^^ Yes, that was her breakthrough song if I remember correctly. Ah. Assassination, though.... They should have made Malloy a comic book fan to balance the scales of justice. I mulled that over as a clever rejoinder as well. And as for their Christmas song.....
50th Anniversary Album Spotlight Workingman's Dead Grateful Dead Released June 14, 1970 Chart debut: June 27, 1970 Chart peak: #27, July 18, 1970 #262 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time The album opens with the Dead's first charting single, "Uncle John's Band" (Aug. 8, 1970; #69 US): Note that while the contributors to the Rolling Stone album list are certainly fond of the Dead, there are no Dead entries on the songs list. Next up is "High Time," a perhaps overly slow country-style ballad: Things pick up with "Dire Wolf" and its attention-grabbing refrain of "don't murder me": Side one closes with "New Speedway Boogie," which, according to a Genius Lyrics contributor, was "the Dead’s response to San Francisco music critic Ralph Gleason’s criticism of their role in Altamont, the infamous free concert documented in the rockumentary, Gimme Shelter." Side two opens with "Cumberland Blues," which has an enjoyably upbeat country/funk vibe for a song about coal mining. "Black Peter" takes things in a more mellow direction without being as draggy as "High Time". "Easy Wind," sung by Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, is a down 'n' dirty blues rocker. The album closes with a song that I wasn't familiar with by title, but which was instantly recognizable to my ear, "Casey Jones": And that's where I was thinking I must have heard it. Overall, this album is a pretty good listen, but most of the individual songs weren't really grabbing me. I'd suspect that the contributors to the Rolling Stone list were giving Workingman's Dead a pat on the head for jumping on the country rock bandwagon that had been rolling for the previous couple of years, but the album does have some historical cred... _______
Here's another classic band that I was more-or-less indifferent to. I liked "Uncle John's Band" (but I'm not sure if I was even aware that it was a Grateful Dead song) and "Casey Jones," and "Touch of Gray" when it came along, but I didn't really pay much attention. I wonder, did Uncle John open for Sgt. Pepper or vice versa? Pretty nice. Probably the one Grateful Dead song that I could have named without hesitation back in the day. It turned up pretty frequently on BCN back in the 80s.
One of the most memorable episodes of the series, and its writers could not know how personalities like that (the hero-worshipping, obsessed collector part , not the crime side) would continue well into the present day. Since it was based on a real case, I always assumed the real world version of Stanley Stover was obsessed with the '66-'68 Batman TV series, since that--even more than comics of the "Superhero Boom" era--was such a phenomenon that it inspired some fans to not only create home-made costumes, but seek out as much merchandise on the series as possible, and also generated some to collect anything from Columbia's Batman serials. Apparently, that was the case; to prevent the popular documentary from muddying the waters of the then-forthcoming Anthology, he acquired the rights, shelving TCB. Personally, one does not compromise or compete with the other.
55 Years Ago This Week Selections from Billboard's Hot 100 for the week, with a Bubbling Under bonus: Leaving the chart: "Catch the Wind," Donovan (10 weeks) "Give Us Your Blessings," The Shangri-Las (8 weeks) "Help Me, Rhonda," The Beach Boys (14 weeks) "Shakin' All Over," Guess Who? (11 weeks) "You Really Know How to Hurt a Guy," Jan & Dean (9 weeks) Bubbling under: "I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better," The Byrds (B-side of "All I Really Want to Do"; #103 US; #234 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time) New on the chart: "Since I Lost My Baby," The Temptations (#17 US; #4 R&B) "You Were on My Mind," We Five (#3 US; #1 AC) "California Girls," The Beach Boys (#3 US; #26 UK; #71 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time) "Like a Rolling Stone," Bob Dylan (#2 US; #4 UK; #1 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time) _______ I've yet to really warm up to them. An interesting possibility, if it was based on something that recent. And assuming the Announcer is telling the truth when he says that the story is true...I've always taken that with a grain of salt.
Very nice. Sounds okay, but.... Very pleasant. And they kind of want to be The Byrds, don't they? Classic, of course. Amazing uber classic. Now that's just nepotism.
