danajohnhill.org | Hard Times Come Again No More

When I was a kid we had something called MTV.  It was great – like our favorite radio station, but with pictures.  Every big hit song was likely to have a corresponding music video, and these videos became popular in their own right.  “Take on Me”, “Sledgehammer”, and “Money for Nothing” were good songs on the radio, but their videos were amazing, and people really paid attention to them.  I recall that a “world premiere” video was a big deal, and kids would wait around all afternoon to see it.  Many of these videos still stick in my mind, even after most people forgot the songs they went to.  Do you remember “Yankee Rose”?

MTV connected with kids because it was on when kids wanted it.  Every afternoon after school, on weekends, all summer, MTV was there with videos, and almost everyone I know watched it every day.

MTV doesn’t exist anymore.  Sure, I understand that there is a channel called “MTV”, but it isn’t “Music Television”.  There may even be “MTV2″ or “MTV [Whatever]“, but videos don’t seem to matter to anybody anymore – at least not like they used to.  MTV cannot be blamed for that, I suppose, since cable television in those days consisted of maybe thirty channels, and, as the only station of its kind, it had a captive audience it cannot take for granted today.

Still, if you were a kid in the 1980s, and you had MTV, you almost certainly remember the video for The Cars’ “Magic”.  This is the MTV I miss.

Filed under: Musings, Nostalgia, Popular Music on July 21st, 2010 | No Comments »

As I have previously declared, this is the Summer of Baseball™.  And though today may only be the first of July, and Major League Baseball may still have months to go, for me some of the joy is ended.

Curiously enough, the Summer of Baseball actually began last winter.  I started attending Florida Gators baseball games back in March.  At that time, it was dusk as the games were getting under way, and I needed to wear a jacket to keep from freezing in the bleachers.  Time sure flies, because the Gators played their last game of the season weeks ago in Omaha, losing to Florida State.  I had had high hopes for the team at the College World Series, particularly since they played so well all season, and pulled out some amazing wins.  But it wasn’t to be.

Still, I have tons of great memories to keep me until next season.  I’ll remember always getting in free with my student ID.  I’ll remember the “Bleacher Creatures” out in left field who psychologically tortured the opposing team: “Hey, center-fielder, look at the left-fielder; he sucks!”  I’ll remember the time that the mascot, Baseball Al, gave me a fist bump (or “terrorist fist jab”) during a Gators rally.  I’ll remember the Dollar Nights, and how I vowed to never eat a jumbo pretzel again.  I’ll remember the fans selected at random to (poorly) sing the chorus to “Take Me Out to the Ball Game”.  I’ll remember the time that some poor fan picked to play the Mystery Pizza Box Challenge chose to take the mystery box over the ten free pizzas and got a Tootsie Roll, then the next game another fan chose the ten free pizzas, and the mystery box contained a new HDTV.  I’ll remember how the girl who tosses out the free t-shirts following innings with double plays or home runs never tried to throw the t-shirts more than about three feet from where she was standing at the time.  I’ll remember that even run-of-the-mill foul balls are frightening when they’re coming toward you and you aren’t wearing a glove.  I’ll remember the night that Marty and I looked up toward the lights behind us to see what appeared to be a plague of locusts.  I’ll remember the astonishing NCAA Super Regional series against the Miami Hurricanes, where a bizarre electrical storm threatened to postpone the first game, and a jaw-dropping seven errors cost Miami the second game.  (My favorite joke of the game: “You can’t spell ‘Miami’ without an ‘E’”.)  I’ll remember singing “We Are the Boys from Old Florida”.

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I’ll remember the many great wins, and the very few losses.  And, of course, I’ll remember some great plays and players, including my favorite, center-fielder Matt den Dekker, who is off to join the Hated Mets.  I’m glad for him.

And I am glad for myself, for getting to spend so many nights enjoying our national pastime.

Filed under: Musings, Sports on July 1st, 2010 | No Comments »

In 1997 I moved into a two bedroom apartment in southeast Gainesville with my friend Steve.  It was a decent place, and while it certainly wasn’t the happiest time of my life–I spent the first couple months unemployed, and the next six months too poor to afford meat–I wasn’t alone in my suffering.  My friend Jeff, looking to improve his life a bit, moved to Gainesville about six months after me, and while he was looking for work and a place to live he stayed with Steve and me.

