie that shows "Wild Thing" entering a game.

The popularity of the movie and the Sheen character marked a radical shift in the character of real closers' music.  As Slate magazine noted, 

The closer songs of the early '90s tended to mix a cranky bravado with the threat of mental instability -- don't mess with me, I'm so mean and crazy.  The more recent crop ditches the crankiness in favor of all-out psychopathy.  Today's closer isn't just baaaad, he's a cold-blooded murderer. Death threats spill out of the stadium speakers every time there's a save opportunity . . .

This explains why metal is the genre of choice for closers.  Heavy metal beats the hell out of anything else when getting the home fans all worked up and perhaps even striking a little fear in the hearts of opposing batters.

Don't underestimate the significance of pumping up the crowd.  Baseball is in competition for the fans' dollars with other sports and entertainment providers.  A good entrance song gets the crowd all jacked up, and if the closer can seal the deal by shutting down the opponents' bats, the fans will go home in a state of near-euphoria.  

Eric Freeman explained how this works in an article on the A.V. Club website:

Fans are already primed for a closer’s entrance -- he’s the bullpen’s best pitcher and they’re only three outs away from a win.  The entrance music exists to ramp that excitement to the loudest levels of the game, and as such cannot wear people out all at once.  Ideally, it builds from marginally quiet to excessively loud over the course of about a minute, announcing the closer’s walk from the bullpen to the mound with slow-burning noise and losing control by the time he’s halfway through his warmup pitches. 

But as the Rolling Stones famously said "It's the singer, not the song."  And as Freeman points out, a closer's entrance song must mesh with the closer's personality and personal style:

Despite its importance, exciting the crowd is an entry-level part of picking the perfect closer song.  If expressing style is the ultimate goal, then closers must establish themselves as unique individuals.  A closer needs a strong sense of self to seem like a larger-than-life character -- as with Batman, they must enlarge the basic aspects of their personalities to monstrous proportions.

There are a number of closers on this year's All-Star Game rosters, and several of them have topnotch entrance songs.  Jim Johnson of the Orioles enters home games to "The Pretender," by the Foo Fighters.  That's a great choice, but 2 or 3 lines has already featured that song.  

Huston Street of the Padres enters to Ted Nugent's "Stranglehold," which is an inspired choice.  (It was actually suggested to Street by the team's strength and conditioning coach.)  But once again, that song is the subject of a past 2 or 3 lines post, and I never post twice about the same song (except when I do).

Jonathan Papelbon entered to "Shipping Off to Boston," by the Dropkick Murphys when he was the Red Sox closer.  2 or 3 lines has already featured that song as well.  Papelbon is with the Phillies this year, and I think he uses a Metallica song as his entrance music.  That figures, because Mariano Rivera of the Yankees -- who is clearly the greatest closer in baseball history -- enters to Metallica's "Sandman," which is clearly the greatest closer's entrance song of all time.  (I could have looked up Papelbon's new entrance song, but I wouldn't piss on the guy if he was on fire, so there's no chance I'm going to feature his song.)

So we'll go with Chris Perez and "Firestarter."  It's a pretty bad-ass song -- and that's the whole idea, after all.

Here's the entrance video for Perez:

Here's the official video for "Firestarter."  It is not for the squeamish, and I'd strongly advise you to send the kiddies to their room before you watch it:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Patti Page -- "Detour" (1951)

Headed down life's crooked road

Lots of things I never knowed

Because of me not knowin', I now pine . . .

Should have read that detour sign

When I was young, my parents used to go out to dinner most Saturday nights with our next-door neighbors.  (Our neighbor managed a local liquor store, and the guy really knew his merchandise.  I think he and his wife were the store's two best customers.)

Their usual Saturday-night destination was a Joplin supper club called Hidden Acres, which has been closed for a decade or so (although the building still stands).  I was invited to join them once or twice a year, which meant putting on a coat and tie, ordering a "Roy Rogers" (a Coke served with a long-stemmed cherry and a swizzle stick) for my aperitif, and feasting on a bacon-wrapped ground sirloin (not hamburger!) steak with a baked potato.  According to the menu below, that delicacy went for $1.65 -- not bad.

