Jan and Dean – "Sidewalk Surfin'" (1964)

Bust your buns

Bust your buns now!

February may be the shortest month for the rest of you.  But thanks to "29 Songs in 28 Days," February is the longest month for 2 or 3 lines.  

All I feel like doing after posting every single day for a whole month is lying down with a cool washcloth on my forehead.

But lying down with a cool washcloth on one's forehead don't feed the bulldog.  I have to produce three posts a week come rain or come shine.  It's time to get back to work.

Which doesn't mean I can't phone one in every so often, of course.  

When I can't think of a good idea for a post, I fall back on my favorite corner-cutting strategy: I fire up Google and see who was born and who died on today's date.

It turns out that March 10 is the birthday of a number of notable musicians.  

Rick Rubin

For example, a couple of notable record producers were born on March 10.  Most of you are familiar with the legendary producer Rick Rubin, who worked with everyone from the Beastie Boys to the Red Hot Chili Peppers to Johnny Cash to Rage Against the Machine to Lady Gaga, who was born on this date in 1963.

But don't sleep on Huey P. Meaux (a/k/a "The Crazy Cajun"), who was born on March 10, 1929.  Huey produced hits by the Sir Douglas Quintet, Freddy Fender, and others.  Unfortunately, he was caught in possession of thousands of photos and videos of underage girls in sexual situations, and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

As for recording artists with March 10 birthday, there's Tom Scholz (born in 1947), the MIT grad who founded the group.  

And Edie Brickell (1966), whose biggest hit was "What I Am."  (You may not know that Edie has been married to Paul Simon since 1992.)

Edie Brickell and Paul Simon in 2014

Country-and-western songstress superstar Carrie Underwood was born on this day in 1983.

And two artists associated with Miley Cyrus –Canadian pop star Robin Thicke (born in 1977), who was famously tweaked on by young Miss Cyrus, and Emily Osment (born in 1992), who got her start as Miley's Hannah Montana co-star – have March 10 birthdays.

But today's 2 or 3 lines is dedicated to a different March 10 birthday boy: namely, Dean Torrence of Jan and Dean, who is celebrating his 75th birthday today.

Jan and Dean were one of my favorites when I was in junior high school.  "Dead Man's Curve," which was a top-ten hit in 1964, was one of the first singles I ever owned, and Surf City (and Other Swingin' Cities) – which featured "Memphis, Tennessee," "Tallahassee Lassie," "Kansas City," "Honolulu Lulu," "Detroit City," and "I Left My Heart in San Francisco," among others – was one of my first LPs.

"Sidewalk Surfin'," which made it #25 on the Billboard "Hot 100" chart in 1964, is a song about skateboarding.

Dean's partner, Jan Berry, wanted to record a skateboarding song but was having trouble coming up one.  So he went to his good buddy Brian Wilson and asked for permission to borrow the 1963 Beach Boys' song, "Catch a Wave," with different lyrics.

Growing up in Joplin, Missouri, the opportunities for real surfing were few and far between, but I did have a skateboard.  I wasn't a half bad sidewalk surfer, although I did bust my buns a time or two.

Jan and Dean performed "Sidewalk Surfin'" in the T.A.M.I. Show, the fabulous 1964 concert movie that they co-hosted with the late Lesley Gore.  (Other artists who appeared in that movie included James Brown, Chuck Berry, the Supremes, Marvin Gaye, the Beach Boys, and the Rolling Stones.)   

Here are Jan and Dean performing "Sidewalk Surfin'" and then demonstrating their skateboarding technique on American Bandstand: 

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Tremeloes – "You Don't Own Me" (1965)

You don't own me

Don't say I can't go with other girls

The late Lesley Gore's 1964 hit, "You Don't Own Me," is viewed by some as a protofeminist anthem.

Some might say that a song that was written by two men is automatically disqualified from being a "feminist touchstone" (New York Times) and “a major factor in the rise of the second-wave feminist movement” (Wikipedia) that belongs on the list of works that helped inspire the women's liberation movement.

