10:17 – Along with doing laundry, it’s another lab day for me today, while Barbara labels and fills containers and makes up subassemblies for the biology kits. She’s working upstairs today, filling containers with non-hazardous materials. Tomorrow, we’ll work downstairs, filling containers with hazardous materials. Well, actually, they’re not hazardous, except to our work surfaces and floors. I’m making up several stains today, most of which would indelibly stain counters, tables, and hardwood floors. We’ll fill those containers in the basement.
12:55 – I was doing fine until I made up the last of the stains for the biology kit, Hucker’s crystal violet. When I inverted the container to mix the solution, the cap leaked. So my hands now have pretty (and indelible) purple stains. I wasn’t wearing gloves because this stain is hazardous only in the sense that it, well, stains things. Oh, well. All working chemists get used to having stains on their hands.
I was just getting ready to ask if Barbara would be going in to work Monday with rainbow-hued fingers. Maybe one color each for the outer three fingers and a nice splotchy assortment on the thumbs and index fingers.
I remember the days of silver nitrate on the toilet bowl seats…
But seriously, that might make a good addendum to the kits. A couple of quick pictures, 100 copies from the photo printer at the drug store, and viola. “Boys and girls, here’s why you’re supposed to wear gloves, goggles, and aprons when doing Chemistry / Biology / etc. labs. Things do get spilled, and while in this case no real harm was done that’s not going to be a given. And for future reference, everyone who majors in these fields in college will have a set of ‘lab clothes’ which are unfit for any other purpose. “
That’s a good idea. Maybe some pictures of indelibly stained Formica countertops or wood kitchen tables, too. “Kids, layers of newspaper are your friend.”
Here’s a blast from the past.
In the early ‘60’s, the production centers for music were Philly, New York, Chicago (Chess Records), Memphis (Sam Phillips’ label Sun, which ‘discovered’ Elvis, and Jim Stewart’s labels, Stax/Volt), West Texas (home to Buddy Holly and other Rockabilly acts), LA (Phil Spector recorded in both New York and LA), and New Orleans. Fats Domino, Little Richard, Gary Bonds, the Neville brothers, Ernie K. Doe, Kris Kenner, Lee Dorsey — all were based in New Orleans as the rock era took hold.
My part of the US (Tiny Town and Naptown) accepted R&B and black artists much more quickly and surely than bigger cities of the US — probably in part because there was a large and influential black population in Indy — including movers and shakers in the pop music world. For more than 40 years, a song has gone through my head, which was only modestly popular around here, so its life on the radio was short, but it WAS played here. I am not sure I ever knew the name or artist of the song. After the Internet, I searched from time to time for what I thought was the likely title of the song “New Kind of Love”. Repeatedly, it turned up nothing. Until about 6 months ago, when somebody finally posted the song.
Willie Harper (RIP) was a backing vocalist in New Orleans’ producer Allen Toussaint’s stable. In 1961, Toussaint started putting Harper as lead vocalist on records released on his Alon label from New Orleans. In 1961, the first one was, indeed, “New Kind of Love”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYlH3jVjOBY
The song is simple — voices, drums, one electric guitar, trumpet, and a piano. Recognize that piano? In 1961, New Orleans-born Mac Rebennack was 21, and probably the most-called-on piano player for recording sessions in the Crescent City. The style is definitely that of Mac’s later solo alter-ego, Dr. John Creaux.
So a song that has been banging around in my head for more than 40 years, has finally been found. Lyrics for the song are misquoted on the Internet. Not sure why I can understand them when others cannot, but here are the true lyrics. The song was written by Shirley Johnson, who was actually the prolific alter-ego of another New Orleans native, Earl King — who quite likely was playing electric guitar on this song of his, in a style that was more percussive than musical.
New Kind of Love
Got a new kind of love, inside of me.
This old love, baby; say it wanna be free.
Like a genie in a bottle, they wanna come out;
And let the whole world know they can jump and shout.
Well I get so lonely, as days go by;
No one to love me, babe, whoa my oh my.
Well inside of me, is a boy that’s hot;
I wanna give to you all the love I’ve got.
A farmer needs a rain, to wet his crop;
Train leaves the station, hey, at uh, every stop.
It’s just a matter of luck, that I’m still alive;
Because a man without love, he can’t survive.
The miracle, they don’t last;
And you better get here, girl, you better get here fast.
Because the way I feel, I’m in awful pain;
If I don’t find love I will go insane.
(singers vocalize)
Got a new kind of love, inside of me.
This old love, baby, — now, — they say they wanna be free.
Like a genie in a bottle, they wanna come out;
And let the whole world know they can jump and shout.
A miracle, they don’t last;
And you better get here, girl, you better get here fast.
Because the way I feel, I’m in awful pain;
If I don’t find love I will go insane.
(vamp to end)
I just found out that Indianapolis’ sole remaining newspaper, The Indianapolis Star, is edited and assembled in Louisville by parent company Gannet’s Louisville Courier Journal staff. I was on the 30th floor of an office building, looking down at the Star/News (The Indianapolis News used to be the afternoon paper) building, and asked the person telling me, “Then what goes on in the Star/News building these days?”
