Tag: 1965

Monday’s Theme Music

Since it’s Monday, and so many songs feature Monday in their titles or lyrics, I thought I’d go with “Wooly Bully.” “Wooly Bully” does not mention Monday, as far as I know. I’ve never looked up the lyrics, but I must admit that I don’t understand most of them. As far as I know, they go, “Mattie told Hattie about a thing she saw. Something (with big horns?) and a wooly jaw. Wooly bully, wooly bully.” Mattie also tells Hattie to take a chance. The singer shouts, “I like it, I like it.”

I don’t know. I like singing that woolly bully chorus. Very liberating.

I learned the song from a forty-five RPM record on a little phonograph. I want to say it was a Capitol record, from what I remember, but I was young, and didn’t pay attention.

Here is Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs from, geez, I’m guessing mid-nineteen sixties, with “Woolly Bully.”

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Today’s Theme Music

Well, this is it.

We’ve begun the countdown to the end of the world, also known as The Doritos Great American Eclipse of 2017. I’ll keep posting right up until the last possible moment. Hope you survive; hope to see you on the other side.

In many ways, this reminds me of the other times the world has ended during my lifetime. One, of course, was when the Beatles broke up. Another, of less significance, but highly important, was when Coke launched New Coke. Our taste buds were thrown into a fizzy tizzy. What a nightmare.

Third on my list must be Y2K. It was such a disaster. We didn’t even have an official sponsor, or a good website. Despite knowing about it for years ahead of time, when it finally happened, it was soul-crushing and chilling. We went for days hunkered in our homes, watching television and old movies, eating junk food and microwaved pizza while awaiting the all-clear.

You know, when that all-clear was finally sounded, and we stopped out of the television’s glow and into daylight, we went right out and got a real pizza, and celebrated.

I want to reassure you all that if we survived those events, you can survive this eclipse. To keep you from getting too hopeful, I’ll play a little ditty that’s sure to depress you. From nineteen sixty-five, here is Barry McGuire, with “Eve of Destruction.”

* That’s not true. Doritos has nothing to do with the eclipse. It’s fake news that I made up.

 

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Today’s Theme Music

Today’s song was a staple of our neighborhood air group. Energetic, enthusiastic, and easy to learn – important for nine-year-old air musicians – we loved getting up on our chairs in a basement with our air-guitars and air-mics, beating our air-drums, and performing “Good Lovin’.” I struggled with the group’s name; I always wanted to call them the Little Rascals, but that was a different group.

Here’s the Young Rascal’s recording of “Good Lovin’,” from nineteen sixty-five. Wow, fifty-two years ago. It aged well, don’t you think?

 

 

 

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Today’s Theme Music

Politics, television, advancement, publishing – I can’t get no satisfaction.

Yeah, baby. The Rolling Stones sing it best. The guitar riff, thumping, unrelenting beat and the Mick’s vocalizing of the frustration with the commercial world all come together fantastic in that nineteen sixty-five rock classic, “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” Jesus, I was just nine but something about that combination spoke to me. While Mick is singing about being pissed over the world’s increasing commercialization and the things he’s being sold, I get that same sense from the news of the world and my efforts to move myself forward. It’s like one stride forward and a long fall backward.

Seeing it on the old “Ed Sullivan Show” is fun. Simpler times, friends, but isn’t that what each generation notices about how life changes?

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Today’s Theme Music

Today’s music is provided by Eric Burdon and The Animals, so it’s an old song, yeah?

I remember that Mom was really excited about Eric Burdon and The Animals coming on to television. I’m not sure what show they were appearing on, as I was about eight years old. I think it may have been “The Ed Sullivan Show.” I lived in Wilkinsburg, PA, on Laketon Road, across from Turner Elementary School. That’s how vivid this memory is of that week. Mom was talking about it while ironing and dressing to go to work at her job as a telephone operator.

Eric Burdon and The Animals’ appearance hugely disappointed Mom. Somehow, in the course of the advertising, she thought it was to be singing animals! My older sister laughed and laughed over that.

