Ya wanna know just how screwed up we are around this great country? A guy died late yesterday who touched the lives of, oh let's just be on the safe side and call it five hundred million people, and his passing was worth only a couple of seconds airtime on the evening news.
Ya see, there was a toy earthquake that shook a bunch of folks on the east coast for a second or so this afternoon and most of the news was about a broken water pipe in the pentagon. Oh - gosh. I almost forgot - some bricks fell on a couple of cars too.
All the cartoon cast of "American President 2012" had nothing to say, but said it anyway and that took up a bunch of time. Also, a bunch of yahoos were running around some street in Northern A-freak-ka shooting guns into the air. It was enough to keep the news stars busy and Jerry was just an afterthought. So much for major news organizations ability to separate the great from the mundane. And the abysmal.
Let's play a game. You remember this, don'tcha? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dt7zGi9Jdww And this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmGQ5SlazJA and this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3HXy9mGPpI . How about this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ke6SDKNbnxA
I can play this game with you for about a day and a half. That's how long the list of his stuff is, and you'll remember most of it. Doesn't matter if you're 25 years old, or a geezer like me. You know at least a couple, if not most, of the songs by heart. Word for word.
I can usually hear a song and say "I remember that! I was driving a '58 TR-3 and dating Karen Lipsky when that was number one." I can't do that with Jerry's stuff. It's hard to remember just what you were doing when the song was popular because they've been popular for the last sixty years. Your whole life was lived while his music was playing. He wrote your song. And your theme song.
I can remember what Jerry's favorite was. And I bet you remember it too. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VscVP_Gt_s
Jerry has the answer now, and I wish he could come back and tell us. Don McLean told us about "The day the music died." back in '72 but he was wrong.
The music died yesterday, August 22, 2010
Ok, now that was a tough one for me. I didn't know who Jerry was. Had to look it up. On the other hand, I rarely bother to watch the "news" readers anymore either. I didn't know there was an east coast earth quake. I only knew there was a series of 3 or 4 temblors near Raton.
ReplyDeleteGood Morning, Jeff. How do you do it? That was the perfect comment.
ReplyDeleteOur society values appearance much more than talent. It's why you know who Ben E. King is and why you didn't know Jerry Leiber. It's why we flock to movie stars and ask them to tell us how to run the government. Thanks for letting me know I did something yesterday to improve that; you now know who Jerry was, and that was my intent - to honor a great talent.
You also managed to emphasize the news is not worth watching anymore. There are other more productive uses of time, and that's a sad thing that's happened to us. Walter, Chet, and David used to tell us what we needed to hear. Not so much today.