After we finished our meal, I would dance once or twice with my mother.  When I was in the sixth grade, I took weekly ballroom dancing lessons with quite a few of my schoolmates.  Thinking about that experience today causes me to have hot flashes and break out in flop sweat, although I don't think I was embarrassed at the time.  I think I thought I was a pretty good dancer and a pretty cool guy back then.

Hidden Acres dinner menu

I was enough of a show-off to enjoy the attention the adults gave me when I danced with her.  I was taller than she was, which helped me feel like I cut a pretty dashing figure on the Hidden Acres dance floor.  (I was six feet tall when I was 13, with size 12A feet.  That certainly made shopping for school shoes easy.  I could get black Florsheim wing-tips, or I could get brown Florsheim wing-tips . . . or I could go barefooted.)

I remember my parents dancing quite a bit those Saturday evenings, although I do think my mother enjoyed it more than my father.  They were both attractive people who were in good shape, and were better-than-average dancers.  (I assume that they were self-taught.  Both of them grew up during the Depression in families of very modest means -- especially my father.  He was one of seven children, and was barely nine years old when his father died in 1934.  Ballroom dancing lessons would have been an impossible luxury when he was in sixth grade.) 

The one song my parents always requested from the pianist/vocalist at Hidden Acres -- his name was Clint Harrison -- was "Detour."  Mr. Harrison died earlier this year -- click here to read his obituary.

"Detour (There's A Muddy Road Ahead)" was written in 1945 by Paul Westmoreland, who recorded it with his Western swing band that year.  David Allan Coe once said that real country songs were always about trucks, trains, prison, mama, and/or getting drunk.  "Detour" goes the prison route -- the song is about the road (or the detour) not taken, which resulted in the singer spending five years in jail.  

Spade Cooley's band (Tex Williams was the vocalist) had a big hit with "Detour" in 1946.  Three other versions of the song also made it to the top 10 that year, so it seems that the song was extraordinarily popular.

Patti Page's version made the top 10 in 1951, and the song has been recorded since then by a number of well-known singers.

My parents on their 65th anniversary

My parents were married in 1947.  (Last month, I flew to Joplin, Missouri, to help them celebrate their 65th anniversary -- think about that number for a minute, boys and girls.)  I thought that they might have danced to "Detour" in their courtin' days, when the song was new and very popular.  But when I asked them, they said they didn't remember hearing the song until they started going to Hidden Acres.  

My mother says she liked it because it was a great song to dance to, but the lyrics are really quite appropriate for them.  Like the singer of "Detour," they stayed on the same road they started down, despite the detour signs.  The singer regretted not detouring from the path he (or she) had taken, but I don't think my parents did.  

No matter how well you think you know your parents, of course, they undoubtedly have some secrets that would surprise you.  But I never got any hint that my parents ever regretted that they ignored any detour signs that popped up after they tied the knot, and instead stayed on the road they had started down in 1947.

My parents, my sister, and I were watching TV the night of their anniversary when my father announced that he believed he would go to bed.  (That's the way we talk in Joplin:  "Well, I believe I'll go to bed.")  It was about nine o'clock, which is quite a bit earlier than most people go to sleep, but he's always been an early-to-bed, early-to-rise kind of guy.

My mother shocked us by commenting that he certainly hadn't gone to sleep at nine o'clock on that date 65 years earlier, when they were honeymooning in Branson.  (Oh my!)

When I wasn't eating anniversary cake or reminiscing with my parents or sister that weekend, I was walking the streets of Joplin.  In an upcoming 2 or 3 lines, I'll bring you up to date on what my hometown looked like one year after an EF5 tornado hammered it.

One final note: today is my father's 87th birthday.

Here's Patti Page's 1951 version of "Detour (There's A Muddy Road Ahead)": 

Here's a video that melds footage of her singing "Detour" on her TV show in 1956 and also in 1998.  While her 1951 recording was Western-swing style, with lots of pedal steel guitar, these performances feature big-band accompaniment.

