Rant #2,703: You've Got a Friend

It’s the summer, and radio was made for the summer … or at least it was way back when.
 
In the days of transistor radios, there was nothing better than going to the park, to the beach or to your favorite haunt and having a transistor radio with you, and with a headphone, it was even better.
 
Your music became portable, and while you couldn’t play your records anywhere you wanted, you could play the stations that brought that music to you in the first place with you anywhere you were.
 
And you could go a long way with AM radio … heck, you could go to Florida and hear New York’s AM stations loud and clear, even as far south as Miami.
 
So what were kids listening to way back when, 50 years ago in 1971?
 
Let’s go back to those days, and look at the Top 10 songs on Billboard’s Hot 100 for July 31, 1971.
 
Tom Clay took two songs and melded them into one with his hit “What the World Needs Now Is Love/Abraham, Martin and John,” which hit number 10 on this date. When was the last time you heard this socially conscious song on the radio? It is one of those hits that was for the time, and even oldies radio today doesn’t play this tune.
 
The Grass Roots continued to have huge single hits into the early 1970s, and one of their biggest songs was “Sooner or Later,” which hit number nine on this date 50 years ago.
 
John Denver had become a songwriter of some renown in the late 1960s, but when he decided to go out on his own, he created one of the strongest catalogs of music of its time, and “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” which hit number eight this week, was one of the best known and most endearing of those tunes.
 
Hamilton, Joe, Frank and Reynolds’ “Don’t Pull Your Love” moved down the charts, pulling in at number seven this week. Yes, they did sound like the Grass Roots, didn’t they? And sharing the same record label, Dunhill, probably made that association somewhat viable.
 
The Bee Gees had a very long hit-making career in several different music genres, but they were still all rock in 1971 with one of their best songs, “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart,” which hit number six on the chart this week. Next week, the song would top the chart.
 
Tommy James went out on his own with a similar sound to that of the Shondells and had a major hit with “Draggin’ the Line,” which hit number five on the chart this week. It would be the biggest solo hit of James’ career.
 
Although today probably best known as a commercial jingle, Jean Knight had the biggest hit of her career with “Mr. Big Stuff,” which came in at number four on the chart this week.
 
Carole King’s former number one two-sided hit, “It’s Too Late on the A side and “I Feel the Earth Move” on the B side, came in at number three this week. This success helped make her “Tapestry” LP one of the biggest selling albums of all time.
 
What was thought to be an out-of-leftfield, fluke hit came in at number two this week: “Indian Reservation” A few years after the hits pretty much stopped, the Raiders—or really Mark Lindsay, who planned to release this as a solo recording but Columbia Records decided to revive the band’s career with it—came back to the upper echelon of the singles charts in a huge way with this record, which had previously topped the Hot 100, the only Raiders’ single to do so in their long history.
 
Singer-songwriters were hot in 1971, and with Carole King already having huge success with her music, it was almost predictable that another such artist would soon have major success on the Hot 100.
 
So, topping the Hot 100 this week was—
 
James Taylor with “You’ve Got a Friend.”
 
Taylor would have long-term success on both the singles and albums charts with numerous big records well into the late 1990s, but this single was his only number one hit he was able to register on the Hot 100.
 
The highest debut single on the Hot 100 this week was “Spanish Harlem” by Aretha Franklin, which came onto the chart at number 69 and would eventually reach the fifth position in a few weeks' time.
 
The biggest mover on the Hot 100 this week—or the song that moved up the most places on the chart from last week to this week—was “Where You Lead” by Barbra Streisand, which moved up 22 spots, from number 90 to number 68, from one week to the next. However, the single would stall at number 40 … but it was revived a few years later as a medley with “Sweet Inspiration,” but it also never made much of a dent as either a song on its own or as part of a medley.
 
So that is what we kids were listening to 50 years ago almost to the day, a good mix of artists who hit it big in the 1960s who were moving into the 1970s with some hit-making swagger and a few new artists who were making their presence known in a big way.
 
