Left of the Dial

Silly Love Songs

Paul McCartney’s "Silly Love Songs" is one of the more ingenious pop tunes ever, a song that manages to be both a catchy little ditty and a surprisingly complex composition. Rumor has it that McCartney wrote it as a one-fingered-salute to the critics who’d said he was no longer capable of writing anything other than silly love songs.

The majority of the song is based around a repeating three-chord-structure. These basic chord changes are first heard in the somewhat industrial-sounding introduction—an ironic counterpoint to the lushness to follow? or on his own ability to seemingly churn out perfect pop ditties with automaton-like efficiency?—where they’re run through twice. A simple but unusual pattern, it consists of the tonic, mediant and subdominant, rather than the far, far more common tonic, subdominant and dominant; making things even a bit more interesting, the mediant and subdominant are both seventh chords, adding a certain amount of tonal richness and ambiguity.

Then we’re into the main body of the song. The chord changes are heard once again, but this time the feeling is completely different. Where before we had sixteenth notes on the high hat and factory-like percussion with whole note chords on the piano, the percussion has disappeared to be replaced by standard (if outstanding) drumming (courtesy of Joe English), with eighth notes on the high hat. The piano’s still there, but it’s no longer just playing bare chords, instead comping tastefully.

The main difference, though, is the bass line, certainly one of the finest in rock history as well as one of the most memorable and, not incidentally, mixed extremely high. In fact, it’s the lead instrument of the song, louder than either the drums or piano. Which, astonishingly, are the only instruments for this first verse. Just bass, drums and a little bit of colorization from the piano comping quietly in the background—not at all standard for your typical silly love song.

Then, of course, there’s the vocals, singing one of those instantly catchy melodies McCartney literally used to be able to write in his sleep (cf. "Yesterday). Mind-bogglingly, this fantastic melody is never heard again until the very end of the six-minute-tune.

Think about that for a second. Imagine being able to write a melody as lovely and catchy as the first verse’s: "you’d think that people would have had enough of silly love songs." Now imagine you’ve got so much talent that you can simply toss it to the side and move on. After all, you’ve got plenty more where that came from.

In fact, before the song’s over, McCartney will come up with five different melodies to go over that one basic set of chord changes, as well as others for the different sections of the song. Many of them are related to each other yet remain distinctly different, thanks to augmentation, diminution, interpolation, extrapolation and so on. Brass suddenly pop up to introduce the chorus, during which they disappear, to be replaced by strings. This is the "I love you" section and, sure enough, it’s the same three chords with a new melody on top.

After the chorus, we get the second verse, the "I can’t explain, the feeling’s plain to me, say, can’t you see" (hey, I didn’t say the lyrics were brilliant) verse, whereupon McCartney comes up with a different, yet equally catchy melody, his third over the same chord changes. This time, Linda’s singing the "I love you" melody from the chorus in the background, kept company by the horn section.

Another chorus, this time both Paul and Linda singing the "I love you" melody and then we come to the bridge, the "love doesn’t come in a minute" section, which is played over an entirely different set of chord changes.

Then it’s back to the good ol’ three-chord-structure again, this time for the solo. But as there’s no noticeable guitar in the song and the piano’s been relegated to simple comping and the bass has been taking the leads all along, what’s he to do? Why, he has the horn section take the solo, playing yet another melody, this one a variation on what they’d been playing in the background during the second verse, related to the original melody, only now each of their phrases is answered by the strings.

Then we’re into yet another section. It could be the chorus or it could be a verse, since they’re over the same set of changes. Since Paul’s singing yet another melody, the "how can I tell you about my loved one" line, however, it might simply be a whole new section, especially since it’s over a setting similar to the industrial introduction. Sans percussion sounds, however, its effect is completely differently, largely thanks to the addition of the drums and bass. After two runs through this, Linda begins to sing the "I love you" chorus part behind Paul’s lead line.

We come out of that for a quick trip to the brass and strings running through the changes once, and then it’s back to the new version of the introduction section. This time through it’s Paul singing the "I love you" melody while Linda soon adds the "I can’t explain, the feeling’s plain to me" part from the second verse. After a bit Denny Laine chimes in with the "how can I tell you" line that Paul’d had the first time but has since discarded. And, of course, all this is interlocking over the same three chords.

