Yup. There’s a meme floating around with a guy showing a little kid a floppy disk, asking “Do you know what this is?”
and the kid replies,
“COOL!! You printed a 3D model of a save icon!!”
😛
Of course, there’s the classic Superman changing in a phone booth meme, which, by the time I was a kid (1960s) made no sense, as they all had glass sides — originally they were fully enclosed by thin wood panels, giving visual privacy — and venturing into the 70s, allowed the sight gag in the first Superman movie as he’s running looking to change and does a double-take at a 3-sided phone booth.
Humor always has some topical elements to it. If you read Martin Gardiner’s “Annotated Alice” (as well as his annotated “Hunting of the Snark”) — both highly recommended, BTW — you find there are a lot of in-jokes and other stuff that has lost all “consciousness” due to lost topicality — you don’t even realize there was a joke there.
Croce was a Villanova alum, as was I only a few years later. His death occurred only shortly before he was supposed to appear there to perform. He and Maury (Jim’s guitar player) were very much missed.
}}} One of my favorites from my early teens. By the time I discovered him, he was dead
Pretty much by the time anyone was aware of him, he was dead. He died within slightly more than a year (Sept, 1973) of his first major hit (June, 1972 — Don’t Mess Around w/Jim).
That song is so great, especially the emotional restraint and parsimony in the lyrics. “My best old ex-friend Ray” (and then that tiny little rueful hint of a smile); “I’ve learned to take it well/
I only wish my words could just convince myself…”
I heard that song when I was about 20. I could relate. That’s an age when heartbreaks are really heartbreaking.
An entirely superficial comment — I was a bit shocked to see Croce’s photo after hearing tender ballads like “Operator” and “Time in a Bottle.”
I expected someone who looked like John Denver instead of Frank Zappa.
I remember “Don’t Mess Around with Jim”! It was a big hit when I was a grad student at the University of Chicago. It’s on the South Side, just north of a huge black slum, Woodlawn, where the song takes place.
One of the other grad students was an expert blues guitarist. The leader of one of the blues band offered to take Curt to Europe as a side man. They went to a bar to talk. When Curt walked in the place went silent and everyone moved away from him. It was the first time in 60 years that a white man wasn’t there to arrest someone.
Woodlawn was and still is a very bad and dangerous place, as are the other parts of the black ghetto. https://heyjackass.com/
With most of the songs I’ve ever written, quite honestly, I’ve felt there’s an enormous gap here, waiting to be filled; this song should have been written hundreds of years ago. How did nobody pick up on that little space?
Half the time you’re looking for gaps that other people haven’t done. And you say, I don’t believe they’ve missed that f***ing hole! It’s so obvious. It was there staring you in the face!
And he nailed the ending with “You can keep the dime.”
Of course, the other great Operator song was by Chuck Berry:
_____________________________________
Long distance information, give me Memphis, Tennessee
Help me find the party trying to get in touch with me
She could not leave her number, but I know who placed the call
Because my uncle took the message and he wrote it on the wall
The line, “…my uncle took the message and he wrote it on the wall,” killed me even when I was a kid.
However, it wasn’t until I looked up the lyrics today that I realized what a change-up, heartbreaker Berry had written, when in the final verse I learned the identity of the person Berry was trying to reach:
_____________________________________
Last time I saw Marie she’s waving me goodbye
With hurry home drops on her cheek that trickled from her eye Marie is only six years old, information please
Try to put me through to her in Memphis Tennessee
RockMeAle:
What a great great song. I had never heard of Steve Goodman, although I now learn he wrote “City of New Orleans,” which I (and just about everyone else) am familiar with. Now I have to start listening to him, too.
He grew up in the PA town (Upper Darby) next to my own (Lansdowne). Four yrs older. As he had done earlier with his wife, my rock group played gigs at the Riddle Paddock Ale House outside Philly. Croce possessed an essentially literary sensibility: observant, witty, soulful and narrative-driven. His brain worked — every song he ever released was smart and tight. And partner Maury became the brilliant Rogers to his Astaire. Ou sont les neiges d’anton?