50 Years Ago This Week Selections from Billboard's Hot 100 for the week: Leaving the chart: "Freedom Blues," Little Richard (9 weeks) "It's All in the Game," Four Tops (13 weeks) "I Want to Take You Higher," Sly & The Family Stone (16 weeks total; 9 weeks this run) "Love on a Two-Way Street," The Moments (15 weeks) "Question," The Moody Blues (12 weeks) "Sugar, Sugar" / "Cole, Cooke & Redding", Wilson Pickett (12 weeks) "Which Way You Goin' Billy?," The Poppy Family (feat. Susan Jacks) (17 weeks) New on the chart: "Big Yellow Taxi," Joni Mitchell (#67 US; #33 AC; #11 UK) "It's a Shame," The Spinners (#14 US; #4 R&B; #20 UK) "25 or 6 to 4," Chicago (#4 US; #7 UK) "Candida," Dawn (#3 US; #8 AC; #9 UK) _______ I'll reiterate what I believe I said in the album review...it sounds particularly like Rubber Soul...before Rubber Soul. Definitely the Lilliputian among this week's selections. I previously tended to associate them more with the Seekers--no doubt because of the female lead singer--but I can hear it now that you mention it...and Wiki categorizes them as folk rock; and they would qualify as part of the wave of California artists spearheaded by the Byrds. Interesting thing about these one-hit wonders is that their follow-up single--which I wasn't planning to cover here because it didn't crack the Top 30--was an earlier cover of "Let's Get Together" (charts Nov. 13, 1965; #31 US), a song that goes back to an even earlier version by the Kingston Trio, but is best known for the Youngbloods' rendition, which was originally released in '67 but didn't peak until '69. And...can't say that I'm crazy about this version. It doesn't have the sign-o-the-times charm of the Youngbloods classic. One might go so far as to say that it's the magnum opus of the Beach Boys' surf rock era...though the song is still a little tainted for me by the David Lee Roth cover... And the second song on the list is by the Rolling Stones...I always thought that was a little cutesy. The Dylan album that will be this track's home, which will be released late next month, is also his highest-ranking on the RS album list...#4, placing behind only Sgt. Pepper, Pet Sounds, and Revolver. Once it's in my collection, I'll have a solid string of all of his '60s albums but the first one.
I wasn’t biggest Byrd’s fan, but I did like this one a lot. This is my favorite song by the original Tempts lineup with David Ruffin. It has, IMO, one of the great keyboard intros ever. Great melody. As for the lyrics, every time I hear about this woman Ruffin has “lost,” I think, he didn’t lose her, she escaped. Another of those songs I’m kinda embarrassed to say I like, but I liked it quite a bit. Some years ago, in fact a lot of years ago, there was a really long (and great) article about Al Kooper, the guy who is playing those iconic organ fills on this song. As I recall, his participation in the session was a last minute thing. He wasn’t even primarily a keyboard player. The kicker though, is that, per the article, Kooper came up with the stuff he played on his own. Imagine LRS without that eponymous keyboard figure that follows each “How does it feel?” This might be the song’s most distinctive hook. Man, studio musicians... No. 1 on RS list of best 100 songs of the rock era. I would not argue with it’s placement.
Cute, especially the significance of the title. Not bad, but I never would have guessed it's the Spinners. On the other hand, there's no mistaking this. Very nice. Also very nice. Telma Hopkins of Dawn was also an actress, who I remember mainly as a regular on Bosom Buddies, one of my favorite shows (Tom Hanks's big break!). Plus which, I was just listening to the Byrds a minute before. The Youngbloods' version is one of those songs that's so definitive that any other version just sounds like they're doing it wrong. I wouldn't argue with that. Thanks for reminding me. Now I'll have to pay for another hypnosis session. You'd think more artists would have worked "rolling stone" into their songs or names.
It would be fascinating for someone to publish a book listing al of the real cases Dragnet used for its episodes, if it did not pose any legal hurdles, that is.
