Greatest Song Evah - 2/23/24

Gimme Some Truth

No need to deal with an instrumental intro here, John Lennon jumps right into reciting some of the most bitter lyrics he had ever written. This is another example of the way he loved the way that certain words sounded together; Lewis Carroll was such a clear influence on his writing style.

This track from his Imagine album was a Phil Spector production. He of course had long since moved past his classic Wall Of Sound style, but he never lost the talent to put together a great record. He may have been an indefensible a**hole, but… Actually I don’t know where I’m going with this. Let’s just pretend a non-murderer was behind the boards.

The production well matches Lennon’s “I’m furious over the state of the world” proclamation. The guitars boom, and that is his old mate George Harrison on those slide guitar fills. Lennon’s vocals were impeccable as well. The impact that primal scream therapy had on his singing in his previous album was still evident here. All told, this is a song that still kicks hard more than a half century later. And sadly, many of the sentiments continue to hold true to this day.

Ballot Breakdown - Cher

A lot of Hall watchers were eagerly anticipating the nomination announcement to see who would be the next country music artist to be honored in the wake of Dolly & Willie. As it turned out we were looking in the wrong direction. Instead of nominating another country legend, the true successor to those two is another generational spanning musical legend. And just like the other two, I can’t see many voters passing up an opportunity to vote for Cher. It’s tricky to make predictions with such a large pool of voters, but Cher might be the closest to a sure thing that we have this year.

I’m 57 years old, and Cher has been one of the most famous women on the planet for the entirety of my life. More than that, she has long had one of the most devoted fanbases imaginable. Years ago a coworker of mine taught me that any celebrity with a passionate fandom in the gay community will always have a career. As long as the celebrity reciprocates the love, the LGBTQ community is the most loyal that there is. Well, there are few bigger icons in that community than Cher has been. That sort of devotion adds a lot of points to an artist’s credentials. It’s one thing for audiences to love an artist; it’s quite another to LOOOOOOOOOVE an artist. That separates Cher from the pack.

I very well remember watching the old Sonny & Cher variety show. It was like many variety shows of its era; lots of broad comedy. Plus a repertory cast that included Steve Martin & Teri Garr! I do recall being floored when I learned that they were getting divorced, it may have been my first realization that what you see on stage might not necessarily be the reality. They seemed like the perfect couple! But she turned out alright. Not only was she in the midst of an impressive run of massive pop hits, but she soon got her own solo variety series. Without Sonny to play off of, she was free to go into full Cher mode. The famous Bob Mackie designed gowns she frequently wore on the show further cemented her over the top persona.

As the hits began to dry up in the late 70’s she increasingly turned her attention to acting, and she proved to be an impressive actress, equally skilled in comedy & drama. She was devastating in Silkwood & in Mask, and the scene in which she shoots down Jack Nicholson’s seduction attempt was the highlight of The Witches Of Eastwick. She of course went on to win the Best Actress Oscar for Moonstruck. I may sound like a heretic when I say this, but I feel she was a much better actress than a singer. I wish she had stuck more with making movies, but she had other plans in mind.

Towards the end of the 1980’s she made a renewed commitment to her music career and entered her second golden age. Most of those records left me cold, they were the sort of generic overproduced rock ballads that were prevalent at the time. Her force of personality helped elevate them a bit, but they were nothing compared to the songs that had made her a star years earlier.

Then, amazingly enough for someone who had been around that long, she took her stardom to a whole new level towards the end of the 1990’s. Believe is a top level dance classic. Once again, it’s far from my cup of tea. The Eurodisco feel leaves it a little too computer generated for my tastes, but I can’t deny its impact. The song was massive & its appeal is long lasting.

These days she is comfortable simply being Cher, and she has certainly earned that right. In the rare instances in which acts anymore she is either playing herself or a character with a pronounced Cher persona. She has perfected the concept of the Perpetual Farewell Tour. And she is the epitome of someone with no tolerance for BS. She didn’t have any f***s left to give when she was 30, you think she cares what anyone thinks about her now?

