More Cash, Fewer Panties
A Second Look At The Best of Johnny Cash Show On DVD
Because of the email I’ve received about the Johnny Cash TV Show DVD featured in Heck of a Guy Recommends Cash - Best of Johnny Cash Show On DVD, today’s post focuses again on this entertainment gem.
The Heck of a Guy DVD Diner Luncheon Menu - Today’s Specials:
1. For the musical gourmands among our guests, we’re offering a pictorial smörgåsbord with screenshots of most of the performances on the DVD arrayed in groups of complementary tastes
2. For the more adventuresome, Chef DrHGuy has prepared a spicy Linda Ronstadt episode, served either with dressing (specially purchased for this dish) or, in an extra zesty version, sans panties with a side of June Carter Cash Remonstration providing a piquant counterpoint
The Visuals From The Johnny Cash Show
From Left to Right
Top Row: Joni Mitchell and Johnny Cash, Marty Robbins, Creedence Clearwater Revival
Middle Row: Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Louis Armstrong and Johnny Cash
Bottom Row: Kris Kristofferson, Glen Campbell, Ray Price, Stevie Wonder
From Left to Right
Top Row: Carl Perkins, Eric Clapton, & Johnny Cash; Carl Perkins1
Middle Row (Far Right): Neil Young
Bottom Row: Tammy Wynette, James Taylor,2 Pete Seeger
From Left to Right
Top Row: Loretta Lynn, Neil Diamond, Conway Twitty, Roy Orbison
Middle Row: Hank Williams Jr and Johnny Cash, Chet Atkins
Bottom Row: Bill Monroe And His Blue Grass Boys, Tony Joe White and Johnny Cash, Ray Charles
From Left to Right
Top Row: George Jones, Merle Haggard,3 Waylon Jennings4
Bottom Row: Jerry Lee Lewis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Jerry Lee Lewis5
Johnny Cash, Linda Ronstadt, June Carter Cash, And Linda’s Missing Panties
The Narrative
By Penni Lane, hairstylist on the Johnny Cash Show:
The Storyboard
Top Row (Left): Penni Lane (hairstylist for the show) narrates
Top Row (Middle): Linda Ronstadt and Johnny Cash embrace
Top Row (Right): Linda Ronstadt and Johnny Cash prepare to chat
Bottom Row (Left): Linda Ronstadt, presumably wearing bloomers, cautiously seats herself
Bottom Row (Right): Johnny Cash spells “R-O-N-S-T-A-D-T”
Top Row: Johnny Cash discovers Linda is from Tucson, Arizona, notes that he likes to hunt jackrabbits in that area, and asks Linda if she participates in the same sport
Bottom Row (Left): Linda answers hat she can’t bring herself to pull the trigger (note left hand used as visual aid)
Bottom Row (Right): In response to Johnny’s explanation that he actually doesn’t like killing the rabbits, just hunting them, Linda observes that it’s all right to kill the bunnies
Top Left: Johnny sings with Linda enthralled (repeat X30)
Bottom Left: Johnny administers quasi-chaste kiss to Linda’s cheek
Between Top Left and Bottom Right: Singing in sub-optimal conditions (i.e., not bare-butted), Linda’s musical expressions run gamut from A to B
Footnotes
- An unsolved mystery is why Carl Perkins, who one assumes had a steady salary as a regular on the show, chose to wear a toupee that couldn’t cost more than $7.22 ~back~
- This was the first appearance of James Taylor on national TV, and, in case you’re wondering why I chose a shot with his eyes closed, as far as I can determine, he sang the entire song with his eyes shut ~back~
- This is Merle before he was haggard. ~back~
- Yep, Waylon was once this young - but still scary ~back~
- The only reason I can discover that The Killer’s piano playing gyrations on the show are heralded as spectacular is that he gave the same incredible performance a few hundred times in a few hundred other venues ~back~
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Heck of a Guy Recommends Cash - Best of Johnny Cash Show On DVD
The Johnny Cash Show: The Best of Johnny Cash 1969-1971
Two weeks ago, Bill Flanagan of MTV, moonlighting on the CBS Sunday Morning News Music Segment, recommended several DVDs featuring important historical pop performances, including “Dreams To Remember: The Legacy Of Otis Redding,” “Smokey Robinson And The Miracles Definitive Performances 1963-1987,” and “Jazz Icons” that presents full concerts by Charles Mingus, Sarah Vaughan, Dexter Gordon, Dave Brubeck, Wes Montgomery, and Duke Ellington.