I would bet that if you found these songs and listened to them again, each one would bring back a huge set of memories to you.
 
Whatever music you are listening to as July peters out and we begin August, have a great weekend, and I will speak to you again on Monday.

Rant #2,702: Jump Around

Let me preface this Rant by stating that this particular entry was quite difficult to write.

My own family has suffered from mental illness, and I know it exists, and I am not putting it down as sheer whimsy when it happens.

But this needs to be said. And people need to listen.

I haven’t watched the Olympics for years.
 
I got completely turned off by the Israeli massacre, when innocent athletes from Israel were slaughtered by terrorists some years ago.
 
ABC’s coverage of the situation was so spot-on—Keith Jackson was incredible—that the whole thing was just so vivid … it--and other situations--brought to light that the Olympics are nothing more than a political gag fest cloaked in sports competition, and nothing more.
 
In ensuing years, I have had to laugh at coworkers and people that I know who have gotten so into the games, know every name and every medal won, yet a month later, cannot tell me who won or the medals they won.
 
It rubs me as being so false, and sorry, it is just not my thing at all.
 
And then we have the 2020 Olympics—or the 2020 Olympics with an asterisk, because the games are taking place in 2021—and I am just as turned off of the whole thing as ever.
 
What with numerous athletes testing positive for COVID-19, many of our own athletes disrespecting their own country with their behavior after winning medals, and the overall money-grabbing nature of the games—as usual, “the science” is touted but never really followed—I simply cannot get too enthused by the Olympics like I was way back when.
 
And now we have the latest fiasco, with American gymnast Simone Biles bowing out of much of the competition because of so-called mental issues.
 
She has claimed that these issues are impacting her performance, that there is just too much revolving around the Olympics this time around for her to give her maximum athletic/mental effort, and she is going day by day to see if she is up to it to participate.
 
Sorry, anyone who fully buys this nonsense really is living in some bizarro world, aren’t they?
 
This is one of our greatest athletes, a young woman who has performed with full capacity on stages around the world for a number of years without any hesitation.
 
Now, all of a sudden, she has the yips?
 
Look, first of all, she is letting her team and her country down on the supposedly the grandest stage of all.
 
If she had mental problems, she should have alerted the American Olympic community way before the games came that she was having doubts about participating.
 
And she is freaking out now because of the pressure?
 
Let her work a regular nine-to-five job, and learn what being under pressure is all about.

Ask our veterans about pressure--real pressure--and they will tell you all about it in vivid detail.
 
These athletes, and athletes in general, are just so pampered, simply because they can do what so few of us can do.
 
It begins at an early age, and it becomes the norm for them throughout their competitive lives.
 
Now, at precisely the wroing time, Biles decides that she can’t do it anymore, there is too much tension, and that she is ready to break?
 
Heck, my wife feels more pressure at her job as a bank teller than this young lady will ever feel.

And this generation ... I mean, really ... they get upset at the slightest chance, don't have the coping skills to get by any change in their personal patterns, and regress into a ball if they are not "right" on a particular day.
 
I understand that this is a mental illness issue.
 
Some people need time to breathe.
 
I get it.
 
We have seen an increased number of athletes taking care of their mental health, and not hiding these issues anymore, which is probably a good thing.
 
But sorry, don’t tell me about tension.
 
This is what you have been doing for years, this is what you have worked hard for, and then, all of a sudden, the yips take you off your game at precisely the wrong moment?

(And note: Biles has not yet canceled any of her personal appearances away from the Olympics, appearances where she is getting paid to do her job ... that may soon come, but right now, as she said, she is day to day.)
 
Sorry, I cannot generate too much sympathy or empathy for you.
 
You don’t live in the real world to begin with.
 
You have been put on a pedestal your entire life … and I am supposed to feel sorry for you because you just aren’t mentally into it anymore?
 
Then move aside for others to do what you do.
 
Get your head on straight, but don’t complain about pressure—every person has pressure in their lives, but I guess some of us can handle it better than others.
 
