The Reverend Will the Thrill Presents a Bonus Album of the Week! (One From the Vault!)

I posted this originally on Facebook (back in the day before I posted all of these here) on 30 September, 2023.  Given the topic of the Album of the Week I just posted for 17 May, 2025, I thought it seemed apropos to revisit this one.  (By the way, I'm still looking for that second volume of the "Rockford" TV movies.)  Enjoy...

 

 

One of my "guilty pleasures," for lack of a better term (although, to be honest with you, I don't feel too guilty about it), are police procedural/mystery television programs. I have no doubt that this is my mother's influence on me. When I was a kid we used to watch shows like "Remington Steele" and "Murder, She Wrote" together. As an adult, it was "Grantchester" and "Blue Bloods." After she died, I bought the boxed sets of the original "Magnum, P.I." and "The Rockford Files"--two of her favourites--and have spent a number of evenings binge watching multiple episodes. They're highly enjoyable--what I call "TV comfort food." And you know what? I'm even comfortable enough in my heterosexuality to admit that I have a bit of a man crush on James Garner.

(NOTE: Between 1994 and 1999, James Garner reprised the role of Jim Rockford in eight made-for-TV movies. If anyone knows where I can find a DVD of the second volume of those programs, please let me know. I have Volume 1, but I'm having no luck finding Volume 2. Every website I check seems to be out of stock. Or if anyone has a copy lying around that they don't want anymore, I'm happy to take it off your hands.)

 

One of our favourites was (and, in my case, still is) the long-running CBS drama "NCIS." I was kind of saddened to learn of the death this past week of actor David McCallum who played my favourite character on the show, Dr. Donald "Ducky" Mallard, NCIS's lovably eccentric medical examiner. Whenever the actors' strike is finally resolved and the show can commence its 21st season, there will be a noticeable absence that even Dr. Jimmy Palmer himself would admit that he can't fill. (In researching this week's rant, I was surprised to discover McCallum actually attended medical examiner's conventions and became an expert in forensics to the point where show producer Donald P. Bellisario considered making him a technical adviser.)

 

In all the tributes and media stories about him over the last week, everyone has talked about his acting career going back to British television in the 1950s. After some notable performances in a few big films, particularly 1963's "The Great Escape" (which, oddly enough, also starred James Garner) and 1964's "The Greatest Story Every Told," in which he played Judas Iscariot, he was cast as Russian agent Illya Kuryakin who was partnered with American agent Napoleon Solo (Robert Vaughan) in the series "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." which ran from 1964 to 1968. The show made him something of a sex symbol and garnered him two of the three Emmy nominations he would achieve in his career. In the 35 years between "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." and "NCIS" (and what are the odds that his two biggest roles would have abbreviated government agencies in their titles?), he had a fairly solid acting career, but never achieved the level of fame that he got either in the 1960s or in the last two decades. Perhaps his biggest role during that time was a British sci-fi series called "Sapphire & Steel" in which he starred with Joanna Lumley from 1979 to 1982.

 

But none of the stories I've read about McCallum this week have touched on his other career as a musician. McCallum actually came from a musical family. His mother, Dorothy Dorman, was a concert cellist for the London Philharmonic Orchestra. His father, David McCallum Sr., was the principal first violinist for the Royal Philharmonic, the London Philharmonic, and the Scottish National Orchestras. David McCallum (the Younger) won a scholarship to University College School in Hampstead, London, where he studied music and played the oboe. It was there that he first became involved in acting. He left school when he was 18 and, after a National Service stint in the British Army, he began attending the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. The rest, as they say, is history.

