Okay… unusual for me, but… I saw Donnie Osmond work it out on one of those t.v. dance shows tonight using the song You Spin Me Round by Dead or Alive. Apparently he and his partner had the 1980s as their decade to represent… and I must admit I sort of gasped. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t like that Donnie was doing it and that it was he who was chosen to represent the 80s. It was that the damn band needed to give this song its props AND PLAY IT RIGHT! This song was part of the launch of the very concept of House Music. At the bare minimum it was infuential to the genre. And I actually think Donnie could have brought the house down had this t.v. show band actually played it even resembling the real thing— and of course if Donnie really let loose on his decades of nay-sayers through some cathartic dance number I’m evidently imagining in my own mind. Hasn’t ol’ Donnie (and Marie too!) endured everyone’s crap for long enough? I’d have liked to see him rip that one open like a gosh dern raptor up in dat hizzy!!!
Here is a real version of You Spin Me Round with a little house-flavuh, from someone who remembers the genuine…
Takes me back to listening to the AM clock radio back in the day. I always remember digging this one. To part of my mind I think a funny lead-in is to say “Beware of the moderns! Look how they purposely omit the traditional instruments of the funk! Nothing but keyboards, and drums, a tamborine and a DAMN COW BELL!!!”
And in 1976, with those instruments, I’m gonna testify right now that they DID bring the funk outta them keyboards and cowbells. They did.
I think the part that perhaps illustrates the great magic best is that the tune is so darn simple. Sure it was probably seen as a bit gimmicky to go all keyboard like that back in those days of K.C. and Kiss. But from my own memories, hearing plays of this song spans many eras of my own life. I have no doubt at all that I heard this song through all of my eras since 1976.
Well, I think it’s time to get ready
To realize just what I have found
I have lived only half of what I am
It’s all clear to me now
If you know the song, you know what part of it that is. I think that’s a song writer pretty much giving it to ya, lyric-wise. (Yes, I’m laughing as I write that… because, of course, I really do believe that.)
I know this journal has leaned quite often on the music critiques as my posts. It’s not really my mission whatsoever to actually “critique” musicians. I never want to put any of them down in any way. Instead I often view this forum as if I am sifting through someone’s old record collection or even doing research in the library when I come across an old gem. And this one took me to my childhood in both San Bruno and Concord, California where I legitimately remember listening to this song being played on my AM clock radio on KFRC, San Francisco.
Yeah, I guess I was about seven years old… and I was a religious listener of the night-time radio shows. (It’s true, Mom.) I mean, like every night. And I knew my seventies artists like frequent friends. :)
I remember it well… it was an olive-green, mono-speaker clock radio made by General Electric. The hands (yes, hands) on the clock glowed flourescent green at night. It was probably made in the U.S.A.
I found this artist while listening to Radio Paradise today, and I just chose to post this video since it is so soothing to me.
I am implementing a change to the format of this blog to one where I may add new posts several times a day, or on any given day. Additionally, instead of sending out an email alert for the usual Friday post I intend to encourage those who are interested to just check in from time to time to see what’s new. Some of my favorite sites are much more frequently updated than my own, and I will often go to them several times a day to see what’s new. And while I doubt I will be posting as much as some of the sites I visit, I do expect I’ll have new things to post more than just once a week.
Let’s just say I am pretty familiar with the operation of this site now, and I’m ready for it to evolve. So enjoy the video and the music in the link above. Maybe more later…
Began my 42nd trip around the sun yesterday, ya’ll. As is stated in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:
42 is “the answer to life, the universe, and everything.”
Enjoy my video gift to you all:
People
Keep on learnin’
Soldiers
Keep on warrin’
World,
Keep on turnin’
Cause it won’t be too long.
Powers
Keep on lyin’,
While your people
Keep on dyin’
World,
Keep on turnin’,
Cause it won’t be too long.
Chorus:
I’m so darn glad He let me try it again,
‘Cause my last time on earth I lived a whole world of sin.
I’m so glad that I know more than I knew then.
Gonna keep on tryin’ till I reach the highest ground.