For me, however, the main attraction was Flanagan’s summary of “The Best of Johnny Cash 1969-1971:”
The Best of Johnny Cash 1969-1971 DVDs
Hustling to Amazon.com, I found that “The Johnny Cash Show: The Best of Johnny Cash 1969-1971″1 (herewith denoted by “The Johnny Cash Show DVDs”) was released September 18, 2007 and is currently out of stock in most outlets. Happily, a quick check showed that Netflix carried the two disk set and a week after the selection was added to my que, both DVDs arrived.
Even more happily, the performances lived up to and surpassed Mr Flanagan’s laudatory description of it.
The Music
I remember the show well enough, but I didn’t recall how many great rock, country & western, and folk stars were featured. The guests, for example, on the series premiere which aired June 7, 1969 included the actress, Fannie Flagg, Doug Kershaw (AKA the “Ragin Cajun”), Joni Mitchell, and a young, well groomed to the point of non-recognition, Bob Dylan.
Dylan sang I Threw It All Away and was joined by Cash for a duet of Girl From the North Country from Dylan’s Nashville Skyline album.
The latter performance is available from YouTube:
While Cash was sometimes given to moralizing, frequently referencing his Christian faith, he also brought still-controversial Pete Seeger on his show and defied network censors, refusing to drop the word “stoned” from his rendition of Kris Kristofferson’s “Sunday Morning Coming Down.”
The DVDs (especially Disk 1) includes commentary from son John Carter Cash, Kristofferson, Hank Williams, Jr., and others that suffers in comparison to the music. I found myself going to the main menu to use the option of selecting exclusively from the list of songs.
The entire playlist of 66 songs is included below but the standout tracks for me were the Dylan numbers, two performances by Derek and the Dominos (”It’s Too Late” and a version of “Matchbox” featuring Eric Clapton trading verses with Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash, ‘Needle and the Damage Done’ by Neil Young, three songs by an impossibly young Waylon Jennings, and Cash’s duets with Louis Armstrong and Ray Charles.
The Official Recommendation
Watching The Johnny Cash Show DVDs is, I can testify, a wonderful way to spend an afternoon in northern Illinois with 5-6 inches of snow falling. While I haven’t tested these DVDs in the full range of locations and meteorologic postconditions, my working hypothesis is that the recorded performances will have the same effect on viewers in all regions of the US, including, for example, Chapel Hill, Kansas City, Las Angeles, New York, and, yes, even Joplin.