 

But he never completely left his musical roots.  While starring in "The Man From U.N.C.L.E.," he released four albums with producer David Axelrod for Capitol Records in 1966 and 1967. Unlike a lot of actors who ventured into music at that time, McCallum did not sing on any of them. The songs on the albums were mostly instrumental versions of popular songs of the day that McCallum conducted. He even wrote a couple of original pieces that were featured on the albums. Perhaps the most well-known piece is one Axelrod composed called "The Edge" which was sampled by Dr. Dre on his song "The Next Episode" and was also featured in the video game "Grand Theft Auto IV." I first heard the song on the soundtrack to Edgar Wright's 2017 film "Baby Driver." This was where I discovered, much to my surprise, that McCallum had also had a musical career. In fact, I had to do some research to make sure it wasn't a different David McCallum. I really loved the piece and found that like so many of my favourite pieces of music, it's probably best appreciated behind the wheel of a car with a manual transmission.

 

So it's with that in mind, since no one else is doing it, that I'm choosing to focus on the musical side of David McCallum's career this week. Featuring the aforementioned track "The Edge," please enjoy his second album from 1967, "Music: A Bit More of Me."

 

Until next week, stay safe, be good to your neighbours, and please remember that if at first you don't succeed, then skydiving definitely isn't for you.

 

Yours in peace, love, and rock and roll!

The Reverend Will the Thrill

 

 

The Reverend Will the Thrill Presents the Film of the Week!

I think--I hope--that if there's one thing you can deduce about me as a person from reading these weekly "sermons" is how important film and music are in my life.  I get my love and appreciation of both primarily from my late father.  Growing up, he exposed me to all sorts of different music.  He did the same with movies.  I've loved film since he took me to see Star Wars (or as it's known today, Episode IV: A New Hope) in 1977.  I was three years old and you can only imagine what an impact that film had on a kid that age.  It's fascinating to me that it still has that effect on kids nearly 50 years later.

Throughout my youth, he would take me to movies when Heather would have a sleepover.  If there was something that everybody wanted to see, we would all go as a family.  When we finally got a VCR, he would pick up tapes of some of his favourite movies of his youth and introduce those to me as well.  As I've said in past rants, my favourite movie of all time is a tie between Dr. Strangelove and Casablanca--both of which are older than me, both of which he showed me when I was in college.

When DVDs were introduced, we were both quite taken with the format--particularly with all the behind-the-scenes "bonus features."  We would actually exchange films and later compare notes.  "What did you think of the commentary on Casablanca?"  "I loved Ebert's commentary, but I thought Rudy Behlmer's was kind of dry.  In fact, I didn't even finish listening to it.  It was kind of disappointing, because he seemed so animated in the documentary features."  What can I say?  Yes, I'm a dork.  So was Dad, but he was a lot cooler about it than I am.

If I feel compelled to buy a blu-ray disc of a movie that I already have in DVD, by and large, I'll give away the DVD to a good home.  There are a few exceptions--if the blu-ray has fewer bonus features than the DVD (yes, I'm looking at you, Pretty in Pink!  What the hell?), or if the soundtrack might be different (such as Love Actually).  But I've also noticed that I tend to hold on to certain titles just because they were among my favourites growing up.  In all of these cases, I even still have them on VHS because, being the sentimentalist I am, seeing those tapes remind me of certain times in my life and how those films played into it.  In some cases, those tapes were given to me as gifts--in one particular case a gesture that moved me almost to tears.

This past week, for better or worse, I bought all of the James Bond movies in blu-ray--I justified it by convincing myself that it was actually a bargain because they were second-hand and, therefore, cheaper.  I have a lot of fond memories of the series, mostly because it was something I shared with Dad.  We saw quite a few of those films together in theaters when they were first issued.  Back in the day, ABC used to air them in prime time and we had taped many of them from those broadcasts (we even managed to edit out the commercials).  In the mid-1990s, after Pierce Brosnan took over the role, there was a sudden resurgence in popularity for the franchise.  During that time I managed to acquire widescreen VHS copies of all of the films--at least the ones that had been done up to that time.  I still have those tapes--in the case of the Connery films, once again, gift... unexpected... moved... near tears.  In 2006, when Daniel Craig started playing Bond, the films were re-issued again in four box sets, each containing five movies, digitally remastered in 2-disc special editions.  In a review I wrote for a local publication at the time, I said that it was worth it just to hear Auric Goldfinger say, "No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!" in Dolby DTS 5.1 stereo surround sound.

