your daily dose of rock and roll

" ... in any fair system, they would flourish and thrive."

It was forty years ago today that National Public Radio officially incorporated as a 501 (c) (3) NPO. As someone who has long labored within the realm of public radio, I can assure you civilians that not all that you listen to on your more generically termed "public radio" station is synonymous with NPR. And while I also can't think of a rock and roll song that references "NPR", Randy Newman, with some help from Mark Knopfler, does sing of "all of the people that I used to know" who he sees "lurking in book stores/working for the Public Radio". Thanks a lot for making us feel so good about ourselves, Randy. I suppose there's some comfort in knowing that song, from Newman's '88 LP Land of Dreams, is not as grim as Davy the Fat Boy from his debut.

"I'll make that other cheek mine."

Thirty six years ago today Cher filed for divorce from Sonny Bono whom she had been married to for a decade. This is somehow sad to me. After becoming the darling couple of prefabricated folk rock, Sonny ended up on TV pretty much playing the butt of a cruel joke: the nebbish who is only barely able to hold on to or be tolerated by his hot chick wife. Then in the eyes of a nation always yearning for vicarious experiences from the glass box in the living room his persona became real life. But Sonny was strong. To quote the words he had written in a truly great song almost a decade earlier "Go ahead, laugh at me!" Some days I think the only people on earth who truly understand how great the song is are me and Ian Hunter. But now you know too, right?

The year '74 was a big one for rock and roll breakups that weren't technically divorces. Alice Cooper the singer left Alice Cooper the group. Pam Morrison left earth and (if Jim was perhaps still alive in Buenos Aires at the time) her soul mate and own true loved one as well. Mick Taylor left the Rolling Stones. And Peter Gabriel left Genesis.

J.R. and Zimmy transform an oldie into a goodie.

On Bob Dylan's second studio LP, the song Girl from the North Country seems and even sounds a tad ho-hum and arid up against the magnitude of the other purely acoustic era tracks: the destined for greatness Blowin' In the Wind, the surreal epic crypticism of A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall, the airtight aw shucks shrugging simplicity of Don't Think Twice, It's Alright, the relentless judgmental slow burn wrath of Masters of War or even the funny, folksy absurdity of Talkin' World War III Blues or Bob Dylan's Blues. But on this day in 1969 when Dylan and Johnny Cash went into a recording studio together, they transformed it into a musical moment that practically demands to be surrounded by a stillness while the listener waits for the verses to unfold with a deliberate, unrushed and inevitable pace that transports us to a place we always knew we'd end up anyway. It was released as the opening track on Dylan's ninth studio release, Nashville Skyline.

"I can't stand what you do ..."

Two hundred and fifty-eight years ago today the very first hospital in the United States opened. Pennsylvania Hospital is located in Center City, Philadelphia and was founded all those years ago by physician and surgeon Thomas Bond and all around brilliant guy Benjamin Franklin. Two hundred and nineteen years later, Jonathan Richman would consider hospitals in this song with the original lineup of the Modern Lovers: Ernie Brooks on bass, Jerry Harrison (later in the Talking Heads) on keyboards and drummer David Robinson (later of The Cars). Who knows why the person who posted this to YouTube opted to put the audio under clips from Roeg's The Man Who Fell to Earth, but spend a quarter of an hour surfing around YouTube for songs and you'll know it could be much worse.

"Get in the pit and try to love someone!"

Some will love me for it, others will hate me, but I really liked a lot of the tracks on Kid Rock's breakthrough LP Devil Without a Cause (more so than anything he's done since), particularly Bawitdaba which mentions "D.B. Cooper and the money he took." Thirty eight years ago today a man known by the name D.B. Cooper hijacked a 727, successfully received $200,000 in ransom and parachuted from the plane, probably as it flew over an area somewhat north of Portland, Oregon. This remains the FBI's only unsolved domestic hijacking case and it has generated mucho musings and pop references. There's a good chance the guy just didn't survive the jump (an explanation the FBI naturally favors) but no body has ever been recovered. Although in 1980 an eight year old kid found $5,880 of the original ransom money in decaying $20 bills while camping on the banks of the Columbia river near Portland, OR.

"it's a mighty tight squeeze."

One hundred and six years ago today Colorado's governor, James Peabody, sent the state's National Guardsmen into the town of Cripple Creek to break up a miners' strike. The town had boomed at the end of the 19th century after a prospector's discovery of some rich gold ore in the area. A refurbished narrow gauge heritage railroad has operated between Cripple Creek and its sister town Victor, Colorado since 1967 (long after the boom had gone bust). Could this be what the heck Neil Young is singing about in this song from his After the Goldrush album? He is, after all, a train freak.

The Cripple Creek muse also whispered to frequent Your Daily Dose cameo Skip Spence ...

... and, of course, Robbie Robertson was apparently inspired by the alliterative name of the locale when he wrote this gem for the Band.

"Can you please tell me what the time is?"

Today in 1604, William Shakespeare's Othello was performed for the very first time at the Whitehall Palace in London. Surely, I thought to myself this morning, there must be a better Shakespearean allusion to that particular play in rock and roll than Doc Neeson's seemingly throwaway line, "she walk like Othello/dresses in day-glow" in the Aussie Angels' (or Angel City's) 1980 tune "No Secrets". Now I'm confounded to learn that according to the crappy online lyric sites, he's saying "walk like a PHAROAH". I'm not convinced. Listen yourself at about :34 in, doesn't it sound like he's saying "Othello"? Great song from a great band, by the way, even though the video looks more than a tad dated at times.

"Where do I go from here to a better state than this?"

Today in 1890 Idaho was publicly admitted to the Union as the 43rd state of the USA. Some 9 decades later, the B-52s would suggest something similar could be done, but privately ...

". . . post man says it's faster."

Hard for someone my age to imagine that it was 1963, on this day, that zip codes were introduced to make the USPS more efficient. And while many know the Five American's highest charting song, Western Union, fewer know of their '67 paean to what was at the time a four year old post office innovation.
  
Why mess with a winning formula. Interesting that two of the Five Americans' highest charting songs were about methods of communication designed to work over great distances. Could this have something to do with the fact that they were from Oklahoma? Cue their big hit, please ...

"Not in New York ... "

One hundred and eight years and one day ago in Paris, France Ambroise Vollard gave Pablo Picasso his first show. Although the one man exhibition didn't make any waves in the Parisian art world, nor any real money for Picasso, as was usually the case, he was not once called an "asshole."

Art, of course, inspires. So when you're down to only four strings, Iggy knows that one of your better options is to borrow a page from Jonathan Richman's songbook.