"How did they know so much so early?" was a question asked by one commenter, about the Beatles' songwriting.
Bob Dylan said in a 60 Minutes interview that he honestly didn't know where the songs came from in that mid-1960s part of his musical output:
the Bringing It All Back Home album;
the Highway 61 Revisited album;
the Blonde On Blonde album.
Is art mysterious?
-30-
on You Tube, you can type in the song title:
You've Got To Hide Your Love Away (Remastered 2009)
...and play it.
"Hey!" ...
viewer comments:
---------------------------------
^ Dear aliens... Welcome to planet earth. Home of The Beatles. We have other stuff but it's not as good.
^ One of the many, many, many masterpieces by the great John Lennon
Greetings from the Netherlands.
^ These 4 kids wrote songs of such depth and beauty. How did they know so much so early
^ This song just gets me every time. It's hauntingly beautiful.
^ Never again will we ever hear a band like the Beatles, the stars truly aligned when these four young boys got together. Their musical journey is breathtaking, vocals, lyrics, melodies, harmonies - just bloody perfect.
^ Most bands are successful when they find their own sound. The Beatles decided that was too simple so they went for their own sound with every song. Every song is its own genre. Impossible. Unbelievable.
-30-
I had a CD of live concert performances by Reba McEntire around the turn of the decade - 1989 to 1990.
When I played it on my stereo in the living room, and it got to a particular song where it was a capella - (I think it was "Sweet Dreams" a big hit for Patsy Cline, written by Willie Nelson) - one of my two cats would go into the living room and roll around on the carpet and yowl-along with the song.
The first time she did it, I set aside the work I was doing in my home office and went out to the living room, like, What is going on??
Is there something wrong with my cat? Is she OK?
When that song was over, the - caterwauling - stopped, and everything was back to normal.
Next time I put on that CD, when it got to that song - here we go again.
Oow - woww - maahh - rahr - wowll...
Ya never know...with cats, you have to accept a certain amount of mystery.
-30-
Yesterday on here, I was describing how I would run back and forth from the TV to my parents, reporting on the funny things that had been said.
Recently a related memory popped up - when I started working as a lobbyist for a statewide association, in the nineties, this one lobbyist, George V., would tease me - he always had something to say - he was one of those professional smart-alecks.
It didn't bother me, but I wanted to have some sort of comeback - listening to the "Nick-at-Nite" channel I heard someone say "living heck" - "they made his life a living heck."
The expression is "a living hell". That sounds horrible, but when someone changed it to "a living heck" it sounded funny and silly.
I thought, "That's what I'll say to him next time - 'George, you turn my world into a living heck!'"
So one day, going in to work at the Capital to see what the legislature was up to, I encountered him in one of the lobbies - House or Senate, and he made a remark, and I used my prepared riposte.
He immediately hurried over to where several of the other lobbyists were sitting with their newspapers and told them, "Did you hear what she said? She said I turn her world into a living heck!"
He was so delighted.
And I thought later it was kind of like when I used to report on the funny lines of TV shows to my mom & dad.
George V. was like me, doing the reporting.
The nearby lobbyists were like my parents - the audience who didn't ask for the show.
And I was like the situation comedy - the source of his amusement.
When I was elementary-school age I would watch Bewitched reruns on TV in the mornings - it was on, back-to-back with That Girl.
Sometimes if something particularly funny happened in one of these shows, I would go and tell it to my mom or dad - find them, mom in the kitchen, maybe, dad in his study, if he was home.
I would hurriedly set the scene: 'this is happening, and they are trying to solve such-and-such a problem, and Darrin said this, and then Endora said that!'
...Then rush back to the living room to continue watching the show.
Second-hand television: what a concept.
I remember in one episode of Bewitched I had to hurry up and tell my dad that after Darrin said something, Endora said (in this theatrical, grand tone of voice which I tried to imitate) - "The fountain of trivia runneth over!"
I had heard my dad use the word trivia, before.
And the word "runneth" was like in the Bible where they say verbs with the "t-h" at the end - "he maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he restoreth my soul"...
Not that we talked like that in real life, but in church where the Bible was read from, and quoted, and we little children memorized passages ... I thought Endora's line was funny, and church-related, so my dad might like it.
Know your audience.
My parents must have wondered sometimes, "How did we give birth to such a rambunctious child?"
-30-
I was thinking, when people marry into royalty, as Lady Diana Spencer did, and also American actress Grace Kelly did, how much of the plan of Being Married is an Idea, and how much of it is Reality?
Then again, what is Reality?
Is it something someone believes?
Is it something someone wants to believe?
It is something a person hopes for?
Princess Diana said later, "I had such hope in my heart."
Some people watching the Grace of Monaco movie on Amazon Prime might be wondering, Why is an actor portraying movie director Alfred Hitchcock in this movie? What has he to do with Monaco?
Well, he kind of had nothing to do with Monaco - the sunny place for shady people. He knew Princess Grace from her earlier life as Grace Kelly, the Hollywood movie star.
They made three movies together:
To Catch A Thief
Dial "M" For Murder
Rear Window.
When I think of Grace Kelly, I think of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy and my mother, because they were all born in the same year, 1929.
I thought about Jackie's adult life and Grace's adult life.
Jackie's had three phases:
First Lady of America
International wife of Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis
book editor.
Grace Kelly's had two phases:
movie star
princess.
(As Steve Martin would say, "Well, excuuuuse - me!")
LOL.
movie star.
princess.
Who is going to keep up with all that? - even Jackie?!
Actress Nicole Kidman portrays Princess Grace of Monaco in a movie that's now on Amazon Prime.
