The Biden campaign throws a random celebrity at me.

That's just sad. The email goes on to ask me to "join" Carole King by giving money to "Joe and Kamala."

What celebrity are they throwing at you? At least I know they're not using Spotify to try to find out which musical artist might be able to reach me. The answer is no one, but I don't think I've ever played one of Carole King's recordings. I've been subjected to them on a number of occasions. I don't dislike her. I just don't care. And even if I did care about her — or anyone else's — music, I wouldn't care about her name slapped on some political email... other than to find it insulting that the campaign thinks I might be stirred to action by a celebrity's name.

Carole King. I mean, it's annoying. It's like some idiot was wondering how to call out to Boomers.

"I thought California would be wild in the sense of nature. It turned out to be wild in the sense of drugs and parties."

"I wanted to live close to the kind of wild nature that must exist somewhere on a large scale.... In 1977 I moved to a mobile home on Robie Creek, a 40-minute drive from Boise. For the next three years, I lived in the backcountry northeast of McCall in a cabin with no running water or electricity. After that I lived adjacent to the Salmon River for 38 years, with a national forest as my nearest neighbor.... President Biden should issue an executive order immediately directing his secretaries of the interior and agriculture to take all steps available to them to stop commercial logging on public land.... Trees absorb carbon dioxide and water from the air and ground and through the process of photosynthesis release oxygen into the air.... Federal law requires that most public lands be managed for multiple uses, such as recreation, gas and oil development, mining and logging. But this longstanding policy is running headlong into efforts to slow the warming of our planet.... In 1970, my collaborator Toni Stern wrote the lyrics to my most popular song, 'It’s Too Late.' That title should not refer to the climate. That’s why, at age 80, I’m using my voice to call on Mr. Biden to stop commercial logging in our national forests."

Writes Carole King in "It Costs Nothing to Leave Our Trees as They Are" (NYT).

Interesting to awkwardly weave in the song title "It's Too Late" when she didn't write those words. It makes it seem that she didn't write the first draft. Whatever. I love trees too. But what about democracy? If the statutes say "most public lands [must] be managed for multiple uses, such as recreation, gas and oil development, mining and logging," isn't it radically undemocratic for the President to single-handedly nix that policy?

It's an emergency — everything is an emergency now (e.g. student debt) — and we can't wait, so the President must act alone. 

"Bob Dylan is among six acts appearing on a new compilation EP that features 'reimagined' versions of traditional wedding songs for same-sex couples."

"Universal Love opens with Dylan’s rendition of the 1929 great American songbook classic She’s Funny That Way, revamped as He’s Funny That Way... The compilation also features contributions from St Vincent (AKA Annie Clark), who turns the Crystals’ And Then He Kissed Me into And Then She Kissed Me. Kesha flips the pronouns on Janis Joplin’s I Need a Man to Love, as does Valerie June on Noël Coward’s Mad About the Boy."

The Guardian reports.

That reminds me, on "American Idol" this week, one contestant, Marcio Donaldson sang "(You Make Me Feel Like a) Natural Man," and the smart-ass writer at New York Magazine wrote:

Marcio Donaldson, “(You Make Me Feel Like a) Natural Woman”

I almost enjoyed this. I’m all for a man owning the Carole King-penned Aretha classic and belting the words “You make me feel like a natural woman” as Carole intended. But no. Marcio Donaldson had the nerve to change the lyrics to “You make me feel like a natural MAN,” which is… pretty stupid, Marcio. What does “You make me feel like a natural man” even mean? And who cares? Stay tuned in the semifinals for Marcio to tackle Cyndi Lauper’s hit “Men Also Enjoy Fun, OK?” and Madonna’s pop classic “Material Person.”

Carole King-penned... Carole intended... Is Gerry Goffin simply invisible? From the Wikipedia page for the song:

Written by the celebrated partnership of Gerry Goffin and Carole King, the song was inspired by Atlantic Records co-owner and producer Jerry Wexler. As recounted in his autobiography, Wexler, a student of African-American musical culture, had been mulling over the concept of the "natural man", when he drove by King on the streets of New York. He shouted out to her that he wanted a "natural woman" song for Aretha Franklin's next album. In thanks, Goffin and King granted Wexler a co-writing credit.

