Link-o-Rama

P.S. A Podcast on Things     YouTube Playlist     iTunes P.S. A Podcast on Things      Want more Computer Chronicles?     Paul Videos, Old and New

My first song for a female vocalist and one of my few songs that is not about my wife. It is about a woman I had a crush on 50 years ago, and the night she fell in love with the other guy. Spotify (please, I make money from it) Made The Room Swirl (My First Real Kiss).

If you must, YouTube

The title was originally the other way around: My First Real Kiss (Made The Room Swirl). I did some testing: a Spotify search for First Real Kiss produced a dozen songs that would outrank me. On the other hand, a search for Made The Room Swirl returns my song on the first page of results.

So, if I want to tell someone about the song casually, without sending them the URL, I tell them to search for Made The Room Swirl. Feel free to do the same.

Four of my radio productions helped make 1971 The Golden Year of Old-Time Radio… if I do say so myself.

Yes, this week's column is a summer rerun, but these links can't wait.

This is MUST reading for anyone who wants to understand where we are and how we got here. 
The Godfather Presidency: How Donald Trump’s Governing Style Mimics the Mob | Vanity Fair

This, on the other hand is my latest lyrics, set to music by the Welsh Wonder and sung by Marvelous Mia. This my first song from a woman's viewpoint. Despite the protagonist being a six-foot blonde, it is NOT about my wife.
My First Real Kiss

Most people I know who are music-adjacent use the term One-Hit Wonders in a derisive way. I have come think of that as wrong. The artists in question are, I am sure, proud of their one hit. It is one more than I will ever have.

Money aside, they touched millions of lives, bringing joy, sorrow or laughter, and left behind a few small slivers that will stick in all those memories until they die (songs are the last memories to go).

I have experienced the tiniest fraction of that feeling. I am embedded in the memories of the thousands of eighth graders who learned U.S. history from me. Anecdotal evidence indicates they were moved by the experience, and unlikely to forget it. Yes, I was paid to teach. Changing lives is much more lucrative, soul-wise.

This from a page called Musical Paralysis. “A New York Times review of Spotify data discovered that our musical preferences are set by what we listen to between the ages of 13 and 16 years old.”

What’s more, a YouGov survey found that what we consider the “best decade in music” is largely dependent upon the era that we grew up in.

The Washington Post crunched the same survey and concluded that people think music, television and sporting events were best during their adolescence and early teen years.

On the older side, most people think their 30s are the best time of their life. According to IFLScience, “The results demonstrate a clear peak at 30-34, suggesting these were the happiest years of most people’s lives.”

“There are two days in every week that we should not worry about, two days that should be kept free from fear and apprehension.” Yesterday and Tomorrow. Whole poem here.
—Anonymous; frequently used in 12-step programs.

Three days that I hate to see arrive
Three days that I hate to be alive
Three days filled with tears and sorrow
Yesterday, today and tomorrow
—Willie Nelson on the same subject

The Danville Community Band, the one in which I play tenor sax, has a concert on Sunday the 18^th at 3P.M. at the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek. I’m going. Be there or be square

Chorus v. Verse

SF Chronicle columnist Jon Carroll used to have fun raising this question about pies: crust or filling (he, like me, thinks crust is a sideshow).

Since I became a lyricist, I have noticed that the chorus (the repeating section between verses) is the only part of a song that most people remember. Clearly, to them, the verse is like the crust.

There are probably several score versions of It Had To Be You (“our” song) that consist of the chorus (It had to be you, wonderful you). Only a handful include the lyric (Why do I do just as you say). Notorious versehound Frank Sinatra is one who sings the lyric.

There are hazards to listening to a song chorus-forward. For one thing, you miss a lot. I am currently revisiting songs from all periods of my life and am flabbergasted by the lyrics, which I am listening to for the first time. (As Sherlock Holmes almost said, “You hear, but you do not listen.”)

I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That) is a great example. In December, I said that my song, Nothing I Wouldn’t Do was an answer song, in a sense, because it was clear what I WOULD do. My friend of long standing Robert Malchman noted that what Meatloaf wouldn’t do is perfectly clear if you read the lyrics.

First, the big news. My first song, Holding My Heart, while heartfelt and set to a nice melody (thank you Welsh Wonder) shifted back and forth between second person (you) and third person (she) because of my inexperience. A few weeks ago, I decided to fix it. The Welsh Wonder re-recorded six words and didn’t charge me for it, so there is a new Holding My Heart, with a change that I, alone, will notice.

Which got me to thinking. In the first century and a half of recorded music, or for that matter, large-circulation newsprint, any stupid error you made was chiseled in stone forever. Now that physical music (CDs) and printed paper are (mostly) gone, professionals in both fields have an unprecedented opportunity: fix the error so it is as if it were never made.

Every newspaper editor and every musician who worked before the 21^st century must be so jealous. Scrupulous and ethical journalists notate such edits. I, on the other hand, make stealth corrections suggested by my handful of Sunday night readers (mostly MIT grads) before the hordes (if 100 can be considered a horde) arrive on Monday. Musicians who only heard the clinker (missed note) after the record/CD shipped,  once had to live with it forever.  Now, five minutes of digital editing insures no one will ever know.