I Found Some Blog

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Author: Cher Scholar (Page 82 of 102)

Crash Week

September 18, 2008 / / 0 Comments

David-foster-wallace Wow…what a week we’ve had: the markets, the election, David Foster Wallace.

I just spent my lunch hour experiencing the closest I’ve ever imagined to seeing a run on a bank. It’s like Mary Poppins but in reverse: the lobby of Bank of America filled with WaMu customers trying to transfer their monies. And it’s sad because I liked WaMu. I really did. They had pleasant lobbies and were always situated in very cool buildings of retro architecture.  Okay, not a good reason to love your bank, but…

And then the suicide of David Foster Wallace really shook me up. I was a bonofide fan of this writer. Although I only had three books of his (two personally signed) and although I had only been to three of his readings, I took his style and thoughts to great heart. He wrote funny and touching short stories and hilarious yet philosophical essays on pop culture, politics, pretty much anything with the best, most interesting footnotes you’ve ever seen. (So much better than someone trying to explicate a T.S. Eliot poem but don’t get me started.)

He wrote wonderfully packed sentences, was handsome in a frazzled sort of way, and came across as a genuinely nice dude. The last reading I attended was years ago at UCLA’s Hammer Museum in Westwood. He read us an unbelievably tragic story about a baby and then described how it was part of his effort to give up a tone of irony for one of sincerity.

Irony is the “it” attitude of my generation. People my age only like things ironically, with a wink wink. Which is why everyone always thinks I like Cher ironically. Which I don’t and that annoys me. But I really love irony in its naked form. But DFW got me to see how overdone it’s become and how spiritually empty it leaves us. I yearned to see the kind of sincerity back in writing that he said he was going to be attempting. I looked forward to that and decided to try to move in that direction myself.

I even thought about his idea weeks ago as I was converting my two Olivia Newton John albums to Mp3 and came across one of the few songs I know of that Olivia wrote herself, “The Promise” about how wonderful dolphins are. The song lyrics are easy to snicker at because they’re so sincere but I just took a minute to love them for just that reason. It’s so much safer to be ironic. So much braver to be sincere. And you end up feeling more moved by it. His mission was a noble one.

Read my brief review of his book of essays, A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, from the site Ape Culture. That's the book where DFW urged us to consider the TV and the fact that we spend a lot of time staring at a piece of furniture. Absurd, true yet somehow acceptable. David Foster Wallace, I believe you did what you had to do…but I wish you were still here.

   

The OCFC

September 18, 2008 / / 0 Comments

Fanclub I joined the Cher fan club and lived to tell you about it. It was $25.

By the way, I was a member during the inaugural year of this club back in the late 90s and you got a folder in the mail back in those days — which I still have. I can’t remember what they charged…maybe $15? Total guess. Years later I also bought the late-70s Cher fan club packet on eBay. I have no idea who ran that club but I loved that it was this kit in the mail with a letter from Cher, a poster and these official-like documents. I love the secret nature of official fan clubs and start to want it to get all CIA with dossiers, passports, ID Cards (Barry Manilow’s fan club actually had those), and local meetings to discuss affairs of the Cher state.

I enjoyed reading the official newsletters in the mail so I’m wondering how a web-style organization will feel. So far, I like the little touches on the site like the floating butterflies on the secret members-only submenu. On the downside, those frames get really screwy if you use your back button (usability issues – it’s my bag.)

And I actually read the user agreement before signing up – which as a normal person I normally wouldn’t do. But this is a fan club so I was interested to see how much of a legal binding agreement I was getting myself into. The thing was 20 printed pages – longer than wedding reception contracts I’ve seen – by like 18 pages!

We’ve come a long way, baby, from that pink one-sheet sign-up in 1977.

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Sonny & Cher’s Record-breaking Stint at the Iowa State Fair

September 12, 2008 / / 0 Comments

While I was searching for pictures online of Sonny & Cher performing live in the 70s, I came across this little statistic:

Who holds the record for attracting the largest Grandstand crowd?

  • In 1972 Sonny and Cher attracted 26,200 in two shows.
  • In 1975 the Beach Boys drew 25,400 in one show.
  • In 1970 Johnny Cash attracted 25,300 in two shows.
  • In 1974 Chicago played to 24,700 in one show.
  • In 1982 the Oak Ridge Boys drew 23,500 in two shows.