Lesley Gore

But I think there's a more compelling reason to question those who view "You Don't Own Me" through feminist-tinted glasses.

"You Don't Own Me" is what you might call a bisexual song.  If a song works just as well with a male singer as with a female singer after you do a little tweaking of the lyrics (for example, you change "Don't say I can't go with other boys" to "Don't say I can't go with other girls"), then how can it be a protofeminist anthem?

Some songs are suitable for performance only by singers of one gender or the other.

For example, there's Tammy Wynette's "Stand By Your Man."  You can change the title to "Stand By Your Woman," and revise the first line to read "Sometimes it's hard . . . to be a man," but the song simply doesn't work if a male sings it.

But the situation described in "You Don't Own Me" is as applicable to boys as it is to girls.

In fact, that song actually makes more sense when sung by a male than a female.

For example, consider those lines from "You Don't Own Me":

I don't tell you what to say 

I don't tell you what to do 

So just let me be myself 

That's all I ask of you 

Let's face it, boys and girls.  The need to tell men what to do is an inherent female characteristic.    

By contrast, men generally don't care what women do as long as they don't try to tell men what to do.  

Jack White spoke for men all over the world in his 2014 song, "Entitlement":

I'm tired

Of being told

What to do

Please don't be offended by this, ladies.  The world might well be a better place if men listened to you more often.  My point is simply that even when what you tell a man to do is 100% right, that man isn't going to like to be told what to do.

The Tremeloes

On New Year's Day, 1962, Decca Records auditioned the Tremeloes and another promising young band.  Decca chose to sign the Tremeloes because they were from London, which made them more accessible than the other group, which was from . . . Liverpool?

You guessed it, folks – the other group was the Beatles, who signed with a different label.

The Tremeloes had a nice career.  They had eleven singles that were top-ten hits in the UK, and their covers of the Contours' "Do You Love Me?" and the Four Seasons' "Silence Is Golden" both made it to #1 across the pond. 

But they weren't the Beatles any more than 17-year-old Lesley Gore was Betty Friedan.  

Here's the Tremeloes' cover of "You Don't Own Me":

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Lesley Gore – "Je Ne Sais Plus" (1965)

Je ne sais plus

Ce qui vient d'arriver entre nous

In the last 2 or 3 lines, our featured song was the late Lesley Gore's "You Don't Own Me."

Miss Gore recorded that song not only in English, but also in French, Italian, and German.

Lesley Gore

I am as monolingual as a man can be, so I used Google Translate to compare the lyrics of Gore's  foreign-language versions of "You Don't Own Me" to the lyrics of the original English version.

The non-English lyrics seem to bear little resemblance to the English lyrics.  The German version – which is titled "Goodbye, Tony" – seems particularly dissimilar to the original.

Many other singers covered "You Don't Own Me," which some people view as a seminal feminist cri de coeur.  (As I explained in the previous 2 or 3 lines, I am not one of those people.)

Dusty Springfield

Dusty Springfield – whose real name was Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien – covered "You Don't Own Me" a few months after Lesley Gore's version was released in 1963.  

Miss Springfield was seven years older than Miss Gore, but her warm, sensual, mature voice was not as well-suited for "You Don't Own Me."  When you hear Dusty sing, "Don't say I can't go with other boys," the line loses all credibility.  Lesley Gore's uncomplicated teenaged voice and innocent appearance works much better.

It's an odd coincidence that both Gore and Springfield were gay.  Gore's relationship with Lois Sasson (which dated to 1982) was not only long-lasting but seemingly free of drama.

Dusty Springfield and Teda Bracci

Springfield's love life was much more tempestuous.  In 1982, for example, she met actress Teda Bracci at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.  The two later moved in together and exchanged vows at an unofficial wedding ceremony shortly thereafter.  But a few months later, Bracci smashed Springfield in the mouth with a saucepan, knocking out several of her teeth.  The two then separated.

