"Sleep Walk"...Santo and Johnny

  As a "self-proclaimed" music observer/critic/lover/commentator, I felt "compelled" to watch MTV's music awards show. I know, I know...I am not in their targeted demographics! They do not consider my generation when making programming choices. I don't give a rat's behind!...I'll watch what I want and they can't stop me! An ulterior motive though, is that I get such pleasure from comparing "our" music (as in Baby Boomers) with "their" music (as in Gen X!).
  It often saddens me when I am reminded that music today seems more about "extreme" stage shows, acrobatic dance moves, outrageous costumes (shades of LaBelle and George Clinton's Funkadelics!), and increasingly less about singing!
  Before I go further, I'd like to note that coming up with a title for today's blog proved to be quite a challenge! If you are a follower of my blogs, you already know that I always choose a song title which summerizes the tone of my article. Well, note today's title: Sleep Walk by Santo and Johnny! Does that pique your curiosity in any way?
  The show opened with a performance by the "Elvis" of rap...Eminem, including a duet with Rihanna. While Em is usually controversial or somewhat interesting in his performance behaviors, he seemed oddly subdued or even "detached" last night; there was no "sizzle." His and Rihanna's duet even seemed disconnected.
  The "star power" of shows past even seemed absent from last night's show, although there were a few surprises: Lindsay Lohan mocking her own "bad behavior" in a skit with Chelsea Handler, who was the MC, for example.~Side bar~ I am a fan of Chelsea Handler and often find her humor "decadently delicious, wonderfully wicked and naughtily nice" but for some reason, she seemed "off her game" and came across as trying "too hard" to be funny and irreverant. Instead, some of her jokes fell flat. One joke directed at Justin Bieber was downright crass, so I won't even repeat it.
  The usual male artists did their things: Justin Bieber had 'em screaming; and when Drake and later, Usher took to the stage, they seemed "geriatric" compared to young Mr. Bieber! "Pseudo celebrities" such as The Jersey Shore cast were in the house, as well as other current pop culture ."icons."
  The night's big winners include Eminem, who won "best male video" for "Not Afraid" and Lady Gaga who won the first four awards for which she was nominated, including the most coveted "best female video." A surprise moment that woke me back up (hence the title above) was an appearance by the one and only Cher!
  As she stepped on stage with her sixty-five-year -old baaaddd self, in that iconic, "barely there" black outfit that shows her in her ancient glory, I had to give props! She still has it! The old gal looked good! She presented Lady Gaga an award and when the camera panned the audience for reaction shots, you could see the looks of awe on the faces of today's "divas." The "other" oldster on the show was Mary J. Blige. Rememer her?
  Here's some irony: my young niece Mary Klausner called to ask if I was watching "Rock, Rhythm & Doo-Wop" which was airing all day yesterday on PBS; I answered "no" because I had seen the episodes before; it was a marathon of previously aired shows, some dating as far back as 2001. Many of the artists are no longer with us. Mary is a younger person who appreciates "our" music; no theatrics, elaborate stage shows, funny or outrageous costumes, or controversial lyrics. Just pure vocal harmonizing, meticulous suits and glamorous dresses. And here I was watching MTV!
 

God Bless The USA...Lee Greenwood

            I'd like to simply share a poem I wrote on September 11, 2001:

                                 The Day Terror Struck My City

                                        Terror struck my city today
                                        It rained down from the sky
                                       I fell down on my knees to pray
                                      I asked God in heaven, "why?"
                                     But God no answer had to give
                                        Terror is not God's game
                                     So when you curse and rant and rave
                                         Be careful who you blame
                                       Remember God is a loving God
                                       Who'll see that we get through
                                   The darkest days our eyes will see
                                          Our faith we must renew
                                          Terror struck my city today
                                    God bless the Red, White and Blue

                                   