Complete Playlist
Disc 1
Johnny Cash - Ring Of Fire
Bob Dylan - I Threw It All Away
Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash - Girl From The North Country
Kris Kristofferson - Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I’ll Ever Do Again)
Louis Armstrong and Johnny Cash - Blue Yodel #9
Stevie Wonder - Heaven Help Us All
Creedence Clearwater Revival - Bad Moon Rising
Linda Ronstadt and Johnny Cash - I Will Never Marry
George Jones - Medley (White Lightning with Johnny Cash, She Thinks I Still Care, Love Bug, The Race Is On)
Johnny Cash - Hey Porter
Waylon Jennings - Only Daddy That’ll Walk The Line
Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash - The Singing Star’s Queen
Waylon Jennings - Brown Eyed Handsome Man
Tammy Wynette - Stand By Your Man
Marty Robbins - Medley (Big Iron, Running Gun, El Paso)
Johnny Cash - Come Along And Ride This Train
Johnny Cash - As Long As The Grass Shall Grow
Johnny Cash - Man In Black
James Taylor - Sweet Baby James
Pete Seeger and Johnny Cash - Cripple Creek, Worried Man Blues
Johnny Cash - Sunday Morning Coming Down
Johnny Cash - Old Time Religion
Johnny Cash, The Carter Family, The Statler Brothers, Carl Perkins and The TennesseeThree - Daddy Sang Bass
Mother Maybelle and The Carter Sisters - Wildwood Flower
Neil Young - The Needle And The Damage Done
Johnny Cash and The Tennessee Three - Tennessee Flat Top Box
Joni Mitchell and Johnny Cash - The Long Black Veil
Johnny Cash and The Tennessee Three with Carl Perkins - Big River
Disc 2
Johnny Cash - I Walk The Line
June Carter Cash - A Good Man
Derek And The Dominos - It’s Too Late Derek And The Dominos with Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins - Matchbox
Charley Pride - Able Bodied Man
Bill Monroe And His Blue Grass Boys - Blue Moon Of Kentucky
Loretta Lynn - I Know How
Jerry Lee Lewis - Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On
Johnny Cash - Ride This Train (America The Beautiful, This Land Is Your Land)
The Everly Brothers with Ike Everly and Johnny and Tommy Cash - That Silver Haired Daddy Of Mine
Ray Charles - Ring Of Fire
Johnny Cash - A Boy Named Sue
Conway Twitty - Hello Darlin’
Mother Maybelle Carter - Black Mountain Rag
Tony Joe White and Johnny Cash - Polk Salad Annie
Glen Campbell - Wichita Lineman
Neil Diamond - Cracklin’ Rosie
Ray Price - For The Good Times
Roy Orbison - Crying
Roy Orbison and Johnny Cash - Oh, Pretty Woman
Johnny Cash - Wanted Man
Chet Atkins and Johnny Cash - Recuerdo De La Alhambra
Chet Atkins - Medley (Country Gentleman, Mister Sandman, Wildwood Flower, Freight Train)
June Carter Cash with Homer And Jethro - Baby, It’s Cold Outside
Merle Haggard - No Hard Times
Merle Haggard and Johnny Cash - Sing Me Back Home
Carl Perkins - Blue Suede Shoes
Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, The Carter Family and The Statler Brothers - The Old Account Was Settled Long Ago
Roy Clark - Medley (In The Summertime, 12th Street Rag)
The Statler Brothers - Flowers On The Wall
Johnny Cash - Working Man Blues
Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash - Jackson, Turn Around, I Love You Because
Hank Williams Jr. - Medley (You Win Again, Cold Cold Heart, I Can’t Help It If I’m Still In Love With You, Half As Much)
Johnny Cash - A Wonderful Time Up There
Footnotes
- Also for sale are two DVDs of Johnny Cash Christmas Specials, selectiona that came up regularly in my searches for The Best of Johnny Cash. The Christmas DVDs may be wonderful as well but I’m not familiar with them and mention them only to alert buyers to this possible source of confusion ~back~
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The Part Of The Story The New York Times Didn’t Care About
The New York Times Dismissal Of Significance Of Unknown Data
Headquarters, New York TImes
In What Do You Mean, Giving Me That?, a thoughtful, quirky piece about holiday gift-giving published December 23, 2007 in the New York Times, author Guy Trebay introduces the subject by describing his own experience as a five year old recipient of the gift of a record player and a selection of records:
“With the exception of one, the titles of those records have vanished from recollection. The remembered record was called “Cold Nose, Warm Heart,” and it was a song about a dog. A Google search suggests that the dog in this particular song was probably Lassie, but the writer does not remember or care very much about that.” [Emphais added]
The Heck of a Guy Blog - Caring and Sharing Since 2006
Headquarters, Heck of a Guy Blog
Well, thank goodness, someone remembers and, yes, cares about the facts.
