November 21, 2015

5 videos I watched, none of which seem capable of supporting a free-standing blog post.

1. On Facebook, somebody got me watching this parody video of Hillary Clinton singing "I Will Survive." Amusing enough that I looked up the YouTube page of Maximum Suffrage. Lots of stuff there, as yet unwatched by me.

2. I didn't know "Convos with my..." got a second child (like the first, amusingly played by an adult). I watched "Asking Nicely."

3. Charles Grodin, in 1995, as a talk show host, riffs for 6 minutes surrealistically introducing Jerry Lewis. (I started watching Jerry Lewis interview videos on YouTube a while back, for reasons I don't remember, and YouTube keeps suggesting more Jerry Lewis videos, and this is never going to end, because I keep watching them, and I'm not going to stop, because they are all so weird, including some where Lewis is the host, like here, interviewing Cassius Clay.)

4. The Grateful Dead in a live performance of "It Takes a Lot To Laugh, It Takes a Train To Cry." I got there as a result of a conversation that was mostly about "Ballad of Thin Man," prompted by reading this old 1965 interview in which Nora Ephron tried to get him to identify Mr. Jones and Dylan said: "He's actually a person. Like I saw him come into the room one night and he looked like a camel. He proceeded to put his eyes in his pocket. I asked this guy who he was and he said, 'That's Mr. Jones.' Then I asked this cat, 'Doesn't he do anything but put his eyes in his pocket?' And he told me, 'He puts his nose on the ground.' It's all there, it's a true story." Meade seemed to believe that Mr. Jones was Leonard Bernstein, but "That Party at Lenny’s" that Tom Wolfe described in "Radical Chic" took place in 1966. The word "camel" does appear in that greatest-of-all-time article, in this sentence: "Forty years ago firms flogging things like Hardman pianos, Ponds cold cream, Simmons metal beds and Camel cigarettes found that matrons in the clans Harriman, Longworth, Belmont, Fish, Lowell, Iselin and Carnegie were only too glad to switch to their products and be photographed with them in their homes, mainly for the sheer social glory of the publicity."

5. "Yeah, I'd like to see a video of a young person singing 'Eve of Destruction,'" I said after commenting in yesterday's post about the death of P.F. Sloan, who wrote the lyrics. The hit single was by Barry McGuire, who was 30ish, and I watched the video of a TV performance I remembered from 1965. I wrote: "Watching it again, I'm struck by the inappropriateness of McGuire's age. The lyrics are ridiculous coming from an adult. They're a perfect expression of teenage confusion about the world. Coming from an adult, it's mental or stupid." I found this, by Bishop Allen. It becomes noticeably "Eve of Destruction" at 3:44, but only the chorus is used, in the changed form: "And I tell you over and over and over again, my friend/That I'm down with you, even on the eve of destruction." I'd like to see a video of a teenager singing the original lyrics earnestly and sincerely.

17 comments:

Curious George said...

I tried to watch the Jerry Lewis - Clay interview. COuldn't Jerry Lewis is a freak.

rcocean said...

I always find the real Jerry Lewis, as opposed to his comic persona, completely unwatchable. Most comedians aren't the wild and crazy guys they play on stage and screen, but Lewis' has to be one of the most uber serious and frankly unlikable off-stage comedians. He always comes off as arrogant or smarmy.

Of course, he was really a comic actor as opposed to a comedian.

William said...

There was a song called "Me and Mrs. Jones." Mrs. Jones was not a real woman but a euphemism for a drug high. Mr. Jones abstracts the metaphor one step further. Mr. Jones is the cuckold who doesn't understand the pleasure his wife can dispense to her illicit lovers. The joke is on Mr. Jones

traditionalguy said...

Barry McGuire was ten years older than three men who came to my mind who naturally absorbed the world view contained in 1965's Eve of Destruction. The three, born within 6 months of each another at the time of the mid-1945 Full Retribution phase of WWII, were P.F. Sloan of course, and Jim Webb of the Democrat debate fame, and myself.

And I completely understand and love the crazy Jerry Lewis.

Wince said...

I like how the Hillary video ended with a dark, unseen puppet master.

McGuire's conception of the apocalypse entailed
wearing a tight polo player suit on his lower half while thrusting his groin out next to a bathroom sink
? (Watch the wide shots thru 2:00 mark.)

Lauderdale Vet said...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AF9d4Uqqb-0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KronioYmPKY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C43OLy0l4P0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl0J02EEZNg

There are tons. Look for "eve of destruction cover" for more.

Will Cate said...

Garcia had a great love for that song. He played it frequently with the Jerry Garcia Band in the 70s, and then revived it with The Dead in 1991.

MacMacConnell said...

The eve of destruction is like global climate change and peak oil, it's always just around the corner.