Finally we get back to a verse, which turns out to be the triumphant reappearance of the first melody, over five minutes after we first encountered it. Whereupon the entire song wraps up yet, interestingly, ends not after another chorus but at the end of this verse and, enigmatically, on an unresolved median chord rather than the expected tonic. All in all, pretty good stuff for a simple silly love song.

Wallace Stealin's

Just got this email from Top Management (prompted by her bad example, I finished off the Oreos):

I have eaten the Chips Ahoy
You bought for your daughter
And now there are no cookies left
To send in her lunch

They were delicious
So sweet
and so sweet

The Voyage, Not the Destination

The Boy’s been a walkin’ fool for the past two weeks.

He started cruising a few months ago, holding onto the couch or a chair or whatever and going as far as those improvised safety rails would allow him to travel. Sometimes we’d push chairs and a footstool and large toys fairly close to each other so he could indeed range a pretty long way.

After a few weeks of that, he began to take real, honest-to-goodness baby steps, up to a half-dozen at a time. As he’s still never crawled, this was pretty exciting stuff. Top Management and I would sit on the floor, six feet apart and he’d just bop back and forth between the two of us, chortling with glee. It was great.

But then he stopped. Just gave it up. It was the oddest thing. Sometimes we could sort of trick him into it again, but even that was a chore. He just didn’t want to do it anymore. He’d still cruise, but he didn’t want to walk by himself. And he’d never, ever voluntarily let go and try for something. If he was holding onto the ottoman and the couch was four inches out of his reach, he wouldn’t let go and take the step required to grab the couch. He’d just howl. It was most odd.

But as long as he *could* reach something, he was happy. It got the point where he’d be able to go through pretty much the entire downstairs, just holding onto chairs or the wall or the toy chest or whatever. It might take him fifteen minutes to get to the train room from the living room by going all along the outside walls, but he did it.

And then two weeks ago he started walking again. There was very little build-up. One day he just started letting go of things and walking. And when he went, he went.

Within days he was walking ten feet with little problem. Then he started doing 180s, walking five or ten feet forward and spinning around flawlessly, effortlessly, and heading back.

He’d spend half an hour up in the blue room, walking from one sister to another, laughing hysterically. At night, rather than go to sleep at his usual time, he’d be up late, walking all over the downstairs, bopping from one room to another.

There was no rhyme nor reason, no method to his madness. He’d be heading straight for the wedgits, his favorite toys. But inches away he’d suddenly turn and veer off for the train tracks. He’d maybe pick one up and then he’d be gone again, this time headed for the kitchen cabinets, which he’d open and close once or twice and then he’d be off somewhere else.

This would go on for hours sometimes. He’d walk towards one of us but rarely made it all the way before he’d spin and go off in another direction. Just aimless wandering.

Except it wasn’t, of course. By the time his sisters were half his age they’d been able to crawl. So if they were unhappy or bored of being in a given location, they’d crawl off to a new one. If there was a toy they wanted, they’d crawl to get it. If they wanted Mom—and when did any of them ever not?—they’d crawl to get her.

He’d never been able to. He was always trapped, unable to motorvate anywhere he wanted whenever he wanted. And now that he could go somewhere, he wants to and he will. It doesn't matter where, really. It's the power to go, the ability to change his location that's the important thing. He's in control.

And the joy and pride and satisfaction he takes in his newfound capability to travel is awe-inspiring. It's not the destination that matters—that's nice, sometimes, but really, it's merely secondary, or maybe tertiary. No, it's the trip itself, the getting from Point A to Point B: that's the vital part of this equation.

When Top Management and I were in college together, we’d frequently just hop in the car and go. It didn’t so much matter where; we often tried to find new roads we’d never taken before but we weren’t really headed anywhere—we never stopped except for gasoline or to get something to drink. It was the going that mattered, not the getting there.

Travelling with small kids can make you forget how wonderful and fulfilling those experiences can be in and of themselves. The Boy's found that out for himself now, and reminded the rest of us in the process.