And, thank goodness, when the New York Times falls short, the Heck of a Guy Blog is on hand to pick up the slack.
As it turns out, “Cold Nose, Warm Heart” was also the first record I ever owned. The opening lyrics, as I recall them, went something like this:
He’s one dog that you gotta see.
He’s exactly as a dog should be,
He’s got a cold nose and a warm heart.
If my “Cold Nose, Warm Heart” is the same song as Mr.Trebay’s “Cold Nose, Warm Heart,” I believe one will find that it was a track from “Songs of Rin Tin Tin,” a 7 inch, mono, 45 rpm, vinyl record on the Golden Records (EP 745) label performed by the Sandpipers.1 The track listing follows: I Wish I Had a Dog Like Rin Tin Tin; A Dog’s Best Friend; Cold Nose, Warm Heart; Rinny, Rusy and Rip; 101st Cavalry Gallop; Rough Around the Edges.
Now, aren’t you more at peace and centered with the identity of the warm-hearted, cold-nosed canine ascertained? Doesn’t the universe seem less threatening and capricious now that justice has been done and Rin Tin Tin, whose fame was largely eclipsed by Lassie’s popularity, has been rightfully accorded his place in the Songbook of America? Isn’t it empowering to be back in sync with the universe as a result of the story’s ambiguity having been dissolved in the solvent of truth? And, isn’t it comforting to discover that the common man in search of information doesn’t have to rely exclusively on the whims of the New York Times to decide what is and isn’t important to know?
Rather than gloating, however, DrHGuy, Editor of The Heck of a Guy Blog, quietly and sagely noted,
Heck, to be fair about it, The New York Times had done most of the work on this story already. We’re all in the publishing gig together - we are just happy we could help out our New York colleagues. And they have nothing to be ashamed of; with some experience and perhaps some additional fiscal resources, they could have a bright future.
Heck of a Guy Bonus: The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin
From left to right: Corporal Rusty and Rin Tin Tin
While the character of Rin Tin Tin appeared in a batch of movies dating back to 1922 and between 1930 and 1955 was heard in three different radio series,2 my experience with Rin Tin Tin3 was as the titular hero of the ABC television show, The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin from 1954-1959.4
According to TV.com,
The mainstays of The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin in front of
what appears to be an urban outreach office of Fort Apache
I had remembered the same premise, but on putting my version in print, it seemed a tad implausible, leading me to defer to the TV.com quotation. Apparently, US Army Lieutenants in the late 19th century had the authority to promote 10 year old boys to Corporals, which qualified them to live on their own in forts in hostile territory.
Sweet.
Footnotes
- The group who sang “Cold Nose, Warm Heart” were the same Sandpipers who sang the “Mighty Mouse Theme Song” but were not the Sandpipers who sang “Guantanamera” ~back~
- Wikipedia - Rin Tin Tin ~back~
- As with most canine actors in starring roles, Rin Tin Tin had several uncredited doubles. Rin Tin Tin, Jr. appeared in several short films in the 1930s, including the 12-part serial, The Adventures of Rex and Rinty. Rin Tin Tin III starred alongside a young Robert Blake in 1947’s The Return of Rin Tin Tin. The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin featured Rin Tin Tin IV as the lead dog, although much of the work actually was performed by Rin Tin Tin II and several other dogs. From Wikipedia - Rin Tin Tin ~back~
- From Wikipedia - The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin, which also reports that “Reruns of the show ran on daytime television and on Saturdays on CBS from October of 1959 until September of 1964. A new set of reruns was shown in 1976, and continued well into the mid-1980s. The original black and white prints were tinted light brown. “ ~back~
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Who Can Resist A Monkey Puppet Singing A Michael Jackson Song?