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

Immigrants -- "I'm Feelin' Blue" (1966)

It's nothing new

I'm feelin' blue

Only four months left until the 2012 elections -- the whole thing has been SOOOO much fun so far that I wish the campaign would never end!

(That's sarcasm, folks, which is often confused with irony.  It would have been irony if I had used "so" instead of "SOOOO" and hadn't inserted the exclamation mark.)

As previously promised, 2 or 3 lines will feature a post related to the upcoming election on the sixth of each month between now and Election Day, when all of us conscientious citizens will dutifully proceed to our local polling places, go into the voting booth, look at the names listed on the ballot, and be suddenly overcome by an uncontrollable desire to beat our breast, tear our hair out, gnash our teeth, rend our garments, put on sackcloth and ashes, weep, sob, keen, ululate, wail, howl, and/or sing the blues.

Today's post is inspired by the recent Supreme Court decision on Arizona's immigration law, which was titled Arizona et al. v. United States.   (I would put a link to the 76-page decision here, but who's kidding who -- there's not a chance you're going to read it.)  You'll no doubt be hearing about this decision and a lot more on the topic of immigration during the next four months.

In a nutshell, the Supreme Court held that a number of provisions of the Arizona law were preempted by federal law.  State laws may be preempted -- nullified, or rendered ineffective -- when they conflict with federal law.  Not surprisingly, federal law trumps state law in such cases.  But sometimes Congress "occupies the field" to such an extent that even complementary state laws -- state laws that are not in direct conflict with federal law -- will be struck down.

The Constitution specifically grants the power to regulate immigration to the federal government, and federal regulation of immigration is so extensive that the states' hands are pretty much tied when it comes to taking action against illegal aliens.  (This may seem unfair since border states like Arizona must bear the burden of crime and other problems associated with illegal immigration, but that's the way the cookie crumbles.) 

One issue in the Arizona case related to a provision in the Arizona law that essentially replicated a federal provision.  Why did the state feel the need to duplicate that federal law?  Because the federal government was not enforcing it.

Supreme Court Building

But the Supreme Court held that a state's attempt to independently prosecute violations of a federal law diminishes the federal government's control over enforcement and would "detract from the 'integrated scheme of regulation' created by Congress."

Presumably Congress passed that law intending that it be enforced.  So how can state enforcement of the provision in response to federal nonenforcement constitute a slap in the face of Congress?

This is the kind of thing that makes people have low opinions of lawyers and judges.  It seems to fly in the face of common sense.  (It makes perfect sense to me, but I'm a lawyer and have been broken of my previous habit of common-sense thinking.)  But that's what the highest court in the land has said, boys and girls -- so you'll suck on it and you'll like it, Arizona!

By the way, don't think that 2 or 3 lines is taking a position on the question of immigration.  I don't know what the answers here are.

On the one hand, nothing is more responsible for the unique character and greatness of the United States than the fact that it is a country of immigrants.  I have a feeling that most of legal or illegal immigrants in this country are just as hard-working and law-abiding (if not more so) than the native-born citizenry, and I have tremendous admiration for the courage of people who leave everything behind and move to a totally foreign place in hopes of making a better life for their families.  The fact that the United States attracts such people shows that we are doing something right.

On the other hand, we do have laws restricting and regulating immigration, and it seems like either we should enforce those laws in a fair and reasonable manner or we should cowboy up and change those laws.  Just sayin' . . .

The Immigrants were an extremely obscure garage band whose five members -- all of whom hailed from the New York City area -- met at Kansas Wesleyan University in Salina, Kansas.  In 1966, the group released its one and only album (The Immigrants '66 -- wonder where they came up with that wacky title?), which consisted mostly of covers, including "House of the Rising Sun," "She's Not There" (originally by the Zombies), "Run For Your Life" (from Rubber Soul), and Little Richard's "Keep A-Knockin' (But You Can't Come In)."

