After Jon Snow and Ygritte, Ten TV Couples We Would Have Liked to See Married in Real Life. You Might Disagree with Number Six.

wedding-rings — Real wedding rings for TV couples?

Jon Snow and Ygritte happily ever after? No, (spoiler alert if you are way, way behind) it didn’t turn out that way on Game of Thrones. But we have hopes in real life, as Kit Harrington and Rose Leslie, the two actors who play(ed) the roles, were married June 23rd. With no White walkers or impenetrable walls in sight (yet), their love affair has a chance for a good long run.

Jon and Ygritte are not the first TV costars to be married in real life. We can go back to Lucy and Ricky, ie Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, on I Love Lucy, and even before that to Burns and Allen, with George Burns playing off his real-life wife, the wonderfully ditzy Gracie Allen. A few years later Martin Landau and Barbara Bain, a married couple, were both part of the ensemble cast of Mission: Impossible, while Jill Eikenberry worked alongside her spouse Michael Tucker on L.A. Law.

So what other co-stars should have been married for real? Here’s my Top Ten list.

Ten Costars Who Should Be, or Should Have Been, Married in Real Life

Roseanne and John Goodman Roseanne: Only because he is such a good actor, he could make us believe they belong together.
Dick van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore The Dick Van Dyke Show: Oh Rooooob, didn’t you want to be with Laura all the time?
Daniel J. Travanti and Veronic Hamel Hill Street Blues: The Pizza Man sizzled with the D.A.
Bryan Cranston and Anna Gunn Breaking Bad: Because all that intensity should have carried on into real life.
Gwen Stefanie and Blake Shelton The Voice: Ok, this is a gimme.
Robin Wright and Kevin Spacey House of Cards: Yeah I know that wouldn’t be his preference, and he has done bad things, but it would be great tabloid fodder.
Julie Bowen and Ty Burrell AND Eric Stonestreet and Jesse Tyler Ferguson Modern Family: A sweet twofer.
Bob Newhart and Suzanne Pleshette The Bob Newhart Show: They were so good together they made it to the final episode of Newhart, a totally different show. With apologies to Joanna Loudon. Sorry, you will never be the ideal mate for Bob.
Lena Headey and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau Game of Thrones: No other brother and sister act ever lit up the small screen the way the Lannister kids did.
Claire Daines and Damian Lewis Homeland: Brody we hardly knew ye.

So that’s my Top Ten. As always, I am open to suggestions…

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When I Want to Laugh I Think of Allan Sherman

Folk singer, Celebrity, and Nut. — Allan Sherman’s greatest albums from 1962 and 1963.

Continuing on with my occasional list of albums that have had the most influence on me, I am heading back to the early 1960’s and the First King of Song Parodies, Allan Sherman. Before Steve Dahl rocked with “Ayatollah,” before Al Yankovic foisted his weirdness upon us, I was memorizing the lyrics to every song on Sherman’s three hit albums, My Son the Folk-Singer, My Son the Celebrity, and My Son the Nut.

A TV producer with a knack for putting funny words to well-known tunes, Sherman, a Chicago native, was a mega-star for a short period of time. He had a Top 40 hit with “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah,” he parodied the French Revolution and Louis the 16th to the tune of “You Came a Long Way from St. Louis,” and he dipped into his own heritage with “Harvey and Sheila,” the story of a Jewish couple set to “Hava Nagila”. And yes, that is where Barb derived the name for our pond swans. More on Barb and “Hava Nagila” below.

My family had all three albums. I played them on our old mono record player incessantly, my parents allowing my 7-year-old mind to be indelibly marked. Just how permanent was the damage? Badly enough that just last month I was able to perform an acapella duet rendition of “Hungarian Goulash” while quaffing beers and eating schnitzel at a Haufbrau Haus restaurant just outside of Cincinnati.

I wasn’t the only family member with Allan Shermania. I remember my sister Linda and her friend Marilyn performing “Here’s to the Crabgrass” while rushing a high school sorority in 1965. They didn’t make it into the sorority, maybe because by then Sherman’s career was already on the wane. His health was waning as well; he died in 1973, ten days short of his 49th birthday.