Apparently Not DrHGuy
The music is Earth Song by Michael Jackson. The occasion is an audition for the TV show, “Britain’s Got Talent.” The human half of the duet is Damon Scott; his hairy, clingy partner is Bubbles.
What can I say? It’s the best of its genre.
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The Old Navy Ad Music Post Post-mortem: On Naming Names
Accuracy, Verification, Credibility, and Blogs
I believe that some small but useful lessons in journalism, expectations, and the nature of truth can be garnered by an examination of the 8 August 2007 Heck of a Guy entry, Blue Alert Featured In Old Navy New Denim Jeans Ad, and the readers’ responses to that post.
First, some background is necessary.
The Heck of a Guy Blog
Blue Alert Featured In Old Navy New Denim Jeans Ad was an atypical entry for this blog.
While its content, the use of a portion of the lyrics of Blue Alert in the new TV ad for Old Navy’s line of New Denim jeans, could hardly be accounted breaking news,1 it was an event that was taking place more or less contemporaneously with the publication of the post itself. Consequently, there was paucity of information then available about the ad.
The usual Heck of a Guy topics are typically less acute matters,2 episodes from my own life,3, and or random subjects that have, for one reason or another, grabbed my interest over a period of time and thus become well known to me.4 It is instructive to note that the Old Navy post was preceded by The Great Ozark Folk Festival Flood of 1973: Mountain View and followed by The Great Ozark Folk Festival Flood of 1973: The Finale, parts 2 and 3, respectively, of a three-part description of an event that was part of my own life 34 years ago and the classic type of essay populating this site.
Examples of posts about “new” events or items at 1HeckOfAGuy.com are difficult to find and even those that might technically qualify5 derive from raw material appearing in other, usually online sources.
The only entries other than the Old Navy post featuring genuinely new events that occurred concurrently with the publication of the posts that come to mind are those covering the Anjani Thomas Warsaw Concert.
The Old Navy Ad Music Post
The Heck of a Guy Old Navy post, on the other hand, was one of the first online entries about the music of that ad.6 That distinction is important to this discussion not, alas, because it buffs Heck of a Guy’s reputation as a source of entertainment news but because it explains why more information about the ad was not available and provides a clue to the expectations of many readers of that entry and, in turn, their reaction to it. More about that in moment.
Given that I had heard Madeleine Peyroux’s cover of Blue Alert, the song playing throughout almost all of the 30 second Old Navy commercial, on a minimum of 20 occasions prior to seeing that ad and listened to Anjani’s original rendition many, many more times than that, it is probably not surprising that I was certain the lyrics were from Blue Alert nor that I believed Madeleine Peyroux was the vocalist for the advertisement.
This is the point at which my thinking and that of many who wrote and the handful who commented on this post chose different paths.
That, as far as I knew, Peyroux and Anjani were the only singers who had released recordings of Blue Alert made it more likely that I was correct but also raised the possibility that perhaps I was responding primarily to my realization that the voice did not belong to Anjani, i.e., I “heard” the voice as Peyroux’s because, by eliminating Anjani, I already assumed that Peyroux was necessarily the singer.
That may sound persnickety, but unintentional bias is frequently the source of error in medical research. In all too many studies, it turns out that the answer the researchers expected is indeed the answer they found while a neutral interpretation of the same data indicated something quite different. In the case of the ad, alternative explanations existed, including the possibility that Old Navy could have hired another, less less well known and less expensive musician for the commercial.
In addition, I could not then find any source anywhere that named the performer - or even the song.7
Most significantly, in my mind, the intriguing issue in this situation was that music produced in part by Leonard Cohen, whose songs have rarely been released for use in advertisements, was now part of a national ad campaign for jeans - regardless of who sang the words. The prototypal reader of the post, in my mind, would be someone interested primarily in Leonard Cohen, Anjani, and the implications of permitting their work to be used commercially rather than someone who, seeing the Old Navy ad, became curious about the names of the song and the singer.