One day in early summer 1998, Jeff came home from being out all day and told us about a song he had heard that day.  “I always immediately turn off a song when I hear ridiculous harmony guitars, but today I decided to listen”.  “What was it”, Steve asked.  “The Boys Are Back in Town”.

“The Boys Are Back in Town” is, strictly speaking, a spring song, since the speaker declares that “it won’t be long till summer comes, now that the boys are here again”.  But whenever I hear it now, because of Jeff, I think back on that early summer of 1998, and the ridiculous harmony guitars make me smile.

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Filed under: Dana Heritage Project, Musings, Popular Music on June 28th, 2010 | No Comments »

Recently, I criticized a newspaper writer who observed that motion picture titles are longer than ever, which struck me as little more than a hasty,  unresearched generalization.  I noted at the time, however, that I, too, am wont to make hasty generalizations of my own, and I am about to make one.

The best songs are summer songs.  I can hardly count the number of great songs that are directly or indirectly about summer.  Many more, certainly, than are about any other season.  Obviously, Christmas has more than its fair share of great songs, and German Lieder are frequently about spring.  But summer has the best songs, the most nostalgic songs, the most evocative songs.  Today is the first day of summer, and beginning today, and proceeding through the summer, I will highlight some of my favorite examples of summer songs.

My first selection, as you might expect, is by Bruce Springsteen, whose catalog of summer-inspired songs is surpassed only by the Beach Boys.  The entire The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle, and Born to Run albums, for instance, depict incidents that could occur on one summer day.  “Racing in the Street”, from Darkness on the Edge of Town, is a sad summer song about a woman who has given up on living, and man desperately trying to hold on.  In summer, a man has a chance.

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The clip above is from a recording of the complete concert that I attended last September with my wife and father.  It’s a wonderful, if somewhat distant-sounding memento of an unforgettable day.

Filed under: Musings, Popular Music on June 21st, 2010 | No Comments »

I am all for hasty generalizations, but a recent New York Times article makes a generalization so hasty that it contradicts even the most half-assed scrutiny.  In “What’s in a Film’s Title?  A Lot More Words”, Brooks Barnes writes that “never before have … compound [film] titles been so ubiquitous”.  Shrek Forever After, How to Train Your Dragon, Night at the Museum, and so on, are, according to Barnes, examples of studios extending the titles of movies to unprecedented lengths.  This is simply untrue.

I just looked through the “Classics” section on Netflix, and in an instant I came across the following: The Birth of a Nation (1915); The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928); Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937); Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939); The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948); The Best Years of Our Lives (1948); The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951); What Ever Happened to Baby Jane (1962); Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967); Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1968); Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974); and dozens of others, all on one page.  Those are all long, if colon-free titles.

But that isn’t the only thoughtless generalization Barnes makes.  He also writes that:

Elaborate titles can bring danger. “The more a title describes the story, the less effective it generally is,” said Dennis Rice, a marketing consultant who has held top positions at Miramax, United Artists and Disney. “You want people to know what they’re getting. But you also want to leave them wanting to learn more.”

If that’s true, explain titles like Mr. Blanding Builds His Dream House (1948), How to Marry a Millionaire (1953), and Mr Hobbs Takes a Vacation (1962).  Each of those titles tells you what the movie is about (and they are kind of long, too).  In more recent years, Snakes on a Plane (2006), and Hot Tub Time Machine (2010) each deliver exactly what they promise.

From what I can tell, Brooks Barnes was just walking to work one day, noticed someone changing the sign on a theater marquee, and thought, “Wow, that title won’t fit on there!  Titles must be longer than ever”.  Then he went home and wrote a newspaper article about it.  Did he consider that the signs for movie theaters now have to accommodate a dozen or more titles?   Meanwhile, old movie houses used to have great big marquees out front, where the feature’s title, and even its actors could be listed.  Watch this 1972 WTOG station ID featuring images of downtown Tampa at night.  At :30 you can see the front of the old Tampa Theatre, which on that night was showing The Legend of Nigger Charlie – proof that they not only had offensive movie titles back then, but long ones, too.

In an upcoming series of posts I am going to make my own generalization: summer is the season about which people have written the best songs. Stay tuned.

Filed under: Film, Musings on May 25th, 2010 | 3 Comments »