Celebrity Death Weekend

I remember once having an argument with a former colleague over the common belief that celebrities die in groups, usually in threes, over a relatively short period of days. “People die all the time!” he protested, and my counterargument was that people whose obits manage to make the front page or get their own headline and story opposite the regular obit page in the newspaper rank in the category of what I was talking about.

Well, this weekend I was proven right once again! First, chess grandmaster and well known curmudgeonly hermit lunatic Bobby Fischer died at age 64. Back in those Cold War days where ANYTHING could be turned into an American versus Russian, Rocky versus Ivan Drago type conflict, Fischer won the chess championship against Boris Spassky, thereby proving capitalism superior to communism. “I play chess FOR MEEEEEEEE!”

Sadder to me were the deaths of two television people who contributed to some truly classic programming. First was Allan Melvin, who began as Corporal Henshaw on the wonderful Phil Silvers Sergeant Bilko series in the 1950s (the recently released and Wagstaff recommended DVD collection features audio commentary and introductions by Allan Melvin), and then turned up in a plethora of material, like playing Rob’s old army buddy on The Dick Van Dyke Show, or the voice of Magilla Gorilla, or the voice of Drooper on Banana Splits, or Barney Hefner on All In The Family, or as most of you are familiar with, as Sam the butcher on The Brady Bunch. Melvin was one of those guys who seemed ubiquitous on 1960s and 1970s sitcom television, along with guys like Charles Lane or Vito Scotti or John Fiedler. Just seeing them turn up at some random moment in some old episode of something always prompts a smile and a “Hey, it’s THAT guy again!”

Also passing was Suzanne Pleshette, best known for playing Emily Hartley on the classic Bob Newhart Show. She appeared in tons of other stuff (as this fansite documents pretty well), and her comic timing was impeccable. Evidently in real life, her raunchy sense of humor was sometimes jolting to Newhart’s (though Newhart often uses his calm/account persona to throw his audience when venturing into darker humor), and this helped them play off each other. You don’t see many comedies on the air these days that depict a marriage between intelligent people like that anymore, which is sad. What’s even sadder is how the cigarettes that may have provided smartasses like me all sorts of ways to make fun of her voice ultimately shortened Pleshette’s life. Let that be a lesson to you all: put down those damn cigarettes and pick up a stiff drink.

Also passing was Lois Nettleton, who I remember from the episode of The Twilight Zone called “The Midnight Sun,” where the Earth is burning up in ways that would even frighten Al Gore, and an episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, “The Dark Pool,” where she plays a guilt-ridden mom being psychologically tortured by none other than Madlyn Rhue, who played Mrs. Khaaaaaaaaan!!!! in “Space Seed.” Lois Nettleton was 80.

Finally, singer/songwriter John Stewart died of an aneurism. He started out as a folkie in The Kingston Trio, won lots of fame by writing “Daydream Believer” for The Monkees, and had a big hit with his own song “Gold” from a late ’70s album Bombs Away, Dream Babies. I’m not a big one for folk music, but it’s pretty clear that this guy had a decent impact on American pop music. And 68 is too damn young to die, if you ask me.

UPDATE: Geesh, speaking of too damn young, it just came over the ‘net today that Heath Ledger has died at 28 from some sort of drug overdose. The story as yet states it was some “powerful over the counter medication,” so I’m wondering if it was some sort of severe allergic reaction or accidental overdose or maybe even suicide. I guess the cause will be sorted out later. Wow.

And what do we say whenever someone famous dies?

“And Keith Richards is still alive! HOW????”

Graham Parker

For some reason today I woke up with Parker’s “Pourin’ It All Out” running trough my head (and NO, it wasn’t because I swallowed an entire bottle of Flomax last night) so since I slept in and avoided the paltry assortment of yard sales for this week, I loaded a bunch of Parker CDs from my collection into the play tray for my extended breakfast soundtrack.