In any case, the singer’s name was, I assumed, somewhere a matter of record that would surface linked to an authoritative source in a day or two.
Consequently, I decided to publish the piece with only the notation that I could not obtain confirmation of the identity of the performer instead of offering my tentative assumption, nurturing the fantasy that readers would understand that there was a reason I had deliberately written that I was “unable to obtain confirmation of the identity of the singer” rather than I was “unable to identify the singer.”
The Response
Soon after the that post went online, I received a few emails and a comment or two pointing to Madeleine Peyroux as the singer, based on the the similarity the writers 
noted between the music on the ad and the Blue Alert track on Ms Peyroux’s album, Half The Perfect World.
In the next day or two, however - after the consensus of opinion on the Internet had identified the singer as Madeleine Peyroux - a determination I had also incorporated as a revision to the original post,8 I received another handful of comments but lots-o-emails with the same content (i.e., “It’s Madeleine Peyroux”) but conveyed in a range of tones from appreciation for identifying Blue Alert as the song in the ad to condescension and worse, apparently in the belief that I somehow guessed the name of the song but wasn’t quite bright enough to figure out how to compare the Peyroux version on iTunes to the ad’s music.
And there were a few emails that informed me not only that the singer was Madeleine Peyroux, which, by this time, the revised post had listed as the consensus choice, but also that the song was Blue Alert, which was, of course, the crux of my original post as indicated by the subliminal cue in the post’s title, “Blue Alert Featured In Old Navy New Denim Jeans Ad.”
So What?
Lesson #1: The value of content (AKA Truth) is determined by the reader’s expectations and needs rather than the accuracy or quality of the writing.
Almost all those who emailed me about the Old Navy ad were unknown to me. In retrospect, it is clear that this group was composed primarily of folks searching for the answer to two simple questions, “What is the name of the song on the new Old Navy ad?” and “Who sings it?” It seems likely that they gave not one hoot let alone the proverbial two hoots about the rarity with which Leonard Cohen’s songs appear in ads, the way Blue Alert’s lyrics are aligned with the ad’s visuals, or any of the other material I included in my post. For these viewers, the ideal post might well have been “Old Navy New Denim Ad Music: Blue Alert. Madeleine Peyroux.” My blog entry, however concise by Heck of a Guy standards, must have seemed bloated and irrelevant to many.
Conversely, while I remain vague on some goals I hold for this blog, I’m relatively certain that being perceived as an almanac of facts is not one of them. I suspect the audience most important to me probably has little overlap with those looking up names of singers on jeans ads.9
Lesson #2: The blogosphere’s reputation of shooting (opinions) first and asking the pertinent questions later appears to be well-earned and in some respects a trait reinforced by the demands of readers. That same characteristic puts the Internet at risk of becoming a Petri dish for rumor preservation and propagation
If there is a demand for quick answers unhampered by annoying qualifications - and there is - those sites that provide easy access to that information will thrive. When those answers are accurate, the only downside is the opportunity cost of not exploring a topic further than the bare facts.
When an incorrect answer contaminate the system, however, the Internet’s exponential powers of information dissemination can overwhelm its capacity for self-correction.
Consider this example of an error of less than monumental but by no means trivial importance that abounds in cyberspace although it is a matter of fact, not judgment, and a fact that could be readily referenced. I was interested in the musicians responsible for Woke Up This Morning, the theme that opens episodes of The Sopranos. A routine Google search for “Woke Up This Morning” and “lyrics,” produced not only the correct answer, Alabama Three but also a huge number of sites that attributed the song to one Leonard Cohen.10 Surprised to find such a well known song listed in Leonard Cohen’s repertoire that as on none of his albums I owned, I investigated a bit farther and discovered that the Cohen attribution was fallacious.