“Not much, apparently,” was the answer.
The big city nooz-papers are dying out, only a matter of time and money before the NYT Empire goes down, too. That will leave all these small-town and regional “free” papers, pretty much; here we have one sort of regular free paper (regular in the sense that it is either non-political or at least middle-0f-the-road), and two lefty/prog papers that make no secret of their admiration for and support of a hard Left/prog agenda, all three heavy with local advertising.
We gave up on broadcast/cable TV six years ago, and the regular radio stations that we can pick up pretty much suck, even the classical one has a daily playlist of “top 40 hits” that they must figure will appeal to the broadest segment of middle-brows in the area. The rest are just nodes of national chains, with the same crap every day and tons of commercials. We get our nooz from the internet and shortwave radio, and generally find that we are far better off without all the other garbage in our lives.
RBT wrote:
“I was doing fine until I made up the last of the stains for the biology kit, Hucker’s crystal violet. When I inverted the container to mix the solution, the cap leaked. So my hands now have pretty (and indelible) purple stains. I wasn’t wearing gloves because this stain is hazardous only in the sense that it, well, stains things.”
Is that the stuff they put in bags of money so that if it’s stolen and mishandled you get indelible stains on your hands (crims rub their hands raw to get it off) that alert the cops that you’ve been a naughty boy?
“Oh, well. All working chemists get used to having stains on their hands.”
That’s why sensible people become mathematicians, physicists and computer scientists.
Lyrics for the song are misquoted on the Internet. Not sure why I can understand them when others cannot, but here are the true lyrics.
If the composer writes and copyrights one version of the lyrics, and the singer sings another version, which are the true ones? I think that is the issue at least some of the time.
Well, I remember the first time I heard Joan Baez’s version of The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down. I couldn’t figure out why she’d changed so many of the lyrics, including some changes that made no sense at all. I later learned that she’d heard The Band doing it, misheard the lyrics, and recorded her version without ever seeing the printed lyrics.
I suspect Baez wasn’t very well educated in US History, or she’d have recognized Stoneman as a US cavalry commander who was also later governor of California (or someplace). Of course, even if she’d gotten it all right, her version (as nice as it was) was a poor echo of the original. When I first heard The Band doing it, I thought it had actually been written in 1865. And if I didn’t know it was impossible, I’d have suspected it was being sung by someone who had lived through the events.
One doesn’t listen to Joan Baez for her deep intellect, encyclopedic knowledge, or adult understanding of how the world works. The only thing she ever had to offer was her amazing voice.
And, just by coincidence, I’ve had her “Drove Old Dixie Down” stuck in my head for the last hour or two.
I believe she offered Bob Dylan quite a bit more at one time. 😉
Robbie Robertson of The Band did considerable research but still got the date of when Richmond fell wrong. Petersburg and Richmond fell in April, not May, though perhaps the news would take that long to reach the Caine residence?
RBT wrote:
“I suspect Baez wasn’t very well educated in US History, or she’d have recognized Stoneman as a US cavalry commander who was also later governor of California (or someplace). ”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Stoneman#In_memoriam
What Bob said about the Band vs. Baez and his hearing of their version matches mine. A very long time ago and far away, OFD used to visit a local chain bookstore/record shop at the Natick Mall (Paperback Booksmith, long gone) and a friend (now recently deceased) and I asked the cashier guy, and I still remember his name, Marshall, what he thought were the good records to have and pay attention to at that time (late 60s) and he said The Band and Creedence. Boy was only a few years older than us but he knew ‘mercan music good.
If you’ve seen The Last Waltz you can catch Dylan making a fool of himself trying to play lead guitar solos.
Well, I confess that Stoneman is perhaps better known hereabouts than elsewhere. He came through here and pretty much ripped up Winston and Salem back before they were Winston-Salem. Of course, I didn’t move down here until 1980, and I heard both versions of that piece when they were first released.
Which reminds me of Carol Lee Bowie, the girl I dated before I met Barbara. Lee took me to visit her grandmother one day. As soon as her grandmother heard me speak, she said to Lee, “You’re seeing a Yankee?!” Then she turned to me and asked, “What’s your position on the War Between the States?” I replied, “Wrong side won, ma’am.” She told Lee I was a keeper.
It took me longer to realize that after thirteen years of brainwashing history classes in the bastion of radical abolitionism and Lincoln worship. Got to know Southerners during my time with Uncle and then did a bunch of reading from the 80s on and discovered that we in Maffachufetts publik skools had been sold a bill of goods. It is still considered Holy Writ up here that the glorious Union and the Christ-like martyred Lincoln were the saviors of the nation, etc., etc. And if you tool around the region, the martial statues that you will find on most of the town commons will be Billy Yank, with the occasional Doughboy and even rarer, believe it or not, Minuteman. Both Maffachufetts and Vermont sent tens and tens of thousands of boys off to that horror and the sweet little mothers of the time exhorted them in the fashion of ancient Sparta, come home with your shield or on it.
For what? Nearly a million dead, countless more crippled, maimed, families ruined and lost, the land and economy destroyed, a half-century or more of Jim Crow and to this day, ill will and bad feelings.
But I am a lonely voice up here…