So, to recap: I liked, but not loved, much of her work from her first decade - both solo and as part of Sonny & Cher. I didn’t much care for her later stuff. I wouldn’t vote for her, but I acknowledge that she will have a lot of support and there is a strong likelihood that she will be one of the inductees.

If elected, will she perform at the ceremony? Ha! Have you seen her comments about the Hall? I could see her showing up if there’s a clamor from her fans, but there’s little chance she would make a speech, and there is zero chance that she would perform. Not to worry, however. There is no shortage of younger artists who would love to put on an outrageous costume and perform in her honor.

Biggest Billboard Hot 100 Hit - Believe

My Personal Favorite - I have 2 answers for this one. If you want to cover her entire career, it would be The Beat Goes On. If you want to limit it solely to solo Chet’s songs, then my choice is Gypsies, Tramps, & Thieves.

Great Job, Nike

In the opening days of spring training there was a great deal of chatter over the new uniforms provided by Nike/Fanatics. They look like cheap knockoffs, and the names on the backs of the jerseys are noticeably smaller and thus more difficult to read. The biggest complaints regarded the uniform pants. Players no longer have the ability to customize them. Anyone can see from watching a game that players not only have a wide range of body types, but there is just as wide of a variety of uniform fits. Most prefer to have a baggy look, but that’s not universal. There are plenty of players, most of whom are pitchers, who go with a snug fit. There has already been talk that clubhouse attendants will need to step up their tailoring skills.

I’m sure that some people brushed this off as standard moaning over resistance to change. And then, following photo day, we got our first real look at the new uniforms. It’s umm, something else.

Yeah, that’s not gonna fly. See through uniform pants? This ain’t Cinemax. I don’t think fans are that eager to learn which players wear jockstraps and which ones don’t. (Yes, the Casey Schmitt photo came up on my timeline. I can never unsee that.) Teams are likely to scramble & dig up last season’s uniform pants, but the shade of white in this year’s unis is slightly different, so the jerseys and pants won’t match precisely. Amazing work, Nike. Great job, great effort.

TV Of the 21st Century - Harvey Birdman, Attorney At Law

Most of the best Adult Swim series were completely deranged - in a good way. Case in point, Harvey Birdman. It built upon the idea that made Space Ghost Coast To Coast such a success. Take a fairly obscure character from the Hanna-Barbera archives and place him in a completely absurd situation. In this instance they resurrected the Birdman superhero character from a cartoon that briefly ran in the early 1960’s and turned him into a lawyer at a high end firm. As a bonus, many of the villains from the original Birdman cartoon showed up as opposing counsel in this show.

His cases involved characters from H-B’s deep bench, and it brilliantly lampooned the cliches of TV lawyer shows as well as many of the characteristics of the personalities in question. The montage linked below only scratches the surface of some of the insanity. Shaggy & Scooby busted for possession? Boo-Boo Bear as a Unabomber type paranoid recluse? Fred Flintstone arrested as a mob boss? Complete with a recreation of the Sopranos opening credits as Fred drives through Bedrock? All equally amazing. I particularly loved the episode in which second tier Super Friends character Apache Chief filed a lawsuit after he spilled hot coffee on his lap. That episode included Wonder Twin Zan on the witness stand which involved his telling an amazingly off-color joke about Wonder Woman. You need to see that one to fully appreciate it. Decidedly NOT for kids.

A crucial element of any animated series is the voice casting & I don’t know if they could have made a better choice for the lead than Gary Cole. He had the perfect mixture of authority and delusion in his take on Birdman. Stephen Colbert was almost as good with his portrayal of the name partner in the law firm. And later on in the run Pages Brewster began to appear as Birdgirl, an overly ambitious and enthusiastic junior associate.

If I have any criticism of Adult Swim it’s that too often their programming plays as if the viewer needs to be fully baked in order to appreciate it. Harvey Birdman is one for which you could watch it with a clear head and find it just as funny as you would if you had partaken beforehand. Or so I’ve been told. Kidding aside, this one was such a gem, and with only 39 episodes that ran 15 minutes each, it’s an easy watch.

Originally aired on - Adult Swim

Currently streaming on - Max

Do You Believe In Miracles?