This fiasco of an Olympic games, already charred by the coronavirus, doesn’t need other distractions, personal ones in particular.
 
If it is too hot in the kitchen, get out of the heat and move on to somewhere else.
 
Me, I have already moved on by not subjecting myself to the nonsense that is the 2020 Olympic Games.
 
The sooner the games are over, the better we will all be, with or without this little prima donna telling us about “the pressure” and “the tension” she feels.
 
Sure, she can do athletic things that few of us can, but evidently, she cannot handle what she terms “pressure” like most of us can.

Feeling pressure is a normal part of human life, and as we feel the pressure, we have coping skills that help us get through them.

Last year, at age 63 and with no job in sight, I was able to cope with my situation as best as I could.

Nobody says you have to have a broad smile on your face everyday, nobody says you have to like the situation that you are in.

There are mechanisms--both within and through counseling--that can help people cope.

Biles should have looked inward before the games, and if she couldn't handle it herself, get help. There is actually a mental health coach for the Olympics; why did she not reach out to that coach?

Look, what little I know about gymnastics is what I can see; if you are not mentally into it, one jump and you can not only completely lose it, but lose it to serious injury.

Is that not akin to an office worker having a bad time and taking it out on his or her supervisor?

It is almost a "death knell" in a way.

We put our athletes on a pedestal, make them feel so special, massage their egos, and then when things get a little tough, some simply cannot handle it.
 
I guess she really is no better than the rest of us. 

Rant #2,701: Wherever I Lay My Hat (That's My Home)

Today, July 28, is an important day in my family’s history.
 
Back in 1971, 50 years ago to this day, my family moved out of New York City to the wilds of Long Island.
 
We have stayed here for the past 50 years, having never ventured back into the Big Apple.
 
We have had connections to the city—my father worked as a licensed New York City medallion cab driver for more than 50 years, and we have his youngest sister, my aunt, who has lived there her entire life—but our core family left Queens on July 28, 1971, and never went back.
 
I worked in New York City for several years, my sister also worked there for a number of years, but as far as our residences, they have been on Long Island for the past 50 years, so I guess you can call us Long Islanders.
 
But the family—my parents—started life in Brooklyn.
 
My parents were both born there, and they married in 1956, when their own immediate families lived in in New York City: Brooklyn—my mother—and Queens—my father, whose family had moved from the Lower East Side of Manhattan a few years earlier.
 
My father also worked with my grandfather as a butcher with a store on Delancey Street, so my family’s roots were firmly in New York City.
 
My parents’ earliest days as a married couple were spent in Brooklyn, and when I came along, we were a Brooklyn trio, as I was born in Brooklyn, too.
 
But my parents wanted something more, and when I was a toddler, the three of us moved to Kew Gardens Hills, Queens.
 
My sister was born in Queens, and we lived in this neighborhood—a somewhat notorious neighborhood which spawned both the Kitty Genovese and Alice Crimmins cases, as well as the glue-sniffing craze of the early 1960s—until 1964, when again, my parents were looking for something better.
 
My parents applied for an apartment in a new development called Rochdale Village in South Jamaica, Queens, an entirely new development that was planned for the site of the old Jamaica Racetrack.
 
My parents were looking for something better, but the designers of this new neighborhood—including master developer Robert Moses—had other plans in mind, that of Rochdale Village being something of a utopian experience, a mainly white neighborhood smack dab in the middle of one of the longest-standing black neighborhoods in the Untied States.
 
The new development would bring schools and shopping to the often neglected area, and since it was a self-contained development—but without gates—it would bring a level of living among both blacks and whites that would be the standard for the United States.
 
(Ironically, we moved into the development on Tuesday July 28, 1964—yes, 57 years to the day—about a month after our building, building 9, opened. We had to wait a little while, because our apartment was flooded, believe it or not, so we could not move into the building when most people did, a month earlier in June.)
 