When No Time To Die was released in 2021 (a year and a half late--thanks, Covid!), it was kind of hard to watch because it was the first Bond film that I couldn't talk to Dad about.  In fact, that's the one film in the series I've watched the least--although to be fair, it's not as old and does have a running time of 2 hours and 43 minutes.  And when I think of Bond, I tend to think of my Dad because we spent so much time together watching those movies.  In fact, after he died, it took me awhile to be able to bring myself to watch one again.

I suspect that on a subconscious level, I bought that blu-ray set this week because Wednesday was the anniversary of his passing.  After I realized that fact, I determined that the best way to remember him this week was to build some Lego insects (a long story--hopefully I'll have pictures up on Facebook soon) and watch what he once told me was his favourite 007 thriller.  I even indulged in a glass of really good Scotch.

Dad often told a story of going to see this film as a teenager.  He and a friend of his stayed in the theater, hiding behind their seats, staying for a couple more showings.  Granted, they were also horny teenage boys and Dad admits they primarily watched it repeatedly for the belly dancing scene in the gypsy camp.

Originally released in 1963, this was the second film in the franchise starring Sir Sean Connery as the world's least secret secret agent.  It was also the first film where everything that we love about Bond films started to come together.  It was the first to have a pre-credit sequence, the first to feature Desmond Llewelyn as MI6's quartermaster, Major Boothroyd, also known as "Q" (who would continue to play the role for the next 36 years until his death in 1999), and the first to feature Q's "gadgets," which would often save 007's life (I would love to have that briefcase).  It was also the first to feature a score by composer John Barry, who went on to write the scores for 10 more Bond films--more than any other composer.  I've often said that those scores frequently served as another character in those films, especially during the 1960s.

Written by Richard Maibaum and Johanna Harwood and based on the novel by Ian Fleming, the film stars Robert Shaw, Daniela Bianchi, Lotte Lenya, Pedro Armendáriz (in what would be his last film), and Walter Gotell (who would later go on to frequently play General Gogol during the Roger Moore era).  Produced by the team of Harry Saltzman and Albert R. "Cubby" Broccoli and directed by Terence Young, this week, I highly recommend From Russia With Love.

Until next week, stay safe, be good to your neighbours, and please remember that James Bond will return.

Yours in peace, love, and rock and roll!

The Reverend Will the Thrill

 

 

The Reverend Will the Thrill Presents the Album of the Week!

In the past, I've alluded to the fact that I grew up on and still enjoy certain police procedural/mystery/detective programs--one of my mother's lasting influences on me.  When the fall TV season starts, I try to not watch too many new shows just because I already watch too much and don't want to get hooked on anything new.  Each season, however, there's usually one program that looks intriguing enough to warrant my attention.  This past year, it was a spinoff of a long-running, beloved franchise.  Actually, it was a prequel.

I was excited by the concept of "NCIS: Origins" for a number of reasons.  First of all, it features the return of one Leroy Jethro Gibbs, the legendary NCIS special agent who led a team of other agents for nearly 20 seasons of the flagship "NCIS" program.  However, here we see Gibbs at the start of his career as he joins what's then known as NIS.  He's just come back from Desert Storm after nearly getting blown up in Iraq after finding out his wife and daughter had been murdered by a Mexican drug cartel leader.  Longtime fans of "NCIS" know this part of Gibbs's story, but now we get to see it played out.  Because the show is set in 1991, obviously Gibbs is played by a younger actor (Austin Stowell), but we still get to hear Mark Harmon narrate his past in a voiceover.

Given the fact that it is not just a period piece, but a period in which I lived and remember vividly, it's kind of humourous to see pieces of that time that are now antiquated, especially from a technological perspective.  In the first episode, we get to see the man who would become Gibbs's boss receive a page (and yes, I'm referring to Mike Franks, played here by Kyle Schmid).  At which point he pulls over his car at the nearest pay phone and calls his office to respond.  (If you're under the age of 25, feel free to Google the term "pay phone.")