I suspect that the original error may have been as simple as someone automatically associating the deep, growling vocals of Woke Up This Morning with Cohen’s voice and consequently listing him as the artist. Others looking for the answer to “Who sang Woke Up This Morning?” found that response, proffered unencumbered by doubt, and not only accepted but also spread it. Now the mistake is so widespread to so many independent sites that eradicating it may be impossible.
Lesson #3: The degree of confidence expressed by unknown individuals in their own, unsubstantiated opinions is not equivalent to the degree of accuracy of those opinions.
Certainly, plenty of folks with full pundit credentials evidenced by their access to a computer and the Internet, have no qualms or hesitation about describing the intrapsychological mechanisms of world leaders, let alone the identification of a singer on an ad based solely on their own judgments and assumptions with nary a disclaimer or admission of doubt. The two or three folks I noticed who mistakenly named Anjani as the vocalist were equally confident as those who selected Peyroux. Doubt and caution are, it seems, anathema to the Internet.
So, I stand by my original judgment that providing my best guess for the name of the singer in the ad without confirmation or consensus support would have been misleading to readers.
The counter-argument, of course, is that it’s only a matter of the name of the singer on a jeans ad so what’s the worst that could happen if the answer is wrong?
I was impressed to discover as a teenager that ethics guidelines and internal policies of institutions such as The Associated Press; the Society of Professional Journalists; the Washington Post; Philadelphia Inquirer; New York Times; The Radio and Television News Directors’ Foundation; Media General Broadcast Group; etc. maintained criteria re the source of news that had to be met before a given story, regardless of its importance, was printed. And, later on, I was equally impressed by the safeguards implemented by competent medical researchers to prevent errors of bias and interpretation.
Implicit in these and similar rules governing other fields is the conviction that if an news item is important enough to be in the paper or a clinical issue is important enough to perform the research then it’s important enough to do whatever necessary to reach an accurate conclusion.
That seems like a good idea for blogs as well.
I further submit that while unalloyed confidence may be an effective sales technique, a blogger’s perpetual concern to write precisely what he or she means, occasional confession of fallibility, regular use of the subjunctive mood, and quick admission and correction of errors are also good ideas, benefiting the blogger as well as the reader.
Footnotes
- The definition of “breaking news” in Wikipedia is representative of that term’s current meaning: Breaking news a current event that broadcasters feel warrants the interruption of scheduled programming in order to report its details. Its use is often loosely assigned to the most significant story of the moment or a story that is being covered live. ~back~
- E.g., videos of 40 year old Leonard Cohen interviews or my acquisition of a Leonard Cohen song last released for sale 40 years ago ~back~
- E.g., falling in love with Julie or the more recent and more mundane report of my hip pinning ~back~
- E.g., Allan Truax and Patient Compliance ~back~
- E.g., the impending release of Jennifer Warnes’ 20th Anniversary Edition of Famous Blue Raincoat or annotated links to recommended entries on other blogs or web sites. ~back~
- I’ve since discovered that identifying the pop songs used by Old Navy, Gap, and other companies in their marketing is an ongoing sport, sparking much discussion with each new ad that appears. ~back~
- At the time, I also did not know that such confirmation might never be available because Old Navy as well as many other companies frequently do not officially list the singers and bands responsible for the music used in their commercials. ~back~
- This change was, of course, footnoted to indicate that it was a revision. ~back~
- On the other hand, addressing my preferred audience does not necessarily exclude other groups in every instance. In this case, given that I aspire to be a courteous, kind, and helpful heck of a guy, I should have anticipated that a number of viewers would indeed be looking for the facts and provided those at the first of the post and then rambled on for my regular readers. ~back~
- A Google search for “Woke Up This Morning” “Leonard Cohen,” and “lyrics” and check the more than 18,000 hits. ~back~
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The Absolutely Fabulous Version of Leonard Cohen’s Bird On A Wire
Featuring Edina As The Drunk In A Midnight Choir - And Elsewhere
In yesterday’s post, Leonard Cohen BBC Interview: “I’d like to go out [on tour] again”, the BBC interviewer alluded to the use of Leonard Cohen’s “Bird On A Wire”1 in an episode of the British sitcom, Absolutely Fabulous.