Teachers,
Keep on teachin’
Preachers,
Keep on preachin’,
World, keep on turnin’,
‘Cause it won’t be too long.
Oh, no
Lovers,
Keep on lovin’
While believers
Keep on believin’.
Sleepers,
Just stop sleepin’
‘Cause it won’t be too long.
Oh, no!
Chorus
(Spoken) An’ Stevie knows that, uh, no-body’s gonna bring me down.
Till I reach the highest ground.
(Spoken) ’cause me ‘n’ Stevie, see, we’re gonna be a sailin’ on the funky sound
Till I reach the highest ground.
(Spoken) Bustin’ out, an I’ll break you out, ’cause I’m sailin’ on.
Till I reach the highest ground
(Spoken)Just, uh, sailin’ on sailin’ on the higher ground
Till I reach the highest ground
Thanks to all for reading my blog,
-BB
This week is a salute to a poet whose brilliance, honestly, has me feeling uncharacteristically timid as I proceed to write. Walk with me out on the wire… I perhaps hear him saying to me.
On both Tuesday and Wednesday nights I stayed up late hoping to see some of the meteor shower expected in the skies in those nights. On Tuesday night in Oakland it was foggy, so no luck that night. On Wednesday night, we had pretty clear skies but for whatever reason I was again without any luck seeing the shower. But what I did get to do is listen to some clips on YouTube while I was allowing the clock to tick past my usual bedtime hour by quite a bit— and I’m actually a bit of a night owl already. And when I came across the video at the bottom of this post I guess I found myself reminded of some of my guitar-playing moments where I’d learn a song by listening to it either with a tape player or a cd player, playing it back over and over again until I got it. It’s actually quite tedious— neurotic, some might say— to stop and rewind and play again, and stop and rewind and play again… and again… and again. It’s not for everyone, I assure you. But there’s a certain intimate, even hypnotic, suggestion that comes through the practice that only those who endure it could probably ever appreciate.
But in this moment, I was not rewinding with any hopes of picking up the chords and notes of the guitar riffs. It was the poetry I was after. It was the cadence and the word choices that always represent far more than the words alone possibly could. This total is immeasurably beyond the sum of its parts. In these moments of such demanding examination of a work of art, in essence we are asking the artist to show us how. We are asking the artist to reveal how he found those words. We ask for an insight perhaps beyond our invitation so that maybe as aspiring writers maybe we, too, can see the very process of inspiration— especially on that level. I think we ask of the artist simply, how can one view the world around him and pick out the jewels of inspiration so well? So incredibly well.
And as any great work of art will do, these intimate requests are rewarded from this persistence. Eventually she gives in to the flattery with a return stare slightly longer than expected and allows you, her subject, an ephemeral glimpse deeper. She affirms your sincerity, modestly acquiescing, and shares your admiration of nuance and subtlety. And once granted such a moment by a piece of art, perhaps then one has genuinely encountered a willing muse of inspiration… where the words spoken reveal far more in symbol and the pulse of their delivery beckons distant ears.
Indeed, I do listen… and hear… and repeat. I gotta know how it feels. I wanna know if it’s wild, I wanna know if it’s real.
One post script:
During the writing of this post I heard news of the great Les Paul passing at age 94. It’s hard to over-estimate how his inventions opened the doors for volumes and volumes of new music in many different genres, including of course rock ‘n roll. So, if you have a moment check out this video of The Les Paul and Mary Ford at Home show in 1953. Rest in peace, Lester William Polsfuss (1915-2009).