EAST COAST * WEST COAST DIVAS: Memories - The Temptations

EAST COAST * WEST COAST DIVAS: Memories - The Temptations

Been So Long...The Pastels

    Good morning peeps! I'm back!!! It's been at least four months since I last posted on this blog thingy! I can't really say why it's been so long, other than I guess I had nothing new to say...I was "worded-out" for a spell. So why am I here today you ask? Well, I can only suppose that I felt an urge to be! My focus is still on the music that I love so much and other tid-bits of pop culture, trivia and life! In the world of music, we've suffered so, so many losses this past year: Teddy Pendergrass, Ron Banks, Randy Cain, Ollie Woodson, Harvey Fuqua, Marvin Isley, Robert Wilson, Al Goodman, Big Ron Carter, Abby Lincoln and the biggest name of all: Michael Joseph Jackson! These are obviously not in the order of their transitions and I am sure I am forgetting many others but this is a heartbreaking number as it is.
    Yes, many of these artists lived wonderful and long lives...but it's always sad to lose such talented members of our universe. I like to remind myself that they are not really gone... their bodies of work assure us that they will always be around. They have just moved into the "Night Shift" to join the most soulful choir ever. If you close your eyes, open your minds and listen...you can hear them singing.

Hollywood Swinging - Kool and the Gang

Good morning peeps!! Did you watch The Oscar Ceremony last night? Being the pop culture "junkie" that I am, I watched in anticipation of the highly publicized hype of "something different from The Oscars that you've never seen before..." Well, unless I dozed off  (which I did occasionally), I missed something. Sure, there were two hosts: Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin, and less big production numbers; not much else seemed really new. Did they mean having former winners from each category offer commentary about the new nominees? Ho-hum. Nothing exciting there. However, what was somewhat new, was having at least three African Americans in the running for Oscars, at one time: Morgan Freeman (Invictus),  Mo'Nique, (Precious), and Gabourey Sidibe, (Precious), and an African American in contention for Best Director (Lee Daniels; Precious).  Can't remember when that happened before or if that ever happened. An African American won for Best Adapted Screen Play for Precious; Geoffrey Fletcher, a New Yorker who teaches at NYU.

Speaking of Precious, it is only one of three of the nominated movies I actually saw; the others being Avatar and The Lovely Bones. I don't go to the movies much these days, but I do see what I want on DVD. Now, back to the Oscars. Kudos to Mo'Nique for her winning her very first Oscar on her first time nominated! That is quite an accomplishment! I also have to say that she looked stunning in her royal blue, shirred front gown, and her beautifully coiffed hair!  In watching her performance in Precious, I do agree that she was powerful, but I don't know if it was Oscar worthy...don't hate, it's my opinion. To me, it was "The Monster's Ball Syndrome" all over again. That is, when Black women play either overly sexualized women (Halle in Monster's Ball) or some convincingly brutal batterer as in Precious, they get Hollywood's attention! I have seen many other performances by African American women that I felt should have won Oscars but didn't. Angela Bassett as Tina Turner for example. This is progress though, in this sense: in the not too distant past, heavy set African American women were relegated to playing maids, mammies, slaves; or fair-skinned black women were always portraying  "tragic mulattoes" "passing for white" or "exotic island dwellers."

Speaking of maids, I thought it was very gracious of Mo'Nique to pay homage to the late Hattie McDaniels, that I'll bet went over the heads of many in the audience, as well as home viewers. How many African American youth even know who Hattie McDaniel was! Do You? Hattie McDaniel was a heavy set African American actress who was very active in films during the thirties, forties and possibly fifties. She played...you guessed it...maids! She is also the first African American to win an Oscar in 1940, for her portrayal as a "mammy" in Gone With The Wind." In her real life, she supposedly quipped that she'd rather "play a maid than be one" as she laughed all the way to the bank!