This song is an old stand-by for me. “We Gotta Get Out of This Place” was often selected as a theme song when I was down, depressed, frustrated, or bitter, which seems to be quite a bit. I would sing it to my self, my wife, my cats, my work teams, whatever. There’s something freeing and invigorating about singing, “We gotta get out of this place, if it’s the last thing we ever do.”

Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about. Whether it’s physical, emotional, or intellectual, if there’s a place you gotta get out of, this song is ideal for fortifying your determination to do so.

Here they are, from nineteen sixty-five, Eric Burdon and The Animals, with all the glory of nineteen sixty-five technology.

 

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Today’s Theme Music

I’m doing more streaming out of the Wayback Machine. This morning, we jump back to the year of my high school graduation, 1974.

Ah, exciting times. Vietnam. Nixon. Whip Inflation Now. Watergate. Cold War. ‘The Godfather’. ‘The Exorcist’. Eight track and cassette tapes. Princess phones, wall phones and extra-long telephone cords were in vogue.

Cable television viewership was rising. Microwaves were riding in on the first wave of availability. Companies were messing around with smaller computers but they were still focused on business. VCRs, DVDs, and Compact Discs were all in the future, as were Microsoft and Apple. There were still two Germanys. No European Union. Cell phones were just being used for the first calls but they were huge, expensive, heavy clunkers.

We were still recovering from the oil crisis of 1973. The national fifty-five miles per hour speed limit was upon us. The Phantom F-4 was our front line fighter, along with the F-111. The F-16 was still a prototype, and the F-14 was just entering service, with the F-15 coming along behind it. The Expos still played in Montreal, the Nationals didn’t play in Washington, and the Rockies and Marlins were still dreams.

From that stew, we have the Troggs with ‘Wild Thing’. I loved the song’s use in the film, ‘Major League’, in 1989. Charlie Sheen played Ricky ‘Wild Thing’ Vaughn, a Cleveland Indians pitcher. Of course, the Troggs hit was a cover of a song written, recorded and released in 1965 and the song in the movie was a cover by X.

So, here we go, a 1965 song, 1974 hit, from a 1989 movie, in which it was covered by a punk band, enjoyed in 2017.

Isn’t technology grand?

 

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Today’s Theme Music

Today’s song is from a movie. I saw the movie back in the mid-1960s when I was a child. For some reason, it popped into my head last night and stayed awhile.

So, here it is, from the 1965 production of ‘Cinderella’, Leslie Ann Warren singing ‘In My Own Little Corner’. 

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Today’s Theme Music

I rode the surf from yesterday’s catchy and memorable song (what was it again?) to today’s.

What I remember best about this was that it was one of many forty-five RPM records my sister owned. We had the little plastic spindle adapter that allowed this to be played on the thirty-three’s spindle. Otherwise, you put on the larger forty-five plastic adapter, which reminded me of a red and gray toilet paper roll. The record’s label was orange, which I think was Decca. The song was ubiquitous, true for many Beach Boys songs at the time.

Here, from 1965, ‘California Girls’.

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Today’s Theme Music

As with many things, I blame Mom.

Actually, I’m embellishing that. I blame Mom for my love of reading, learning, walking and eating, so it’s actually a short list. I do blame her for some of the music I know, too. Blame isn’t the correct word, of course; I credit her.

Staying with a walking theme for my theme music, I recall one song that I sang when I was younger. By Roger Miller, it must have seemed odd to anyone noticing that a ten to twelve year old was walking, snapping his fingers and singing, ‘King of the Road’. I know Mom had this album; I vividly recall its cover. But more, I saw him perform this song on television. I have no idea what show or what year it was, but I remember it. Of course, I have an active imagination, so perhaps I just imagined it.

Anyway, from 1965, Roger Miller and ‘King of the Road’. 

 

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Today’s Theme Music

I was just nine years old when this song came out. I learned it from my Mom’s albums, but it was an AM pop station mainstay for years and then became a ‘golden oldie’ on FM radio.

This video is fun. It’s a television recording from the mid 1960s. That allows us to experience some modern twin developments defining themselves: pop music and TV. I like the hair, the matching little outfits, and the spartan stage.

Here’s ‘Let’s Hang On!’ by The Four Seasons, 1965. Sing along. The words are easy to learn.

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