Ann Althouse said...

Thanks Lauderdale Vet. I watched them all. The last one was closest to what I wanted. Very charming. Reminded Meade and me of Melanie.

traditionalguy said...

The Eve of Destruction got here in all its glory in 1945.The destruction of their existing lives hit two thirds of the world's peoples during mid-1945.

That was when the new American Empire absolutely crushed out every smidgen of the German Empire and The Japanese Empire. This was intentionally done by smart men despite the German's and the Japanese's heading down a suicidal scorched earth path that their insane leaders imposed on their people in hopes that the American leaders would back off from a complete slaughtering of their Governments and exposing their crimes against humanity.

The answer came from FDR's Generals Patton and LeMay. Hundreds of tanks rolled in as 1000 plane raids firebombed cities and killed half a million civilians. And it finished up when Truman sent them a couple of blinding light gifts of 150 million degrees centigrade nuclear fission blasts.

But that was only the Eve of the Destruction that became available within 6 years when Fusion Bombs replaced the early firecracker like Fission Bombs.

320Busdriver said...

My kid who's in marching band turned me on to several drum corp vids which are amazing if you like that sort of thing.
These kids are extremely good at what they do and practice all day every day through the summer to compete at the DCI championships in August at Lucas Oil Stadium.
These are from the 2013 winners Carolina Crown with their show E=mc2

Rehearsal in 3 parts
https://youtu.be/84LXWEkW5Xc
https://youtu.be/dXZ1t9NdwHU
https://youtu.be/C99wfPFv88Q

Championship performance:
https://youtu.be/aOMeOnkTLvU

The brass got a perfect score, the music and visuals are stunning! Enjoy

Hazy Dave said...

A pretty cool song Jimmy Webb wrote about P.F. Sloan 45 years ago:

https://youtu.be/o_R1US0RNi4

I heard the Turtles' cover of "Eve" on the radio last night. Probably not quite what you had in mind...

Roughcoat said...

The performance of the male dancers behind McGuire is seriously hilarious.

Watch the video with the sound muted. It'll change your life.

Ctmom4 said...

What was Jerry Lewis doing on Hullabaloo? You have to kind of admire a song that rhymes coagulatin' and contemplatin. It seems to me most of my youth was spent thinking we were on the eve of destruction. I saw Bridge of Spies and hubby and I had a chuckle when they showed the school kids films about the effects of the atom bomb. I remember that. We did duck and cover drills in school, and I wondered how putting my coat over my head was going to protect me from an atom bomb. I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis, and how everyone in my Catholic neighborhood went to Mass to pray.

ganderson said...

Dunno which version of "It takes a Lot to Laugh..." You saw- the on RFK Stadium in 1973 is my favorite. Dickey Betts sits in on that version. The Dead (and the Garcia Band) did a LOT of Dylan. There's a rendition of "Visions of Johanna" recorded at Soldier Field, I believe, not too long before Garcia's death that makes me cry.

jaydub said...

I have come to really enjoy Andre Rieu and his Orchestra from Maastricht. These are three of my favorites, but his concerts are really amazing and all of them are available on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66-A2MyVDbU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVbOxh7tQCc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMuKw1NYpjs

Sammy Finkelman said...

Here's an interesting random fact that doesn't seem to belong anywhere:

Both Stalin and Senator Joseph McCarthy misled the world about their age, making themselves one year younger. Stalin pretended he was born in 1879, when he was really born in 1878, and Senator Joseph McCarthy claimed to have bene born in 1909 when he was really born in 1908.

The Stalin fact I learned this year from the book "Stalin" by Edward Radzinsky, (Doubleday, 1996) which I obtained after it was mentioned (maybe this fact) in another book, and the fact that Senator Joseph McCarthy lowered his age is in the book "Senator Joseph McCarthy" by Richard H. Rovere (Merdian Books, 1969 - paperack edition of a book copyrighted 1959) which I guess I had never really read and had been sitting in one of my closets since maybe 1994 - and I encountered this book long before, I think, in a library. Some shelves had to be emptoed to let the plumber work.

Stalin's fictitious birthdate started being used in 1922, after he had been made Secretary General of the Communist Party, when he was 43, and Senator Joseph McCarthy apparently began using this in 1939 when he ran for Circuit Judge in Wisconsin District 10 on the age issue (he claimed his opponent was 73 [occasionally claiming he was 89] which would have made him born in 1866, when he was born in 1873 and was aged 66) and then claimed to have been, at age 29, the youngest Circuit Court judge in the state's history.

Maybe that sentence/paragraph needs some revision. It might be tough to diagram. Is he verb "started" or "began" or both?

Both men did not write much or want much written about their early years, even flattering things. Was that because both had reduced their age by one year?