* If we’re supposed to be suffering under global warming, please explain to me why I’m wearing a sweatshirt and the heavy jeans and still freezing my ass off. We’re not even supposed to make it out of the thirties until Friday afternoon sometime. I was rather hopeful to have the majority of the yard work done by now so that I could concentrate my efforts on bringing our camper home and prepping it for a summer of week ending. No such luck.
I see Brit Hume [1] has caught on to all of this nonsense. Go read it.
I tell you the truth….The “global warming” crowd… Mostly, Democrats who are desperate for power, are lying to us, friends. There are no kinder words for it. Do not be taken in by it.
*The Music: Ace: Five a side
“How Long” of course was the hit that made the band, and alas it was their only one, really… though Paul Carrack went on to record a number of other hits.
While that single does raise some serious memories of my AM hit radio days, in this case, it’s the album that’s the thing. This is a collection of songs written by ….and performed well by.. a first rate pub band. In a world of 1975, which it the time was overloaded with flash and glitter such as Kiss, Gary Glitter, and you name it, and the loud and frantic sounds of bands like Sweet, etc, the sound of Ace is a bit of a throwback to bands that are just out there on the road, gettin’ it done, night after night. In a strange way, it reminds one of the bands and situations that Southside Johnny tried to portray in the early Epic releases, such as “I don’t wanna go home.”
Nothing extraordinarily flashy instrumentally… just solid good playing and good singing with tight attention to harmony. “Tasty”, as the Good Rats used to say. Even the technical quality of the recording itself while relatively clean doesn’t really sparkle all that much. It had a rather subdued quality to it.
That said, in listening to Five a Side, one envisions the kind of sessions that Steely Dan used to have. No, really… I remember an interview with fellow Rochester Native Steve Gadd who played for them on their legendary “Aja” about how the band archived it’s relaxed, almost catatonic sound. (I wish now I’d taped the interview… I didn’t…)
The producers simply kept the band playing the same song over and over again… sometimes 30 and 40 times, until they got the sound they wanted. By that time all the nervous energy and been drained out of the musicians and the sound became “tired”.
With Ace, the sound is almost that, but not quite; One gets the impression that this is a band that’s been playing the songs on the road for some time and has a certain amount of fun while playing them, but there’s certainly no nervous energy about them, no urge to break out and get loud. Perhaps this was intentional to play up the pub band bit… I don’t know… It certainly doesn’t sound to me like a was a conscious effort. .
Like the mythical South Jersey bands, so much was centered around the sound of the band, that even the only hit single, “How Long” was not as it sounded… about a love affair breaking up… it was about somebody leaving the band. Does kind of raise the concept of this being the band’s sole top 40 hit to a level of irony.
Ace did have a few follow-up LP’s, and there was a couple of bright spots on them, (“I’m not taking it out on you” from “No Strings” is a favorite) but none of them really got to the level of their debut.
Still, “Five A Side” is worth a listen, if you can find it.
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* I’ve noted several times today, problems getting into Outside The Beltway [2]. THe problems come and go… and I’m unclear why. I do hope it’s nothing serious. (Update: James says something in Apache is running a high load, but they have no clue why.)
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* I see that NBC and CBS were “Forced” to suspend Imus [3]. (See my earlier comments here… [4] I’ll amend them, now)
I see the left, who Imus has been shilling for, for years now, is suddenly backing away from him. Which is nothing that I didn’t predict years ago. I’ll bet he wonders why.
But I must admit that the sight of Bowers at My DD claiming Imus isn’t a ‘progressive” (As if being a “progressive” is supposed to be a GOOD thing)… was amusing.
Boortz [5] was amusing, too;
Oh .. .and need we even say it? What about rap music? If Imus can show that he didn’t say anything that isn’t said day after day on urban radio stations .. .then he gets a pass.
And so now Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are doing their best to cash in the only way they can, by manufacturing outrage and calling out their roving band of race hustlers. For his part, Imus is employing the Michael Richards strategy. That is, handing his head to his enemies and hoping they’ll go away. The problem is that when you pay blackmail, the price always goes up.
Which goes to show this “controversy” has nothing to do with the original remarks and everything to do with certain people lining their pockets.
Unfortunately, I’m beginning to suspect Imus is one of the people lining his pockets.
Neal’s point about your average rap “song” is well taken. What Imus said, really isn’t all that different . And they get a pass… why shouldn’t he?
Then I got to thinking… one does not stay in the business for as long as he has, without creating ratings. A moron about some things he may be, but not about that, or he wouldn’t be still in business. Would this situation, I thought, create ratings? The answer, obviously, is yes. Controversy always creates publicity which in turn creates ratings. Look at John Edwards and his wife. Same tune, different arrangement.
A number of years ago, myself and a bunch of other radio misfits took over an ailing AM radio station here in Rochester. We took its middle of the road, full service format, and basically drove a knife through it. We did so by playing the same song over and over again for three days. We started this little station bombing, right smack dab in the middle of morning drive.
We would intro Gladys Knight and the Pips doing Jim Weatherby’s “Midnight Train to Georgia” and on would come John Denver’s “Thank God I’m a Country Boy”. We’d intro Olivia doing “Please Mr Please” and on would come John Denver. I mean, aside from the discontinuity between what we were announcing, and what we’re actually playing, that that particular song of Denver’s is, when played too often, probably among the world’s most obnoxious to ones to be playing, next to perhaps Morris Albert’s “Feelings”.
The idea was to attract attention… and so we did. By the time the three days had gone by, we didn’t have too many listeners, (as a matter of fact I would suggest we probably didn’t have any at all… including the on-air staff…) but we did have everybody in town talking about us. We had several radio station jocks at other stations talking about us, the local talk radio station was talking about us, the television news was talking about us, (they sent a camera crew down to take pictures of the door that I’d jammed closed with a pile of old equipment ) and we’d had several visits from the local boys in blue, who never could figure out why they could never open the studio door. They never did bother to check the studio window, to see if it was open. It was. (Sorry, Jack, I never told you… But didn’t the practical situation of the necessary room enter your mind? After all, what would I do with all that coffee I drink? )
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As for Imus…. think;
Not everybody in the country was listening to his radio show. Not hardly. Indeed, his ratings have been dropping of late. But I will guarantee you that just about everybody in the country is talking about it, now. That’s a level of publicity you simply can’t buy anywhere else, for anywhere near the price.
And no, my friends, I wouldn’t put it past him. He’s been around long enough to know how to create mastodon barbecue… He’s certainly been around long enough to know how to create ratings.