Dalida, the legendary Italian-Egyptian singer who received 70 gold records, recorded "You Don't Know Me" in French and Italian, while other singers covered the song in Dutch, Swedish, Czech, and Japanese.  

Joan Jett's funereal cover of "You Don't Own Me" is shockingly bad:

But for sheer douche-chill-generating power, no cover version of "You Don't Own Me" comes close to the one performed by Goldie Hawn, Diane Keaton, and Bette Midler in the 1996 movie, The First Wives Club. 

A sign that the apocalypse is just around the corner is the fact that a musical based on that movie is scheduled to open in Chicago any day now.  The book for First Wives Club: The Musical was written by Linda Bloodworth-Thomason.  Along with her husband Harry, Ms. Bloodworth-Thomason is responsible not only for "Designing Women" but also for the Bill Clinton hagiography, The Man from Hope.

Here's Lesley Gore's French cover of "You Don't Know Me," which is titled "Je Ne Sais Plus":

Lesley Gore – "You Don't Own Me" (1965)

You don't own me

Don't say I can't go with other boys

In 1965 – I was 12, going on 13 – I saw the T.A.M.I. Show at the Lux Theater in Joplin, Missouri.

The T.A.M.I. Show was a 123-minute concert film that combined footage from two back-to-back October 1964 concerts at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium.  The featured performers included the Beach Boys, Chuck Berry, James Brown, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, the Rolling Stones, the Supremes, and several others – the crème de la crème of pop music (with the exception of the Beatles, of course).

Here's the trailer for that movie:

The T.A.M.I. Show's co-hosts were Jan and Dean (who entered on skateboards) and the 18-year-old Lesley Gore, who already had four top-ten hits (including a #1 and a #2) under her belt.

You probably wouldn't rank Lesley Gore in the same class as the Beach Boys, James Brown, Marvin Gaye, and the Supremes.  But while each of those artists performed four songs in the movie, Miss Gore sang six numbers -- more than another else in the movie except the Rolling Stones (who also performed six songs).

Here are all six of those songs:

Lesley Gore (nee Lesley Sue Goldstein) – who died of lung cancer last month – was a student at the tony Dwight School for Girls in New Jersey when she recorded “You Don’t Own Me” in 1963.  (She was only 16 when she recorded her biggest hit, “It’s My Party.”)

“You Don’t Own Me” is a very good pop record.  But let's not try to make it something that it's not.

Like “It’s My Party” and “Judy’s Turn to Cry,” “You Don’t Own Me” is a song about teenagers that was written for teenagers – 1963-vintage teenagers to boot.  

Gore’s New York Times obituary – which was written by veteran popular-music critic Jon Pareles -- described her as a singer of songs “about heartbreak and resilience that went on to become feminist touchstones.”

Lesley Gore as a teenager

I don’t think anyone in their right mind would describe “It’s My Party” and “Judy’s Turn to Cry” as “feminist touchstones.”  Pareles was clearly talking about “You Don’t Own Me” when he used that term.

Wikipedia goes even further, claiming that the song was “a major factor in the rise of the second-wave feminist movement.”  (Really?)

But Songfacts calls the Times and Wikipedia, and then raises them:

Along with Betty Friedan's book The Feminine Mystique (which was published shortly before this song's release), this song can be considered one of the many artistic works that helped begin the Women's Liberation Movement, despite the fact that the movement did not really take off until a decade later.

Let’s take a deep breath, boys and girls.  Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar (as Sigmund Freud supposedly said), and sometimes a teenage puppy-love song is just a teenage puppy-love song – not a “feminist touchstone,” and not “a major factor in the rise of the second-wave feminist movement” comparable in impact to the writing of Betty Friedan.

All you people who want to turn "You Don't Own Me" into some kind of protofeminist liberation anthem are off your rockers.  The singer’s isn’t angry about the patriarchy’s oppression of the fairer sex.  Her main complaint is simply that her possessive boyfriend doesn’t want her to “go with other boys.”  