Another first this time around, is that a woman won a "Best Director" Oscar for the little known film, "The Hurt Locker." This is significant for more reasons than one: the movie beat out the Goliath: Avatar, and the director, Kathryn Bigelow, beat her former husband...James Cameron in the Best Director category!
Congratulations to all the winners!!!

You Make Me Feel Brand New - Stylistics

Good afternoon peeps!!! It's been a while, but I am back with reason to smile! In a few more weeks, Spring would have sprung; no more snow (knock on wood); I'll be celebrating another year of living (God willing) because my birthday is April 1st, and my sister-friend Stephanie Jordan has redesigned the layout of this blog! So, I just wanted to make this piece an opportunity to say thank you to Stephanie, and to all of you who have read our collective blogs. I'll return soon with more commentary, more songs, more little gems of knowledge and hopefully...more reasons to bring a smile to your lips. Until we meet again,

Ciao my friends!

Dance, Dance, Dance - Chic

Good morning peeps!! You already know that, "I love music, any kind of music, long as it's grooving..." but, I also love to dance! The two go hand in hand of course. In my parallel universe, I was a "Solid Gold Dancer" like Darcel Wynn; memba her! Tripping back down memory lane, I can recall the many dance records and dances from my youth. The Two-Step, The Twist, The Madison, The Stroll, The Bop, The Mashed Potatoes, The Swim and The Pony to name a few, were from my really early years of dancing. That's when we were glued to the TV set watching American Bandstand.

Next phase: The years of The Motown Sound and The Philly Sound ushered in a new set of dances: Remember The Jerk (the original one), The Hitch Hike, The Monkey, The Boston Monkey, The Boogaloo, The Philly Dog, The Wobble, and The Twine?  Now I know that many of these dances might have been local or regional favorites, but often, when a singing group picked up the dance and created a song around it, the dance became more widespread. The Twist is an example of this. Although it was first performed by the original creator of both the dance and song, Hank Ballard and The Midnighters; it was Chubby Checker's version that achieved world-wide fame and became an international dance sensation! To this day, even young children pick up this dance and work it! I taught it to my class of Kindergarten and First grade students, who performed it on stage, to the delight of everyone.

Moving into the Disco era, dancing re-emerged as an important social activity. In my East Harlem neighborhood, we were doing a latin dance called The Palladium. We had no knowledge of the club by the same name...we just knew how to do this particular dance to the Latin music that we all listened to at the time.

This style of dancing evolved into The Hustle that predominated the dance floor, when Van McCoy recorded a song by the same name, Do The Hustle. However, in the movie Saturday Night Fever, The Hustle was depicted as a line dance. That's not how we did it in the hood. It was also during this phase that line dancing became popular once again, after having all but disappeared from the local scene! If the song, "Moving" by Brass Construction came on, nearly everyone did a line dance very similar to The Electric Slide, called The Bus Stop. Solo dances around this time included The Bump, The Rock, The Freak (or Freaky-Deaky depending on where you were from), The Wop, The Skate and numerous other dances with names I can't recall. And I can't talk about dancing without mentioning the best music and dance show of all time...Soul Train of course! A party ain't a party without a Soul Train line!

Just as the music scene changes, so do the dancing styles. By now, Disco was fading and Hip-Hop was emerging as a dominate force. B-Boys and girls destroyed with their gravity-defying moves! Break dancing! Popping and Locking! The Robot! The Electric Boogaloo! By now, people in my age group had to go to dances given by organizations in order to hear "our" music and do "our" style of dancing. I know you can feel me on this. Oh the dances that have evolved out of The Hip-Hop culture!

Moving on through the eighties and nineties: The Cabbage Patch, The Snake, The Worm, The Running Man, The Pee-Wee Herman, The Charlie Brown. All the line dances that evolved from The Madison...Electric Slide, Mississippi Mud Slide, Cupid Shuffle and on and on and on! Walk It Out y'all, Walk It Out! We have danced into The New Millineum ...What's next? Dancing on the Ceiling for real?