(If you’ve already mentioned the movie in a previous post, my apologies.)

😛

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VegvworoMX4

I do like old B&Ws, but Marilyn is holding her value on Amazon — $4 to rent a colorized version of Niagara.

Songwriters vary in how true their songs are to material from their lives. It doesn’t surprise me that Ocasek includes fantasies.

A few nights ago I went down a rabbit hole from Leonard Cohen to Joni Mitchell and then to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.

With the exception of Marianne, the woman Cohen lived with on Hydra, and Janis Joplin, Cohen tended to transform personal material so it’s not clear who the songs were about and how much was fiction.

Joni Mitchell’s songs were closer to her life, though usually cloaked in metaphor. According to one account, she broke up with David Crosby by singing “That Song About the Midway” to him. “Blue Boy” was about Graham Nash with whom she lived for two years. “Rainy Day House” and “A Case of You” were about Leonard Cohen.

After Mitchell broke up with Graham Nash, he wrote the most broken-hearted lover song I know — “I am a Simple Man.” In sympathy Neil Young wrote “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” for Nash.

The LA singer-songwriter crew wrote a lot of songs for each other in the 70s.

So Timothy Hutton directed that video for Drive, which made watch it again carefully. I was fascinated by the fact that the only real people in it are Orr, Porizkova and Ocasek. Some scenes have rooms full of people who are mannequins or automatons, except for the three persons.

It reminds me of the film noir classic “Niagara” with M. Monroe, Joseph Cotton and Jean Peters. I like it better every time I watch it. It was conceived as big budget trash by the studio, but the screenwriter Charles Brackett could not resist making it into a good movie. Except viewers don’t seem to get it.

Everybody in the film is either a jerk or a automaton or a non-entity, except for Jean Peters and Joseph Cotton who are married to other people. It is a commentary on society in the 50’s, IMO.
_____

I found the Prof. of Rock’s comment that Ocasek said that his song writing is sometimes an expression of his fantasies very interesting. If that applies to “It’s All I Can Do” it suggests that it is an entirely imagined romance.

Prof of Rock has an episode on the Cars’ “Drive” with an interesting exploration of the lyrics:

–“This 80s Hit by The Cars Should’ve Been A #1 | Professor of Rock”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfA2Q1GFKiE&t=15s

I hadn’t considered it, but there’s a lot of Buddy Holly in Ric Ocasek. The skinny guy in glasses, still sexy, with a truck load of talent, an eye for boy-girl pop songs and a slightly nasal voice. Both wizards in the studio.

Thanks for considering my “Dangerous Type” riff. I may get carried away at times, but I don’t think song lyrics are as arbitrary as people tend to assume.

This may somewhat obvious, but I wasn’t to me. I was listening to “My Best Friends Girl” yesterday (I’ve heard it a great many times) and it struck me. It’s very derivative of Buddy Holly; a post modern Buddy Holly perhaps. And I think Ocasek’s unusual vocal style is at least a little bit derivative of Holly. The song has some more of the powerful modern guitar cords and fuller vocal choruses than Holly, and it tricks you into hearing it as modern era rock and roll. Strip out those cords and a couple voices, and it is Holly. I’ll intentionally skip the lyrics.

Golden Earing: “Radio plays that forgotten song” etc.

I’ll get some of the candy but I won’t get any of the scratch offs! forgetaboutit