This Croce post makes me happy and sad at the same time. More and more the past, even the relatively recent past like this song, seems so very dear and the present so very terrible. Aside from our horrific political strife, there is the terrible coarsening in our arts and the “artists” churning the garbage out. In our house we tend to dwell on The Classic Movie Channel and watch as many old films as we can before they are cancelled. Taping them too. Our version of the Farenheit 451 exhortation to memorize books before they are burned.
Jeanne:
I have that same bittersweet feeling.
The last few days I’ve seen headlines to this effect: “why are the Grammys losing their audience?” And I wonder why anyone would consider that a mystery. It’s not just music – it’s so much of the arts.
Neo,
So glad you liked it.
Steve and I were in Boy Scouts together and members of the same synagogue, where he got his start in the choir. My brother and I shed more than a few tears when the Cubs won the World Series a few years back (Steve was a diehard Cubs fan and wrote what would become their theme song, “Go Cubs Go”). He died of leukemia at the age of 36.
RockMeAle:
I was VERY impressed by the song, by his humor and his demeanor, his voice, his guitar-playing, his gift with lyrics, and his smile. What a great musician and seemingly wonderful person. I will have to listen to more of him. I did look him up, and discovered the sad story of his illness and death.
Bands are dying out…. seriously… they are going away…
people cant get along, and you can do all the parts in your basement
a trend started with the rock group Boston, who had no people till it had to hire them to play…
Croce is hard to hear… if your in a good mood, he will lift you up and make you thoughtful, the same song will cause you to go suicidal if your depressed..
I will go with Dr Hook and the Medicine show… Silvias Mother.
however most didnt know “Ray” was gay…
t’s not just music – it’s so much of the arts.
read suskinds goals of the communists
Neo,
I only just saw it in the sidebar of video I posted. Haven’t had a chance to view it yet but I will.
I always had two mental explanations for “You can keep the dime”:
1: He was feeling generous (?) and leaving her a tip, or
2: He was so depressed he was going to kill himself, so he didn’t need the dime.
Probably neither is correct.
I like listening to this British guitarist analyzing popular music in terms of the details of the performance (remarks on the craft of writing, singing, and playing – especially at the same time; plus background anecdotes about the artists & the music industry). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2A02FTny8o
“It’s like they are talking to you in tune.”
He mentions that songwriters don’t tell stories anymore, and that is regrettable.
A commenter put it well.
“You can keep the dime” – what a great line, yet meaningless to virtually anyone born after this song was recorded.
Telling a story where all the characters are multidimensional while only hearing the voice of the protagonist. It’s a novella in just three verses and a chorus.”
Yeah, wish I had listened more to this guy back in the day; I was in college during his short publishing career.
“Big, Bad Leroy Brown” got a lot of play on the radio, and one of my favorites, “Time in a Bottle,” but I don’t remember many of the others.
Hiking an extended Camino pilgrimage during the latter half of Covid-19-laced 2020 from Bayonne in France to Finisterre in northwest Spain and then pivoting southward toward Lisbon in the south of Portugal—around 2,000 kilometres of stiff muscles, aches, brain-melting language confusions, hangovers and even shingles—I’ve heard a kaleidoscopic range of opinions from both fellow pilgrims and strangers encountered regarding the virus and the reactions of governments. They span the spectrum of plausibility and some stray into conspiracy theory territory if not boldly stride right on in. I’d be the first to acknowledge that the more far-fetched ones push your limits for maintaining a polite response.
…
Conspiracy is in the eye of the beholder. So just as how someone can fall into the trap of seeing a conspiracy where there isn’t one, that can be flipped on its head so that there is a danger that a fairly reasonable assertion might be written off as a conspiracy theory when in fact—à la Truman Burbank—there is far more truth to it than being granted by those in opposition or who have vested interests. Hence, I haven’t really known what to counter with in response to all the pilgrims that appeared entirely sane, friendly and certainly intelligent, and who remarked to me on the strangeness of the fact, given the scale of the Covid-19 pandemic, that they either didn’t know anyone who had caught it or, which was more often the case, how they didn’t know anyone who had died of it.