Being a sporadic viewer of the series, I had not seen this episode but was intrigued enough to track down the specifics, an effort fully requited by this rendition of the Cohen classic. Although “Bird On A Wire” has been covered by - well, nearly everybody from Joe Cocker to Jennifer Warnes to The Bobs, the Ab Fab version is, I believe, uniquely memorable.
The Scene: Absolutely Fabulous - Bird On A Wire
Jealous: Series 3, Episode 4 (First broadcast 27 April 1995)
Edina (AKA Eddie, AKA Eddy), has expectations of winning the PR Person of the Year Award over her rival, Claudia Bing, but, despite rigging the vote, loses instead and wants revenge. Later, at an industry luncheon, Edina loses her prepared remarks but proceeds unabated to give a drunken speech, one portion of which consists of the lyrics of “Bird On A Wire.”
The Dialog: Absolutely Fabulous - Bird On A Wire
From IDMB (with “Bird On A Wire” lyrics placed in bold by me):
[Edina (Eddie) has lost her speech which she has to present to the PR meeting]
Eddie: Yeah I was gonna’ make a-
[taps microphone]
Eddie: Testing. Testing. -Yeah I was gonna’ make a speech, but I just can’t be bothered anymore. I mean, this used to be like fun you know; yeah it used to be fun, but I’m getting bored of all the ‘fun’ bits now. You know, your endless bloody lunches and launches, you know, no-career celebrities and party desperates. And what for, huh? Some colony of crap tags and mags! Well I’m sorry there has to be a little more than that doesn’t there?
[slams her handbag down]
Eddie: Hmmm? You know I had a speech, you know, my… my integrated-projected-global-tele-network system bloody system-system. But you know, if that’s what the worlds coming to I don’t want to be in it. No I don’t want that. I don’t want to be in some sort of cyber-space-hypervirtual bloody reality. I don’t want that- exchanging e-mails with some old age bloody hippies with more information at their fingertips than is safe to know about. I don’t want that! What kind of reality is that, huh, you know, with a thirteen-amp plug on the end of it? Huh? Huh?… That can be un-plugged like that? Come-on I’m going.
[She turns to leave, but... ]
Eddie: No I’m not going yet! No, you!
[points to her competition, Claudia Bing]
Eddie: You, you, just sit there like your velcroed to some bloody add-man! You know those crap-head add-men over there, you know, those kings of bastardization that have just taken everything that was ever real and genuine and honest and original and attached it to a toilet cleaner! Whereas I, I… Like a bird on a wire… Like a drunk in a midnight choir… I have tried in my way to be free.
[Then she sings]
Eddie: Like a bird, on a wire.
Patsy: Go for it Eddy.
Eddie: [singing] … Like a drunk in a midnight choir. I have tried in my way to be free.
[Claudia Bing and her colleagues are laughing]
Eddie: Yeah you can laugh, but you know something- I don’t want more choice I just want nicer things! And you, you can take that look off your face, sitting there with your… with your wheels and AIDS and starvation. You know, skimming a neat profit of the whole of human misery. Labeling us all with this- with this global guilt. Well it may not be all great and good but it ain’t that bad, so cheer up world it may never bloody happen!
[slams her bag down again]
Eddie: Come on I’m going.
[Edina walks off making rude farting sounds at everyone in the room]
Audio Only: Absolutely Fabulous - Bird On A Wire
This audio excerpt contains only the 20 seconds of Edina’s rambling version of the lyrics from “Bird On A Wire.”
Video: Absolutely Fabulous - Bird On A Wire
The YouTube video below is the fourth quarter of the episode in which Bird On A Wire appears. The pertinent segment begins at 3:08 and continues until 3:40.2
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