Ah! So the original idea was the "natural man"!  And men outnumber the woman on the credits to the song. There's Gerry and Jerry. And they're all white people thinking about black people. So what, really, is the original intent? And even if it was a woman — or, specifically, Aretha — what's wrong with extending the idea to a man? Aretha famously flipped the sexes when she sang Otis Redding's song, "Respect."

Did it take "nerve" for Marcio Donaldson to change the lyrics? Are the changed lyrics "stupid"? Does the smart-ass writer at New York magazine (Louis Virtel) think the "Universal Love" project, with all the change-of-sex lyrics is stupid? He mocks —  “Men Also Enjoy Fun, OK?”  “Material Person" — but will he mock Dylan's "He's Funny that Way" and St Vincent's "And Then She Kissed Me"?

And does the smart-ass Virtel know that Rod Stewart sang "(You Make Me Feel Like a) Natural Man," on his 1974 album "Smiler"? It's not a new concept. Rod's version is fantastic. Listen.

On this blog in 2004, we were talking about "Songs transformed with the sex of the singer." Tori Amos had come up with a list of 20 songs, and I said:

The classic example of a man singing a woman's song is Frank Sinatra singing Gershwin's "Someone to Watch Over Me." He's forced to sacrifice the most beautiful couplet -- "Although he may not be the man some/girls think of as handsome" -- but singing words that are an entirely conventional woman's dream, Sinatra lets us see a shocking, haunting vulnerability.

Virtel betrays some woeful sexism when he asks "What does 'You make me feel like a natural man' even mean?" Is the "natural" condition something special for women, some notion that women have more "nature" in them or that Nature is a woman (Mother Nature) and that The Male is something else — something like Civilization and Order? If that's what underlies the question "What does 'You make me feel like a natural man' even mean?," then I wonder if he knows there's another song, "Natural Man," written by comedian Sandy Baron and singer Bobby Hebb and recorded by Lou Rawls, who won a Grammy for it in 1971. Listen here. Lyrics:

Well now, I tried to do what others say that I should do
They say that I should fit in, fool em, fake it
Those kinda dues just make me crazy and blue, man, I just can't take it
So when you see me walkin, won't you notice that proud look in my eyes
My feet are on the ground and my soul is searching for the sky...

Anyway, Marcio Donaldson is one of the top 24 on "American Idol." Here he is singing the Goffin/King/Wexler "Natural Man":

Let's dance like it's 1958 in Idaho.

That's nice and slow. I think you can all learn that, and I think it would be nice if kids today learned that dance, maybe in gym class. I think it would help them in many ways. And feel free to dress like that, even unironically.

I found that because YouTube suggested it after I watched this 1965 clip from the TV show "Hollywood a Go-Go" with Del Shannon singing "Runaway" and the "Hollywood a Go-Go" go go dancers were dancing around him doing some dance that represented running away, even though their forward motion only took them in a circle so they never got away. It's faster and more frenetic dancing, but I think you might be able to figure out the moves, even though we never get to see the feet.

Seemingly bridging the time gap between the first and second video — and also suggested by YouTube — here's Little Eva singing about the brand-new dance "The Loco-Motion." I say "seemingly" because it looks early 60s and the "Runaway" dance looks later 60s, but in fact, both clips are from 1965. A lot of old and new intersected in 1965. Personally, I was 14 years old, and I was rooting for progress. I watched "Hollywood a Go-Go" and "Shindig" (the show Little Eva's on), and I tuned in hoping to see British invasion stuff like The Kinks or folk rock stuff like The Byrds. I would have regarded Del Shannon as an intrusion from the pre-Beatles era. "Runaway" was a hit in 1961. It was one of the singles we played at slumber parties when we were children.

"The Loco-Motion" was a hit in 1962. Little Eva — Eva Narcissus Boyd — was a maid who also worked as a babysitter for Carole King and Gerry Goffin: "It is often claimed that Goffin and King were amused by Boyd's individual dancing style, so they wrote 'The Loco-Motion' for her" — but maybe that's not true. Little Eva doesn't look too interested in dancing in that "Shindig" clip. The notorious song "He Hit Me (It Felt Like A Kiss)" was based on what Little Eva told Carole King about her relationship with her boyfriend. That song was originally recorded by The Crystals — produced by the not-yet-a-murderer Phil Spector — and in recent years, it's been covered by Courtney Love and Grizzly Bear — with some unknown degree of irony.