Most of these pilgrims—some of whom have clocked up well beyond 2,000 kilometres crossing various European countries and thus had passed through innumerable towns, cities and Covid-19 “hotspots”—could only conclude that the original virus was far less contagious than we were led to believe throughout 2020. The Dutch owner of a hostel I stayed in while passing through northern Spain told me that, based on his experiences and having read around widely on the issue, he was convinced that initial warnings early in 2020 about the risk of transmission from surfaces—and hence all the accompanying paraphernalia about washing your hands like a brain surgeon and wiping and spraying everything that didn’t move and never touching or hugging anything with a pulse—had been utterly misguided and overcooked, as the virus was primarily airborne, which, he explained, meant it had to be inhaled in high-enough volumes to cause illness and thus could be avoided or mitigated simply through the likes of adequate ventilation. In short, the humble nineteenth-century advice of Florence Nightingale was likely our best bet.
…
At which point, the nurse or doctor working flat-out on a Covid-19 ward will justifiably raise a hand: How about my individual experience?! Quite so, and those working to save lives from Covid-19 deserve only praise and all the support that can be mustered—but I don’t see how that equates with shutting down our societies, nor should the predicament of NHS workers be used as an emotive sledgehammer to justify quashing civil liberties.
It’s not a perfect or entirely fair comparison but I am reminded of my time in the military—if you send the military to fight overseas, soldiers are going to die. It should come as no surprise; the same with the NHS dealing with a nasty infectious disease; it’s going to happen that those at the coal face get sick and face enormous pressure. It’s sad, lamentable and measures must be taken to prevent staff getting sick and unduly suffering psychologically with the likes of moral injuries—already reports have come out of the US of medical workers who have taken their lives after being overwhelmed by their experiences dealing with Covid-19 and the choices they had to make—but the level of hand wringing and emotive manipulation around the NHS’s situation is causing society and our supposed political leaders to lose perspective.
We appear to be edging toward the territory of Fyodor Dostoevsky, whose bleak novels sought to highlight—and warn about—those forces that “would lead away from freedom into a totalitarian society where the rules for human behaviour were worked out according to scientific formulae and imposed upon the population for their own good,” A. D. P. Briggs, professor emeritus of the University of Birmingham, writes in the introduction to the 2007 edition of Dostoevsky’s The Karamazov Brothers by Wordsworth Classics.
…
Even if the “best case” explanation for the past year’s turmoil is true: governments were simply bamboozled and wrong footed by a particularly shifty and malleable virus happening in a world of 24-hour news cycles and social media hysteria, we mustn’t lose sight of more disturbing elements that are not the realm of conspiracy theories. These include how most mainstream media just couldn’t resist running with and stoking a story with terrifying headlines that would keep on giving forever—it would appear that increasing numbers of editors nowadays have the type of moral fibre of our worst politicians—and there are people and companies out there getting very, very rich from Covid-19, and rich people who are out of touch with the real lives of ordinary people will often do very strange and heartless things to make even more money.
If Sinclair is right—and his argument appears entirely supported by empirical experience—that digital technology is increasing the natural tendency of governments to confine entire populations during pandemics, I suspect far more of us will start to feel more like Truman Burbank.
One of my favorites from my early teens. By the time I discovered him, he was dead
Nowadays the song needs to be explained
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AC1DZsuyleI
}}} Nowadays the song needs to be explained
😀
Yup. There’s a meme floating around with a guy showing a little kid a floppy disk, asking “Do you know what this is?”
and the kid replies,
“COOL!! You printed a 3D model of a save icon!!”
😛
Of course, there’s the classic Superman changing in a phone booth meme, which, by the time I was a kid (1960s) made no sense, as they all had glass sides — originally they were fully enclosed by thin wood panels, giving visual privacy — and venturing into the 70s, allowed the sight gag in the first Superman movie as he’s running looking to change and does a double-take at a 3-sided phone booth.
Humor always has some topical elements to it. If you read Martin Gardiner’s “Annotated Alice” (as well as his annotated “Hunting of the Snark”) — both highly recommended, BTW — you find there are a lot of in-jokes and other stuff that has lost all “consciousness” due to lost topicality — you don’t even realize there was a joke there.