The soundtrack basically comprised close to the current bookends of the man’s career, starting out with his first album Howlin’ Wind and ending up with his 2005 release Songs Of No Consequence. His gravelly voice sounds even more gravelly these days, but the addictive hooks, the variety of mixes, and especially the cleverness and stark honesty flowing from the lyrics are still there. For a guy who was one of the first “New Wave” of British songsters who broke through to America back in the mid 1970s (paving the way, really, for Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson. Ian Dury and others), I always found him to be the best pure songwriter of the bunch. I admire Costello as a songwriter as well, and I think his first three albums are flat-out amazing, but there’s more of a self-conscious conceit to his writing, evident in the ways in which he conspicuously adopted varying styles as he pumped out album after album – he tried blues, he tried radio-friendly horn pop, he tried Cole Porter-esque and Burt Bacharach stylings, and so on. Joe Jackson did the same thing, often in Costello’s wake, and while they still came up with material worth listening to, Parker’s evolution and variety of styles seemed more to do with maintaining the feel and integrity of the songs themselves rather than enveloping them in particular aesthetics as an attention-getting gesture. I guess in this way I’d compare Parker more to Andy Partridge & XTC, where the wide variety of arrangements and music styles are merely matters of personal and artistic preference, rather than combining those elements with marketing ploys. Parker is also far more cynical about the nature of the music industry and its commercial judgments, and it often turns up in his songs, such as “Mercury Poisoning” or “Passive Resistance,” among others.

It comes as so surprise to me that Graham Parker’s website, complete with links to his intermittent blogging, is filled with more of his writings that reflect his intelligence and command of the language. I especially like this blog post of his, a response to a reviewer, since it not only gives us a window into Parker’s ideas but also brilliantly illustrates the care in which the guy crafts his music. Since I can’t play a single note, I’m fascinated by the process of putting music together, a subject which enhanced my enjoyment of films like Amadeus or Chuck Berry: Hail! Hail! Rock And Roll!

Check out the long scroll of albums at Parker’s site. Check things out, follow the links, and ultimately give ’em a listen. Your ears will thank you.

Play It Again, Schumann

Another set of those little coincidences that I can never ignore led me to an interesting but overall mediocre-to-fair movie run on TCM the other night. During Saturday’s yardsales, I came across a book of movie lists that I passed on, mostly since it contained the sorts of information one can easily find online these days and my bookshelves are already overflowing and ready to bury me alive. But while randomly checking out various lists of films by theme, I came across a movie in the “classical music” category that I had never heard of, called Song Of Love from 1947, with Katherine Hepburn as Clara Schumann, Paul Henreid as Robert Schumann & Robert Walker as Brahms.

I was intrigued by the cast and wondered about searching for the movie at Eddie Brandt’s, went home and with Schumann on my mind, popped in a recording of his 4th symphony that I like while I had breakfast, and then basically forgot about it.

And then the other night I see in the TV listings, while looking for something else, that it was playing on TCM at 7pm.

Clearly, this was a SIGN from GOD that I was to watch this movie!

While pleasant, I found the movie disappointing. Schumann’s bipolar manic-depression leading into insanity is handled with nothing but some ear-ringing and bad headaches until he keels over and croaks in the asylum, and I think the now-most-likely-treatable madness that afflicted and eventually destroyed Schumann would be handled far more realistically in a film made today. Add this to the way in which wife Clara’s talents and earning potential (and the marital conflicts therein) would be handled in a modern movie as opposed to 1947 and you have even more interesting material, and THEN throw Brahms into this odd romantic triangle and it gets even more intriguing. This movie portrays Brahms as a lovesick Mr. Saccharine, though since it’s Robert Walker, you keep waiting for him to ask Clara if she wants him to kill her husband in exchange for her murdering his father instead of telling her he loves her with a Victorian “…and that’s why I simply MUST go!” routine. The reality of Brahms has a lot more for a modern day movie to work with – never mind his often sharp humor, how about the way he hung around Clara Schumann for another forty-odd years after Robert’s death and how they mutually destroyed letters from each other? How about how messed up Brahms was about sex in general from spending his childhood playing piano in brothels? Now THAT’S the Robert Walker we’d know and love! Alas, he’s not in this movie.

Hepburn is also miscast as Clara – while you always believe Hepburn as a capable and intelligent woman, I never get a real sense of her fierce devotion to Crazy Hubby which would transcend any desire to marry Brahms after he dies. This requires almost a motherly “He needs me, even in death!” angle to that devotion, which is attempted by the depiction of the Schumann brood of eight children but doesn’t quite come off.

So, all in all, a mixed bag with some hokey dialogue here and there, but I’m still glad I satisfied my curiosity. Whereas a great movie like Amadeus deals better with its main subject, Mozart’s story is one dealing with a musical genius determined to show you how clever he is with every note. Schumann is one of those guys who had to keep writing music in a vain attempt to forestall the moment when his insanity consumed him, and you can hear that desperation, joy, loss & frustration in every note. It all depends on what you’re in the mood for, I guess.