Of course, the woman who left the following comment on the Songfacts page about “You Don’t Own Me” would argue that the song has much greater significance than I give it credit for having:

I still love this song & Lesley Gore after all these years.  When it was #2 in Dec. '63, I was in high school & having difficulties with a boyfriend who was trying to be domineering with me.  Well, anyone who knew me back then knew I was NOT the type of gal to be toyed with!!  In short, he tried to dominate me so I just set him straight and left him with two black eyes & bruised ribs!  Back then, I was 200 lbs. at 6' 3" tall and not a girl to be trifled with. Haaa! Go Lesley Gore, Go!!!

(Admit it, ladies.  That tale of a linebacker-sized “gal” beating the crap out of her obnoxious, controlling boyfriend put a smile on your face, didn’t it?  It would a different story if the shoe were on the other foot, of course – you’d send the boyfriend off to the poke . . . perhaps after he had been neutered with some rusty hedge trimmers.)

Lesley Gore as a sixty-something

Let’s not forget that “You Don’t Own Me” was written by two old-pro male pop songwriters, John Madara and David White.  Madara and White’s biggest hits other than “You Don’t Own Me” were “At the Hop” and “1-2-3,” which no one has ever viewed as anything more than enjoyable pop songs.  I'm guessing that Messrs. Madara and White would be bemused to learn that they had written a "feminist touchstone."

By the way, Lesley Gore's next top-ten single after "You Don't Own Me" was "Maybe I Know," whose singer chose to stick with her boyfriend despite the fact that he cheats on her.  (I wonder if Hillary Clinton owned the 45?)

Maybe I know that he's been a cheatin'

Maybe I know that he's been untrue

But what can I do?

The 17-year-old Lesley Gore was a very talented performer, and she knocked "You Don't Own Me" out of the park.  

But many other well-known chanteuses have covered "You Don't Own Me."  (We'll talk about some of them in the next 2 or 3 lines.)

Here's Lesley Gore singing "You Don't Own Me":

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Toby Keith – "Red Solo Cup" (2011)

Red Solo cup

I fill you up
Let's have a party!

The last day of February is always a bittersweet day for 2 or 3 lines.

Bitter because "29 Songs in 28 Days" is the ne plus ultra of my wildly popular little blog . . . its crowning achievement . . . the thing that makes 2 or 3 lines the real Slim Shady of pop music blogs.

Sweet because IT'S A PAIN IN THE ASS TO WRITE A POST EVERY DAY FOR A MONTH . . . especially when you readers just sit there and take, take, take, without giving anything back!

By now, you've no doubt figured out that the second of the two themes of this year's "29 Songs in 28 Days" is the visible spectrum.  

The posts that appeared on even-numbered dates all featured songs with a title or artist whose name included one of the six pure spectral colors – violet, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red.  Because 2 or 3 lines is nothing if not obsessive-compulsive, those color-related posts appeared in order, beginning with the shortest-wavelength color (violet) and ending with the longest-wavelength color (red).

Hence, we opened with Hole's "Violet" and are closing with Toby Keith's "Red Solo Cup," a song I had never heard of until five minutes ago.

*     *     *     *     *

Toby Keith is never afraid to tell it like it is:

Now, red Solo cup is the best receptacle

For barbecues, tailgates, fairs and festivals

And you, sir, do not have a pair of testicles

If you prefer drinkin' from a glass!

Actually, the song wasn't written by Toby.  It was written by two pairs of brothers:  Brett and Brad Warren and Brett and Jim Beavers.  (Jim Beavers, who has co-written eight #1 country singles, has an M.B.A. from Vanderbilt.  I bet he is the envy of everyone else in his class.)

A song this dumb shouldn't require four people to write it.  I think it goes without saying that they weren't sober when they penned the lyrics to this bad boy.  (When I say "weren't sober," I mean they were at eleven on a one-to-ten scale for inebriation.)

