Vinegar, for the iPad, iPhone, and Mac: “Vinegar is a Safari extension that replaces the YouTube player with a minimal HTML video tag. It removes ads, prevents tracking, restores picture-in-picture, and keeps videos playing in the background.” Vinegar costs $1.99 and is a “universal purchase”: pay once and use it on all three devices.
Found via Daring Fireball.
Monday, November 29, 2021
Vinegar
At Barnes & Noble
Elaine and I went into a nearby Barnes & Noble and found a baffling arrangement of retractable-belt stanchions, making the entrance to the store look something like a small airport. A security guard nodded for us to enter.
I went off to look for other versions of Illinois, the great Sufjan Stevens album, and found an entire aisle devoted to his work, with everything packaged in enormous black boxes, looking more like elaborate board games than CDs, just three or four boxes to a shelf. I reached up to the highest shelf and took down a package labeled Dice. Inside, a deck of cards and a device that looked like a cross between a corkscrew and a flower press. The gist of the game: place cards under the corkscrew/press until it drops. Then add up the values of your cards.
Then we met Ben. We didn’t know he would be at Barnes & Noble. We made plans to go get ice cream.
And then I met Skip James. We seemed to already know each other. Skip wore a bright plaid shirt. I asked him if he was playing anywhere and where he was living. He said he was living in Newark, Music City, and I wondered if he had meant to say Nashville.
A one-time colleague and know-it-all approached and asked, “Michael, did you know that Led Zeppelin recorded Skip’s [some song title]?” “Okay,” I said. “But what about Cream and ‘I’m So Glad’?” Skip said he may have already had COVID and moved over to a wall to lie down. I then realized that none of us were wearing masks. “We should probably socially distance,” I said.
We never got to the ice cream.
Related reading
All OCA dream posts (Pinboard)
[To the best of my knowledge, Led Zeppelin never recorded a Skip James song.]
Sunday, November 28, 2021
The Beatles: Get Back thoughts
[If you haven’t watched Peter Jackson’s The Beatles: Get Back, please know that this post is full of spoilers.]
Fifty-two years after the fact, we now have seven hours and forty-eight minutes of the Beatles’ rehearsals, conversations, and famed rooftop concert (a concert about twice as long as what the film Let It Be depicted). The Beatles are forever.
People
~ Paul is the dominant figure here, always dapper, often insufferable, occasionally smoking cigars. John is along for the ride. He and Paul engage in endless fun and games, sloppily spoofing ’50s R & B and rock ’n’ roll and their own earlier material. And when there’s a discussion about how to approach the impending live performance, it’s just John and Paul.
~ George is a disaffected figure early on. At Twickenham Studios, he sits on the edge of Ringo’s drum riser. Perhaps that’s just how George preferred to sit, but I find it telling that he doesn’t take a chair with Paul and John. When Paul’s criticism of George’s playing prompts George to announce that he’s leaving the band (in a scene kept out of Let It Be ), all John can say is “When?”, followed (after George has left the building) by a declaration that if he isn’t back by Tuesday, they’ll get Clapton. In part two, after a difficult (offscreen) reconciliation, George seems like a different guitarist, filling his spots with much greater clarity (and without the dumb wah-wah pedal). But he’s still diffident about introducing his own songs. He describes “For You Blue” as something short and simple, as if it won’t take much of anyone else’s time or effort. When he demos “Something,” we see no reaction from John or Paul. (But listen to Abbey Road : Paul’s bass line makes a great song even better).
~ Ringo is a patient and sometimes exhausted observer. At times his posture reminds me of what it feels like to sit through a committee meeting as other personalities act out.
~ I found Yoko Ono’s presence unnerving early on. I imagined what it might be like for a member of a string quartet to bring a silent partner to rehearsals, a silent partner who sits with the quartet and knits, reads letters, and sorts through papers. By part two I found myself ignoring Yoko’s presence, save for when the camera lingers on her in close (unheard) conversation with Linda Eastman.
~ Yes, it’s true: Billy Preston does enliven the proceedings. When he plays (for the first time?) on “I’ve Got a Feeling,” the room (now the Beatles’ own studio) comes alive.
~ I’ve always admired George Martin for his work in the cause of music. But when I hear him say of John and Paul that “They’re our songwriting team,” and that George Harrison is on his own team, I’m taken aback. And when someone points out that John and Paul no longer write much together, Martin insists that they’re still a team. Because, as someone points out, that’s what it says on the record label.
Moviemaking
~ Michael Lindsay-Hogg, the director of Let It Be (1970), had some strange ideas. How about a cruise — with British audience onboard — to Sabratha, Libya, where the Beatles would perform at an ancient Roman amphitheater? How about a television special, with the Beatles’ performance punctuated by news bulletins, the last of which announces the breakup of the band? Nearly as bad: Lindsay-Hogg hides a microphone in the lunchroom where John and Paul go to have a private conversation. The microphone catches their admission that they’ve treated George badly, and John’s admission that he wishes he had pushed back against Paul’s taking control of the group.
~ Technically, Peter Jackson’s film is miles above Let It Be, which feels dark and gloomy and, save for the rooftop concert, claustrophobic, even on the vast Twickenham sound stage. Here, even when things in the band are dark and gloomy, the image and sound are clear as can be. You can even read the lettering on the Swan Vesta matchboxes.
~ My one objection to Jackson’s editing of the material: it gives the movie a reality-TV quality. The many quick closeups of a silent George foreshadow his departure from the band. A shot of the Apple rooftop early on foreshadows the concert that ends the film. Putting in Paul’s comment “And then there were two” after George has walked out and John doesn’t show up for a rehearsal feels like a cheap, weird, knowing touch.
Musicmaking
~ I love the scene in which Paul calls out the chords for the middle eight of “I’ve Got a Feeling”: “E, G, D, A.” In a later scene, George is at the piano: “What’s this chord, Billy?” Billy: “I don’t know.” (It’s an E chord with a C at the top, a raised fifth, an augmented chord.) There’s no vocabulary here aside from a seven-letter chordal alphabet: A through G. Everything else is shown, not named.
~ There’s lot of mucking around, lots of parody, lots of playing at music (even a brief bit of Canned Heat’s “Going Up the Country”). I think of it all as a creative form of procrastination. There’s a deadline to be met: the band has to be ready for a live performance of new material (to take place on the Apple rooftop), after which Ringo will begin work on the film The Magic Christian, but things don’t come together (no pun intended) until very late in the schedule, when they have to.
~ There’s an extraordinary degree of invention here, not very much on view in Let It Be. You can see songs take shape in real time. As the band runs through Paul’s “I’ve Got a Feeling,” John adds lines from his “Everybody Had a Hard Year.” Later, after Billy Preston has signed on, someone asks him to add a riff to “I’ve Got a Feeling,” and he invents a bouncing figure on electric piano that now feels like an inevitable element in the song. Also feeling inevitable: the step-like countermelody that George Harrison worked out for the bridge of John’s “Don’t Let Me Down.”
~ And then there’s the magic of playing for people. When the Beatles and Billy Preston are up on the roof, playing for an audience, even if it’s an audience five stories down, even if it’s so cold that John says his fingers can’t make a chord, the feeling is joyous, the energy is abundant — at least until the police put a stop to things. Strange: when the Beatles were playing stadiums, they could be seen but not (really) heard. And in this last rooftop performance they could be heard but not seen, aside from the few dozen people on their own and other rooftops.
Other
~ I have the same guitar strap that’s on George’s Gibson acoustic. Who knew? My strap, which hangs on a tie rack in a closet, not far from my guitar, goes back to high-school days, not long after Let It Be came out. But now I play only while seated.
[That’s the one.]