And inspired by the master, I have been writing parody lyrics ever since…

—–

Hava Nagila: Alan Sherman parodied it; Harry Belafonte loved it. And Barb couldn’t get enough of Belafonte’s version on the incomparable (more than a year on the charts) 1959 album Belafonte at Carnegie Hall. She even asked Brett Lavender, the wacky, New-Yorky, DJ to play this version at Laury’s Bat Mitzvah. If Barb had a Top Ten list this album would rank right near #1.

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Lunar Eclipses and Mad Men: My List Continues

dark-side-and-wish — “The Dark Side of the Moon” meets “Wish You Were Here”

Post #2 In My Favorite 10 Albums Challenge List.

A friend recently asked me what musical groups were still on my list of “bands I had never seen but would like to.” I don’t have such a list, but if I did Pink Floyd would be on it. That being said, I know I will never see them because 1) they are no longer a band, and 2) Roger Waters holds strong anti-Israel, pro-BDS beliefs (if you don’t know what that is, email me at les.raff@post.com) that would keep me from attending any concert he performed in. So though I will never see “The Floyd,” their music still hits my top ten album list. The question is, which album?

The easy answer is “The Dark Side of the Moon,” the 1973 Pink Floyd album that sold 46 trillion copies and spent nearly 7 decades on the Billboard 200, a record matched only by Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and Weird Al Yankovic’s “Polka Party!” But perhaps familiarity does breed contempt, as I now shudder every time the cash register rings at the beginning of “Money,” reminding me of the perpetual cash machine the album provides for Waters, Mason, Gilmour, and Wright.

So what is eclipsing “Dark Side” for me? It has to be Pink Floyd’s 1975 follow up, “Wish You Were Here.” It is only five tracks long, though track one, “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” has many, many parts divided over both sides of the LP. SOYCD, like the title track, is a love song. But neither composition is aimed at a spouse, a girlfriend, or a mistress. The two pieces are a paean to Syd Barrett, the band’s long-gone, drug-addled founding member. Syd died in 2006, amazing all who had assumed he had already been dead for at least twenty years.

The album also includes”Welcome to the Machine” and “Have a Cigar,” darkly humorous condemnations of the music/recording business. The latter features the prophetic lyric “By the way, which one’s Pink.” This was many years before Alicia Beth Moore raised her glass and claimed the title. Maybe all those drugs gave the bandmates a peek into the future.

And that’s it. Five tracks. Blink and you miss it. But don’t worry. As long as WDRV, 97.1 The Drive, is still playing Classic Rock you don’t have to wish, this album will always be here.
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Favorite Album Forum: My List Begins with the Beatles and the Stones

stones-beatles — This Beatles, Stones combo would make a smash double album!

Roger Marcus, a friend, fellow traveler, game show enthusiast, and trivialogist, has invited me to join the Facebook Favorite Album Forum. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be spouting on about ten different albums and what they mean to me. In addition, I will be inviting other friends to contribute their favorites.

I’ll be mixing these posts in with the usual collection of blogs. Since this is a Facebook project, if you want to contribute your ten, please do so on Facebook and be sure to “Friend” me. If you are not on Facebook, you can either sign up (another victim for Mark Z.) or just email me (les.raff@post.com) your ten favorites and I will post them for you.

Enough housekeeping! For my first entry, I plunge into the Beatles vs Stones debate. Although I was always more of a Beatles fan, I can greatly appreciate the rock’n’roll mastery of the Rolling Stones 1971 album, Sticky Fingers. The album cover, with a real live zipper, was notorious, but it was the music that rocked. Brown Sugar got things galloping, Wild Horses slowed things down. For me, the real treats were the guitar riff on Bitch, and the fantastic jam at the end of Can’t You Hear Me Knocking, the best four and a half minutes of Stones vinyl anywhere.

Beatles anyone? While most rock critics would choose Rubber Soul or Sgt. Pepper as their most iconic, trend-setting, albums, I delight in A Hard Day’s Night (1964). A soundtrack to the movie of the same name, side one starts out with a ringing guitar chord that always makes me stop and listen. And so many of the songs just fill my mind with their related movie scenes. Side two (on the UK version) is a collection of non-movie songs that work great too!

Beatles or Stones-either way it’s a great choice, a choice that is still relevant 50 years later. Any thoughts on these two top albums? Let me hear from you! And look out for more great sounds in the weeks to come.

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Dear Evan Hansen: Why Don’t I Love You?

Dear Evan Hansen:

I know your therapist wants you to write self-affirming letters to yourself to help you improve your self-image and cope better in interactions with the people around you. And I know you won a whole bunch of Tony Awards last year and that you inspire lots of people. But does that mean I have to love you?

Barb and I booked our tickets to see your show at The Music Box Theater in New York City months ago. Last Sunday, travel umbrellas held high, we sloshed the mile and a half to the theater to see the matinee. We weren’t quite sure what your story was, and we weren’t familiar with the music, but that never prevents us from enjoying a really great show. We didn’t know much about “Hamilton” before we saw that either…

Anyway, umbrellas securely tucked out of the way, we settled in for what we hoped would be two and a half hours of being swept away. The stage was hung with giant Twitter feeds and highlights from other social media, so we knew the show would be hip and au courant. And we had pretty good seats, eighth row, a bit left of center, just like my politics. We were ready!

And then your tale began. You were a good kid, but like all high school kids you had some problems. Then one of those damn self-affirming letters you wrote wound up in the wrong place. Misinterpreted, it put you into a “situation” that you exaggerated, and eventually outright lied about. First good things happened, then bad things happened, and then we fast forwarded a year and things looked brighter. The end.

During the course of your story, you sang some songs and everyone else sang a few too. I wish I could remember even one melody! And I can’t put my finger on it, but all the actors seemed just a beat or two off. Maybe it was because that show was the last performance for one of your costars, the guy who transforms from your early nemesis to your post hoc best friend. But the curtain call was great, as we got to see the cast bid him a tearful farewell. That was true emotion!

The playbill compared your story to the likes of previous Broadway teen romps like “Hairspray,” “Grease” and “Next to Normal.” But the first two rocked, and the latter was more about adult mental illness than teenage angst. I’m sorry Evan, I think you just have a bad case of Young Adult Fiction Syndrome. Painful, but it won’t last forever.

I know you are coming to Chicago next year. I recommend you look up Ferris Beuler and spend some quality time at Wrigley Field with him. I promise you that you’ll feel a whole lot better. No self-affirming confessions required!

Sincerely,

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Fleetwood Mac Says “Go your Own Way” to Lindsey Buckingham

rumours — Fleetwood Mac and Rumours. Lindsey Buckingham will be gone.

Have a favorite song? I’ve been reading the book “Why You Love Music: From Mozart to Metallica, the Emotional Power of Beautiful Sounds.” It had me wondering what songs would make my Top Ten list.

Of course, in my list, there would be some U2, some Steely Dan, a flicker of Pink Floyd. But sitting way up at the top would be the most perfect rock-pop song ever recorded, Fleetwood Mac’s “Go Your Own Way.” A relentless drumbeat, a wailing guitar, and the Lindsey Buckingham lead vocals make a relentless, infectious, pop wall of sound. But things are about to change…

A little history. Way back in the sixties, Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, two bluesy sorts of guys helped form a group with the inspired name of Fleetwood Mac. The band got some radio airplay here in the states and had a minor hit or two, but was best known for its constantly changing lineup and for a fight with a manager over whether the band, or the manager, owned the name “Fleetwood Mac.” A phony tour and the ensuing lawsuits gave the group some publicity but didn’t sell many albums or concert tickets.

And then, in the mid-70’s, the California couple Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham joined the band and the blues guys began to rock and roll. They called their first album together “Fleetwood Mac.” The lead single in the US, “Over My Head,” was written and sung by Christine McVie, John’s ex. I heard it and I was hooked. Hearing the song still reminds me of my first med school crush. The album was a hit, but Fleetwood Mac was about to unleash a monster.

Late in 1976, the band released the single “Go Your Own Way,” followed in early 1977 by the album “Rumours.” Fueled by drugs and disintegrating relationships, the song and the album were the band’s pinnacle of success, selling millions and spending months at #1.

The band has rolled on ever since. Barb and I caught them in Rosemont three years ago. Mick, John, Christine, Stevie, and Lindsey had all aged, there were rumours of a shadow band playing behind the curtain, but the show was still fun and still brought back all the memories.

And now the band has announced it is going on tour again–but without Lindsey Buckingham. While the reasons why are known only to insiders, the man behind my top tune has been fired, replaced by two other musicians. But I will always have his sound, safe in my iTunes, as he goes his own way.

And how about you? What is your favorite song?
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