Nairobi Trio

Always loved this Ernie Kovaks bit when I was a kid...still do!

Ernie Kovaks and his wife, Edie Adams.

She's banging him on the head in the Nairobi Trio bit above.

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Sixties Rock

Neat cup, isn't it? We've all had favorite cups over the years and used them until we either dropped them or the inside got so vile looking that we found a replacement. This one came out of one of those mail order catalogs and never fails to evoke a knowing smile as some of the group names come into focus. Some fun, eh kid?

By the way, a black cup is great...you never see how vile its inside has become!

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Stones, Peas, and a Kiss

I was thinking about the Super Bowl half-time show and had heard the criticism it got from today’s crop of critics. To tell you the truth, I haven’t paid much attention to pop music at any time in my life and stopped listening to the radio music stations sometime in the 1970s.

Now and then a really good song would make its way through my personal fog and register in my mind as one to remember…but I’ve generally forgotten those, too. Until the Super Bowl performance I had never heard of the Black-eyed Peas, or of Will-i-am, although I had heard of Fergie…that’s randy Andy’s ex-princess isn’t it?

The Peas’ appearance struck me as rather bizarre and their music struck me as unremarkable. However, Fergie wasn’t hard to look at. Their bizarre appearance is really what got me thinking. Bizarre music acts aren’t anything new.

A generation ago there was Kiss, another bizarre looking group whose music I don’t recall.

In our youth about the most bizarre looking group I can recall would be the Stones, which doesn’t look too bizarre to me now. However, a lot of their songs are a part of me. How many guys of our generation don’t remember most of the lyrics of Under my Thumb and how many times did you wish your own situation with a girl would resolve itself in accordance with the lyrics? But they never did.

Under my thumb
The girl who once had me down
Under my thumb
The girl who once pushed me around
It's down to me
The difference in the clothes she wears
Down to me, the change has come,
She's under my thumb

Yeah, right

Aussie Folk Songs - 3

The first of these last two songs is a take-off of an old Johnny Cash song, "I've Been Everywhere" that features many of the odd sounding Aussie town names...like Wodonga, Geelong, and Wangarrata etc. I had fun puzzling the Aussies by reminding them that those words had their roots in the Aboriginal language which were then spelled out phonetically by the early English settlers...the Aboriginals have no written language! Most Aussies had a startled look on their faces when something that they had taken for granted all their life was defined by a Yank in a way they had never before thought.

Here are the last two...

Aussie Folk Songs - 2

That line, "Shame About the Flies" is something the Aussies themselves celebrate.  Whenever you go walkabout in the bush (anything from a stroll in the woods to a cross-continent trek) you are quickly aware of the flies.  There are a lot of flies and it seems that they all bite. 

The graphic comes from a T-shirt I picked up and the flies are the actual Aussie creatures...kind of pretty, don't you think? 

A couple more rousing Aussie folk songs...

Aussie Folk Songs - 1

Had a project in Australia some years ago and the opportunity to bring the family down with me for a few months. Has to be one of the best places on earth...except for the snakes and spiders. Shame about the flies. But the people are the greatest, terrific sense of humor and the music is fun. The next couple of posts feature some songs from a tape I played the whole time there. Videos are a little weak, but close your eyes and enjoy...

CSN - Crosby, Stills, & Nash

I've always liked David Crosby...his talent, that is. His personal life has been pretty bad but the "give a shit" attitude he has always seemed to exude (see his 1985 Dallas mug shots) and his candor on a variety of topics has been interesting.

In a recent interview, grinning that shit-eating grin, he nailed our time in history as succinctly as I've ever heard it done by saying that he was the luckiest guy in the world...he grew up "after the Pill and before AIDS."



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