The Neighborhood Boogeyman

Top Management took the girls to this activity at the library a few weeks back; the assignment was to make fairy gardens, or something like that. I stayed home while The Boy napped. It’s a tough job but someone’s gotta do it.

Given that it was our neighborhood library, it’s perhaps not entirely surprising that there were several other people from the neighborhood there, including a good friend who brought all three of her kids. Her oldest was still working on his garden long after all the other dozen or so kids had finished theirs. Peeking over, Top Management noted that it was a masterpiece, incredibly detailed and beautifully designed.

Naturally, she complimented our friend on her son’s artistic skills. "Yeah," our friend sighed. "He could be happy all day doing projects like these. It’s what he really loves to do. He could easily never leave our house again, if we just had enough supplies and stuff to keep him content."

"Well," answered Top Management, thinking of her beloved. "Maybe he’ll turn out like Scott."

"That’s what I’m afraid of!" blurted our friend in horror.

And she wasn’t kidding.

Now, any ol’ fool can be a role model. Just work to be a decent parent or child or sibling or friend or employee or employer or neighbor or some combination thereof. But how many are able to attain the statue of Cautionary Tale?

The Girl Whose Face Froze Into a Horrible Grimace
The Boy Who Died From Eating Poprocks and Coke
The Kids with the Hook on the Door Handle at Lover’s Lane
Veruca Salt
And Me.

I’m in exalted company.

RIP Hack

A hero of mine died the other day.

Colonel David H. Hackworth passed away on Wednesday, May 11, 2005 in Tijuana, where he was receiving treatment for cancer. He was 74 years old.

Colonel Hackworth lied to enlist in the merchant marine at age 14 and served in the South Pacific. The next year he lied in order to enlist in the Army at 15 and won a battlefield commission at 20 to become the Korean War's youngest captain. He was America's youngest full colonel in Vietnam, and won a total of 91 medals, including two Distinguished Service Crosses, 10 Silver Stars, 8 Bronze Stars and 8 Purple Hearts.

Robert Duvall’s amazing character in "Apocalypse Now" was based on Hack, an amazing guy who always tended to side with the enlisted men over the officers and who thought the civilians running the wars had no idea what they were doing. Strong stuff coming from a guy who was nominated for the Medal of Honor three times, and just one reason Nixon despised him.

Later Hack became, among other things, a Newsweek contributing editor, which is how he and I came into contact.

In 1996 we decided to do a comic book about landmines. As the victim of violence, Batman was the logical choice for the story’s lead character. Dennis O’Neil volunteered to write the script (and donated his fee to an anti-landmine charity), we got some fantastic artists, and then lined up a few folks to write pieces for the book. United States Senator Patrick Leahy wrote the introduction and two prominent anti-landmine activists, Jody Williams and Jerry White, wrote pieces for the back of the book.

I felt we needed one more piece and recalled that Hack had recently written a piece about landmines for Newsweek. Our publisher was also a big fan of the colonel’s and enthusiastically gave me the thumbs-up.

I have no idea how I got Hack’s number but somehow I did. I called and spoke with one of his assistants. I explained who I was and what I was looking for and within about ten minutes I received a call from the most-decorated living American soldier, who laughed when I tried to call him "Colonel," insisting I call him "Hack."

He asked for specifics—word count, what kind of audience this was for, what the others were writing so there wasn’t too much overlap, that sort of stuff—and then asked about deadlines. Well, as usual, the deadline was pretty tight, and he had his regular Newsweek gig and a new book about to come out that he had to promote. But he said he could hit the deadline.

He didn’t. Instead, his piece came over the fax several days early. And it was absolutely perfect. It opened hard and gripped you from the first. He tossed in facts to support his argument and bolstered them with first-hand memories of what it’s like to get splattered with the brains of a young man whose head had just been vaporized by a landmine.

Actually, it wasn’t *quite* perfect—there was this one tiny little transition that wasn’t as clear as I’d have liked it to be. It was good, it was just fine, but this project was a labor of love for all involved and I obsessed over the wording of this one sentence. But what to do? Who the hell was I to question the most-decorated living American soldier, a contributing editor to Newsweek, a best-selling author, a triple-nominee for the Medal of Honor?