Related reading
All OCA Beatles posts (Pinboard)
Let It Be at the Internet Archive
Listen: do you want to know a secret? Do you promise not to tell? Let It Be (dir. Michael Lindsay-Hogg, 1970) is available for streaming from the Internet Archive. You can’t really appreciate Peter Jackson’s The Beatles: Get Back without seeing the earlier film.
Related reading
All OCA Beatles posts (Pinboard)
Saturday, November 27, 2021
Today’s xkcd
Today’s Saturday Stumper
Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, by Greg Johnson, is an easy one — another good Stumper for anyone who fears the Stumper. I skipped 1-A, seven letters, “Instances of indifference” and started with 8-A, seven letters, “Concerning,” which gave me one corner of the puzzle — and more. Hooray for 8-A.
Some clues of note (four of which I’m skeptical about):
10-D, ten letters, “Great Lakes region.” I don’t think I’ve ever heard or seen the answer. Life-long learning!
15-A, seven letters, “Williams title topper.” I thought it must have something to do with tennis and a Grand Slam.
17-A, fifteen letters, “‘Clean it up, roomie!’” Who says “roomie”? And who would say the answer to a roommate? More plausible clues: “Don’t expect me to do it,” “Spousal protest.”
23-A, six letters, “Bermudas-backwards beer brand.” This strange clue becomes much less strange when you remember that it’s in a Saturday Stumper.
29-D, six letters, “Kid-lit quadruped since 1940.” Hooray for 29-D.
34-D, nine letters, “Animalistic persona.” I may not know enough about 34-D, but I think “Animalistic state” would be more precise.
35-A, five letters, “Tutor’s lofty promise.” No. There’s nothing lofty about it. And how can it be 35-A if you’ve had to seek out a tutor?
43-A, three letters, “Once-over ender.” One of my favorite clues in the puzzle. So oblique.
61-A, five letters, “Swift, e.g.” My other favorite clue. My first thought was SATIRIST.
64-A, seven letters, “How some cave fish evolved.” The answer calls for an adverb. An alternative clue: “Like Samson in Gaza.”
No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.
Friday, November 26, 2021
Stephen Sondheim (1930–2021)
[Bernadette Peters sings “No One Is Alone,” from Into the Woods, words and music by Stephen Sondheim. From “Take Me to the World: A Sondheim 90th Birthday Celebration,” May 2020.]
The New York Times has an obituary.
A handful of Sondheim posts
“The Ladies Who Lunch” : On education : Paper and pencil : Writing habits
Woolworth’s
[Margaret “Mick” Kelly (Sondra Locke), store clerk. From The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (dir. Robert Ellis Miller, 1968). Click either image for a much larger view.]
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter was filmed on location in Selma, Alabama. That has to be a genuine Woolworth’s.
My one and only Woolworth’s stood at 4318 13th Avenue, Brooklyn. I remember the candy display and the tables with all sorts of inexpensive stuff. I remember buying Christmas presents for my grandparents: a comb, a hand mirror. (I was a little kid.) I remember buying Silly Putty for myself, packaged in what looked like a television set. (I was a little kid.) I remember retail density, the thing I still most admire in hardware and housewares stores. S. Feldman, I’m thinking of you.
That’s my shopping for today.
Modern mondegreen
Watching the first part of Peter Jackson’s Get Back, I realized that I’ve been mishearing a word in “Get Back” since 1969. The lyric references “sweet Loretta Martin,” not “sweet Loretta Modern.” I will consider “sweet Loretta Modern” my very own mondegreen.
I have more thoughts about this documentary, but that’s all for now.
Related reading
All OCA Beatles posts (Pinboard)
Thursday, November 25, 2021
Thanksgiving 1921
[“Beggars’ Holiday Mars Thanksgiving: Throngs of Children in Garbs, Tattered or Classic, Invade City’s Crowded Centres.” The New York Times, November 25, 1921. Click for a larger view.]
No full-grown oaths at the dinner table, or while shooting craps!
Happy Thanksgiving to all.
[“Latin” seems to be the Times word for “Mediterranean.” My people, or half of them.]
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