Yes, my description of Rochdale Village might appear to be heavy handed, but even the New York Times covered this area with that type of reverence, spouting how blacks and whites lived together in perfect harmony in the new community.
 
And we did just that. Nobody was better than anyone else in this community—the rolls of the development were culled from the rosters of the city’s many unions—and everyone was on an equal level there.
 
But with such a shiny veneer, there were problems in the development from the get go.
 
Many in the existing community did not want us there, there were problems with the non-use of minority construction workers at the site, and we were sort of the “black sheep” community in one of the most proud black areas in the country.
 
And the tinsel wore off after a few years, with the community becoming a battleground brought on by a lot of issues that were going on in New York City at that time, and nationally.
 
Drugs, the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., constant teacher strikes and general city/state/country unrest impacted our once Utopian community quite massively, and after about 1968, the place was never the same.
 
Safety was also a major factor, and the place had become unsafe, almost anarchistic.
 
The schools, and primarily I.S. 72, had become the center of the battleground, and various attacks on a daily basis had become such a norm that the principal of the school told attendees at one of the PTA meetings—both blacks and whites—that all good people should “move out” of the neighborhood for their own good.
 
And by the dawn of the 1970s, it was readily apparent that yes, the neighborhood had deteriorated to the point that it was often unsafe, and yes, families like mine were wary of living there anymore.
 
And yes, we became part of the great “White Flight” of the early 1970s. I am not ashamed to say it, because it was true.
 
Once again, my parents looked for something better for us, and they found it in a place where we couldn’t even pronounce the name … in a Long island neighborhood called Massapequa.
 
Honestly, the only reason that I had heard about Massapequa was that it was part of an episode of the “That Girl” TV series, where actress Ann Marie is sent on a job as a model. Her agent tells her where she has to go to meet up with the shoot, and when he told her it was in Massapequa, she asked, “What’s a Massapequa?”
 
And I asked the same question 50 years ago.
 
I remember the morning that we left New York City for good.
 
It was a Wednesday, a hot summer day, and I was sitting in the car as my father loaded the last of our belongings into the Checker cab that he owned, which could fit lots of stuff.
 
I looked at my building, Building 9, for the last time, and I saw someone that I knew hanging out in the front of the building, a person years later I would find out that sometime after, died of a drug overdose.
 
The radio was on, and as he got in the car and we drove away to our new home, Melanie’s “Brand New Key” played on the radio, a song that just a few weeks later would become a massive hit for the singer.
 
It is a song that addresses exactly what I was going through as we moved away—I did not want to leave, did not want to leave my friends, did not want to leave the place where I went from a little kid to a young teenager--and I will never forget driving out of the development while that song played on the radio.

But here I was, with a "brand new key" to get used to, and I don't know at the age of 14 if I ever really did.
 
We moved to our new home, and we had many challenges on Long island, too, including rampant anti-Semitism right in our own new neighborhood.
 
I remember that our menorah that we put up for our first celebration of Hanukkah there was knocked out of our window by a rock thrown by one of our own neighbors, and this behavior carried over throughout my high school years, even though there was a large population of Jews who lived in Massapequa at the time, including a number of people who themselves had moved from Rochdale Village at the same time I did.
 
Personally, I was always wary of my new community, and I never really assimilated as a high school kid to my new environs. I found myself spending almost every weekend back in Rochdale Village with my friends, in a place that even with all the strife, I felt comfortable in.
 
Heck, people thought I still lived in Rochdale Village at this time, but although both of my feet were not permanently out of the neighborhood, I visited my old haunts through 1976—and since then, I have never been back.
 
I have lived in Massapequa—now Massapequa Park—off and on for those 50 years, and have even raised my own family here.
 
So today is a sad day and a happy day, too, as I look back on the past half century as a somewhat reluctant Long islander.
 
I know that I never could move back to New York City ever again. Once you live on Long Island, it is difficult to go back.
 
And during the pandemic, so many New York City residents wanted to move out to the Island, for many of the same reasons—and many different reasons—that my parents decided to move out for good in 1971.
 