I was, I guess, slightly more arrogant (or obsessed) than trepidatious, because I finally called him and asked him about that one sentence. Hack just laughed. "Oh, hey, listen," he said. "You do whatever you need to do to make that piece work. I trust you."

Hack later came to the office for a press conference with Senator Leahy to promote the comic book. As I recall, he only had an hour to spare, as his book was now out and he had his own project to promote, yet he still found time to lend a hand for a cause he believed in. Moreover, he was as friendly and engaging a guy as you could ever meet.

As anyone who’s ever met me knows, I’ve never been a macho guy. Didn’t like sports growing up, and never had any interest in military history, much less actually joining the military. In fact, I still don’t like macho guys. But if the world had more guys like Colonel David Hackworth it would be a far, far better place.

Requiescat in pace, Hack. And thanks. It was a pleasure and an honor to know you.

A Solution to the Energy Crisis

So there’s been a lot of talk about how we’re entering perhaps a critical phase in world history (what else is new?) and an impending energy crisis (true) and how we now pretty much have no choice but to turn/return to nuclear power (debatable).

Of course, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl really made some folks kinda squeamish about the whole nukes thing and, on balance, I don’t think that’s unreasonable. If you’ve read any of the follow-ups on Chernobyl especially, it’s somewhere well north of horrifying. Who would willingly, gladly open themselves up to that possibility, were there any choice?

But, as usual, I don’t just piss and moan (although I certainly do that too), I also happen to have a solution, because I’m a can-do kinda guy (as long as publishing deadlines aren’t involved). And since my brainstorm will make neither side happy, but both sides about equally unhappy, it’d actually work (and never happen). So how’s that for a set-up? Well, here ‘tis:

If we must have nuclear power in this country—and I’m enough of a realist to say that if folks aren’t going to give up their SUVs or computers, then indeed it’s possible we must, at least to some extent—then I propose the following: every major executive from any energy company that owns and/or operates a nuclear power plant must live, with his immediate family, within five miles of a nuclear power plant. Relocation costs and a housing stipend, within reason, can even be part of the deal.

But as it stands now, most power plants, nuclear and otherwise, are located in areas where the per capita incomes are…well, to put it politely, they’re not in what most executives would consider "nice" neighborhoods. There are, of course, some exceptions…but, nationally, not many. And even some of the exceptions can be misleading: the one that was near us in Queens, for instance. Sure, the houses in the immediate area went for pretty good sums o’ money: say, $200,000. But a mile away the house prices were double that; it’s all relative, baby.

We can change the unfair nature of the way things are currently structured *and* be pretty much guaranteed safe nuclear power. Because if the entire board of directors lives with their children within five miles of a nuclear power plant, you can be damn sure safety is truly going to be Priority Number One, even over profits—and what are the odds on that happening otherwise?

Addendum

An addendum to Monday's entry. Maybe it's not so much the "duh" category as the "ugh" category. It's not that the parents are ignorant, it's that they don't care about the children because, well, the children are unattractive. This just in:

A headline yesterday in Science Times was jolting: "Ugly Children May Get Parental Short Shrift." As Nicholas Bakalar wrote: "Canadian researchers have made a startling assertion: parents take better care of pretty children than they do ugly ones."

Researchers at the University of Alberta observed that at the supermarket, less adorable tykes were more often allowed to engage in potentially dangerous activities - like standing up in the shopping cart or wandering off. Good-looking children, especially boys, got more attention from their parents and were kept closer at hand.

"When it came to buckling up, pretty and ugly children were treated in starkly different ways, with seat belt use increasing in direct proportion to attractiveness," the article said. "When a woman was in charge, 4 percent of the homeliest children were strapped in, compared with 13.3 percent of the most attractive children." With fathers, it was even worse, "with none of the least attractive children secured with seat belts, while 12.5 percent of the prettiest children were."

You Don't Say...