Wine, Satan, & Song

It’s funny how things run in thematic cycles. Last week’s round of yard sales saw a plethora of DVDs at nearly every sale I went to. This week, I saw next to NO DVDs at all, and instead went from sale to sale seeing books and CDs. So, those are the categories for this week’s discoveries.

In the book department: despite finding nothing at a sale overloaded with pre-publication reader-review copies of assorted high-end fiction due out for the 2007-08 season (this was an unpleasant surprise), I managed to find a copy of A Perfect Glass Of Wine by Brian St. Pierre, a rather basic but beautifully illustrated and well organized guide to all the major varieties of grape and the wines thereof. I like the way he keeps coming back to food pairings whenever he goes into a particular type of wine, since that’s pretty much the way I’ve always drunk the stuff. To me, it’s a part of the meal, with the meal being the compilation of recipes featuring compimentary ingredients and flavors. This looks like a wonderful book to lend out to people who are new to wine drinking, or aren’t familiar with the differences in varieties or food pairings. Too bad I hate lending books out. Come to think of it, I usually hate people too. This might be a problem in sharing this book with others. I’ll have to work on that. Or perhaps instead I’ll read from the other book of the day, The Devil: A Visual Guide To The Demonic, Evil, Scurrilous and Bad, taking copious notes to guide my future behavior. But wait! This book may as well be about me, although I was never so lavishly depicted in Medieval and Renaissance art as the actual Satan (and the abundantly wonderful illustrations of those depictions litter this book, making it the deal-maker as I browsed through its enjoyable and interesting collection of all-things-Satan trivia. I mean, we’re talking two dollars here, I need to think about such things carefully.)

In the CD department, two classical samplings that turned out rather well. First up was a recording of Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony with Bernard Haitink and the Concertbegouw Orchestra (the single CD I have seems to be out of print, but you can get the same recording along with the Bruckner Sixth here, and the first Amazon review listed is from a guy I remember from college who ate ketchup out of a bowl with his fingers, but he writes a lot of pretty decent Amazon reviews, I must admit. I just hope he cleans his keyboard.) Bruckner wrote big burly man-sized symphonies, picking up from Brahms and leading up to Mahler. I like most of them, though I’ve been particular about which recordings and versions. This one is very good indeed. The 7th has some melodies in its “funeral” Adagio that remind me of similar passages in Tchaikovsky’s 6th, only Bruckner’s aren’t as emotionally pleading & yearning, which basically sums up the difference between Germans and Russians. The other CD was an all-digital authentic instrument recording of Haydn’s final 3 string quartets, which I can only describe as “exquisite.” The quality of sound from those period instruments is truly wonderful, and Haydn’s inventive and lively melodies are always good stuff.

Plenty of wonderful finds to be thankful for, as well as my thanks for the spiffy NEW battery in the Wagstaffmobile which kept my car a’startin’ after yesterday’s adventure in turn-key-nothing-happening-at-all. You’d think my car would have needed Viagra in its engine oil from the way it was behaving yesterday afternoon, but thankfully it only turned out to be the five year old battery dying of old age and having the good grace NOT to take the alternator with it to that big anode in the sky. I was even able to drive to the grocery store today to restock some pantry items and walked by a woman who smelled like the inside of a cedar closet.

My adventures never end, to be sure.

A Quick One, The Sequel

The Len Price 3 answer the question – “What would happen if you locked someone in a room with nothing but a copy of The Who Sings My Generation to listen to, freed them after several years and then handed them instruments?”

Both their debut Chinese Burn and their recent Rentacrowd evoke The-Kids-Are-All-Right era Who with a healthy wallop. Give the boys a listen!

Highly recommended!

Pianos Are Like Girls…

… when they’re not upright, they’re grand.
Thank You, Benny Hill!



But I digress! The romantic piano concerto remains one of my favorite items in the classical music arena, something pretty obvious from examining my collection. The easiest way to analyze someone’s tastes in classical music is to take note of how many different recordings of the exact same piece they have & play frequently for different reasons. That must be why I have five different recordings of the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto #2, my favorite of ’em all, since it brings my inner tortured Russian soul to life. (Which reminds me how happy I am that my outer running-from-torture Russian ancestor’s bodies got the hell OUT of Russia 100 years ago) I have some of these recordings, like an old mono of Rachmaninoff playing the thing himself, strictly out of curiosity (How DID he want it played?), while others, like the exquisite 1963 Ashkenazy version, I would put on my desert island list of CDs.

It’s as good as a purring cat in my lap.

I stopped into a used CD store over in Silver Lake driving back from jury duty some years ago, and there it was in the used bin, with the “1963, ” the year I was born, in huge font on the label, AND I KNEW IT WAS THE HAND OF GOD AT WORK!!!

If you’re familiar with this piece, you know all too well how it combines keyboard wizardry with syrupy (or would that be borscht-y?) Russian romanticism. I’ve only heard it once in a live concert, by Lang Lang on the piano with the LA Philharmonic – and he didn’t miss a trick as far as capturing the feeling of the piece as well as hitting all the technical demands. Mark Swed, the highbrow music critic of the LA Times, gave him a lousy review because Swed doesn’t like Rachmaninoff to begin with. Ask me again how the reasons for me cancelling my Times subscription piled up over the years.

You could ski down that pile, come to think of it.

It’s inevitable when ranking symphonies and concertos that we begin by comparing our faves to the others in the same composer’s repertoire. The Rach 1 is pleasant and gives signs of the magic to come in future works, a promise fulfilled by #2. The third impresses with the usual keyboard magic, but somehow the melodies in the first two movements meander a bit for me, though I love the finish. The fourth seems quickly thrown together somehow, yet is certainly worthwhile.

Grieg & Schumann make it easier for us by only composing one piano concerto apiece. They’re often grouped together on CDs since the opening notes in each are so similar. Grieg combines notes designed to represent the playfulness of his new baby with a wealth of his genius for catchy melodies, similar to his Lyric Pieces. Schumann’s is a coded love note to his wife Clara, where piano notes spell out his special nickname for her. Awwwww! And what a sad sad story his life is. Oy! But he wrote some bitchin’ tunes!

Speaking of the sad life department, I’d also like to put in a word for my appreciation for the often overlooked Second piano concerto by Tchaikovsky. The first is played much more often, with its familiar opening chords (that give way to different themes and then are never heard again in the piece – I’ve always found that odd), but I like the way the second mixes moods as well as Tchaikovsky’s symphonies 4 and 6, giving you a real sense of the bi-polar-esque emotional highs and lows the poor schnook must have been capable of. They love to pair Tchikovsky 1 with Rachmaninoff 2 as well, sort of a “Russian Greatest Piano Hits” way of organizing things. Peter Donohoe does a wonderful job with the Second on this set. I think I’m partial to this Van Cliburn recording of the first, however.

Pianists like Peter Donohoe, Marc Andre-Hamelin, Howard Shelly, Stephen Hough and others are building quite a number of lesser-known and rarely-played piano concertos into their quiver. Hyperion Records has been issuing a monster set, The Romantic Piano Concerto, which is up to volume 42 now (you can check them out by clicking here, try not to spend ALL your money) featuring music from composers who have faded with time, but wrote wonderful stuff in the style of their era. The booklets are a wonderful edjucation as well, since you basically get to see who was tutoring who, who was influencing who, who was challenging and competing with who, and so on – giving you a much better sense of the 19th century music scene.

It managed to be upright and grand! Happy listening!

A Power Pop Goldmine

In keeping my promise to post more about music & the arts to break up the sports talk (though with the Yankees done for 2007, I’ll probably only post weekend football-themed rantings until next spring), here’s a MOTHER LODE of guitar-pop garage-psychadelic sweet sweet yummy goodness for you to feast on.

The guys running Rainbow Quartz Records must have very similar tastes to mine, all right. Click on the link and check out all the bands they have in their stable. Nearly all of them have MySpace pages where you can sample a few of their songs & get an idea of their particular sound and sometimes all-too-obvious influences.

Chances are, you won’t hear a lot of them on the radio. Because most of radio SUCKS and isn’t getting any better (as I ranted about earlier). To get good music, you have to do a little web work. So start clickin’!

It looks like they’ve made a talent raid on what must be the retro-psychadelic pop scene in Spain, of all places – a number of their bands – The Shake, The Gurus, The Winnerys – all hail from there, singing in English with vocal styles this side of John Lennon and The Knickerbockers.

The Winnerys’ new CD “Daily Urban Times” mixes the jangly guitars of early Beatles with harmonies from The Hollies and it all comes out of the speakers like chocolate cake out of the oven.

Denise James has a voice like Leslie Gore to go with guitar-layered harmonic pop that evokes Brian Wilson, The Byrds and Petulia Clark! I think I’m in love!

Too much to go into here – So off you go! Check it out, click around, give it all a listen & support these indy bands and the label that provides them a home.

I COMMAND YOU!

So let it be written, so let it be done!

Another Light Goes Out In The World (A Rant)

One of the last remaining commercial radio stations devoted to classical music, Los Angeles’ KMZT, is switching over to talk-radio format as of October 29.

The station used to be broadcast in FM stereo at 105.1, but then switched formats with a country music station the same company owned at AM 1260. Since people weren’t listening to classical in AM mono, the ratings declined even further.

Music history and music appreciation are not taught in elementary or high schools, since it takes away too much time from teaching directly to district-required your-budget-will-be-based-on-this standardized testing & politically correct indoctrinating BULLSHIT. Art history, the most important subject for connecting the various parts of the humanities together, isn’t taught either. Neither is any way of getting students to critically think about such things and tie them together, oh, the way people in the REAL WORLD ACTUALLY DO WITH CULTURE ON A DAILY BASIS.

How many standardized multiple choice tests have YOU taken since school? I thought so.

Therefore, non-school cultural institutions like libraries, museums, art galleries, symphonies and radio stations that play stuff other than what is commercially viable for the mass market (as opposed to servable niche markets) are absolutely necessary to make our society WORTH LIVING IN. So when yet another little light of a classical music station – one that provided ME with much of my interest in the subject and sparked me along on discovering my love of varied composers, periods and styles – turns out its light to become another uncecessary middle-of-the-road nondescript talk outlet for the mush-mouthed twaddle of Larry King & Michael Jackson, it ought to be a capital offense.

The only broadcast radio stations playing classical these days are NPR stations, and lately they’ve been squeezing down the time for music and filling it up with more talk ‘n’ chat ‘n’ news shows that stroke the supposed sophistication and preening self-esteem of the latte drinkin’ Nation readin’ Volvo drivin’ set that listen to them.

That’s right, when stuff like this happens, I HATE EVERYBODY!

Well, not YOU, since you’re reading this. You’re my hero! Click on the links I give you, leave a comment, send money, etc. I also like kitties!

I also like the shrinking list of people out there keeping the kinds of institutions I mentioned above alive. In fact, I like them A LOT. So let me acknowledge a few and try to be a little more positive:

So thank you, KUSC, for playing music 24/7! There should be more like you! Hey, look! There are!

Thank you to the people who maintain websites like this one that feature a wealth of information, links, reviews, and all sorts of things to take over your soul and move it forward.

Thank you, Michael Tilson Thomas, for devoting your talented self to this.

I just came across this article, and it gives me hope.

There should be more classical streams online as well! ANYTHING to get more people to listen to stuff worth listening to, ANYTHING for kids to find online instead of listening to the same pre-packaged corporate pablum CRAP that fills the airwaves.

Bah.

In short, I should be King. I will expand on more reasons for this as I continue to write here (there are so many, after all.) In the meantime, I think I will have to listen to some Beethoven or Mozart to be reminded of what sorts of GOOD things human beings are capable of. Isn’t that one of the biggest favors art does for us?

Punk Guitars & Pixie Voices

The Dollyrots’ Because I’m Awesome has been getting multiple plays in Wagstaff’s little world. Give the band a listen here. The Los Angeles trio’s second CD, and the first on Joan Jett’s Blackheart label, is a wonderfully solid effort of the one-good-song-after-another variety. They mix up the melodies and arrangements throughout, though the vast majority of the tunes here, especially “My Best Friend’s Hot,” “Tummy Tum Tum,” and the title track remind me of earlier Donnas albums in their overall affect on the ear and tappin’ toe. There’s also the Phil Spector-ish “This Crush” (as opposed to “This Gun In My Mouth,” the hidden track on Phil’s last album) and a great Ramones-esque cover of the old ’70s novelty number “Brand New Key.”

And the big-time high notes vocalist Kelly Ogden hits on that last number make me put this one into the category I named this post for. Much like Rodney Bingenheimer, a lot of my musical taste leans towards the subcategory of pop/punk bands with pixie-girl vocalists. Like a lot of “girl rock,” this subcategory can be traced back to Blondie, but I think the genre really got going in the later ’80s with bands like The Primitives, Lush, Letters To Cleo, Echobelly, The Darling Buds … even Transvision Vamp to a degree.

Amazing how many of those bands I just ran through put out amazing debut albums & then just VANISHED, either for real or merely artistically.

It’s a sound I’m always a sucker for, much like any band that rips off the glam rock/T-Rex sound or manages to ape the British Invasion sound. It’s like having a favorite brand among a bunch of candy. I really can’t explain it. It’s just there.

Time to make dinner! Yummy yum yum!

The Soundtrack To Pagan Goddess Worship

I was listening to the new Donnas CD “Bitchin'” recently, giving it a second go-round since my first impression was not overly enthusiastic, and while the non-stop sequence of metal-influenced shout-along-with-the-chorus party anthems that populate its tracks are often catchy, I still prefer their earlier CDs The Donnas Turn 21 and Spend The Night, which managed to mix elements of punk with metal for a hard rocking melange of sound befitting the musical heirs of Joan Jett (whose most recent CD, Sinner, is among her best work).

I don’t possess the music theory vocabulary to accurately describe the difference I can hear in the chord progresions and arrangements that signify “metal guitar” and “punk rock guitar” to me, I just know it when I hear it – and Bitchin’ owes more to the influence of Def Leppard than to the Ramones, and my own tastes tend more towards the Ramones. Yet when the Donnas’ brand of party rock is fronted by the sassy-girl-turned-tough-woman vocals of Brett Anderson, I can deal with a song that follows a Motley Crue structure like “Who Invited You?” off of Spend The Night, or a song that borrows from Bon Scott-era AC/DC the way “Are You Gonna Move It For Me?” did off Turn 21. I pay more attention to the music than the lyrics with this band, since the lyrics usually boil down to “I wanna get laid, and I can anytime I want, so let’s go!” and this is unfortunately an ability I can only envy from a distance.

Take out your handkerchiefs and CRY FOR WAGSTAFF!

I’ll listen to it some more to see if it grows on me, as many CDs often do after repeated listenings, but I was reminded of something about myself when surfing over to The Donnas’ website and watching the video of the new single “Don’t Wait Up For Me,” (which cribs from Joan Jett’s “I Hate Myself For Loving You” in its opening riffs, but then goes in a different direction). Not my favorite song on the album perhaps… but in watching the video and watching them perform it, I can’t help but fall under the spell of the potent combo of hard rockin’ sound and sexy young women producing that sound as their signature, as opposed to the hot-chick window dressing in rock videos by similar style male bands.

So much for rational thought – it all makes my will power turn to melted butter. It has more to do with the quality of the music than the sexiness of the women playing it, definitely… clearly why I don’t have the same reaction to the wailing dreck of The Pussycat Dolls or the tunes of any number of foxy hip-hop singers. The jaw dropping awe and fascination that can only be categorized as what Camille Paglia wrote about as “pagan Goddess worship” can only manifest itself when the music moves the soul along with the musician attracting the eye and filling the heart with ridiculously irrational fantasy.

Welcome to being a guy! Though the more I think about this, the more I can fully understand how a Pamela Des Barres and her galpals (sounds like a Saturday morning cartoon show, doesn’t it?) spent the better part of their lives as groupies. I remember seeing The Bangles live back in Providence, where the audience pretty much consisted of a bunch of slack-jawed goggle-eyed thunderstruck dweebs, myself included, staring up at the rock goddesses (at one point Vicky Peterson remarked “Do we even have any female fans here tonight?” with a laugh) and all thinking the same thing:

Please please please carry me backstage and pass me around like a rag-doll manslut

Pathetic, isn’t it? BUT I CAN’T HELP MYSELF!!! The fever overtook me when watching Debbie Harry sing “Dreaming” on SNL years ago, in watching how the terminal cuteness of Jane Wiedlin only grew since she never stopped moving throughout the entirety of the Go Gos show, or watching Kate Smith sing “God Bless America”…

Okay, not Kate Smith. Just wanted to see if you were still paying attention. And OMIGOD the Kate Smith society at the link is located in my home town of Cranston, Rhode Island!

Clearly, it’s DESTINY!!!!

Sorry, Donnas. I belong to Kate. And America.

Keep those handkerchiefs out and CRY FOR… oh never mind.