The internationally acclaimed Iowa State Fair is the single largest event in the state and one of the oldest and largest agricultural and industrial expositions in the United States.

Source: http://www.iowastatefair.com/about/trivia.php

New CherScholar.com Cooking

September 12, 2008 / / 0 Comments

There is a lot I wan't to talk about right now that I hope I can get to next week: a very interesting French/Italian collection of 60s Sonny & Cher songs a diligent Cher scholar sent me last week and my first experiences after joining The Official, International, World-Renowned Cher Fan Club. It was actually fun and I'll divulge my journeys into that early next week. In the meantime, I've been revamping CherScholar.com.

The idea for this came to me last year when I realized I needed to professionalize my publishing credits page and CherScholar.com looked pretty amateurish as it was inter-woven into my other sites. It needed to grow up a bit. Not that it's completely mature now, but it's better.

Newcs
 

It's up and surf-able but only in a sort of beta form. When I transfered all the text, encoded punctuations became garbled and I now need to re-read every freakin word of the damn thing to find unfortunate parentheses and dashes a global search and replace surely missed. And that's a major pain in my ass and will take me a few days. I blame Microsoft products. But it's readable at this point.

I've organized the site more like a learning institution and expanded out some of the sections a tiny bit (tabloids, records) and added whole new sections on books on Cher, television, photographs and concerts. And there's a new glossary of Cher terms I hope you'll enjoy.

If you can stand to wade through the typos, spelling errors and punctuation tragedies, check it out at www.cherscholar.com. Otherwise, wait a week!

Yours in Cher scholarship…

   

Rags, Stars, 80s Videos, Rosetta Stone, Black Rose, Les Dudek, Elton John, Kathy Griffin and Whatever Else I Can Throw Into One Blog Post

September 4, 2008 / / 2 Comments

BlackRoseIP-2 80s Videos

I’m not even gonna go near The Enquirerthis week or this year for that matter (between all the John Edwards, Sarah Palin and Cher stories I’ll lose my mind). 

I started a new ceramics class last Saturday and then came home and threw a small dinner party that evening. On Sunday I was so exhausted I crashed and spent 12 straight hours watching “80 Hours of 80s” on VH1-Classic. It was like a flashback to my teen years where I spent the days and night watching 80s videos. All day Sunday I kept saying I should at least read my mail during the commercials and videos I hated (like U2s "With or Without You" or anything by The Romantics) but I found myself just as mesmerized as I was 20 years ago through every single ridiculous yet charming video.

It makes no sense. I feel like I have severe attention deficit watching modern videos with all their jump cuts and poses. But 80s videos, were nothing but mindless shenanigans in front of a camera happen, those suckers hypnotize me for hours. I wasted the entire day laying on the couch. I didn’t even eat much. I even saw a few video’s I’d never seen before and decided to seriously re-evaluate Sinead OConnor (due to "I Want Your Hands on Me") and reconfirmed my yen for P.I.L. (with "Rise"). Then one video practically got me to giddy as I hit the record button on my Crap-o (my Comcast DVR) – it was like 1986 and I was hitting Play on my prehistoric VCR that would groan for two seconds before actually recording anything so that now I have tapes and tapes of videos with the beginnings missing. But this song I saw only once or twice in the 80s but loved it, LOVED IT (and could never find on 45, CD or even now on iTunes!) The Producers singing “What’s He Got That I Aint Got” – perfect 80s-ness.

Blog Questions

To answer a few recent questions posted on the blog:

  1. How is Rosetta Stone going? I love it so far and am still trying to find time to work on it more often. It's designed to teach you how to learn a language as you first did as a toddler. I got 98% on my first lesson; and I am so not a left-brained/memorize-it sort person. So that’s a good sign. 
  2. Do I think the unavailability of Starshas contributed to its current cult status among fans? Most probably so, but I still think that fact is more of a detriment to Cher’s long-term respect as a talented musical artist than it is a kewl underground gem we can all bond over. Why? Because it’s not like Neil Young who maybe has a rare great album that’s become a cult find but he also has plenty of other critically acclaimed albums to rest his laurels on. Cher has lots of pop albums that are easy to find and a few awesome ones that are hard to find. It’s only a cool thing among fans. The rest of the world is still in the dark about it. I will concede that I’m not sure Cher’s respect among critics will even yet treat Stars fairly, but I think she’s definitely getting there, each year more and more respect.

