Once Upon A Time… In Sydney

Let’s dip our toes back in Rick Dalton’s swimming pool with this track by Los Bravos, from Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood.

The song was originally written and performed by the Australian band The Easybeats, best known for their big hit “Friday On My Mind”. The guitar opening for “Bring a Little Lovin'” was later apparently borrowed by another Australian act, the Bee Gees, for their song “Jive Talkin'”.

Can’t We All Just Get Along?

The Rolling Stones album Beggar’s Banquet includes a song called “Prodigal Son.”

There was some initial confusion about the songwriting credit, having not been clearly attributed to the Reverend Robert Wilkins, who first recorded it in 1964.

The song is actually a reworking of Wilkins’ song “That’s No Way To Get Along” from 1929, before he became a devout Christian.

https://youtu.be/9J2rEvVxBP8

Please Peace Me

We have the 1918 pandemic, the unemployment rate of the Great Depression, and the race riots of 1968, all at the same time. There’s no need to wait for hindsight to have 20/20 vision about 2020, and the year isn’t even half over!

Something that’s overlooked about John Lennon’s infamous heckling of the Smothers Brothers at the Troubadour in 1974 is that he knew Tommy Smothers. Yeah, Lennon was being a jerk, and he acknowledged it ever after, but in a way he was just being a pain in the butt to a friend.

Needle Tracks

A very nerdy thing I’ve enjoyed doing is listening to the many different combinations of inexpensive phono preamps and cartridges presented on YouTube. Here is how the setup in my home office sounds. Listen quick, in case YouTube decides to yank it, despite many other unofficial copies of the song already being there.

The cartridge is a Grado Black ($75), the preamp a Behringer PP400 ($25), and the turntable is a Technics SL-BD20D. The Technics was the last of the P-Mount (T4P) models, and it was purchased new for $99 from J&R Music World, an outstanding retailer and mail-order service that is gone, but not forgotten.