Yesterday was the 44th anniversary of the Miracle On Ice, one of those events that can never be precisely duplicated today. Overall it’s a positive thing that shamateurism is a thing of the past, but one result is that now that there are no longer faux amateurs competing in international sports, American teams are now essentially the big bad wolf. One day the time will come that the US women’s basketball team loses in the Olympics. When that happens the celebration will be as manic as it was when a plucky bunch of college hockey players defeated the Soviet Red Army team. What would be the modern day equivalent for an American team? It’s hard to envision.

Back in 1980 the Winter Olympics program was much thinner than it has become, so ABC could get by with limiting their weekday presentation to the regular prime time show. As a result, the game was shown on tape delay. None of us had smartphones, so we didn’t all get push alerts to inform us of the result. But ABC still found a way to spoil it. The network used to run a brief newsbreak just before primetime programming began. At around 7:57 an anchor would read the day’s headlines. So, I turned on the TV just before the telecast began only to be informed that the US had won the game! On the other hand, even if I hadn’t known the result was somewhat obvious. As ABC went on the air, American fans could be seen outside the network’s Lake Placid studio celebrating in joy, and Jim McKay could barely contain his excitement. The rest is history, as the nation soon got to hear Al Michaels’s legendary call of that game.

What many people may have forgotten is that despite the result in the Friday night game the Soviet Union could still have very easily won the gold medal. In 1980 the format of the hockey tournament’s medal round was round robin, not knockout. There were 2 pool of 6 nations with the top 2 from each advancing, and the results of pool play carrying over. The US & Sweden emerged from one pool, and they had played to a tie in their meeting. So, the medal round began with the USSR having 2 points, the United States & Sweden 1 each, and Finland scoreless. Sweden & Finland tied in their medal round match, so after the Miracle the teams went into the final day with the US leading with 3 points, the Soviets & Swedes with 2 each, and the Finns trailing with 1. That meant that a USSR victory over Sweden & a Finland victory over the USA would leave the Soviets at the top of the final standings with 4 points. It all worked out in the end. Coach Herb Brooks famously warned his team that if they lost that game they would, as he said, take it to their f***ing graves. The Americans defeated Finland and earned their place in sports history.

SNL Preview

At least once a year SNL has a host that makes people ask why? Shane Gillis was hired as a featured player a few years ago but was quickly fired once his litany of homophonic and anti-Asian slurs came to light. As a general rule of thumb I’m a little uneasy over searching through comedian’s old Twitter feeds. The very nature of finding one’s comedic voice is that there is a lot of trial & error, figuring out what’s funny, what’s pushing things too far, etc. A lot of the time this is done at an open mic night in a small comedy club. Testing yourself through social media is pretty much the same thing. It’s fair game to question someone’s judgement if they broadcast objectionable material over the internet rather than to an audience of a few dozen in a club. But other than that it’s probably not very fair to come down too hard on a young comic acting stupidly.

But that was decidedly not the case with Gillis. The comments that caused him to be fired before he even formally joined the cast weren’t years old, they were recent terrible jokes he had made on podcasts, and worth noting that he continues to make. I don’t know what purpose it serves to have him host. You could almost justify having someone like Elon Musk host. He brought attention, and ratings. Is Gillis a big enough name that he will spur a ratings jump? The shocked faces that Bowen Yang & Sarah Sherman made when Dave Chappelle showed up for closing goodbyes a few weeks back went viral. I can easily imagine similar feelings shared by several cast members this week. I’ll try to go into it with an open mind, but I can’t help but feel very pessimistic about this week’s show.

And speaking of SNL, recent guest star and alleged sane Republican Nikki Haley offered her thoughts on the recent Alabama Supreme Court decision. She said that “embryos, to me, are babies.” I give her credit for thus far refusing to bend the knee to Orange Napoleon, but her comments serve as yet another reminder that there’s no such thing as a moderate in today’s GOP.

Closing Laughs

Did you see that we successfully landed a craft on the moon yesterday? Science is awesome. Time to wrap a bow on yet another week. Thanks for reading, & have a pleasant weekend.