08:29 – Netflix sends me emails when a new season is released of something in our queue, but for some reason they don’t send emails to warn when something unwatched in our queue is about to expire. For that, I have to go in periodically and scan the queue. When I did that the other day, I noticed that two concert films I’d put in our queue for Barbara were going to expire on the 16th, Jackson Browne and America.
Guys my age will remember the pop/soft-rock group America from their college days. Most women loved America; most guys couldn’t stand them. Their lyrics generally made no sense at all, and appeared to have been constructed with the aid of a rhyming dictionary. But I fired up the concert film during dinner last night, because I knew Barbara had been one of those many girls who liked them back then. When it started, I commented that the only track they’d ever done that showed any musical merit was Sister Golden Hair, and that they’d probably close with it. Sure enough, they did. They didn’t do a particularly good live performance of it, so I came into my office to find the original studio version on YouTube. (Apparently, Jackson Browne had a lot to do with that track, including I suspect writing the music and lyrics.) But what I also found was a video of a bunch of teenagers doing a cover version. No surprise there. What was surprising was that this bunch of kids did a better version live than America did in the studio.