The album also included several surf-guitar instrumentals and this original song, which kind of grows on you and has nothing to do (thankfully) with the 2012 elections.

Here's "I'm Feelin' Blue":

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.

Crow -- "Keeps Me Runnin'" (1971)

There’s a town lyin’ just ahead

I wonder what it holds for me?
My many sins, and my colored skin
Keeps me runnin' all the time

The last 2 or 3 lines featured Crow's great 1969 hit, "Evil Woman (Don't Play Your Games With Me)" and an interview with the band's bass player and co-author of that song, Larry Wiegand.  Here's part two of that interview:

2 or 3 lines: The success of "Evil Woman" and the Crow Music album meant that Crow had a lot of opportunities to play live.  You opened shows for some Hall of Fame-caliber performers, including Blood Sweat & Tears, Iron Butterfly, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, Steppenwolf, and Three Dog Night, and played at outdoor festivals in Miami, Denver, Toronto, Vancouver, and other cities.  Of all the acts you shared the stage with back then, who impressed you the most?

Janis Joplin

Larry Wiegand:  We played with Janis Joplin in Minneapolis, Madison (Wisconsin) and Chicago and we were really impressed with her talent and power.  Out of all the acts we opened for, Janis and the Yardbirds had the greatest influence on us.  But I really believe Crow was a harder-working band than any of the bands we performed with. We used to pride ourselves on playing hard, doing our best and leaving folks happy.

2 or 3 lines: Black Sabbath included a cover of "Evil Woman" on its eponymous debut album, but for some reason, it was left off the North American edition of the LP and wasn't released in the U.S. until 2002.  Tell us about the Black Sabbath version of "Evil Woman" -- did they approach you about doing the song before they recorded it?

Larry Wiegand:  Well, they never talked to any of the band members before they recorded it, although they probably did talk to Dunwich Productions, who produced the record.  We released the song first and had the hit here in the States.  Then they re-recorded it and released it as their first single but only on the English LP. "Evil Woman" was also covered by Ike and Tina Turner on their Come Together LP in 1970, but they changed the title to "Evil Man" to make it work with a female singer.

2 or 3 lines:  The singles from your second and third albums failed to duplicate the success of "Evil Woman."  I understand that you and the other members of Crow were excited about the songs you had written for a proposed fourth album, but your record company -- Amaret -- didn't think they were commercial enough.  You became very disillusioned with Amaret after they rejected your new material, and you wanted to change label.

Larry Wiegand:  We had distribution problems with Amaret. That was a big deal at the time. The Amaret president was a problem for us in letting us go to Elektra, which wanted to sign us -- he finally agreed to let us out of our contract but only if we agreed not to use the name Crow.  We never could work it out.  And we had problems with our own personal manager also.

(Counting both singles and LPs, Crow sold over a million and a half records, but very little money got to the band's members.  Fed up with the financial and managerial mess that Crow was mired in, lead singer David Wagner left the group in late 1971.  The rest of Crow's members tried to soldier on for awhile with a new vocalist, but finally threw in the towel in the summer of 1972.  Amaret released a Best of Crow album later that year.  Crow reformed in 1988, and is still performing today.  The group was inducted into the Minnesota Rock/Country Hall of Fame in 2005 and the Iowa Rock & Roll Music Hall of Fame in 2009.)

2 or 3 lines:  Have you travelled much since getting back together, or do you stick pretty close to home?  Do you ever play with other bands from the 60s/70s era?

Larry Wiegand:  We don't do too much traveling.  We've played mostly in the midwest but also some southern states.  We've played with many acts from that era -- Edgar Winter, Steppenwolf, Iron Butterfly, Rick Derringer, Uriah Heep, Delbert McClinton . . . the list goes on and on.  We'd love to go overseas and play. We get a lot of requests to do that.

Larry Wiegand today

2 or 3 lines:  What were some of the bands over the years that you and the other guys in Crow were fans of?