What's also fun for those of us who have been watching the original "NCIS" for more than two decades, is that we get to once again enjoy beloved characters (albeit much younger) who passed away during the course of the original series, specifically Gibbs's father, Jackson, and of course Franks.  At one point we even get to meet a much younger Tobias Fornell, who I hope we'll get to see more of next season.  At some point, I'm really hoping we'll get to see a younger "Ducky" Mallard.

The one thing that makes this particular "NCIS" series special for me is its use of music.  And I'm not saying music hasn't had a place in the other series, but it was more of a special occasion type of thing--like the use of Warren Zevon's "Keep Me In Your Heart" during Jackson's funeral in 2014.  But in "Origins," it's practically another character.  I assume part of this is due to the "period piece" nature of the show--after all, we have to be reminded that it's 1991 somehow.  And while it would obviously be a mistake to use songs that were recorded later, the show's writers and producers can get away with using songs that were recorded before 1991.  Not only does the music provide background ambience, but it also becomes part of the story.  For example, in one episode we find out that not only was Officer Mary Jo Sullivan married (at least on paper), but her ex was a big fan of Ray Charles.  What a great excuse to feature "Georgia On My Mind" and "Hit the Road Jack" in your program!

I actually started putting together a playlist of some of these classic songs from the show--everything from Bob Dylan to Mötley Crüe, from Carly Simon to U2 (hey, that rhymes!).  By the end of the season, I actually had enough songs put together to fill an entire CD.  I don't know if they ever intend to release a soundtrack album--and they should--but I've already assembled my own just based on what I already had in my music collection.  It's been great hearing some of these songs again.  Some I hadn't heard in a long time.  Some I didn't really know, but I knew and liked the artist, so that gave me an excuse to track down the original album and fall in love with something new--or, at the very least, new to me (more on this next week).  I also have to say that (spoiler alert!) I never would have guessed Mike Franks was a Bangles fan.  He always seemed like more of a Johnny Cash kind of guy to me--not that I'm judging, since I'm a fan of both.

I even revisited this week's album which I hadn't listened to in its entirety in awhile.  It's featured (cover art and all) in an episode titled "Blue Bayou," in which Gibbs befriends his landlady.  They listen to the album on her portable turntable while assembling jigsaw puzzles.  And even though we only hear one song from the album during the episode, the album itself is treated almost as a pseudo-maguffin.

I'm often amazed by how frequently I have to remind myself what a great singer Linda Ronstadt was.  What has always fascinated me is how she interprets and performs a song.  Unlike so many of her contemporaries, as far as I know, she didn't write any of her own songs.  Instead she covered--and had some pretty big hits with--other people's material.  On this week's album, she covered the likes of Buddy Holly, Warren Zevon (twice), and Roy Orbison, whose song lent its title to that particular episode of "Origins." *  Originally released in 1977, the album climbed to the top of Billboard's Pop AND Country Album charts.  Featuring harmony vocals from Dolly Parton on "I Will Never Marry," please enjoy the great Linda Ronstadt with Simple Dreams.

Until next week, stay safe, be good to your neighbours, and please remember that if at first you don't succeed, then skydiving definitely isn't for you.

Yours in peace, love, and rock and roll!

The Reverend Will the Thrill

* GEEK NOTE:  On this album, Ronstadt also covers "Tumbling Dice" by my beloved Rolling Stones, written (of course) by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.  The slide guitar solo was performed by the great Waddy Wachtel, who actually played on most of the album.  Wachtel would later go on to play in Richards's solo band, The X-Pensive Winos.  SUPER GEEK NOTE:  Wachtel also played guitar for Warren Zevon during the time this album was released.  As stated, Ronstadt covered two of his songs on this album.  Wachtel played not only on those covers, but on the original recordings of both songs as well.

