"[Dylan] and Robertson had had something between friendly discussion and outright arguments about Dylan’s style of songwriting while on tour the year before."

"Robertson — who, at this time, remember, had a body of songs that mostly consisted of things like 'Uh Uh Uh' — thought that Dylan’s songs were too long, and the lyrics were approaching word salad. Why, he wanted to know, did Dylan not write songs that expressed things simply, in words that anyone could understand, rather than this oblique, arty stuff? He kept holding up Curtis Mayfield songs as a model, like 'People Get Ready'... ... Robertson didn’t know... that that song was in a way the grandchild of one of Dylan’s own songs... [It] was inspired by 'A Change is Gonna Come,' which was in turn inspired by 'Blowin’ in the Wind' — but nonetheless Dylan thought that Robertson had a point. He was getting increasingly disenchanted with the counterculture which he was supposedly the figurehead for, and with psychedelic music. But also, he was aware that you could do a lot even with simple language... [b]ecause the folk tradition he came from had a very different attitude to language than either the Beat poets he’d been recently imitating or the R&B songwriters that the Hawks [i.e., The Band] had been listening to...."

Episode 167 of Andrew Hickey's "A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs" is about "The Weight" by The Band. (It's only by chance that this song came up in the week when Robbie Robertson died.)

This is new, not old: Dion sings "Song for Sam Cooke (Here in America)."

Notice the "quoting" of "Chain Gang" and the harmony sung by Paul Simon. Dion — who is 80 years old — says it's "an old song," but it's a new recording, part of a new album, "Blues with Friends" — which has also features Van Morrison, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Gibbons and Jeff Beck. And the liner notes were written by the Nobel laureate, Bob Dylan.

About "Song for Sam Cooke":

“At first, I just had the melody and the refrain ‘Here in America.’ A friend suggested I use an episode from my memoir about walking southern streets with Sam Cooke in 1962. It’s a good story, a true story. We were in the South together. And he stood up for me. He was a good guy. I miss him.”

He finished the song, he said, but put it aside, thinking it was too personal for other people to get. He put it in his drawer, where it remained, unsung and unrecorded, for years.

“Then in 2019,’ Dion said, “I saw the movie Green Book and after that, I couldn’t shake the song. I thought, 'Hey, they almost wrote a movie about my song.’ I loved the movie so much that I thought I’d better take that song out to see it if works. And it did. It actually did.”

I've loved Dion since 1961, when "Runaround Sue" was a hit. And — as I told you back in 2006 — "I saw him in a small club here in Madison in 1990, and I can honestly say it was the most enjoyable concert I've seen in my whole life."

Did Moby sexually assault Donald Trump? Moby does confess to "knob-touching" Donald Trump.

From Moby's new book, "Then It Fell Apart," the second volume of his memoir. The scene is a party in New York City. It's 2001, after 9/11 (and Moby characterized himself as "traumatized" and not knowing "how to process my sorrow"). Moby describes himself as "well on my way to getting drunk," because he'd had "three glasses of champagne, three glasses of red wine with dinner, a shot of vodka before dessert, and an Armagnac digestif."

“Dale,” I said, once we had ordered drinks, “tell Clarice about ‘knob touch.’”

“First off, you’re beautiful,” he told her.

“She’s a Miss USA runner-up,” I said, proud of my new friend.

“Okay,” Dale continued, “‘knob touch’ is when you take your penis out of your pants at a party and brush it up against someone.”

“Eww,” Clarice said, grimacing.

“And that’s sexy?”

“No, no,” he said seriously, “it’s not sexual, it’s just stupid and funny. You only knob-touch their clothes, and the person you knob-touch can’t know they’ve been knob-touched.”

Clarice turned to me. “Have you done this?”

“No,” I admitted.

The party wasn’t that exciting. It was mainly full of businessmen and real-estate developers, most notably Donald Trump, who was standing a few yards away from us at the bottom of a staircase, talking loudly to some other guests.

“Moby, go knob-touch Donald Trump,” Lee said.

“Really?” I asked. “Should I?”