(Full Screen and High Volume Recommended)
In the evening, When the day is done
I’m looking for a woman, but the girl don’t come
So don’t let her, Play you for a fool
She don’t show no pity baby, she don’t make no rules
*Chorus: Oh, oh, I need your love, I need your love
Oh, I need your love, I just got to have
So don’t you let her, Oh, get under your skin
It’s only bad luck and trouble, From the day that you begin
I hear you crying in the darkness, Don’t ask nobody’s help
Ain’t no pockets full of mercy baby, Cause you can only blame yourself
Chorus
Oh it’s simple, All the pain that you go through
You can turn away from fortune, fortune, Cause that’s all that’s left to you
It’s lonely at the bottom, Man, it’s dizzy at the top
But if you’re standing in the middle, Ain’t no way you’re gonna stop
Chorus
Oh whatever that your days may bring
No use hiding in a corner, Cause that won’t change a thing
If you’re dancing in the doldrums, One day soon, it’s got to stop, it’s got to stop
When you’re the master of the off-chance, When you don’t expect a lot
Chorus
— Jones/Page/Plant
Just needed to rock one out today, ya’ll.
— BB
I cannot deny that the succession of Ed, then Farrah, and then Michael passing this week has startled me. And while I wouldn’t place any of these entertainers at the top of my list of influences I still feel that somehow in the time of only a week an entire era has just passed us by. And indeed I pause because there’s no question that for me, the era itself was quite influential… as I suspect many others would also attest for themselves. Perhaps that thought alone startles me as much as anything.
As the news-reporters interview people around the world, who all seem genuinely stunned after the Michael Jackson news, I find myself thinking these questions about us everyday Americans: WHO DIDN’T grow up listening to Michael Jackson’s music? What young man in the 70s DIDN’T see visions of Farrah Fawcett in his carnal dreams? What person DOESN’T remember the Ed McMahon laughter as an icon in itself from The Tonight Show?
And maybe if we honor that familiar, altruistic generosity of the biggest single pop star the world has ever seen, perhaps our mourning of Michael Jackson should actually reaffirm this great capacity for inclusiveness with prayers for the other two— and for all from that era— much like his music magically carried along with it so many from any background, ethnicity, or nationality. We possibly cannot over estimate the impact on the people of the world as the news spreads to the furthest reaches. Probably not since Princess Diana died has such an icon left the proverbial stage.
As I turn down the chatter on the television of reporters trying to “get the story” I find myself thinking how there is something from childhood that we never lose: how we love to amuse and to BE amused. And at first glance of the lifestyle of Michael Jackson we maybe do dismiss him in the most recent years as excessively dizzied by amusements— perhaps even to an immoral and illegal level. But there is no denying that as an artist and performer Michael lived for the adoration of the audience who fueled his inspirations and delivered back to him in that adoration the one and only measurement of his art that mattered to him. This extraordinary, reciprocal devotion truly was, and perhaps always will be, what legitimately coronates the King of Pop.
Maybe you’ll be reminded over and over this weekend of every little thing about Michael Jackson— and maybe it will become somewhat tiresome— but whether you had any connection to the music of Michael Jackson or not, a huge percentage of the population of the world mourns the loss of this human being whose music crossed the sometimes impenetrable borders of our world with a message reminding us that WE ALL “can ride the boogie and share that beat of love”.
And to me, that really is fantastic! So if you’ve come along this far in this post, please click below to enjoy MY favorite Michael Jackson tune in the video below. And if you turn it up loud enough maybe Ed and Farrah will hear you too.
Girl, close your eyes
Let that rhythm, get into to you
Don’t try to fight it
There ain’t nothin’ that you can do
Relax your mind
Lay back and groove with mine
You gotta feel the heat
And we can ride the boogie
Share that beat of love
(chorus)
I wanna rock with you (all night)
Dance you in the day (sunlight)
I wanna rock with you (all night)
We’re gonna rock the night away
Out on the floor
There ain’t nobody there but us
Girl, when you dance
There’s a magic that must be love
Just take it slow
‘Cause we got so far to go
When you feel that heat
And we gunna ride the boogie
Share that beat of love
(chorus)
And when the grove is dead and gone
yeah, u no that love survives
so we can rock forever
I wanna rock with you
I wanna groove with you
I wanna rock with you
Iwanna groove with you
Rock (all night)
Girl, (sunlight)
Rock with you, rock with you,(all night)yeah
Dance the night away (rock rock)
(chorus)
Feel the beat, feel the beat woo
Rock you in the day (sunlight)
I wanna rock (all night)
Rock the night away
— Michael Jackson