Wouldn't you think that by now this would fall well inside the "well, duh" category? Sadly, it appears not so. This just in:

Back-seat restraints best for kids

May. 2, 2005 12:00 AM
BLOOMINGTON, Ill. - "The single most important lifesaving decision parents can make for their child is to use the rear seat and age- and size-appropriate restraints during every car ride, every time," said Dr. Flaura Winston, a pediatrician and chief investigator of a study on car safety for kids released today.

The study was based on information from more than 370,000 State Farm Insurance Co. policyholders involved in car crashes.

Winston said too many parents give in to children who have grown out of safety seats and want to ride up front, where they can be hurt by air bags, dashboards or windshields.

What Is Wrong with Me?

I know, I know, that’s quite a straight line. But, seriously, there is a major glitch in my basic make-up.

I took Max to Dairy Queen for May Day, a holiday which Top Management and I have always celebrated (putting us in the one percent of one percent of Americans who do so). There was a small line in front of us, but within a minute of our arrival, there were no fewer than fifteen people behind and maybe even more. The one cashier and the one guy making up the orders were, needless to say, pretty harried. At one point it turns out the cone the dude’d just prepared was supposed to be in a cup so, barely even pausing to aim, he whipped it over his shoulder into a trashcan in the corner. It was a nice shot, but the waste of ice cream sent a visible shudder through the line; Max, in particular, was stunned and horrified by the wanton disregard for all that is good in life, which is pretty much how she views ice cream.

So Max gets her small vanilla cone with sprinkles and I wait for my medium Blizzard (with mint and oreos, thank you very much). And when the guy finally shoves it in my hands and rushes off to do the next order, I look down at the stubby little cup and wonder if Dairy Queen has changed their sizes in the three or four months since I’ve last been there. I look at the cup sizes atop the machine, though, and no, sure enough, my medium is actually a small. The woman next to me sees me looking and confirms that, yes indeed, he gave me the wrong size.

I try to catch his eye but he’s running around like crazy. I look at the line snaking through the place and decide that it’s just not worth it. So Max and I split.

But I was totally bummed out. Analyzing the situation I realize it’s incredibly foolish to be bummed that my medium ice cream is only a small. I mean, it’s not like I *need* more ice cream. And it’s not like I get this often, so any amount’s a nice treat. And talk about the glass being half-empty. I know all that. I do.

And yet there it is. I was still really bummed. And I realized I would honestly rather have had none than order and pay for a medium and only receive a small.

Which brings us back to: what the hell is wrong with me?

Top Management thinks it has something to do with my being the youngest, but then she thinks that about almost everything that’s wrong with me—and that’s a pretty hefty list.

It’s like when I was in high school and I’d get a hot dog and pal Karen would ask for a bite. But I didn’t want to give her a bite of my hot dog. It was mine, I ordered it, I paid for it and now I was going to eat it. And it’s not that I was cheap—I would have been more than happy to buy her a hot dog for herself. But she didn’t want a dog, she just wanted one bite (which, by the way, begs the question: what the hell was wrong with her?). I, meanwhile, didn’t want 90% of my dog, I didn’t want 110%, I wanted the dog, the whole dog and nothing but the dog (which, yes, leaves aside the question of what really was IN the dog).

So what makes me this way? I’m not generally a perfectionist, not even close, and I’m not even remotely a food nut—food is pleasant and necessary but I have no problems eating peanut butter and jelly or Oodles of Noodles for weeks on end; I have no need for a truly good meal, or even a not-good-but-a-favorite-meal, on any kind of a regular basis. So what explains this character flaw of mine?

Thinking it over as I write this, I suspect it’s possible I’ve gotten off-track in my own analysis by focusing on the food part. I think much of it is that when I order something—whether it’s food or books or CDs or whatever—I want and expect to receive what I ordered. Maybe that’s the problem. I simply expect people to do their jobs properly. And I understand why the guy messed this one up: he was doing a tough job under tough circumstances and we all make mistakes. So it’s not like I went nuts on the guy or called him out or feel like condemning him to the fifth circle or whatever—hell, I didn’t even make him re-do the order, since that would have meant screwing up his day and the day of all the folks in line even more. It just…bums me out.

And, yes, the easy solution is to stop eating ice cream altogether. Fortunately, I’ve never been one for easy solutions.