It is funny how things are so cyclical.
 
Right now, I am happy to be on the outside looking in, close enough to New York City to still feel the energy it delivers, yet far enough away to be able to diffuse the negative energy that the city also produces.
 
Personally, I cannot believe it is 50 years to the day that we left, and it might actually be 50 years to the minute that we left as I am writing this Rant.
 
It is difficult to fathom and to fully process this occasion, but I have tried to do it here in this entry.
 
I still have New York City blood in me, and I always will, but I am a full-fledged Long Islander now after 50 years here.
 
And yes, the two can co-exist. 

Rant #2,700: I Just Want To Celebrate

BINGO!
 
We have reached another plateau at the Ranting and Raving Blog, hitting our 2,700th entry today.
 
Believe me, the way things have been going lately, I never thought that we would get to this number, but we finally did, a couple of days later than I originally had planned.
 
But better late than never.
 
And let me tell you, writing this blog is pretty therapeutic.
 
Now having done it for all of these years, I finally understand why people used to love to write entries in their diary.
 
Sometimes when you write things out, they seem to be clearer, rather than the often jumbled mess they are in your mind.
 
Putting it on paper—or in my case, putting it up electronically—is the way I sort things out, and I am more than happy to provide you with my thoughts each and every weekday … or at least each and every weekday that I am able to do so.
 
And as I have said from day one, you don’t have to agree with me at all. We can have a proper discourse, as long as things are civil.
 
That is fine with me.
 
You learn from what I say, and I learn from what you say.
 
That is the proper way to do it, I do believe.
 
I have been doing this blog since May 4, 2009, so we are well into our 12th year, with the blog bar mitzvah year coming up right around the corner in 2022.
 
We have covered just about every topic under the sun, from my dislike of current entertainment to the coronavirus, and seemingly everything in between.
 
It has been fun, it has been exhausting, it had been exhilarating, it has been poignant, it has been all over the place.
 
But one thing that every entry shares is that it is all here.
 
I pull very few punches when I write entries for this blog, and I do put my heart clearly on the table most of the time.
 
I don’t mince words.
 
If I like something, you will know about it; if I don’t like something, you will also know about it.
 
And I thank the people that read the blog.
 
You guys have made everything great for me.
 
Heck, if just one person read this each day, I guess I would be happy.
 
Yes, we are monetized, but I don’t make one red cent from these Rants, and it is better that way.
 
I don’t need thousands of people reading these Rants.
 
I am happy that we do have some regular readers, but it has become an exclusive club here, which is fine with me.
 
We have countless other people reading what I have to say on Facebook, so I am happy that people are reading what I have to say, ingesting what I have to say, and formulating their own opinions about what I have to say.
 
So going on 13 years, how does the future look for the Ranting and Raving Blog?
 
I think it looks pretty good.
 
I enjoy writing in the blog format, and I enjoy writing about whatever I want to write about five days a week.
 
Could this expand to a video presentation, or a Vlog?
 
I have thought about it at times, and right now, I am quite happy with just the writing aspect of it.
 
I guess I could go on YouTube and make a daily presentation there, but while I will never say never about such a thing, it really isn’t in the offing, at least right now.
 
I like to almost handle this as a newspaper feature, and that doesn’t include any video of me reading what I have written, at least not right now.
 
Maybe something to explore at another time.
 
So you will have to read what I write each weekday, if that is what you choose to do.
 
Hopefully, this 64 going on 65 years old body holds up.
 
Right now I am doing fine, living with my new reality that I have a “bum” eye.
 
I have been to a few eye doctors now, they have given me the green light to do anything I want to do, so I will follow what they have to say and not wallow in any self pity.
 
I can see the light!
 
Yes, I can, and the Ranting and Raving Blog will go with me wherever I am for the foreseeable future.
 
We hope to reach entry number 2,800 sometime early next year.
 
Thanks for joining me on this journey.