*     *     *     *     *

The red 16-ounce cup produced by the Solo Cup Company is the quintessential beer-drinking vessel.  (Let he – or she – who has not filled a red Solo cup with cheap beer from a keg cast the first stone!)

As the song notes, red Solo cups are not only economical, but also help to save the earth:

Hey, red Solo cup is cheap and disposable

And in fourteen years, they are decomposable

Not to mention patriotic, too:

Solo Cup's first product was the familiar paper cone used to drink from bottled-water coolers.  Over the years, Solo acquired a number of rival companies, including the Sweetheart Cup Company, which was once known as Lily-Tulip.  

In 1951, Lily-Tulip built a huge factory in Springfield, Missouri, which I remember driving by several times when I was a kid.  That building was notable for its entrance, which was an enormous faux paper cup:

By the way, Solo also makes a blue cup, which should NEVER be used for drinking beer from a keg.

Click here to read more about the red Solo cup.

*     *     *     *     *

You're no doubt expecting me to start down my usual narcissistic path here, telling one pointless tale after another about the parties where I used a red Solo cup to achieve an advanced state of intoxication.  I could do that . . . but it's the end of the longest month of the year for 2 or 3 lines.  I'm purt near plumb tuckered out.

So let's just cut to the chase.  Click here to watch the music video for "Red Solo Cup," which features not only the irrepressible Toby Keith, but also Carrot Top, Lance Burton, Craig Ferguson, Eric Church, Joe Nichols, Roger Clemens, Larry Bird, Sammy Hagar, and  . . . last but certainly not least . . . Ted Nugent!

Click below to buy "Red Solo Cup" from Amazon:

Hot Butter – "Popcorn" (1972)

Each 2 or 3 lines usually begins with a quote from the lyrics of the featured song.  But last year's "29 Songs in 28 Days" broke new ground by featuring only instrumentals, and I've decided to include one in the 2015 version of "29 Songs in 28 Days" as well.

"Popcorn" was one of the first hit singles to feature the Moog synthesizer.  It reached #9 on the Billboard "Hot 100" singles chart in 1972, and was even more popular in other countries.  ("Popcorn" was the #1 single in Norway for six weeks, in Australia for eight weeks, and in Switzerland for ten weeks.  It sold almost a million copies in France, and is the 131st best-selling single of all time in that country.)

The mother of all Moog synthesizer records was Switched-On Bach, which was one of the oddest hit albums ever recorded.

Released in 1968, it consised of Moog synthesizer performances of various Johann Sebastian Bach pieces by Wendy Carlos.  (Wendy was born Walter Carlos, but began to live as a woman shortly before Switched-On Bach was released.  In 1972, she had sex reassignment surgery.)

Wendy Carlos

The album was one of the best-selling classical records ever recorded and won three Grammys.  

Hot Butter was an instrumental cover band that was fronted by Stan Free, a jazz keyboardist, composer, and arranger.  Free had previously been a member of the First Moog Quartet, a group that was formed by Gershon Kingsley, who had composed "Popcorn" and recorded it in 1969.

Stan Free

A friend of mine who knows a lot more about science than I do recently sent me Jenny Rood's article about the physics of popping popcorn, which appeared in the online edition of The Scientist on February 11.  Here's an excerpt:

When popcorn pops, it displays similarities both to explosively flowering plants and to animal muscles, according to a study published this week . . . . High-speed video stills captured by a pair of researchers in France revealed that popping begins with the sprouting of a starchy “leg” that causes the kernel to jump when it comes in contact with a hot pan.  The popping noise, the researchers explained, is likely caused by the release of water vapor.

Capturing images of popping kernels at 2,900 frames per second enabled the team to observe the speedy transition from kernel to fluffy flake.  Once the kernel begins to fracture, the “leg” forms within 14 milliseconds and the popcorn jumps 6 milliseconds later. . . .