Croce was a Villanova alum, as was I only a few years later. His death occurred only shortly before he was supposed to appear there to perform. He and Maury (Jim’s guitar player) were very much missed.
}}} One of my favorites from my early teens. By the time I discovered him, he was dead
Pretty much by the time anyone was aware of him, he was dead. He died within slightly more than a year (Sept, 1973) of his first major hit (June, 1972 — Don’t Mess Around w/Jim).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odkIEDi2x0g
That song is so great, especially the emotional restraint and parsimony in the lyrics. “My best old ex-friend Ray” (and then that tiny little rueful hint of a smile); “I’ve learned to take it well/
I only wish my words could just convince myself…”
I heard that song when I was about 20. I could relate. That’s an age when heartbreaks are really heartbreaking.
An entirely superficial comment — I was a bit shocked to see Croce’s photo after hearing tender ballads like “Operator” and “Time in a Bottle.”
I expected someone who looked like John Denver instead of Frank Zappa.
I remember “Don’t Mess Around with Jim”! It was a big hit when I was a grad student at the University of Chicago. It’s on the South Side, just north of a huge black slum, Woodlawn, where the song takes place.
One of the other grad students was an expert blues guitarist. The leader of one of the blues band offered to take Curt to Europe as a side man. They went to a bar to talk. When Curt walked in the place went silent and everyone moved away from him. It was the first time in 60 years that a white man wasn’t there to arrest someone.
Woodlawn was and still is a very bad and dangerous place, as are the other parts of the black ghetto. https://heyjackass.com/
Another one we lost way too soon
Steve Goodman: “I Just Keep Falling in Love”:
https://youtu.be/CfLt8zMrrI8
With most of the songs I’ve ever written, quite honestly, I’ve felt there’s an enormous gap here, waiting to be filled; this song should have been written hundreds of years ago. How did nobody pick up on that little space?
Half the time you’re looking for gaps that other people haven’t done. And you say, I don’t believe they’ve missed that f***ing hole! It’s so obvious. It was there staring you in the face!
I pick out the holes.
–Keith Richards, “Life”
_____________________________________
With “Operator” Jim Croce found a hole.
And he nailed the ending with “You can keep the dime.”
Of course, the other great Operator song was by Chuck Berry:
_____________________________________
Long distance information, give me Memphis, Tennessee
Help me find the party trying to get in touch with me
She could not leave her number, but I know who placed the call
Because my uncle took the message and he wrote it on the wall
–“Chuck Berry – Memphis, Tennessee (1959)”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5ezeUM6c74
_____________________________________
The line, “…my uncle took the message and he wrote it on the wall,” killed me even when I was a kid.
However, it wasn’t until I looked up the lyrics today that I realized what a change-up, heartbreaker Berry had written, when in the final verse I learned the identity of the person Berry was trying to reach:
_____________________________________
Last time I saw Marie she’s waving me goodbye
With hurry home drops on her cheek that trickled from her eye
Marie is only six years old, information please
Try to put me through to her in Memphis Tennessee
RockMeAle:
What a great great song. I had never heard of Steve Goodman, although I now learn he wrote “City of New Orleans,” which I (and just about everyone else) am familiar with. Now I have to start listening to him, too.
He grew up in the PA town (Upper Darby) next to my own (Lansdowne). Four yrs older. As he had done earlier with his wife, my rock group played gigs at the Riddle Paddock Ale House outside Philly. Croce possessed an essentially literary sensibility: observant, witty, soulful and narrative-driven. His brain worked — every song he ever released was smart and tight. And partner Maury became the brilliant Rogers to his Astaire. Ou sont les neiges d’anton?
This Croce post makes me happy and sad at the same time. More and more the past, even the relatively recent past like this song, seems so very dear and the present so very terrible. Aside from our horrific political strife, there is the terrible coarsening in our arts and the “artists” churning the garbage out. In our house we tend to dwell on The Classic Movie Channel and watch as many old films as we can before they are cancelled. Taping them too. Our version of the Farenheit 451 exhortation to memorize books before they are burned.
