The week started well with a relaxing and delicious lunch at June’s All Day brasserie on far South Congress. This is the place that Mark took me to for lunch when I interviewed for my job in Austin, and I hadn’t been back since. Diana and I both loved our lunch – delicious wines, smoked salmon nicoise salad for D and steak tartare for K. The heavens opened as we were finishing up and so we had to stay for coffee and wait for a brief respite in the rain. Temperatures dropped 15 degrees in a few minutes and the humidity was thankfully gone from the air for a while.
I got tied up at work until late on Monday evening. Diana was able to meet up with Sheri (after some confusion on which Kendra Scott store they were meeting at) and then they stopped back into June’s for some Happy Hour champagne.
Then they met up with Sean at the Continental Club to see the amazing Peterson Brothers. These two young men have so much positive energy and interact with each other beautifully. May they never lose those positive smiles they have playing music together. I was able to join around 7:30pm for the second half of the show. We particularly enjoyed the rendition of “Amazing Grace” on violin by Alex – it was his first instrument in school before graduating to bass guitar virtuoso.
Then the Brothers went mobile, wandering through the club, passing the guitar off to a friend at the bar to jam, heading out into the street and then plopping down in the seats behind us for a few minutes.
I thoroughly enjoyed the second hour of this show. Just what I needed after a long work day. Here’s a quick clip of the Brothers jamming:
After the show we followed the typical circuit – Hopdoddy burger followed by Hotel San Jose courtyard. Sean was able to have a nice chat with Glenn and Alex about when they were going to play in California.
Diana headed back to Dallas on the Tuesday bus and I put in some long days at the office, battling system problems.
I enjoyed a work dinner at Bonneville on Wednesday night. This is a good restaurant, just across the bridge from the apartment, that I hadn’t heard of but enjoyed quite a bit. The scallop dish was yummy.
I rode back to Dallas with Vinod on Thursday afternoon – always an enjoyable journey because of the wide ranging conversations. It was really nice to be home with Diana in McKinney for a few days.
The new movie from director Danny Boyle, “Yesterday”, was our entertainment on Saturday afternoon. We both enjoyed the movie and the interesting concept behind it. It really brought home the breadth and differences in the Beatles catalog. Diana mentioned being reminded of the Cirque du Soleil “Love” show in Las Vegas, and how it gave whole new meanings to the classic Beatles songs.
I had always thought that the Beatles “I Want to Hold Your Hand” was the number one song when I was born. I just looked it up and that was actually an honor held by the Four Pennies, with their song “Juliet”. Have you ever heard of the Four Pennies? I certainly haven’t. I like the guitar introduction to the song. It was only number one for a single week.
Take a look at the number one hits from 1964 – so many classics that we still remember. I challenge anyone to believe the same will be true of the number one hits from 2019 – most of them will be forgotten a couple of years from now. Cilla Black has a couple of number ones and she got a mention in “Yesterday” during the visit to Liverpool. What was in that Mersey water?
| Date | Artist – Title | Weeks at #1 |
|---|---|---|
| « 1963 1964 Number One Songs 1965 » | ||
| – | Beatles – I Want To Hold Your Hand | 5 |
| – | Dave Clark Five – Glad All Over | 2 |
| – | Searchers – Needles And Pins | 3 |
| – | Bachelors – Diane | 1 |
| – | Cilla Black – Anyone Who Had A Heart | 3 |
| – | Billy J. Kramer and The Dakotas – Little Children | 2 |
| – | Beatles – Can’t Buy Me Love | 3 |
| – | Peter and Gordon – A World Without Love | 2 |
| – | Searchers – Don’t Throw Your Love Away | 2 |
| – | Four Pennies – Juliet | 1 |
| – | Cilla Black – You’re My World | 4 |
| – | Roy Orbison – It’s Over | 2 |
| – | Animals – The House Of The Rising Sun | 1 |
| – | Rolling Stones – It’s All Over Now | 1 |
| – | Beatles – A Hard Day’s Night | 3 |
| – | Manfred Mann – Do Wah Diddy Diddy | 2 |
| – | Honeycombs – Have I The Right? | 2 |
| – | Kinks – You Really Got Me | 2 |
| – | Herman’s Hermits – I’m Into Something Good | 2 |
| – | Roy Orbison – Oh Pretty Woman | 3 (2) |
| – | Sandie Shaw – (There’s) Always Something There To Remind Me | 3 |
| – | Roy Orbison – Oh Pretty Woman | 3 (1) |
| – | Supremes – Baby Love | 2 |
| – | Rolling Stones – Little Red Rooster | 1 |
I heard a song on Spotify that I enjoyed by Alan Price. The keyboard sound was somewhat familiar, so I did some research. I found out why it sounded familiar – he was the organ player with the Animals. You’ll notice above that “House of the Rising Sun” was number one just after I was born – I still enjoy that song today and remember Billy Joel playing it when we saw him in New Orleans recently. The Western musical brain certainly loves arpeggios – particularly when a minor resolves into a nice major.
Alan Price is a self-taught musician and was a founding member of the Tyneside group “The Alan Price Rhythm and Blues Combo”, which was later renamed “the Animals”. His organ playing on “The House of the Rising Sun”, “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood”, and “Bring It On Home to Me” was certainly a big part of the group’s sound and success.
He also had a big role in introducing one of my favourite musicians, Randy Newman, to the world. Price’s second album, “A Price on His Head”, released in 1967, featured seven songs by Newman, virtually unknown at the time.
What was number one on December 18, 1964 when my wife entered the world, I hear you asking. Well – that was a Beatles song – “I Feel Fine”. Not one that I was familiar with, even though it spent 5 solid weeks at number one. Oopsy – now that I listen, I know it well. “I’m in love with her, and I feel fine”.
Changing over from music to the literary front, I finally finished “The Parisian” by Isabella Hammad. This was a very long slog of a book with lots of Arabic dialog and names. I did learn a lot about the history of Palestine in the early 2oth Century, and the influx of Jewish immigration that ultimately caused the Israeli/Palestinian conflict that still exists.
Here are some of the reviews that convinced me to embark on this read. I’m not sure I agree with any of them – this book was really hard work. I enjoyed the first few hundred pages that were set in Paris, but the Palestinian years were just work.
I’m looking forward to some lighter reading this week.
Here’s the Alan Price song that got me off on that Animals trip earlier:
Diana gave me a beautiful vinyl rendition of Bruce Springsteen’s new “Western Skies” album for fathers’ day. Here’s one of my early favourites:
How can Bruce still be making such meaningful music while performing every night in his solo Broadway show?
I’ve always loved the music of Robert Cray and came across this recent album. Ask me about seeing Robert Cray in a small club on Greenville Avenue in Dallas in the late 80s, when Stevie Ray Vaughan joined him on stage.