 

 

The Reverend Will the Thrill Presents the Film of the Week!

The only word I can think of to describe this week's film is "beautiful."  Virtually every frame of the movie looks like it could hang in an art museum.  When I look at it, I just want to step into it and be in that space.  I realize this is a trait of all of the films made by this particular director (even the animated ones), but, for some reason, this is my favourite of his and the one I've watched the most.  In fact, I think I'll watch it again after I finish writing this.

When I first saw the trailer for the film, I could tell just by the camera movements that Wes Anderson directed it.  His films all seem to have a certain stylized look about them.  It's that look that always seems to draw me into his films.  He always seems to combine that look with a clever script--which he also writes or co-writes--and great actors.  I would love nothing more than to be an extra in one of his movies.

W.C. Fields allegedly said, "Never work with children or animals."  Anderson, however, seems to be quite good at working with both, particularly in this film.  Set in September of 1965, the story focuses on Sam Shakusky and Suzy Bishop (played by Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward respectively--both making their acting debuts at the age of 12).  Sam is an orphan who has difficulty relating to those around him and has escaped from his scout camp to run away with Suzy who also has difficulty relating to those around her, particularly her attorney parents (Frances McDormand and Bill Murray).  Using Sam's wilderness survival skills that he learned as a Khaki Scout, the two escape to a small cove on the far end of the island they inhabit, all the while pursued by the adults in their lives including the island's lone police officer (Bruce Willis) and Sam's Scoutmaster (Edward Norton).

Like a lot of Anderson's films, it's easy to forget that the locations aren't real--they're more of an alternate universe version of some place we know to be real--in this case an island just off the east coast of the United States (the film was actually shot in Rhode Island which helped contribute to the film's overall appearance).  There is no Island of New Penzance or St. Jack Wood.  There is no U.S. Department of Inclement Weather or Khaki Scouts of North America.  But watching this movie kind of makes me wish these things did exist.  The one thing that is real is the emotional connections between the characters.  Anderson's films often remind us of how good it can feel to be in love.  This week's film also reminds us of how good it can feel to be young and in love.

Released in 2012, co-written with Roman Coppola (the two got an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay), and co-starring Jason Schwartzman, Tilda Swinton, and Bob Balaban, this movie also has a great soundtrack which made me fall in love with the music of Françoise Hardy and Hank Williams.  This week, from the bottom of my heart, I recommend Moonrise Kingdom.

Until next week, stay safe, be good to your neighbours, and please remember that if at first you don't succeed, then skydiving definitely isn't for you.

Yours in peace, love, and rock and roll!

The Reverend Will the Thrill 

The Reverend Will the Thrill Presents the Album of the Week!

As I write this, I'm kind of at a loss.  As I write this, I don't know what album to present this week.  I have lots of ideas--lots of albums out there that I'm very fond of for many different reasons, but I don't know what to say about them other than, "Here's an album I like.  Hope you like it too."  And I realize that that was the general idea behind these weekly recommendations, but--especially since I've started doing this as a blog post--I feel like it needs something more.  Maybe a few words about why I like it, how I stumbled upon it, what it means to me.  But nothing is coming to me.  I'm not really in the headspace for it, I guess.  I'm also at work which is a source of constant interruption.  And I realize that since I'm being paid to be here that that should be my priority--and it is--I just wish it would stop derailing my train of thought.

I keep hoping that as I continue writing, something will jump out at me.  I'm thinking back to my youth, when I first discovered and fell in love with rock music.  I started going through my parents' record collection looking for something new (or at least new to me) to listen to because I hadn't yet developed my own music collection.

Now I've got something...