_______ 50th Anniversary Catch-Up Viewing _______ Hawaii Five-O "Six Kilos" Originally aired March 12, 1969 The 5-O team is staking out the airport to learn about the job for which a box man has been brought in from the mainland. So as soon as he opens a locker at the airport, they try to arrest him instead of, y'know, continuing to tail him. Of course, Danny and Chin's surveillance technique leaves a bit to be desired... The box man pulls a gun and Danny puts another notch in his pistol. McGarrett proceeds to make lemonade out of these lemons by arranging to impersonate the box man, leaning on some safecracking experience from his Naval Intelligence days. Now I could buy Steve going undercover when he was operating on the mainland, but they've portrayed him as being too prominent and newsworthy a figure to credibly pull it off on the islands. This is sort of addressed a ways into the episode when Steve is making a shady rendezvous with a nitro supplier at a hotel and one of the security guys walks up and loudly greets him by his real name...though their way of dealing with the issue is to have the guy apologize after the fact, saying that he should have known better. Undercover, Steve gets in with a group of other hired individuals, including Margi Carstairs (Antoinette Bower) and Carl Swanson (Gerald S. O'Loughlin). Oddly, no attempt is made to connect Carl with O'Loughlin's previous character, Charlie Swanson, from "The Box". Maybe he's supposed to be the same guy and this episode takes place before that one, but I'd have to go back and watch it again to see if there were any clues in that direction. The group is taking their instructions from an anonymous voice on a tape--clever gimmick, huh? But here the voice is distorted in a way that is very recognizably the slowed-down voice of a woman, so I knew right off that as the only female in the group, Carstairs was the secret mastermind. She's using her role as part of the entourage of a diplomatic envoy from somewhere or another to pull off a heist of the titular six kilos of smack from her boss's boat. After they succeed and Steve has her place surrounded with his men, he "unmasks" Carstairs by playing one of the tapes at increased speed. "And I would have gotten away with it, too, if not for you meddlesome Hawaiian cops!" _______ Dragnet 1969 "Vice (DR-30)" Originally aired March 13, 1969 Wednesday, March 5 (1969): Friday and Gannon are working the night watch out of Administrative Vice Division when they get a tip from a hotel manager about how some of his guests have been getting driven out to an illegal gambling establishment and losing big. They pose as guests from the aforementioned convention and start casing the situation and the the staff and other patrons of the hotel, including the bartender (Bobby Troup) and a woman named Dottie Taylor (Chanin Hale), whom they correctly peg as a shill. Friday's method actually involves getting flirty with her, which consists of him eyeing her while wearing a very awkward-looking tight-lipped smile. When they eventually get driven out a house in the Hollywood Hills that's set up like a genuine club, via an indirect route meant to be disorienting to out-of-towners, we find that his poker face is pretty much the same as his flirty face. Friday spots that the poker game is using marked cards, but the guy running the joint, Nate Calvin (that other John Sebastian), lets him win to make him interested in coming back the next night and losing big-time. When they do come back, it's with backup to bust the place. _______ And The Old Mixer is the size of a lentil. _______ Seems like every song is somebody's favorite. Had to look up what that was about. Dayum. No need to be embarrassed here, you're in like-minded company! Of all time according to the title of the list...but they are a rock magazine. I'm not sure I follow the connection between that and the rest of the song's message, other than having the refrain "you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone" in common. An enjoyable oldies radio classic. Definitely one of their strongest tracks. Didn't know that. And looking up a different factoid, I just read that at this point there wasn't really a "Dawn"...it was just a group name that Tony Orlando was working under with studio musicians because of contractual issues. It strikes me that the follow-up to "Candida" was probably meant to be a soundalike single...in this case, one that outshined its predecessor. I might have liked it if it'd had a more similar arrangement. That's a relief, because I wasn't sure if I was using "magnum opus" right... Ah, we share the same trauma... That would indeed be interesting...and there'd be only one possible title for it. _______ What's wrong with this picture?