Kathy Griffin Meets Cher
Kathy Griffin’s implored Rosie O'Donnell to introduce her to Cher in exchange for getting Rosie into some braniac conference. This all happened on a recent episode of Griffin’s reality show. Here’s a story about her meeting with Cher.

Black Rose
I was doing research on the spelling of Les Dudek’s name for a Cher Glossary I’m putting together for the revamp of CherScholar.com and I came across this interesting Wikipedia entry that claims there are enough spare tracks for a Black Rose (see kewl pic above) album #2 and that "Don’t Trust that Woman" was written by Les Dudek and Cher. But I thought the co-writer was Elton John (as Lady Choc Ice) and that the song ended up on John’s album Leather Jackets (see the lyrics and credits here on an Elton John discography site) and as explained by Elton John and Cher on The Joan Rivers Show.

However, lesdudek.com list the same song same lyrics for his Gypsy Ride album and claims it was written by Cher and himself: http://www.lesdudek.com/disco/gypsy.htm. Here's the sound clip: http://www.lesdudek.com/disco/byte/gr/gypsy09.mp3.

Yahoo Music clears it up and says it was written by all three of them.

Three things I conclude from this lesson:

  1. Cher can co-write some catchy sh*t.
  2. This song can be contorted into vastly different pop and rock genres.
  3. I like Les Dudek’s voice. I really do.

Do you think there was a jam session with all three of them on this little piece? Nah.

  

Cher Hearts Hillary

August 28, 2008 / / 1 Comment

Scsunsetstripriot I’m a Cher fan; I’m a dog fan; I love Mexican food; I dig pottery and poetry; I adore the southwest and I’m a political junkie. Two of these things have come to clash this week – Cher and politics. Don’t get me wrong: I love me some Cher stuff; but I actually get really fired up about the politics. 

And yet I really debated even covering this issue in 'I Found Some Blog,' even bothering to discuss Cher’s comments to Liz Smith about both of their feelings on US presidential democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama. I debated discussing it for two days and for two big reasons.

First, my parents told me never to bring up politics in a mixed crowd. So you can probably guess by that rule my parents are democrats. This blog is definitely a mixed crowd. So in warning: if you’re not someone of liberal leanings, go get yourself some coffee or take a walk around the block.

Secondly, is this blog really the place to hash out this sort of thing? And this is really a stickler. On the one hand the purpose of this blog originally was more about me and my learning to journal on a regular basis about semi-personal things, all under the guise of a celebrity blog; so political discussions sorta fit within that framework. And sometimes personal anecdotes bring readers and writers together—but sometimes personal subjects are just too derisive, you know? Sometimes it just doesn’t help to share.
But does that make soap-boxing permanently off limits? We can’t go that far.

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Rumors about Cher Playing the Next Catwoman

August 28, 2008 / / 3 Comments

If I had a dollar for every film role Cher was rumored to be in the running for…I go get me some Shakeys pizza.

One news report says “Veteran singer Cher” — veteran: that's a new one — is first in line to play Catwoman in the next Batman movie.  This we hear is according to the franchise’s director Christopher Nolan. However, Angelina Jolie is also rumored to be up for the part.

According to the Sunday Mirror,

"Cher is Nolan's first choice to play Catwoman. He wants to portray her like a vamp in her twilight years. The new Catwoman will be the absolute opposite of Michelle Pfeiffer and Halle Berry's creations." Julie Newmar was the first actress to take on the role in the 1960s Batman television series. The supervillainess has also been played by Eartha Kitt, Lee Meriwether, Michelle Pfeiffer and Halle Berry.

This doesn’t mean Cher has agreed, responded or even been approached officially yet for this part. So don’t go updating your Cher-filmographies, batkids. In fact, many entertainment news site are expressing their deep skepticism about this particular rumor.

 

Celebrity Family Feud

August 28, 2008 / / 0 Comments

Familydvd08A friend showed me a few episodes of her new DVD of All-Star Family Feud. It must have been circa the late 70s because host Richard Dawson made a joke about the Jimmy Carter, Ted Kennedy, Jerry Brown debates.

This particular episode pitted the cast of The Love Boat against the cast of Eight Is Enough (I never liked Eight is Enough  by the way - was it a comedy, a drama?). The Love Boatcast seemed a bit wild. Cruise director Julie threw a few angry eyes at Doc for his lame answers. Issac looked very flirty. On the other side, it seemed almost like a real dysfunctional family of 8 is Enuffers. To the directive “Name a body part where you would dab perfume” Dick Van P. answered inexplicably “the tip of your tongue.”

One question was “Name an Italian singer.” 100 people surveyed, top 8 answers on the board:

Enrico Caruso – 19 (who?)
Frank Sinatra – 18
Mario Lanza – 16
Dean Martin – 13
Sergio Franci  – 7 (who?)
Sonny Bono –4
Tony Bennett – 3
Perry Como – 1

No one guessed Sonny Bono, including Dick Van Patton, who at some point was golfing friend of Sonny. Maybe that was later, in Sonny’s Palm Springs era.
   

Wrecking Crew Documentary is Awesome

August 25, 2008 / / 3 Comments

Cherwc If you live in LA, go see the documentary The Wrecking Crew at the Arclight in Hollywood this week only. The movie not only has good commentary from Cher, it has a semi-lengthy clip of Sonny & Cher in sessions for their Wondrous World album and interviews and conversations about the many musicians and producers who worked with them in the 60s and 70s. You get a great sense of what recordings were all about during that time of that frenetic westcoast sound S&C were part of. You also get:

  • Extensive interviews and discussions about drummer Hal Blaine, who played on many a Cher and Sonny & Cher album.
  • Interviews with Snuff Garrett – including a clip where he talks about “Gypsys Tramps and Thieves” a fact that made me rethink the musicians used for the All I Ever Need is You album. If the Wrecking Crew played for Snuff on the solo Kapp album Cher in 1971, they most likely played on the duet album as well instead of S&C’s live band at the time who played on their first live album.
  • Jimmy Webb was also interviewed extensively but not about anything related to Cher.
  • This tightly knit group of studio musicians were more often than not excluded from album credits even though they were the real musicians behind so many iconic albums, even for heavy-hitters like The Beach Boys and The Byrds. Conventional wisdom was that it would have been embarrassing to credit them. Buy at least producers like Phil Spector and Snuff Garret made sure they got paid well. It’s also interesting to note that Sonny Bono did credit them on Sonny & Cher’s debut album Look at Us: Earl Palmer, Hal Blaine, Don Randi, Mike Rubini, Don Peake, Julius Wechter.
  • Cher commented that she didn’t know how great these musicians were when she recorded with them; she was very shy and new to recording and she was basically just trying not to get in anyone’s way. Years later other musicians would ask her about working with these musicians with awe and respect.
  • The Wrecking Girl had one chick, Carol Kaye, and she was awesome! Worth seeing the movie for her contributions alone. She explained first hearing and working on “The Beat Goes On”  and coming up with that great bass hook. She sang how the song sounded as written (kind of adult contemporary, not very groovy) and how she thought ‘we gotta light this thing up!’ Very funny. She said Sonny loved it and they used it. Her story was indicative of how these studio musicians contributed in substantial ways to songs from Herb Albert to The Beach Boys.
  • More interesting tid-bits about what contributed to the wall of sound: the ceramic walls of Gold Star Studios, the bleeding between playing instruments and making musicians do so many takes, they became exhausted (less showboating).
  • If you see the movie at the Arclight in Hollywood, you are in a one-mile radius of where all these great songs were recorded. Amazing insight into 60s California sound.

I also learned a lot about Plas Johnson and Tommy Tedesco who was doing guitar on just about every iconic piece of music from the 60s or 70s, including many TV themes like Bonanza and MASH.

At the end of the movie there was a Q&A with Don Randi (who played piano on Look at Us)  with the film’s director. The film is doing very well in festivals and showcases but is looking for a distributor. They do plan a DVD and soundtrack at some point. There are 125 songs in the movie, so that will be an interesting soundtrack. Check Wreckingcrewfilm.com for more information. Or read my post from last week.
   

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