This week's album is a bit on the obscure side.  In fact, it's the only album released by this particular group and, arguably, a relic of another time--which may be why I'm drawn to it in the first place.  I first found it in my parents' collection, strangely enough, not when I was in high school, but sometime after I graduated college.  Based on the record label (Elektra Records), producer (Paul A. Rothchild), the way the band's name was written on the front cover, as well as the band's wardrobe (the gentleman front and center appears to have been ejected from the set of a Robin Hood movie), I deduced that it was a psychedelic rock album from the mid to late 1960s.  Having a weakness for that sort of thing, I put it on the turntable and found, much to my delight, that my suspicions were correct.  Naturally, I was quite taken with it and listened to it quite a few times.  I was super excited some years later to find that, in spite of its relative obscurity, it had been released on CD, so of course I bought it immediately since, at that time, I no longer had access to a turntable.  It's interesting to me how it's not an album I play much, but when I do, I really enjoy it.  It always reminds me of that really weird but enjoyable time in my life when I first moved out of my parents' house and was officially "on my own."

Even though this was the group's only album, many members became known for other things later on.  Dallas Taylor would go on to become the drummer for Crosby, Stills & Nash, as well as Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and many of Stephen Stills solo projects.  Doug Lubahn sat in as a session bassist on The Doors' second album.  (The Doors also recorded for Elektra Records and were produced by Rothchild.)  After declining an offer to become their full-time bassist, he did actually play on many tracks for their next two albums.  Lead singer Cliff De Young turned to acting where he amassed over 130 film and television credits including The Hunger (1983) and Glory (1989).

Originally released in 1967, the album set itself apart by featuring two drummers, Dallas Taylor and Michael Ney, playing together.  It only reached #126 on the album chart, but the group enjoyed some moderate national success touring alongside other acts of the day, including Moby Grape, Canned Heat, and The Doors.  After a couple of personnel shake-ups, the group disbanded by 1968.  While definitely a product of its time, I still find the music enjoyable.   Allegedly taking their name from The Tibetan Book of the Dead (as well as a rather potent form of LSD), this week please enjoy Clear Light with their self-titled debut (and only) album.

It should be noted that the YouTube link does include the bonus track "She's Ready To Be Free" at the end.  This song was the B-side to their single "Black Roses" and was not on the original album, however it was included in the CD release (although why they put it in the middle of the album, I'll never know).

Until next week, stay safe, be good to your neighbours, and please remember that if at first you don't succeed, then skydiving definitely isn't for you.

Yours in peace, love, and rock and roll!

The Reverend Will the Thrill

The Reverend Will the Thrill Presents the Film of the Week!

Not to brag, but I'm the guy who gets recruited for trivia teams as a ringer, especially if music and film are the main topics.  The trivia team for which I regularly play is more of a general knowledge kind of thing.  Every time one of the questions is categorized as "Sports," everyone at our table simultaneously and sarcastically utters, "Yay, sports."  It is our weak spot both collectively as a group, as well as for me personally.  I was always the kid chosen last for whatever we were doing in PE class because I have no discernible athletic ability or understanding of the rules of many of the games.  When I was a young boy, I genuinely thought the whole point of football was to run and fall down because that's what I saw football players do on television.  In spite of the fact that I do actually admire people with finely tuned athletic abilities, this developed into a genuine apathy toward sports that continues to this day, my fondness for baseball notwithstanding (for more on this, please see this week's Album of the Week "sermon").

The interesting thing to me is that while I'm not really a sports fan, I do love sports movies.  I don't know how this works exactly.  The only thing I can figure is that the event itself is usually reserved for the last third (maybe even the last quarter) of the film with the rest of the movie devoted to the trials and tribulations of how the protagonists of the film got to the championship game, match, or whatever.  As a result, we don't have to watch the whole sporting event which, let's be honest, can drag on an excessively long time--especially if it's aired on CBS on a Sunday evening.  (Seriously?  The football season finally ends and now "60 Minutes" has to be delayed because of friggin' GOLF?  Note to CBS--we have a TV format for this sort of thing that won't delay your prime time programming.  It's called ESPN!  Look into it!)  As I said a few months ago, I'm particularly fond of boxing movies--and I like boxing about as much as I like basketball (which isn't much).  I wrote, "I don't think you could pay me to watch an actual boxing match--yet I'll watch Rocky at the drop of a hat."

Last week was the NFL draft.  I didn't watch any of it.  Not because the NFL has no concept of time (it should not take 30 minutes to play the last 60 seconds of a game!), or that I dread each upcoming season because the NFL has no concept of time.  I didn't watch any of it because I honestly don't care.  They run, they fall down--I don't understand the hype.  In lieu of following the draft, when I heard that it was going on, I decided to watch this week's movie instead.  Because, unlike the real draft, a movie about it at least makes the subject interesting for a guy like me.

In the film, Kevin Costner stars as Sonny Weaver Jr., the General Manager of the Cleveland Browns.  Trying to get out of the shadow of his highly revered and recently deceased father, Sonny wants to build a championship team of his own.  Unfortunately, his methods of putting the team together and getting the players he wants don't always sit well with Browns fans or his crew, most notably his Head Coach (played by Denis Leary) and team owner (played by Frank Langella) who essentially threatens to fire him.  Adding to the tension is the fact that his secret girlfriend who works in his office (Jennifer Garner) just told him she's pregnant. *

Included in the cast are Chadwick Boseman as a hopeful draft pick, the great Ellen Burstyn as Sonny's mother, Sean Combs as a rather unctuous sports agent (don't worry--you won't like him in this film any more than you probably like him in real life), and small parts and cameos by Terry Crews, Sam Elliott, and a host of NFL players, coaches, and broadcast announcers as themselves.  Written by Scott Rothman and Rajiv Joseph and directed by the late, great Ivan Reitman (this was the last feature film he directed), this week, I highly recommend 2014's Draft Day.  I find it interesting that 1) this film could make the NFL draft seem exciting to me and 2) even though this film was not a major hit at the box office, as of last month, it apparently is one of the top trending movies on Netflix.

Until next week, stay safe, be good to your neighbours, and please remember that if at first you don't succeed, then skydiving definitely isn't for you.

Yours in peace, love, and rock and roll!

The Reverend Will the Thrill

* SPECIAL NOTE:  You can tell this film is a work of fiction because it centers on the idea of the CLEVELAND BROWNS building a championship team.

 

 

The Reverend Will the Thrill Presents the Album of the Week!

This week's sermons are about a topic that really isn't that near and dear to my heart--at least not as near and dear as it is to many people, especially men.  But there are still elements of it that I appreciate, even love, and this is the time of year to do so.  As I've often said, I'm not really a sports fan, however, since my mid 20s, I have developed a love for the game of baseball.  I have a team in each league that I root for each year (I even got to see them play each other in the 2016 World Series), but I don't follow it obsessively.  In fact, I don't really follow it at all until after the All-Star break, which is why I think it's too early to get excited over the fact that the Chicago Cubs are currently leading in the National League Central Division.  But I still get excited when spring finally rolls around and the new season begins.

 

 

It's kind of a circuitous route to this week's album, so please bear with me...

When I was about 10 years old, my mother--the town librarian--brought home some cassette tapes of old radio broadcasts from the 1930s and 1940s, thinking that her son would enjoy them.  She was right.  I immediately fell in love with old programs like "The Lone Ranger" and his great-nephew "The Green Hornet"--and, no, I'm not making up that familial factoid.  These tapes were also responsible, at least in part, for fostering in me a love of comedy.  There were two tapes that Mom brought home that entertained me so much, I'm surprised I didn't wear them out.  The first was a broadcast of (Stan) Laurel and (Oliver) Hardy, specifically one in which Stan was getting married.  ("My name?  Laurel.  They call me Stanley for short.")  The other tape was a broadcast of (William "Bud") Abbott and (Lou) Costello that aired on 17 April, 1947, in which Costello was invited to play for the New York Yankees temporarily, filling in for Joe DiMaggio who was on the DL.  (You can hear the complete broadcast at: https://archive.org/details/OTRR_Abbott_Costello_Singles/AbbottAndCostello47-04-17CostelloIsInvitedToJoinTheYankees.mp3.)

The program featured a performance of their most well-known routine "Who's On First?"  I laughed myself senseless and listened to it so many times, I committed not just that routine, but the entire broadcast to memory--in fact, listening to it again, I still remembered many of the jokes, actress Marilyn Maxwell singing "Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans?", and even the ads for Camel cigarettes ("Camels suit my T-Zone to a T.")

I was so taken with "Who's On First?" that my dad suggested that we perform it together during "talent night" at our upcoming church retreat.  So I typed up a script and we rehearsed it diligently.  We had it down.  At the last minute, Dad had to work and was not able to attend the retreat.  However, my sister Heather had been watching us rehearse and absorbed what we were doing.  Knowing my love of entertaining an audience, she offered to fill in for Dad.

Needless to say, we were a hit.  We were asked to do it at church retreats many times over the next few years.  We eventually retired it just because our specific audience had seen it so many times that they no longer laughed, even though they requested that we do it.  We didn't perform it again for at least 20 years until our aunt asked us to reprise it for a fundraising dinner at a minor league ballpark.  I was surprised at how easily it came back to us.  We were asked to do it one more time, after which we preemptively retired it again, just to keep it from getting stale, especially for us.

I've been thinking about this a lot because next month, the Paoli Mennonite Fellowship (PMF)--the church in which we grew up--is celebrating its 50th anniversary.  (I feel so old--it seems like just yesterday, they celebrated their 25th!)  Heather and I have been asked to perform "Who's On First?" again.  We've agreed to do it and even though we now live 2,000 miles away from each other, we've been working hard on re-memorizing it (right, Sis?).

If you're not familiar with the routine, I highly recommend doing so (preferrably by Abbott and Costello, not Allen and Freeling).  They performed it many times during their career going back as early as 1937.  While they seldom performed it exactly the same way more than once, many consider their finest performance to be in their 1945 film, The Naughty Nineties.  Decades after both Abbott and Costello passed away, "Who's On First?" still endures.  In 1999, Time magazine named it the greatest comedy sketch of the twentieth century.  It was adapted into a board game in the 1970s and a childrens book in 2013.  And in spite of the fact that neither Abbott nor Costello was professionally involved in Major League Baseball in any capacity, a gold record of "Who's On First?" was placed in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, and a video of the routine from The Naughty Nineties plays continuously.  It's this little tidbit that inspired my selection of this week's album.

Being selected for the Baseball Hall of Fame is an impressive feat.  But I truly believe it's an even more impressive feat to be honoured by the Hall of Fame if, like Abbott and Costello, you were not involved in the sport.  In fact, off the top of my head, I can only think of one other person who has done this--and please feel free to let me know if there are others I don't know about.  In 2010, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of perhaps his best known (solo) song, rock and roll legend John Fogerty was honoured by the Baseball Hall of Fame for the title track to his 1985 album Centerfield.  During the ceremony, Fogerty even performed the song with a guitar shaped like a baseball bat, which he said only plays one song.

The other historical significance of this album is that it opens with his late-1984 single "The Old Man Down the Road," for which he was sued by his former label which claimed that it sounded too much like the Creedence Clearwater Revival song "Run Through the Jungle," which he wrote and sang fifteen years earlier, but which the label owned the rights to.  To put it succinctly, Fogerty was accused of plagiarizing himself.  In 1988, a six-person jury said he didn't.

Like any album by a really talented artist that yields a massive hit song, there are quite a few other songs on the album as well--many of them as good as, possibly even better, than the big hit (including "The Old Man Down the Road").  So, in spite of where this rant started out, I proudly submit the album that feels like it can only be played in the spring, this year celebrating its 40th anniversary (my, how time flies!) John Fogerty's Centerfield.

Until next week, stay safe, be good to your neighbiours, and please remember that if at first you don't succeed, then skydiving definitely isn't for you!

Yours in peace, love, and rock and roll!

The Reverned Will the Thrill