Jeanne:
I have that same bittersweet feeling.
The last few days I’ve seen headlines to this effect: “why are the Grammys losing their audience?” And I wonder why anyone would consider that a mystery. It’s not just music – it’s so much of the arts.
Neo,
So glad you liked it.
Steve and I were in Boy Scouts together and members of the same synagogue, where he got his start in the choir. My brother and I shed more than a few tears when the Cubs won the World Series a few years back (Steve was a diehard Cubs fan and wrote what would become their theme song, “Go Cubs Go”). He died of leukemia at the age of 36.
RockMeAle:
I was VERY impressed by the song, by his humor and his demeanor, his voice, his guitar-playing, his gift with lyrics, and his smile. What a great musician and seemingly wonderful person. I will have to listen to more of him. I did look him up, and discovered the sad story of his illness and death.
Have you seen this video about him?
Bands are dying out…. seriously… they are going away…
people cant get along, and you can do all the parts in your basement
a trend started with the rock group Boston, who had no people till it had to hire them to play…
Croce is hard to hear… if your in a good mood, he will lift you up and make you thoughtful, the same song will cause you to go suicidal if your depressed..
I will go with Dr Hook and the Medicine show… Silvias Mother.
however most didnt know “Ray” was gay…
t’s not just music – it’s so much of the arts.
read suskinds goals of the communists
Neo,
I only just saw it in the sidebar of video I posted. Haven’t had a chance to view it yet but I will.
I always had two mental explanations for “You can keep the dime”:
1: He was feeling generous (?) and leaving her a tip, or
2: He was so depressed he was going to kill himself, so he didn’t need the dime.
Probably neither is correct.
I like listening to this British guitarist analyzing popular music in terms of the details of the performance (remarks on the craft of writing, singing, and playing – especially at the same time; plus background anecdotes about the artists & the music industry).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2A02FTny8o
“It’s like they are talking to you in tune.”
He mentions that songwriters don’t tell stories anymore, and that is regrettable.
A commenter put it well.
“You can keep the dime” – what a great line, yet meaningless to virtually anyone born after this song was recorded.
Telling a story where all the characters are multidimensional while only hearing the voice of the protagonist. It’s a novella in just three verses and a chorus.”
https://genius.com/Jim-croce-operator-lyrics
Songs like “Operator” are more like the old ballads, most of which told a tale.
[IIRC, you had to drop a dime in the slot to get Operator, and they had the phone give it back if no connection was made.]
Complete list of his songs & recordings (including covers), with individual links to videos which include the lyrics:
https://www.famousfix.com/topic/jim-croce/songs
Yeah, wish I had listened more to this guy back in the day; I was in college during his short publishing career.
“Big, Bad Leroy Brown” got a lot of play on the radio, and one of my favorites, “Time in a Bottle,” but I don’t remember many of the others.
Long play – a full album “Jim Croce – 1980 – His Greatest Songs”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7Wm0X3ia8g
There are lots of reaction videos to Croce’s music. Just one at random.
“I Got a Name”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZ4qXwMhixc
Titania McGrath nails the zeitgeist.
https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/january-february-2021/bidens-brave-new-world/
I’m reading a backlog of good articles at The Critic.
Lots of good thinking behind all the ellipses.
This one is for the Tin Foil Hat Brigades – keep your armor bright, you may need it.
https://thecritic.co.uk/are-we-trapped-in-our-own-version-of-the-truman-show/
Just throwing this out there —
https://legalinsurrection.com/2021/03/21-states-sue-over-biden-executive-order-halting-keystone-pipeline/#comment-1148543
stablesort | March 18, 2021 at 12:08 pm
Leftists are funded by governments while conservatives are taxed by governments.
For reasons I’m sure I cannot put a finger on, I find myself becoming more and more of a Slavophile of late.
And so, here is Svetlana Kapanina performing acrobatics:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0Mm_fFUZDo
Aerobatics, even.
Kapanina:
Devushka-sokol! (girl-falcon!)
Coming to a spectacular messy end is also very Russian, so I hope she quits before that.