Donald Trump was a mid-level real-estate developer and tabloid-newspaper staple whose career had recently been resuscitated by a reality-TV show.

“Yeah,” Dale said.

“Yeah,” Clarice said, mischievously.

“Shit,” I said, realizing I now had to knob-touch Donald Trump. I drank a shot of vodka to brace myself, pulled my flaccid penis out of my pants, and casually walked past Trump, trying to brush the edge of his jacket with my penis. Luckily he didn’t seem to notice or even twitch.

I walked back to my friends and ordered another drink. “Did you do it?” Clarice asked. “I think so. I think I knob-touched Donald Trump.”

Is this a sexual assault? Dale says "it’s not sexual, it’s just stupid and funny," but the New York statute criminalizes "forcible touching when such person intentionally, and for no legitimate purpose... forcibly touches the sexual or other intimate parts of another person for the purpose of degrading or abusing such person, or for the purpose of gratifying the actor's sexual desire...." I'm not an expert on NY criminal law, but I think touching someone to be stupid and funny is not a legitimate purpose, and being free of an intent to gratify your own sexual desire doesn't save you. Moby seems to have had the intent to degrade or abuse Donald Trump, so the requisite intent is there. But I'd say Moby is off the hook because he didn't touch "the sexual or other intimate parts of another person." He used his own sexual part to "to brush the edge of his jacket." Maybe there's another New York statute. I find it hard to believe that "knob-touching" isn't a crime as long as you only touch the other person's non-intimate parts.

Anyway, I thought you should know. Imagine if we found out Donald Trump was knob-touching the hems of garments.



ADDED: Moby's story is unbelievable for a number of reasons. He was obviously drunk, and he had a motive to lie. But another thing is that he puts the story in his "New York City (2001)" chapter, then says Trump's "career had recently been resuscitated by a reality-TV show," but "The Apprentice" didn't debut until 2004.

ALSO: I became aware of this Moby story yesterday when I watched him on Bill Maher. He was there to talk about his book and brought up the "knob-touching"...



... and he did some additional knob-touching-related things during Maher's segment on using ASMR to deal with Trump fatigue. This segment is quite good, and I would recommend it even if it weren't for Moby and his dick, but keep an eye on Moby:



MORE: In the interview with Moby — the first of the 2 Moby videos above — he directly says he was drunk. He also says "These days, my penis is always flaccid." And when Moby asserts that knob-touching is "not sexual," Maher says: "Like Biden. It's not sexual. Not sexual. It's just inappropriate."

MORE ABOUT NY STATUTES: There is also the NY crime of "Sexual abuse in the third degree." That covers "sexual contact without the latter's consent." Here's the definition of "sexual contact" in NY law:

“Sexual contact” means any touching of the sexual or other intimate parts of a person for the purpose of gratifying sexual desire of either party.  It includes the touching of the actor by the victim, as well as the touching of the victim by the actor, whether directly or through clothing, as well as the emission of ejaculate by the actor upon any part of the victim, clothed or unclothed.

Unlike the statute quoted above, this seems to cover using one's penis to touch a non-intimate part of another person. But now you need the intent of "gratifying sexual desire" and there's no mention of the intent of "degrading or abusing." So I don't think this statute works either, even though I'm sure that going around rubbing your naked penis on another person, without their consent, should be a crime.

AND: Why, in the #MeToo era, did Moby think he could freely confess to what looks like a sex crime? I am surprised that NY statutes don't seem to cover his exact behavior, and maybe his publishers ran the manuscript past its lawyers, and that's why this was published. But let's assume it's absolutely not a crime in New York (or that it's too late under the statute of limitations). Why does Moby not fear personal and career destruction over his open confession to amusing himself by brushing his naked penis against another person? Presumably, it's because the other person was Donald Trump, and that just takes the story into an entirely different universe where assaulting someone with your naked penis is pure hilarity.

"There’s a home video of me at about age 5, where my mom asks if I want to sing a song. "

"I sing a couple verses of 'You Send Me.' Then I point out that it's really 'a grownup song.' Sam Cooke had clearly touched me from very early on. He had a light, warm, amiable quality that could appeal to a young child, while having the depth and maturity to appeal to adults. And he has a passion and feeling that’s allowed his music to endure for 50 years."