Larry Wiegand:  Boy, that's a tough one.  There were so many great groups we loved -- Mitch Ryder, the Stones, Wilson Pickett, the Beatles, the Rascals, James Brown, the Yardbirds, Deep Purple, Eric Burdon, Bob Seger, Tower of Power, Poco, the Eagles.  I already mentioned the Ventures -- Nokie Edwards was a great lead guitarist.  A couple of lesser-known bands I like a lot are the Crusaders and the Dixie Dregs. There was a group from Minneapolis called Gypsy that was very good that didn't get as much attention as I thought they should have -- also a group called Dreams from New York City.

2 or 3 lines:  Do you do any covers of other groups' hit songs in your live shows in addition to Crow originals?

Larry Wiegand:  We do "We Gotta Get Out a This Place" by the Animals, "Cry To Me" by Solomon Burke, "Take It Off The Top" by the Dixie Dregs.  Also some Delbert McClinton songs. They're all great songs to play live.

2 or 3 lines:  "Evil Woman" was a favorite of mine -- it came out when I was a senior in high school, and I remember it vividly -- but I didn't really know anything about Crow's other music before contacting you to do this interview.  Do you hate being called a "one-hit wonder"?  Is it frustrating that "Evil Woman" is all that most fans know about Crow's music?

Larry Wiegand:  No, I don't hate being called a one-hit wonder.  I'm glad we had one big hit.  And I never get tired of playing "Evil Woman."  It is a little frustrating that more folks aren't aware of our other songs, but that's the way the cookie crumbles.

2 or 3 lines:  What Crow songs deserved a better fate?  What do you think were the best Crow songs other than "Evil Woman"?

Larry Wiegand:  "Busy Day," "Cottage Cheese," "Something In Your Blood," "Mobile Blues."

("Busy Day" originally appeared on Crow's debut album, Crow Music.  "Cottage Cheese" -- which made it to #56 on the Billboard charts -- was on their second album, Crow by Crow.  All four songs -- along with "Evil Woman" -- are available on the Classics 1969-1972 CD that is for sale on Crow's website, www.thecrowband.com.)

2 or 3 lines:  "Cottage Cheese" has to be one of the oddest names ever for a rock 'n' roll single.  How did you come up with it?

Larry Wiegand:  We needed a song that would feature our drummer, Denny Craswell, doing a drum solo.  So my brother Dick and I came up with this riff and we all started working on it at rehearsal.  We eventually recorded it but we didn't have a name yet.  The engineer needed to label it something so Dave told him to just call it "Cottage Cheese" until we came up with something better. We never did, so that name stuck.

2 or 3 lines:  Final question.  You're a bass player, and I think bass players tend to get overlooked by a lot of casual fans -- they usually aren't as well-known as singers, guitarists, and drummers.  Who are some of your favorite electric bass players?

Motown great James Jamerson

Larry Wiegand: My all-time favorites are James Jamerson, Chuck Rainey, Paul Samwell-Smith, Rocco Prestia, and Paul McCartney -- they are all idols of mine.  I was influenced by all these bassists, but especially Jamerson and Paul Samwell-Smith.

(Jamerson was the bassist on most of the early Motown hits.  Click here for a Youtube video that isolates the drum track and Jamerson's bass playing on "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," which gives you a taste of just how good he was.  Rainey was a great session musician who recorded with Laura Nyro, the Rascals, Al Kooper, Aretha Franklin, Steely Dan and many others.  Samwell-Smith was a founding member of the Yardbirds.  Prestia was the bassist for Tower of Power.)

Thanks, Larry -- I enjoyed learning more about "Evil Woman" and Crow's other music.  If I ever make it to the Minneapolis-St. Paul area again, I hope I'll have a chance to see you perform live.

Larry wrote "Keeps Me Runnin'," which is from Crow's third album, Mosaic.  It has a much rougher and less polished sound than "Evil Woman," and isn't dressed up with a fancy horn arrangement.  The instrumental break is interesting because it's so subtle -- it's very quiet compared to the rest of the track.  I don't recall hearing anything quite like it.

Here's "Keeps Me Runnin'" by Crow: