Author: DOuG pRATt

Sunday School with Davey and Goliath

If you’re of a certain (older) age, and American, you remember “Davey and Goliath.” It must have been one of the primary inspirations for “Calvin and Hobbes,” but I don’t know if Bill Watterson has ever acknowledged that.

“Davey and Goliath” really stuck with me as a kid. Later, I was thinking about the Protestant denomination that produced the series when, as a teenager, I walked into a Lutheran Church by myself one Sunday morning.

There are, of course, parodies of “Davey and Goliath,” but I’m uncomfortable with them, because I feel that although the cartoons are now dated, in their day they were sincere, positive and worthwhile. The “Davey and Goliath” Mountain Dew commercial is clever, and it does nothing to undermine the lessons or spirit of the series. Something that’s emphasized repeatedly, and still resonates with me, is that everybody has choices in life, and people have to take responsibility for themselves.

Here is one of my favorite episodes. Animator Art Clokey did some really psychedelic stuff in “Gumby and Pokey,” and “Davey and Goliath” is toned down by comparison, but there’s a brief, slightly surreal dream sequence in “The Winner.” The importance of a lowly cotter pin is something I’ve always remembered. “For want of a nail…”

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Songs for birds and lobsters

Happy 3rd anniversary to my blog!

Here it is, forty years gone by since “Abbey Road” was released. I listened to that record start-to-end so many times I have no idea how many times it was, although it’s been quite a few years since I’ve done that. In ’79, when I bought a high quality Parlophone pressing of “Abbey Road,” it struck me how different it sounded from every previous Beatles recording. It was so smooth it was almost antiseptic. According to Brian Kehew and Kevin Ryan, the difference was the introduction of a solid state console, replacing the old tubed REDD board.

Ten years after “Abbey Road” the music scene had changed a lot, thanks to the anti-Disco movement that was equal parts of angry anarchy and silly fun. Here are some examples of what I was listening to, going into and out of 1979.

From the quirky….

….to the quirkiest…

Lene Lovich Bird song (clip 1979)
Uploaded by libelule64 – Explore more music videos.
…and from the hard….

…to the hardest.
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Unsigned, unsealed, and undelivered

Beatles
Photo by Albert Marrion, 17 Dec 1961

I sort of assume that everybody with more than a passing interest in the Beatles has heard the complete recording session held at Decca on New Year’s Day, 1962, but maybe you haven’t. It’s a day that lives in infamy, of course, because they didn’t get signed to a record contract. But the fact is, at that point they still sounded — and looked — like amateurs. Brian Epstein got them into suits in March, but they still needed the ear of somebody who could hear their potential. Listen and decide for yourself. Would you have heard the greatness that was missed by Decca?

Wise words

Today’s Boston Globe has a short editorial called “Aging Boomers: Hit the pavement slowly.” This sentence says it all, for guys like me, because I’ve been there and done that:

Training all-out to overcompensate for fading physical gifts often leads to injuries.

After decades of seeming to be immune to running injuries, the last few years have taught me that exercising smarter, not running more, is what I need to do.