From my son John's post, a tribute to Sam Cooke, who died 50 years ago today. I've quoted the personal reminiscence part. The rest of the post analyzes the music, with 10 videos, including Cooke's moving response to the question "What is soul?" and... there's nothing better than this:

"When he first played it for Bobby Womack, who was his protégé, he said, 'What's it sound like?' And Bobby said, 'It sounds like death.'"

"Sam said, 'Man, that's kind of how it sounds like to me. That's why I'm never going to play it in public.'"

50 years ago, Sam Cooke wrote and recorded "A Change Is Gonna Come."

Great shakes.

The previous post talks about the 1960s dance called "the shake," which The Supremes were instructed to do with their "buttocks under" rather than "protruding." I wanted to see some video of what this old dance really looked like, a search that was complicated by the YouTube era meme the Harlem Shake... not to be confused with the actual dance called the Harlem Shake, which goes back to 1981 and is also not the 1960s shake I'm looking for.

I amend my search to "1960s dance  the shake," and I get this old TV commercial:



Both Meade and I felt a big nostalgic twinge of recognition at the point where the pyramid-shaped packets of powder are dumped out of the plastic shaker.

And speaking of pyramids, the inventor of the dance the Harlem Shake, Al B says:

It's a drunken shake anyway, it's an alcoholic shake, but it's fantastic, everybody loves it and everybody appreciates it. And it's glowing with glory. And it's respected. But if we could mystify it, and become historian, about this Egyptian jazz... Pharaohs invented this thing, with spears, and hats, and gowns. And so, it becomes a subject of being communicative to the system and to realization. If you get my drift.... It was a drunken dance, you know, from the mummies, in the tombs. That's what the mummies used to do. They was all wrapped up and taped up. So they couldn't really move, all they could do was shake...

Yes, but how about the 1960s dance? I see "'Shake!!' - RJ & The Del Guapos - (60's dances)," but the dancers are obviously doing the twist and the pony, so this is not an authoritative depiction. And here's a video with the Sam Cooke song "Shake" — "a new dance that's going around" — but, again, somebody just threw together clips of 60s people dancing a jumble of 60s dances. But I did immensely enjoy the appearance of  the word "shake" clipped from the Great Shakes TV commercial!

So... finally, here's The Supremes, singing and dancing "The Shake" on the British TV show "Ready Steady Go" in 1965. That's kind of bad. This is much better, also on "Ready Steady Go." The year is 1966:



BONUS: The Who do a Great Shakes commercial. But those of us who followed The Who back then — I was a member of The Who Fan Club before they released their first album in the U.S. — know that The Who sold out early. It looked like this:

Records From My Father, Part 3: "Memories Are Made of This."

For Part 3 of this series, I chose "Memories Are Made of This," a 1960 album by Ray Conniff/His Orchestra and Chorus. This is extremely, possibly insanely cheerful music.



There are vocals, but no words, indeed, no individuality. We hear blended voices bopping along, making "ba" and "ah" sounds, as if they were another section of the orchestra, a section less important then the trumpets which get way out in front at times. Whoa! Settle down, you might want to say to Doc Severinson, blaring out in "Three Coins in the Fountain."

The idea is to take "biggest hits of the past ten years" — like "Three Coins" — and put them through the Conniff-grinder, which processes familiar songs into bright, incredibly perky instrumentals. Check out "Tammy."

My favorite rendition was "Unchained Melody," which you can listen to here. If you're used to The Righteous Brothers' achingly soulful version, you might find this hilarious or awesomely refreshing. Since, as noted, the words are never sung, you can use this as a karaoke background track, perhaps inspired to revise the words to fit the very cheerful instrumentation:

Time goes by so quickly
But time can't mean too much
Are you still mine?
I need your love
If not your love
Some other love for me!
Oh, my love, my darling
I'm hungry for some lunch
It is lunch tiiiiiime!