The scientists also determined the ideal temperature for popping by heating kernels in an oven for five minutes while raising the temperature in 10°C (18°F) increments.  They found that only 34% of kernels popped at 170°C (338°F), while 96% transformed at 180°C (356°F).  At that temperature, the pressure inside the kernel is 10 times stronger than atmospheric pressure at sea level, causing the kernel to fracture and pop.

Here's Hot Butter's "Popcorn":

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs – "Little Red Riding Hood" (1966)

Hey there, Little Red Riding Hood

You sure are looking good

You may think that the Brothers Grimm are responsible for coming up with the "Little Red Riding Hood" folktale, but 'tain't so!

Mama Grimm's boys got the idea for that story from the 17th-century French author, Charles Perrault, who published it in 1697 in a collection of fairy tales that included "Cinderella" and "Sleeping Beauty."  

But a British anthropologist has traced the tale back to the first century.  It appears to have originated in the Middle East, then traveled to China, and back to Europe via the Silk Road at least a couple of hundred years before Perrault wrote it down.

Domingo "Sam" Samudio is a Texican who was born in Dallas in 1937.  His first band was named the Pharaohs, but it broke up in 1962 when its first record didn't sell.  Later, Sam joined Andy and the Nightriders, which was the house band at the Congo Club in Leesville, Louisiana – which was (and still is) the home to the U.S. Army's Fort Polk.  (I'm guessing the Congo Club was a pretty rowdy nightspot.)  

After the Nightriders relocated to Memphis in 1963, a couple of the band's members decided to move back to Texas.  Sam and the remaining original Nightrider recruited a couple of new guys and changed the name of the group to "Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs."  (Sam was given that nickname because he wasn't much of a singer.)

Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs

The group's first big hit was "Wooly Bully," which was named after Sam's cat.  "Wooly Bully" sold three million copies and stayed in the top 40 for 14 weeks in 1965.  It was named Billboard's "Number One Record of the Year" despite the fact that it never reached #1 on the "Hot 100."  

"Wooly Bully" would have been a great song for me to feature today, but neither of the themes of this year's "29 Songs in 28 Days" fits it.

That's why I'm featuring "Little Red Riding Hood," which was released the following year and also topped out at #2 on the "Hot 100."  (By coincidence, another fairy-tale song – "Pied Piper," by Crispian St. Peters – was popular at about the same time.)

The fairy tale has the little girl saying "What big eyes you have!" and "What big teeth you have!" to the wolf who has disguised himself as her grandmother.  But in the Pharaohs' song, it's the wolf doing the talking – "What full lips you have!" – as he walks through the woods with the yummy Miss Red Riding Hood.

The wolf in the song is disguised as a sheep, but he blows the disguise by emitting a hearty howl.  He immediately corrects himself, baaaa-ing for everything he's worth, but surely our plucky little heroine didn't fall for that old trick.

What big . . . EYES you have!

Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs never got back into the top 20 after "Little Red Riding Hood," but they kept trying.  In 1967, three female backup singers joined the group as the Shamettes.  ("Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs and the Shamettes" is just a bit unwieldy, n'est-ce pas?)  Later that year, they dropped "Pharaohs" from the band's name after the Six-Day War between Israel and Egypt, Jordan, and Syria.  (If you ask me, a little bad taste never hurt anyone – but you didn't ask me, did you?)

Samudio released a solo album titled Sam, Hard and Heavy in 1970 that won the Grammy for "Best Album Notes."  (Duane Allman played on that album.)  But after that, he ran afoul of drugs and lost just about everything he had.  

At some point, he became the skipper of the Lynchburg Ferry, a free car ferry that crosses the Houston Ship Channel near the San Jacinto battlefield.  (I only know that because The Today Show did a piece about him many years ago.)

Today, Samudio is a motivational speaker and writes poetry.

ApologetiX, a Christian parody band, released a parody of "Little Red Riding Hood" called "Little-Read Bible Book" in 2003.  Here it is:

Here's "Little Red Riding Hood."

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: