Tapestry: Iconic Gen Jones album and a timeless classic
Carole King’s “Tapestry”
“Timeless” may be one of the more overused tags to tout popular songs, books, and movies, but in the case of Carole King’s 1971 album Tapestry, the label fits. Don’t just take my word for it: It’s 36th on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 all-time greatest albums:
On Tapestry, King remade herself as an artist and created the reigning model for the 1970s female singer-songwriter – not to mention a blockbuster pop record of enduring artistic quality.
King was no stranger to the music world when Tapestry was released. She had been a successful song writer for artists like Aretha Franklin and The Shirelles during the 60s. Fortunately she was encouraged to enter the recording studio, and Tapestry was the result.
Here’s the album’s original song list, courtesy of Wikipedia:
- Side 1
- “I Feel the Earth Move” – 2:58
- “So Far Away” – 3:55
- “It’s Too Late” (lyrics by Toni Stern) – 3:53
- “Home Again” – 2:29
- “Beautiful” – 3:08
- “Way Over Yonder” – 4:44
- Side 2
- “You’ve Got a Friend” – 5:09
- “Where You Lead” (lyrics by Toni Stern) – 3:20
- “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?” (Gerry Goffin, King) – 4:12
- “Smackwater Jack” (Goffin, King) – 3:41
- “Tapestry” – 3:13
- “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” (Goffin, King, Jerry Wexler) – 3:49
And here’s one of the livelier numbers, “I Feel the Earth Move,” from YouTube:
The singles from Tapestry were all over the pop charts. And if we stick with the defining Gen Jones age range (born 1954 through 1965), we see that it arrived during the heart of our childhoods and teen years, when we spent a lot of time listening to the radio and playing favorite music. The memories associated with these songs would fill volumes.
Remember writing and receiving real letters?
Graphic from Phillip Martin (http://languagearts.phillipmartin.info/la_writing_letters.htm)
Somewhere in my basement storage area, I have several file folders stuffed with personal letters from back in the day, the product of an inveterate saver and collector. If memory serves me well, very few of these letters contain news or sentiments of extraordinary significance, especially when weighed against events of a lifetime. Nevertheless, they harken back to when writing and receiving letters via the mail was a welcomed part of our everyday lives.
My most intense phase of letter writing ran from college through law school, covering my late teens through early twenties. It makes sense. We often take our daily lives rather seriously during those years, and the diaspora of friends and family via assorted personal milestones creates the need to keep in touch as we move around.
In the days before e-mail, Facebook, and cheap long-distance calls, letter writing was the way we did it. I recall exchanging veritable tomes at times. And while today I might be a tad embarrassed over some of the missives I wrote and mailed, sending and receiving letters was very meaningful to me.
Today, of course, technology has largely supplanted old fashioned letter writing. I sometimes wonder what records of our everyday exchanges will be available to anthropologists of the future as they search for clues of how we shared ideas, information, thoughts, and feelings from a distance. Will our digital footprints disappear with us? And even if they are available, how will someone sort through the mounds of empty chatter to get to the real stuff?
Though sentiment creeps in when I write about writing letters, I have no illusions that we will see a revival of this form of communication anytime soon. It’s too bad, though. Anticipating a personal letter from a dear friend or family member sure beats turning on the computer, awaiting the pile up in my inbox.
Bye bye, Blockbuster
This week’s announcement that Blockbuster is shuttering its remaining video stores was greeted with a ho hum by most of the public. Some may have assumed that the company already had disappeared, recalling its 2010 bankruptcy filing. Others may have skipped past the news as they clicked into their Netflix queue.
In my case, of course, news of Blockbuster’s demise triggered a bout of remembrance….
As much as I love movies, I was a latecomer to home video. I didn’t buy my first VCR until the summer of 1992, when I was in my early 30s. But once the VCR was set up in my apartment, I went into video rental overdrive, and the Blockbuster on 6th Avenue near 8th Street in Manhattan got a lot of my business that summer (and thereafter).
It wasn’t the cool, artsy video store in the East Village, nor the cozy neighborhood shop where I lived in Brooklyn. Nevertheless, Blockbuster had movies, and lots of them. Its blend of the latest hits, popular older movies, and some of the classics was just right for me.
I visited Blockbuster 3-4 times a week that summer, always filled with anticipation over what I might discover. I’d start with the new arrivals in the front of the store, then went toward the back to check out the oldies. Rare was the time I walked out empty handed.
Businesses may come and go, and Blockbuster has had its run. But I’m not alone in remembering the fun of picking out a movie there and loading it into my VCR later that night, minutes after the pizza was delivered! Having that kind of easy access to thousands of movies — no more scouring the TV listings in hopes that a favorite would pop up — changed dramatically how we engaged the medium, and made for many enjoyable evenings at home.
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Logo:Wikipedia
What’s your favorite comfort food?
Confession: The yolks broke (Photo: DY, 2013)
A burger, coffee, and slice of pie. Mac & cheese with some greens on the side. Eggs, hash browns, and pancakes.
Yup, comfort food. Good, hearty stuff. Here’s how Wikipedia defines it:
(T)raditionally eaten food (which often provides a nostalgic or sentimental feeling to the person eating it), or simply provides the consumer an easy-to-digest meal, soft in consistency, and rich in calories, nutrients, or both. The nostalgic element most comfort food has, may be specific to either the individual or a specific culture. Many comfort foods are flavorful; some may also be easily prepared.
As that snippet suggests, comfort food is often associated with lasting memories! Mention “meat loaf,” and I think of my mom’s recipe, which included a thin brush of tomato paste and strips of bacon on top. (Mom knew her comfort food.) I also recall a meal during my collegiate semester in England, when my friend Don got a care package from home that included a packet of powdered meat loaf mix. We bought 2 lbs. of ground beef and a pile of Brussels sprouts, and enjoyed a feast.
What are your favorite comfort foods? If you need a prod, the Wikipedia article on comfort foods collects lists from different countries! (Bangers and mash, anyone?)
Da Bears (1985 ed.)
I’m not obsessed, really.
So the Chicago Bears are playing the Green Bay Packers on Monday Night Football tonight. This inevitably means that I’ll have at least one or two memories about my favorite sports team of all time, the 1985 Chicago Bears.
Across the nation, but especially in the Chicagoland area, a large cohort of middle aged men (and some women, too!) carry with them a fierce, nostalgic devotion to a football team that has etched a permanent place in their hearts and minds. That devotion can be activated in a millisecond, whenever names like “Payton,” “McMahon,” “Ditka,” “Singletary,” “Danimal,” “Mongo,” or “The Fridge” are uttered, or when a sports broadcast plays a snippet of a very bad rap video, “The Super Bowl Shuffle.”
The 1985 Chicago Bears are regarded as one of the top two or three teams in National Football League history. They dominated the regular season with a 15-1 record. They then trounced the Los Angeles Rams and New York Giants in the playoffs, before thoroughly, utterly flattening the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl. It’s not just their won-loss record that matters; it’s how they won, with a tightly controlled offense and the most dramatic, overpowering, fun-to-watch defense the game has ever seen.
It’s a team that gave back to the Windy City its swagger, years before Michael Jordan would lead the Bulls to six NBA championships. It’s a team full of memorable characters and stories.
A memorable year for me, too
Memories good and bad rarely stand in isolation. I have no doubt that my devotion to this team connects to where I was at that time in my life. I had just graduated from NYU Law School, and I was fulfilling my wish of working as a public interest attorney, practicing at the Legal Aid Society in Manhattan.
I shared an apartment in Brooklyn, earned a little over $20,000 (not much even by 1985 standards, especially in New York), and was absolutely smitten with the wonders of New York City. It was a rougher town during those days, and the decade was marked by a high crime rate and the arrival of crack cocaine. But one could still enjoy city life on a meager budget.
In the meantime, my longstanding affinity for Chicago sports teams — having grown up in Northwest Indiana — had not disappeared. By following the newspapers and Sports Illustrated, and by watching the Bears games that were televised on the East Coast (via a foil-enhanced black & white TV set), I watched that magical season unfold.
In addition to collecting the stuff pictured above, somewhere in a storage trunk I’ve saved the Chicago Tribune edition from the day after the Super Bowl victory. One of the headlines is etched in my mind: “Bears Bring It Home.”
Twenty Generation Jones sitcoms
Image: Wikipedia
Many a Gen Joneser watched a good share of television as a kid, especially a variety of sitcoms that spanned the spectrum of quality. Here are twenty that come to mind, not in rank order, though I do lead with a classic:
1. Dick Van Dyke Show — One of the very best sitcoms of all time, groundbreaking in its own modest way, starring Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore as Rob and Laura Petrie. Episodes were set in the Petrie’s New Rochelle NY home and at Rob’s job as head writer for the Alan Brady Show in Manhattan.
2. Gilligan’s Island — The theme song says it all. It’s iconic TV for Gen Jonesers. (Plus, the ultimate question: Ginger or Mary Ann?)
3. Andy Griffith Show — Sheriff Andy Taylor (Andy Griffith) keeps the peace in the small town of Mayberry, North Carolina, aided by his bumbling but well-meaning (and hilarious) deputy, Barney Fife (Don Knotts).
4. Get Smart! — A Mel Brooks classic, starring Don Adams as hapless Agent Maxwell Smart, with his smart and beautiful sidekick, Agent 99 (Barbara Feldon).
5. Bewitched — Elizabeth Montgomery’s Samantha Stevens was the world’s most comely suburban witch.
6. I Dream of Jeannie — Larry Hagman is an astronaut who discovers a genie in a lamp, a/k/a Jeannie (Barbara Eden), and the rest is all kind of silly. Yes, but we watched.
7. Hogan’s Heroes — With a little bit of work, this could’ve been Mel Brooks-level brilliant. It needed Mel Brooks to get there. Still, Colonel Klink and Sergeant Schultz gave us reason to laugh at the Nazis.
8. F Troop — Politically incorrect but sometimes hilarious sitcom of U.S. cavalry stationed at Fort Courage, forging business deals with an Indian tribe led by a chief with a New York accent.
9. McHale’s Navy — I remember the reruns on afternoon television. I remember wincing at references to “the Nips.” Oy.
10. Beverly Hillbillies — Gotta tell you a story ’bout a man named Jed. Sick-at-home, morning rerun television.
11. Green Acres — Another legendary theme song. Fred Ziffel and Arnold the Pig were my favorite characters.
12. Petticoat Junction — Billie Jo, Bobbie Jo, and Betty Jo made it easy to forget about Uncle Joe. Plus, if you loved trains as a kid, the Hooterville steam engine was a fave.
13. The Odd Couple — My office has been inspired by Oscar Madison’s interior decorating scheme.
14. The Brady Bunch — “Here’s the story, of a lovely lady.” You know the rest. Plus the whole Marcia vs. Jan thing. A defining Gen Jones sitcom.
15. The Partridge Family — David Cassidy and Shirley Jones sing some very corny pop songs. I confess that I liked this show.
16. Mary Tyler Moore Show — This time MTM is a single career woman, working for a TV news station, with a grouchy boss and a hilariously inept lead anchor. A great 70s sitcom amidst a sea of clunkers.
17. Bob Newhart Show — Deadpan hilarious Bob Newhart plays therapist Bob Hartley, with lovely Suzanne Pleshette as wife Emily, and a motley crew of colleagues and clients.
18. MASH — We’re bridging to the modern era with this important classic that mixed comedy and drama. Alan Alda as Dr. Hawkeye Pierce led one of the great series of all time.
19. Happy Days — The Fonz and all that. One, two, three o’clock, four o’clock rock.
20. Welcome Back Kotter — Gabe Kaplan starred as a New York schoolteacher presiding over a rowdy bunch of high schoolers called the sweathogs, one of whom was a young John Travolta.
Please feel free to add your favorites to the list, or take aim at mine!
Scary stories: It’s Halloween time!
Once again, I’m all in for Halloween decorations! (Photo: DY, 2013)
As a kid, Halloween was all about trick-or-treating. It basically involved the short-lived joy of my brother Jeff and I returning home with our bags full of candy, dumping our catch on the kitchen table, and sorting out the A list candies from all the rest. A couple of weeks and a few gazillion grams of sugar later, it was over.
Truth is, I always felt kinda dopey dressing up in a Halloween costume. But you gotta do what you gotta do to get the annual haul of candy.
There also was the annual viewing of “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.” It took a far second place to “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” but still managed to give us our fix of the Peanuts gang.
Nowadays…
I can’t recall the last time I went to a Halloween party, and more often than not I’ve found myself teaching on Halloween night. This year, scary movies are my way of ringing in the Halloween season. Here are the three I’ve viewed so far:
The Haunting (1963) (**** stars) — An old house in a remote part of New England has a bad history, and four paranormal researchers descend upon it to learn more. A very scary psychological thriller, enhanced by the black & white cinematography, starring Julie Harris and Claire Bloom.
Paranormal Activity (2007) (*** stars) — A young woman has been dealing with a paranormal entity for much of her life, and it’s not about to let her and her boyfriend (played by Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat) settle comfortably into this otherwise perfectly normal San Diego house. A low-budget movie that delivers some real goosebump moments.
The Ring (2002) (**1/2 stars) — I enjoyed this more than I expected after reading mixed reviews. Naomi Watts stars as a Seattle newspaper reporter investigating the unexplained death of a friend’s daughter. It’s already a “period piece,” as the story is driven by a VHS tape and use of extensive videotape technology.
I hope to squeeze in two more by Halloween, a couple of high-touted oldies that I’ve never seen before: The Uninvited (1944) (starring Ray Milland) and The Innocents (1961) (starring Deborah Kerr).
Ghosts and “chicken skin”
I can’t say for sure that I’ve ever seen a ghost or an apparition, but I believe they exist. I’ve never gone on an actual ghost hunt, but I enjoy going on ghost tours in cities I visit and reading about local ghost stories and supposed hauntings.
Over the years I’ve been on ghost walking tours in London, Cambridge (UK), Oxford, New Orleans, New York, Chicago, and Boston. I’ve also walked around parts of Hawaii, Gettysburg, PA, and Salem, MA, figuring ghosts must be hanging around. These occasional wanderings are supplemented by a small collection of books about ghosts and the supernatural that I enjoy dipping into now and then.
Technically, of course, none of this has much to do with Halloween, other than the general idea of scary stories. There’s a part of me that says you don’t wanna mess with this stuff too much, but I guess the “what if” is part of the fun of it all. It’s about what the Hawaiian folks call “chicken skin” stories, the tales that give you goosebumps.
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Celebrating books and authors: Boston Book Festival, 2013
I spent Thursday evening and a good chunk of Saturday at the Boston Book Festival, an annual event in the city’s Back Bay neighborhood. Since 2009, the BBF has been a big draw for avid readers and book lovers in the area.
Thursday’s opening night program, “Writing Terror: An Exploration of Fear,” captured what is so enjoyable about the BBF. It featured former CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson (Blowback), journalist and intelligence expert Mary Louise Kelly (Anonymous Sources), terrorism expert Jessica Stern (Denial), and film producer/director Wes Craven (Nightmare on Elm Street), moderated by journalist Joe Klein.
Opening night of the Boston Book Festival, awaiting panelists
This eclectic panel engaged in a wide-ranging exchange on fear & terror in real-life and in fiction. Some snippets: Plame and Kelly, authors of new international suspense novels, concurred that when it comes to the most frightening aspects of global terrorism, all roads lead to Pakistan. Stern told us that unfortunately we likely will have to live with the ongoing specter of low-level terrorism, as exemplified by the Boston Marathon bombings. Craven said his biggest fears are grounded in America’s ugly domestic politics and global climate change.
I bought books by each of the authors and one of Craven’s films, and then went to the author signing tables. The line for Craven was by far the longest, with mostly young folks posing for pictures with him and requesting his autograph on a variety of movie memorabilia. (Sigh, even at a book festival, the scary movie guy is getting much of the love…)
On Saturday, the BBF went into full gear, with dozens of programs featuring leading authors and booths of publishers, literary journals, bookstores, and other vendors ringing Copley Square. I bought Vincent McCaffrey’s Hound, the first entry of a mystery series set in Boston (featuring, ta da, a bookseller protagonist) at the Small Beer Press booth:
Small presses and indie publishing increasingly are the wave of the future for quality work overlooked or not regarded as sufficiently commercial by mainstream publishers, especially niche fiction and non-fiction books. I hope that such presses will have an even greater presence at future BBFs.
The Brattle Book Shop is my favorite used bookstore in Greater Boston and one of the oldest in the nation. I was happy to see its booth attracting a lot of interest:
I love used bookstores. Whenever I walk into one, I am filled with a sense of anticipation over possible discoveries awaiting me. Brick-and-mortar used bookstores are in decline, but stalwarts like Brattle remain. It joins my favorites in other cities, such as the legendary Strand in Manhattan and Powell’s in Chicago’s Hyde Park.
You may not know that Dunkin’ Donuts originated in Greater Boston! They were handing out free samples of their pumpkin spice latte, a welcomed little treat on a perfect fall day. After all, books and coffee are a natural match.
Greater Boston has experienced a sad decline in the number of bookstores, as have most other parts of the country. But this still remains a place where books and reading are given due respect and affection. Events like the Boston Book Festival are a welcomed reminder of that.
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Photos: DY, 2013
Binge viewing and the triumph of the small screen
DVDs and pizza, a classic combo
The availability of inexpensive VCRs and, later, DVD players may have changed the way we watch movies, but it took newer technologies plus superb writing, acting, and production talent devoted to the small screen to revolutionize the way we watch television.
The Wire. Downton Abbey. Breaking Bad. Mad Men. Homeland. The Sopranos. Friday Night Lights. The whole bunch of great British detective series on PBS, such as Prime Suspect and Foyle’s War. The list goes on and on.
While this list may be a bit short on comedy (though I’m told that The Big Bang Theory is a winner), the number of superb one-hour drama series available to viewers today is almost overwhelming. And with the availability of low-cost DVD players, DVR recording, and subscription services such as Netflix and Hulu, we can set aside weekends or holidays to “binge view” old and new favorites.
If you want, you can follow a day of Jack Bauer fighting the bad guys (24) practically in real time. Or, you can watch the entire mission of the starship U.S.S. Enterprise (Star Trek) over the course of several compressed weekends.
A few of mine…
I’ve enjoyed many of the programs already mentioned (Breaking Bad and The Sopranos being the most glaring exceptions), but here are a few more good ones over the years, including some network shows and oldies:
- The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones, covering the life of Indiana Jones as a kid and young man, growing up in Princeton, New Jersey, and then leaving home to fight in the First World War. Each episode is a mini-movie and a fun history lesson.
- David Simon’s Homicide: Life on the Street preceded his masterpiece, The Wire. But this earlier Baltimore cop series starring Andre Braugher, Yaphet Kotto, Richard Belzer, and a first-rate cast of others, stands on its own as excellent drama.
- The short-lived but very suspenseful Jericho, starring Skeet Ulrich, about a small town defending itself against an apocalyptic takeover of the U.S.
- BBC America has offered some great police dramas, including Broadchurch, Whitechapel, and Ripper Street.
- Numb3rs is a quirky network crime show featuring David Krumholtz as a brilliant math professor who applies his skills to solving crimes, with Rob Morrow as his FBI agent brother. It’s good, formulaic fun, with appealing characters, that ran for six seasons.
- Unfortunately, only the first two seasons of the pioneering 1980s cop series, Hill Street Blues, were released on DVD. I’m guessing that low sales didn’t justify releasing the rest of the run. But seasons 1 and 2 are excellent.
- I love the last two seasons of The West Wing, featuring the twilight of the Bartlet Administration and the Santos-Vinick campaign. The story arcs completely feed the political junkie in me!
- I’m looking forward to binge-viewing China Beach, the Vietnam War drama starring the most awesome Dana Delany as nurse Colleen McMurphy, that ran in the late 80s through early 90s.
Yeah, I’m partial to crime dramas!
Comedies, too
If classic sitcoms are your thing, there are plenty of options as well. What about the oft-brilliant Dick Van Dyke Show? Or the homespun humor of the Andy Griffith Show? Maybe more recent standouts such as MASH, Cheers, or Taxi?
Personally, I’ve found that sitcoms don’t work as well for binge viewing, but they’re great for delivering a welcomed dose of humor and levity after a long day.
Compare/contrast
Between the core of network standouts, a host of quality productions for cable, PBS, and now streaming video, the small screen offerings make us think twice before we plunk down $10 a ticket to see a so-so movie and pay a ransom for popcorn and a drink.
How spoiled are we with all of these offerings?
Well, if you’re of a certain age (which includes most readers of this little blog), then think back to the popular network television shows of the 1970s and early 1980s.
‘Nuff said. For small-screen fans, these are the good ol’ days.
School supplies nostalgia
Some of my stash! (Photo; DY, 2013)
If you get a warm fuzzy feeling when you walk through the aisles of your local Staples or Office Depot, there’s a good possibility that you’re caught in the grip of a condition we might call school supplies nostalgia. If mere mentions of terms such as “Trapper Keeper” and “Crayola 64” trigger pangs of sentiment, then you’re really deep into it. And if you’re a parent whose school supply purchases for your kids are influenced by memories of your own pencil boxes and notebooks, well, perhaps we need to talk about counseling options.
School supplies nostalgia can happen to someone of any age, but those of us who went to grade school in the days before everything went digital are especially susceptible. Shopping for school supplies was part of our fall ritual, and our local retail stores would stock up on them in preparation for the annual onslaught.
If you have this condition, the good news is you’re not alone. Google “school supplies nostalgia” and you’ll see what I mean.
More than soggy sentiments
Childhood memories may be at the core of school supplies nostalgia, but there’s more to it than that. Crayons, pens, index cards, notebooks, and simple blank paper were among our earliest forays into creating, expressing, and preserving our emerging knowledge, ideas, and art. They served as open invitations to use our minds.
As the regimens of memorization, testing, and grading become a bigger part of our lives, it seems like those invitations are withdrawn from us. I fear that a lot of creative lights are snuffed out that way.
Try it out
So . . . perhaps the school supplies aisles aren’t just for kids.
If you’re a writer, artist, or other creative sort (or want to be!), try this out: The next time you want to do some thinking and brainstorming at your local coffee shop or library, leave your laptop at home. Instead, bring a notebook and pen and spend an hour or two jotting down thoughts, ideas, and lists or making drawings and doodles.
Maybe we all should put our gadgets away long enough to express ourselves on paper. A lined sheet of paper or ruled notebook allows us to preserve our thoughts and ideas in our own handwriting. A blank page or sketchbook invites us to draw, diagram, and imagine.
Before you know it, you’ve got your own portfolio of stuff, and you never had to worry about clearing a jam in the printer.
Musings of a Gen Joneser 
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