Like both of my parents, Ray Conniff served in the U.S. Army in World War II.  I was 9 years old when this album came out, and I conveniently avoided living through the Depression and WWII, so I was in no position to understand the emotional impact this music had on the people it was designed for. When I look at the 1960 Top 100, I remember liking "The Twist," "Cathy's Clown," "Running Bear," "Puppy Love," "Ally-oop," "Chain Gang," and "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini." I liked the singers and the words of these songs (whether I knew what a chain gang was or not, I got "Give me water! I'm thirsty!").

But my father enjoyed the wordless Conniff, who explained his musical revelation like this:

"One time I was recording an album with Mitch Miller - we had a big band and a small choir. I decided to have the choir sing along with the big band using wordless lyrics. The women were doubled with the trumpets and the men were doubled with the trombones. In the booth Mitch was totally surprised and excited at how well it worked."

I love the front cover of "Memories Are Made of This." That lady in what we used to call a bulky knit sweater is charmed by her charm bracelet. But the back cover is pretty dull, so I'm hiding it below the jump:



The back covers for albums often had, like this, advertisements for other albums. In this case, lots of other albums by Ray Conniff. When I finally got around to buying my own record albums — this was my first — in 1962, I did not like seeing any ads for records my father might buy. I wanted clear separation from the things that were his and the things that were mine. In the 1960s, this was called the "generation gap." This series, "Records From My Father," is a belated effort to bridge that gap.

"Fifty years ago Saturday, Sam Cooke stepped onstage at a club in Miami."

"The result was loud, raw, artful and raucous — but it wasn't the Sam Cooke the label was looking to sell to mainstream audiences. RCA decided to tuck the Harlem Square Club recording into its archives."

Here's "One Night Stand: Live at Harlem Square Club 1963."

Reading the above-linked article wasn't my first encounter with Sam Cooke today. Earlier, someone sang me a beautiful rendition of his version of "Mean Old World," which he'd learned from "Complete Recordings of Sam Cooke with the Soul Stirrers,"

"Working in the Coal Mine."

At Meadhouse this morning, we're talking about the song "Working In The Coal Mine," not because of the abysmal jobs situation these days, but because... well, because there was a little too much milk in my coffee. (This stream of consciousness has nothing to do with the suffering of unemployment and working in coal mines, so please forgive me.)

Meade decided to make me a double-shot, and I — helpful in my usual abstracted way — started playing "Double Shot of My Baby's Love" (by the Swingin' Medallions) — a song about a woman who "loved [her man] so hard" that he woke up with... "the worst hangover [he] ever had."

That got me talking about the frat rock cassette recording that I bought when my kids were very young. It had "Double Shot" along with stuff like "Hang On Sloopy" and "Louie Louie." It was one of a series of tapes that I bought to play in the car after I realized that rock and roll oldies were good children's music. (Well, not "Double Shot.") I first had this realization back in the 1980s when, for some reason — maybe a toddler said "ya ya" — I started singing "Sitting in Ya Ya Waiting for my La La." Baby talk!

"Who sang that?" I ask, playing it on YouTube. Meade says "Sam Cooke." No! It's Lee Dorsey! Do you know any other Lee Dorsey songs? There's only one other that you might remember. It's this. "Working in the Coal Mine." (Not to be confused with this Sam Cooke song, which is, frankly, much better... as a recording. I will not compare the degree of workplace suffering described in the 2 songs.)

But check out these 2 other recordings of "Working in the Coal Mine" — this and this. I can't picture any of those people actually working in a coal mine, but in a pinch, if I had to say, I'd pick The Judds.

Have you had enough coffee this morning? I have.

ADDED: "Get your ya-yas out." Remember when Barack Obama said it? Back in June 2008, when he was thanking his campaign workers for "submerging their egos." The "Ya-yas" remark comes at 10:45. But start here:



Based on that part — before the "ya-yas," I think he didn't expect to win in Iowa. "If I'd lost Iowa, it would have been okay." But: "Because we won, we now have no choice." It seems as though he'd intended to make his mark, then reemerge in 2012 or 2016 as the frontrunner. But he won. It came too soon. Yet he had to plunge forward. It was all a crazy miscalculation. He just didn't expect to be that loved in Iowa.

And now, it's 2011, primary time once again, and our nation turns its lonely eyes to you, Iowa, ya ya ya.

"I have a little confession: I don't like ['A Change is Gonna Come']."

Kim Cosmopolitan confesses (in the Throwing Things recap of last night's "American Idol" finale):

I'm sure that flags me as a social reactionary or something, but I don't like the song...

Ha ha. Yeah. I do like that song so I don't have that problem, but I certainly would be careful about expressing dislike of it. (Lyrics. Here's Sam Cooke singing it. And here's Adam Lambert singing it in last night's finale.)

It's like: Don't you care about civil rights? Really: Don't you hate when there's some work of art — e.g., "Schindler's List" — that you don't even want to risk looking at with a neutrally critical eye? Don't you hate when a work of art comes to you encrusted with moral/political importance that denies you the freedom to say it's bad? Well, say it's bad then! Fight back. It's a matter of moral and political importance.

Anyway, back at Throwing Things, Adam responds to Kim:

I'm just going to assume that the people who don't like Adam will find his "A Change Is Gonna Come" indulgent. I guess I was hoping for that little wink that acknowledged the gravity of the change Sam Cooke was singing about and which Lambert presumably was connecting with in his own interpretation. But he cut both the "too hard living but I'm afraid to die" and "go downtown"/"don't hang around" verses, the latter of which especially would have brought that home, and so what we were left with was a song sung well but without the depth that could have made it transcendent. What change, Adam?

Transform a song about black people into a song about gay people? Gay people aren't born by the river in a little tent. Would you buy a glammed up gay guy asking for sympathy for his troubles in words written about poverty and race discrimination? I guess it's possible to do that, but also probably in bad taste to horn in on the unique suffering memorialized in "A Change Is Gonna Come."

Let's look at the new Obama ad.

Nicely done. I'm glad to see the return of the light touch.

The source material is the great old Sam Cooke song "What a Wonderful World," and you can hear it on this video, which, like the new ad, has a political theme:

''James presented obviously the best grooves. To this day, there has been no one near as funky. No one's coming even close.''

Said Chuck D about James Brown, who has now left the stage:

Along with Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan and a handful of others, Brown was one of the major musical influences of the past 50 years. At least one generation idolized him, and sometimes openly copied him. His rapid-footed dancing inspired Mick Jagger and Michael Jackson among others. Songs such as David Bowie's ''Fame,'' Prince's ''Kiss,'' George Clinton's ''Atomic Dog'' and Sly and the Family Stone's ''Sing a Simple Song'' were clearly based on Brown's rhythms and vocal style.

If Brown's claim to the invention of soul can be challenged by fans of Ray Charles and Sam Cooke, then his rights to the genres of rap, disco and funk are beyond question. He was to rhythm and dance music what Dylan was to lyrics: the unchallenged popular innovator.

There are some sad things in his story. You can read them at the link. I'm not going to bring them up here. The man is dead. Goodbye to a brilliant artist.

Movie aftereffects.

Sometimes a movie leaves an incongruous aspect of itself in your head. On Sunday, after the accident, we watched "Serial Mom" to cheer us up. This is a black comedy about a squeaky clean suburban mom -- a veritable June Cleaver -- who turns out to be a serial murderer. (Hmmm ... June Cleaver would be an appropriate name for a murderer!) In one scene, a victim is taken by surprise while happily watching a videotape of "Annie." Four days after watching the movie, I'm still hearing "The sun'll come out tomorrow..."

I'm not really sure why I thought "Serial Mom" would be a good post-car-crash movie -- surely not because the first murder we see Mom commit is running down someone with her car! There's nothing cheerful about murder, though perhaps there's something cheering about laughing at death. But the movie -- which I've seen many times -- does embed the world's most optimistic song in the minds of the sort of jaded, cynical people who watch black comedies. Days later, the film is out of my consciousness, and that song, which I'd never have sought out, is still playing in my head, still "clear[ing] away the cobwebs and the sorrow."

ADDED: Maybe you think there's a more optimistic song. "Some Day My Prince Will Come"? Let me know.

UPDATE: A reader suggests two other songs which are also prominent in movies: "We'll Meet Again" (used at the end of "Dr. Strangelove") and "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" (from "The Wizard of Oz"). While both of these songs express hope, they are quite wistful and really rather sad. Does the singer really think things will work out well? Obviously, in "Dr. Strangelove," all hope is over when the song plays, but that is very much like the use of "Tomorrow" in "Serial Mom" (as opposed to the original use in "Annie"). The character in "Serial Mom" dies and has no shot at any tomorrow, sunny or cloudy. "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" ends with "why, oh, why can't I?" and expresses the characters feeling of helplessness. There's the dreamy wish for a land somewhere else, which seems beautiful but feeble and unlikely to come true.

By the way, I first head "We'll Meet Again" -- and loved it -- on The Byrds' first album "Mr. Tambourine Man." The Byrds sang it because of "Dr. Strangelove," but I did not see "Dr. Strangelove" until years later. The Byrds did a nice job of using phrasing to convey the irony that accompanied the song in the movie.

ANOTHER UPDATE: For the most optimistic rock song, I'm going to suggest The Beatles' "All You Need Is Love."

Let me note that it isn't just the lyrics that makes the song optimistic, it's the music and the way a singer sings it. "Tomorrow," on the lyrics alone, could be seen as depressingly pessimistic: good times are "always a day away," which means they never actually get here.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: One reader says the best answer is "What a Wonderful World" -- the Louis Armstrong song. I always think of the Sam Cooke song when I read that title, but the "Don't know much about history" Sam Cooke song is called "Wonderful World." Another reader offers religious lyrics as the most optimistic -- "The Messiah" is suggested -- and pooh-poohs the delusional optimism of "All You Need Is Love." But it's the delusion of "All You Need Is Love" that I find so optimistic.

Another reader poses the question: What is optimism? Define your terms! Where does mistaken cheeriness fit in? "What a Wonderful World" is a great example of looking at the world that exists now and perceiving it as beautiful. There's no reliance on future events that may not happen as in "Tomorrow" and "We'll Meet Again" (and in "The Messiah" for that matter). "All You Need Is Love" also finds the present situation sufficient, but it makes assertions about the present that are quite simply not true and futility is presented as a good thing.

But let's look up "optimism" in the dictionary:

1. A tendency to expect the best possible outcome or dwell on the most hopeful aspects of a situation: “There is a touch of optimism in every worry about one's own moral cleanliness” (Victoria Ocampo). 2. Philosophy a. The doctrine, asserted by Leibnitz, that this world is the best of all possible worlds. b. The belief that the universe is improving and that good will ultimately triumph over evil.

So, maybe we need three songs to cover the three definitions.

AND MORE: A reader offers "You'll Never Walk Alone," from "The Sound of Music": "At the end of the storm is a golden sky/And the sweet silver song of a lark." That suggestion made me think of "My Melancholy Baby": "Every cloud must have a silver lining/Wait until the sun shines through." And what a beautiful song that is! It's a bit like "All You Need Is Love," but instead of the abstraction "love," the solution for everything is cuddling. That's damn sweet!

AND EVEN MORE: Wait. "You'll Never Walk Alone" is the big finale song by Rodgers and Hammerstein in "Carousel." I was thinking of "Climb Every Mountain," the big finale song by Rodgers and Hammerstein in "The Sound of Music": "Climb every mountain, ford every stream/Follow every rainbow, till you find your dream." Walking, climbing ... life is a journey. At least in "You'll Never Walk Alone," you have help. In "Climb Every Mountain," you're pretty much on your own. And it's not even a level surface!

"American Idol," simulblogged.

I fry up some meat and pour a glass of wine, and sit down to "American Idol." I say "I bet we see the winner tonight and some of the other finalists, because we're in New Orleans, and the best singers are always from the south."

Gene Simmons is the guest judge. "Why do you want to do this?" he says to the 19-year-old David Brown. Brown looks perfect. He belts out "Long Time Comin'" beautifully. Randy tells him he's the best audition he's seen in four seasons of the show. Wow! He's suddenly the favorite to win Season Four. [UPDATE: As a reader reminds me, the title of this song, which does contain the words "long time comin'," is "A Change Is Gonna Come." I've written about that song before and especially regret the mistake, for it is surely one of the most beautiful songs ever, and I adore its composer, Sam Cooke.]

