If having a catchy melody were enough to hit number 1 on the charts, this song would have hit number 1 and then some (0, -1? Why does rising on the charts mean getting a lower number?).
Written by the highly talented Brill Building all-stars Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich (“Da Doo Ron Ron”, “Be My Baby”) and sung by the equally talented Lesley Gore (“It’s My Party”, “You Don’t Own Me”), this remarkably catchy single from 1964 only rose to #14 in the US and #20 in the UK. Competing with the Beatles and their countrymen, plus Motown, the Beach Boys, the Four Seasons and Phil Spector, was hard work.
Born in Brooklyn, New York, raised in Tenafly, New Jersey, it’s Lesley Gore, proto-feminist icon, giving her all on “Maybe I Know”:
Note: the powers that be removed a video from YouTube that had better sound. That better sound is available below, although the video and sound are out of synch:
James Turrell is an American artist who specializes in light. He doesn’t paint it. He manipulates it. He also constructs spaces, some room-sized and some gigantic, in which light can be seen to aesthetic advantage.
From the New York Times:
Much of his art is located in the far corners of the earth. There is an 18,000-square-foot museum devoted to Turrell in the mountains of Argentina, a monumental pyramid he constructed in eastern Australia and an even larger one on the Yucatán Peninsula, with chambers that capture natural light.
Turrell is most famous for his purchase of an extinct volcano and its surrounding land in the wide open spaces near Flagstaff, Arizona:
… where he has been developing a network of tunnels and underground rooms since 1974. The volcano has a bowl-shaped depression on its top and is known as Roden Crater. Turrell has never opened the crater to the public, and he is guarded about who sees it. An invitation to visit Roden is one of the most coveted tickets in American art.
A view of Roden Crater:
In the early 70s, Turrell bought a small airplane so he could fly around the Southwest looking for a small mountain to use as an enormous studio:
Each evening, he would land the plane wherever he happened to be, unfurling a bedroll to sleep beneath its wing. In the morning, he was back in flight, scanning the desert floor. He wanted to find a small mountain surrounded by plains, so the view from on top would resemble that of flight. Inside the mountain, he planned to carve tunnels and chambers illuminated by celestial light.
Inside the mountain:
This summer, museums in Los Angeles, Houston and New York are putting on exhibitions of Turrell’s work. None of the museums have room for a mountain, so they’ll exhibit artworks like these rooms instead:
It’s nothing like Rembrandt, but it must be wonderful to experience. It’s also wonderful that someone belonging to our species has imagined and created such things.
I’ve been puttering around with a YouTube playlist for a few months, adding songs that I especially enjoy hearing. Most of them aren’t the biggest hits — they’re songs I want to hear more of. So I haven’t included wonderful songs like “Good Vibrations” and “In the Still of the Night”. I’ve got “Let Him Run Wild” and “Ramble Tamble” instead.
Many of the songs are singles I heard on the radio when I was a kid — songs that I’ve never owned but can now hear whenever I want. It’s amazing, and somehow seems improper, that all of this music is available for free.Â
YouTube apparently allows a playlist to have a maximum of 200 entries. Right now, I’ve got 199 songs or some 10 hours of music (plus unwanted commercials).
Certain artists aren’t well-represented on YouTube. For example, some law firm or corporation apparently makes sure that there are very few Bob Dylan album tracks available; otherwise I’d have included “Highway 61 Revisited” for sure. On the other hand, you can find just about every song ever recorded by many well-known artists. But songs come and go fairly frequently, so it’s never certain that a particular song will be on the list the next time around.
One of the surprises I got while compiling my list is how much I enjoy a particular song by the British Invasion duo Peter and Gordon. I was never a big fan of theirs and would never have thought of “I Go To Pieces” as a personal favorite, but I love it every time I hear it. Released in 1964 (not 1965), the single got up to number 7 in the U.S. It wasn’t a hit in the U.K., failing to make the top 50.
So, without further ado, thanks to our friends (or Masters of the Universe) at YouTube, here is “I Go To Pieces”, written by Del Shannon (“Runaway”), and performed by Peter Asher (the one who looks like Austin Powers) and the late Gordon Waller:Â
And here’s a link to my rather large YouTube playlist (“I Go To Pieces” is currently number 70 out of 199 entries):
P.S. 6/25/13 — Looks like I’ll be moving to Spotify. I’ll pay $5 per month to avoid commercials, plus they’ve got “Highway 61 Revisited”.
P.P.S. 6/26/13 — Spotify is pretty amazing. It’s like being in the 21st century. Except it doesn’t seem right that all this music, including new albums, is so cheaply available, the price being either exposure to advertising or a small monthly fee, plus being observed by whatever tracking software they use.
There is something very wrong about that. He had such presence, not just in The Sopranos but in his movie roles, that it’s hard to believe he’s gone. Especially at the age of 51.
Here’s a funny segment from Saturday Night Live, in which he demonstrates what a believable (i.e. excellent) actor he was. He made fiction seem real.
Here’s a brief color film showing London in 1927. It’s part of the British Film Institute’s collection. Someone added New Age-ish music.Â
It’s a sure-fire distraction from fake scandals (Benghazi, the IRS) and real ones (spying on the Associated Press, cutting government spending during a recession).
Whereof One Can Speak 🇺🇦 
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