Song is actually kind of funky in it’s own way. Taxi has always felt like a bit of a throw away for her, something she tossed off during lunch. She probably spent years on it. This Is from back in the Spinners’ Motown days. GC Cameron, who was the lead singer on this song, had been a solo artist, was foisted upon the group because the label didn’t think the Spinners had a good enough lead. It was a moderate hit from what I recall. I liked I’ll Always Love You, their other minor hit with Motown, a lot more. I used to love early Chicago. They were unique; a rock big band with jazz, r&b, and funk elements. But they split up or something and started putting out that string of sappy and insipid ballads. “Does Anybody Know What Time it Is” and “Saturday in the Park” were great, but then came the darkness. Yes, The Youngblood’s’ version was much better.
"Break up. You look like a cadet review." Now I'm worried that he's starting to like it. Why does Naval Intelligence need safecracking skills? The script probably called for a wig and fake mustache and Jack freaked out. I wonder if it was the same writer. Sometimes writers sneak certain names into their work on a regular basis (like Roddenberry and Noonian Singh). If it self destructed they would have been better off. "Book 'her, Danno. But throw her in the drink first." You don't work all those nights in Vice without learning something. No dramatic parting scene between Friday and the shill, a la Maltese Falcon? I'm drawing a blank for lentil jokes. Come back when you're older. That would make a good song lyric. This is just my interpretation, but the lyrics are all about ecology except for that one little bit about her old man leaving, and that's what gave the song its title-- which implies that it was the personal loss that inspired the general philosophizing. "My boyfriend left me. The world is a mess. Fill 'er up, bartender." So she wasn't even on that song.... In the sense of a giant penguin? I think a lot of people would like to forget... uh, what were we talking about? Not only is their Watergate timeline off, but the scenario doesn't quite fit the facts either.
_______ 50th Anniversary Catch-Up Viewing _______ Hawaii Five-O "The Big Kahuna" Originally aired March 19, 1969 (Season 1 finale) I don't know what casting people saw in John Marley that made them think he could pull off playing a Samoan clan leader in Ironside, and here, a year before that, not just a native Hawaiian, but a descendant of royalty! His character, Sam Kalakua, is sitting on an inherited estate that would be worth a fortune to land developers. He begins to receive visitations from what appears to be the goddess Pele, which cause his sanity to be questioned. Steve gets the case because he's a buddy of the Governor. At the scene of the first visitation, a scrap of material determined to be from a type of movie screen is found; and at the second, it's determined that an oil lamp that Kalakua threw at the apparition exploded because it was filled with fireworks explosives, possibly intended to detonate in closer proximity to him. The 5-O team traces the movie screen material to an acid-head hippie director of avant garde films. Along the way we learn that Kalakua's nephew/heir and his wife (Robert Colbert and Sally Kellerman) have been scheming with a crooked land developer (Peter Leeds) to have Kalakua committed, but as McGarrett's investigation begins to get to the bottom of things, the developer puts pressure on the couple to resolve the matter ASAP...so they arrange a final visitation from Pele on a cliffside, during which she's to lure him to jump. But the 5-O team gets ahold of a reel of the hippie director's film that shows Kellerman's character, Eleanor Kalakua, in her Pele getup, and get there in the nick of time. When McGarrett arrives, Eleanor is startled, loses her balance, and falls off the cliff herself...apparently onto dry land, not into the drink. _______ Dragnet 1969 "Forgery (DR-33)" Originally aired March 20, 1969 Tuesday, April 11 (1967?): Friday and Gannon are working the day watch out of Frauds Division, Forgery section, when they're assigned to investigate the forging of bad payroll checks from a movie studio, using the signature of an employee named Sarah Phillips (Angel Tompkins), who tells the detectives that somebody stole her credit cards and driver's license. They ask questions about her roommate, Mary, who's recently joined a new religious group called the Ming Dynasty Crusaders, and take Mary's picture and a sample of her handwriting for analysis, but it doesn't match that of the forger. The detectives get a tip from a hippie former TV/movie writer named Blake Thompson (Gary Crosby), who reveals that his wife, Sondra (Jill Banner), has been brainwashed into passing the stolen checks by the people in the commune where she now lives. Along the way, the detectives question why this relatively together