Next up is a yodeler. He yodels well. Paula: "That's not easy to do." They make him go behind a screen and try a Stevie Wonder song. (Stevie has long been the show's standard of perfection for the male pop singer.) He's not too bad, but he's still rejected.

Lindsay Cardinale is beautiful and sings beautifully. She makes it.

An earnest and very tall accountant named Sandeep sings "Eye of the Tiger" and is asked how he thought he did. He says he got the lyrics. He's rejected. His after-analysis: "The voice was in one tone. I needed to kind of mix it up with the tones. So … sorry."

Michael Liuzza wants to be the American Idol because "The world's a evil place. They got a lot of bad people. I'd like to give some good love around, you know." He sings "Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans" – the Louis Armstrong version. It's elegantly modulated, but has a bit of a weird affectation some of the time. He reminds Gene Simmons of Rosemary Clooney, and he says that's all out of style. Randy says no, Simmons says no, Paula says yes, Simon makes a sound that causes Paula to say: "You take the joy out of me having fun and showing love." Then Simon gives him the chance, and Paula still calls Simon "obnoxious." The Simon-Paula thing is part of the game, part of the act. We see Liuzza running out into the street, exulting.

At every break, they promote Leroy Wells. They've preselected him as this year's William Hung. He'd better be damned funny. Okay. Here he is. He's happy. He's a clown. Dances. Talks, but you can't understand a word he's saying. Wait. I did understand when he got down on his knees and said, "Thank you, Jesus. 'Cause you gotta put Jesus first." Randy: "Yo, dawg. But can you sing? … Sing something!" They suggest James Brown. He tries to sing "I Feel Good," and can't do it. He has gold teeth that he puts in and out. They love him, but he can't go through. Yet, media-savvy, he understands that he's on TV right now! Success! "It's all good!" He walks out saying "Can you dig it?" And they all say "Yes!" America is entertained. He's raving, happy. He knows he's going to be on TV.

Next is a minister from Dallas, Jeffrey Johnson, who's shocked by New Orleans. He sings "In the Still of the Night." Simmons thinks he's a country artist, because of his ministry. Rock is about sexuality, he says. Simon says the public will love him. Randy's the deciding vote and he says yes. He's through.

Back to David Brown, in his Baptist Church. We see a closeup of him with a tear rolling down his cheek. We love this guy. Fox TV wants us to love this guy, and, yeah, it's manipulative, but we do love him.

After the commercial, it's all about twins. The first two -- the Jefferson twins -- are pronounced "good" by Simon and they make it. The second two … you get the vibe they're going to be bad. The Molfetta twins. They sing "I'll Make Love to You," and Paula is seduced. Simmons refers to "the oozy, oozy white boy thing." Simon thinks it's only the twinning that makes them seem approvable: "I don't think individually, you're good enough." But maybe one is better than the other? Judged individually, it's still a no. Randy and Paula get pissed and walk out. In the promo for tomorrow night, we see one of the Molfetta brothers returns in the Las Vegas auditions.

"They sure signaled to us that the guy to watch is David Brown," I say. Chris says: "I don't like when they give an unfair amount of air time to someone no one has voted on."

Soup lyrics.

Here are the four lines of "At Long Last Love" that Cole Porter wrote while he was in excruciating pain with his legs crushed, pinned under a horse for hours, waiting to be rescued--according to John Lahr, writing in the New Yorker (link via A&L Daily):

“Is it an earthquake or simply a shock?
Is it the good turtle soup or merely the mock?
Is it a cocktail, this feeling of joy?
Or is what I feel the real McCoy?”

You know soup does not make an appearance in song lyrics all that often, but oddly enough, just the other day, I was sitting in a cafe, eating an almond scone, and I noticed this bizarrely soup-related lyric in a Sam Cooke song:

Shake it like a bowl of soup
And make your body loop de loop
Put your hands on your hips
And kinda let your backbone slip
Move your body like a whip
And just shake!