It's good.
Film of a winding road going up a hill looks like a scene in Alfred Hitchcock's To Catch A Thief (starring Grace Kelly) which was set in Monaco, and I think may have actually been filmed there.
Intrigue and broken dreams in this film.
There's a saying, "Monaco is a sunny place for shady people."
A hairstyle they do on Nicole Kidman is reminiscent of a hair-do on Kim Novak in Hitchcock's film, Vertigo.
The hair coils around, like this:
-30-
Part of the reason I think a lot of people say - or used to say - that they "started in the mailroom" is because it gives their "story" an "arc."
I started there.
Now I'm here.
(farmer who inherited 500 acres of land) -
"I worked hard for everything I have."
(rancher who inherited 1000 acres of land) -
"I worked my way up."
(rancher who inherited 2,000 acres of land) -
"I started in the mailroom."
---------------------- Something else I've heard successful people say is, that they had a teacher in school who told them they would "never amount to anything" or some variation on that, like - "You are not good enough to be a writer" - or actor, etc.
That sounds crazy, to me. Would any teacher ever say such a thing?? It seems implausible....
But there again, like the Mailroom Story, it gives the person's story an arc.
Things were bad; now they're good.
Someone tried to discourage me; they were WRONG!
I started at the bottom; now I'm at the top.
Do we believe all this?
(Thinking about a story arc - something the character Christopher Moltisanti worries about in The Sopranos - makes me think of another scene in that show, where the character Salvatore Bonpensiero [played by actor Vincent Pastore] says jovially, "Ya know who had an arc? Noah!")
-30-
That Hollywood agent discussed here in yesterday's post was said to have "started in the mailroom" at an agency.
That's a common story of people who have successful careers.
They started in the mailroom.
(That photo I used here yesterday that I found on the Internet - that was a mailroom he was standing in.)
David Geffen, another successful show business person, said he started in the mailroom, & there was something I read a while ago about Michael Bloomberg, who was mayor of New York City after Rudy Giuliani, that said he began his career sweeping floors at a brokerage firm, and worked his way up and is now a billionaire.
I'm beginning to get a little bit skeptical of these stories.
A little while ago in this blog, I advised readers to be skeptical of things people say, like
"family!!"
"freedom in America!!"
"I'm a CHRISTIAN!!!"
Perhaps I need to apply a little skepticism to these backstories - (myths?).
(billionaires) -
"I started in the mailroom."
"I started in the mailroom."
"I started in the mailroom."
"I started out sweeping the floor."
"I started in the mailroom..."
(me, howling into the void) -
"Where is this mailroom??!!"
-30-
This guy whose interview channel I've been listening to on You Tube, Harvey Brownstone, is a Canadian retired judge.
Now, this is a way to "retire"! - The conversations are fascinating.
Some people might tune in to this channel and then write to my blog and say, "You listen to the weirdest stuff!"
Mr. Brownstone said, in his Joel Brokaw interview, "people who watch this channel are lovers of classic Hollywood."
He had the conversation with Joel Brokaw because Mr. Brokaw's father Norman was a show business agent in Hollywood, and the son, Joel, wrote a book about him.
A lot of the guests on the channel have a book out, so that's part of the interviewing process - promoting their book. But the conversations are really interesting, because they go way beyond that.
Some of the people he has on, worked with "ghostwriters" to "do" their book. (...My idea of a ghostwriter: a white sheet with big dark eyes, hovering above an office chair, focused on a computer screen with a stack of pages....)
Hollywood agent
-30-
Kaye Ballard, pictured above, is one of the "iconic" American entertainers featured on Harvey Brownstone Interviews, a channel on You Tube which I recently encountered.
I could listen to this [stuff] all day.
...(I have listened to this [stuff] all day. ... haha)
He conversates with stars and, many times, the adult children of stars because the stars have passed away - Don Knotts, Tim Conway, etc. ...People who were entertaining us - and / or our parents - in the mid-20th Century.
(I used to get Kaye Ballard mixed up with Martha Raye.
I won't, anymore....)
Mr. Brownstone has a terrific interview on there with Tommy James, of Tommy James and the Shondells ("Crimson And Clover" ...)
And an off-the-wall interview with Mamie Van Doren, an actress whom a Hollywood studio intended to be an imitator of Marilyn Monroe.
Ms. Van Doren was from South Dakota.
the first five, left to right, are: Bob Dole, Nancy Reagan, Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford, Nelson Rockefeller
There's a video on You Tube titled:
Jon Meacham: Carter was a complicated man driven by ambition and service
uploader / channel: MSNBC
That title is kind of "click-bait." I don't see Jimmy Carter as all that "complicated."
But it's a good video. Very informative. 12 minutes.
One of the commentators says Carter lived "an epic American life."
-30-
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter passing away this week - 100 years young....
He was the first president I got to vote for: I turned 18 a month before the election, Whew!
He came to the state where I lived, to campaign: he was set to appear and speak in the biggest city down in the southeast corner. I and two friends from school asked my dad to drive us down there to hear him.
After he talked about issues that were current at the time, he said, "We haven't had a farmer in the White House since Thomas Jefferson; I think it's about time we had another one."
And the crowd roared.
He reached out from the stage as if to shake hands with everyone. At the front, we reached our hands up, and he swept his hand in an arc, touching as many fingertips as possible.
Years later, I read something where he quoted a line from a Bob Dylan song.
He spent the years after his presidency working for projects such as Habitat For Humanity - (doing things to help; not boasting about himself).
He was a good person.
-30-