guy lives in squalor. After a follow-up call from Thompson, they bust the place where Sondra is living, but she's not there; Thompson gets ahold of them so she can turn herself in at his place. A month later, on the court date, Friday and Gannon are approached at HQ by a man they don't recognize--Blake Thompson, now clean-cut the way we're used to seeing Gary Crosby on Adam-12. "It was because of what's happened to Sondra that I decided to turn off, tune out, and drop back in." Friday and Gannon walk with him and Sondra to the courthouse in a supportive gesture. (James Oliver and Maxine Greene) _______ And The Old Mixer is the size of a blueberry. _______ I don't think the screenshot captures it, but Danny is really obviously craning his neck to get a better look. Intelligence...during the war...he did spy stuff. But in this case, played by the same actor and appearing in the same season. Think he was saying that one to Chin. Haven't seen the film (), but actually there was such a scene, with her hitting the repentant moll theme pretty heavy...all over a $40 fine. "The story you have just seen is true...except for the parts we cribbed from an old Bogie flick." The ecological part, according to the song's Wiki page, was inspired by a visit to Hawaii, during which she viewed a spectacular vista from her hotel room but couldn't help noticing a sprawling parking lot below. As for the part about her old man leaving, it just occurred to me that the song might have been referencing her breakup with Graham Nash, given the timing. Its Wiki page suggests a more esoteric meaning... The perfect response would be to post the video...but I can't bring myself to do it. How so? The big change in their sound came at the dawn of the '80s...from what I read, following their split with a longtime producer of their albums and the death of a band member.
Feature not bug: Things have to be set up so Steve can put everything right. Yes of course. They have editorials about McGarrett on the evening news, but he can also just slip into the underworld whenever he wants. They have a pretty messed up idea of what naval intelligence is. It has little or nothing to do with espionage of the secret agent variety. Even less to do with arresting embezzling supply officers as in an earlier episode. Magnum P.I. did the same thing. Also, they're not alternating single and double quotation marks.
_______ 50th Anniversary Catch-Up Viewing _______ Dragnet 1969 "Juvenile (DR-32)" Originally aired March 27, 1969 Saturday, September 12 (1964?): Friday and Gannon are working the day watch out of Juvenile Division when a health official enlists them to find the dog who bit a five-year-old girl, Sherri Wickersham, five days prior. Sherri is highly allergic to the anti-rabies serum, so they have to locate the dog to determine if it's rabid. It seems like this is more of an animal thing that would be handled by a department or division other than juvenile. Sherri's mother, Dorothy Wickersham (Shannon Farnon), describes how two terriers were involved, each tied to a camper, which the campers belonging to a man and two women who were traveling together. The owners left the scene without identifying themselves, but she wrote down the plate numbers, so the detectives go to the CHP to try to run them down. They go to the residence of one of the owners, Mrs. Parker, who isn't home, and despite a neighbor's (Virginia Gregg) help, have trouble tracking down their current whereabouts; then she remembers the name of Parker's, in-laws. Her father-in-law helps identify their vet, whom they'd taken the dogs to The vet, Dr. Carl Felton (Morris D. Erby), is at a football game, so they have him paged. He goes back to his office and determines that the dogs are healthy and don't have rabies. With the clock ticking, Friday has trouble getting this information to the girl's doctor by phone, so he drives to the doctor in the nick of time. _______ And The Old Mixer is the size of a kidney bean. _______ Kono was playing it cooler in his phone booth. I didn't watch that, but I've heard that there were H5O references in it. Was he also naval intelligence? Didn't even notice that...it's too "day job" for me!
Yeah. Magnum was a Naval Academy graduate, had been a SEAL in Vietnam doing special operations and worked at Pearl Harbor in "intelligence" in the late '70s. Then he had something of a personal crisis, chucked all major responsibilities and became a PI, living rent-free in exchange for doing minor security work on the Oahu estate of a wealthy, usually absent author. His intelligence work seemed to have been largely counter-espionage, which naval intelligence doesn't do, either. They mention Five-O a couple of times in passing, but that's it. But much of the production team stayed on for Magnum, and it used a lot of the same local actors. I wish I could not notice it. Or not find it so annoying, one or the other.