Now, you just know the original idea was to shake like a bowl of jelly (like Santa Claus in "'Twas the Night Before Christmas") but he switched to soup for the sake of rhyme.

The only other soup lyric I can think of offhand is the Lewis Carroll lyric "Beautiful Soup." I'll try harder later, but I've got to run to class.

UPDATE: Well, I see Bob Dylan did his own version of Sam Cooke's "Shake." It's called "Wiggle, Wiggle." Here's the soup part:

Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a bowl of soup,
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a rolling hoop,
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a ton of lead,
Wiggle - you can raise the dead.

Pretty funny, and a nice salute to Cooke. "Under the Red Sky" is a Dylan album I never paid any attention to.

And here's the text of "Beautiful Soup," set alongside the poem it was parodying. Carroll substitutes the homely image of soup for the lofty image of a star.

ANOTHER UPDATE: You can listen to "Wiggle, Wiggle," and buy "Under the Red Sky"--cheap!--here, on Amazon. The Amazon commenters are pretty brutal, several calling it Dylan's worst album. "Wiggle, Wiggle" wins special contempt. No one seems to get that "Wiggle, Wiggle" is to "Shake" as "Beautiful Soup" is to "Star of the Evening."

What's in the Times Arts section today?

1. A Princeton student (Kathleen L. Milkman) gets a big article, with a big picture of herself, all about her senior thesis, on the first page of the Arts section. How does one pull off such a thing? She did a statistical analysis of the content of the stories in The New Yorker. (Hmmm .... sounds like a job I used to have.)

The study was long on statistics and short on epiphanies: one main conclusion was that male editors generally publish male authors who write about male characters who are supported by female characters.

The study's confirmation of the obvious left some wondering why Ms. Milkman, who graduates this morning from Princeton with high honors, went about constructing such an intricate wristwatch in order to tell the time, but others admire her pluck and willingness to cross disciplines in a way that wraps the left and right brain neatly into one project.

... and left others wondering why the NYT put a big article about her on the first page of the Arts section. Standard reader response: What about my plucky graduate? The answer must be: we all care about the short stories in The New Yorker. ... Don't we?

2. New Oprah's Book Club choice: Anna Karenina. (The nice Pevear/Volokhonsky translation.) Can't say anything against that, can you?

3. Stanley Kubrick's crazy archive has been transformed into a huge museum exhibit. I want to see it, but--right now at least--it's in Frankfurt, at the Deutsches Filmmuseum.

4. There's going to be a big fundraising concert for John Kerry at Radio City Music Hall on June 10th. It has a name: "A Change Is Going to Come." That title is based on the beautiful song "A Change Is Gonna Come," which was written by Sam Cooke after witnessing a civil rights demonstration in 1963 ("I was born by the river/In a little tent, and just like that river I've been running ever since"). I guess "Gonna" had to be changed to "Going to." But that is one of the best songs ever, and it never hurts to stop and think about how great Sam Cooke was. Go to that first link and see the list of artists who have covered that song. Artists appearing at the June 10th concert are: Jon Bon Jovi, Whoopi Goldberg, Wyclef Jean, John Mellencamp, Bette Midler, James Taylor, and Robin Williams.

5. David Foster Wallace has a new book of short stories and Michiko Kakutani is not being very nice about it.

Unfortunately for the reader, such tiresome, whiny passages predominate in this volume. There are moments in "Oblivion" when we catch glimpses of Mr. Wallace's exceptional gifts: his ability to conjure both the ordinary (a Midwest motel room with a television stuck on the motel's welcome page) and the extraordinary (a Spider-Man-like figure, who may or may not be a terrorist, scaling the slippery side of a skyscraper); his ability to map the bumpy interface between the banal and the absurd.

These moments, sadly, are engulfed by reams and reams of stream-of-consciousness musings that may be intermittently amusing or disturbing but that in the end feel more like the sort of free-associative ramblings served up in an analyst's office than between the covers of a book.

"Reams and reams of stream-of-consciousness musings ... free-associative ramblings ..." -- sounds like a blog!