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Tag Archives: Mary Wells
TRACK-BY-TRACK: THE TEMPTATIONS SING SMOKEY
Posted on January 15, 2020 by Nondisposable Johnny
The Temptations Sing Smokey (1965)
Continuing with the in-depth presentation of my 20 favorite Vocal Albums. I'm up to #5 (And 1965, which is going to be a very big year for this concept):
Any list of competitors for the not-so-imaginary title of Greatest Rock and Roll Vocal Group doesn't need your toes to count: The Everly Brothers, Beatles, Beach Boys, Mamas & Papas, Impressions, Spinners, Four Seasons. You can argue all day long about who's #2.
There's no argument about #1.
Close harmony might belong to one of the white groups (white musicians tend to prize order). But the Temptations, who were better than fine with close harmony, could do more of everything else and do it better while the Motown machine assured they would never lack for first rate material. If White America–well, the crit-illuminati anyway–hadn't been so stuck on the auteur theory, developed for film but lying handy and transferable to anything, and been averse, consciously or subconsciously, to the idea that Black America could do more than dance and snap its fingers, the Tempts' early albums (which I wrote about here) would have been treated as seriously as contemporary efforts by the Beatles, Stones and Beach Boys.
Since this was their tribute to Smokey Robinson, who may or may not have once been called America's greatest living poet by Bob Dylan, but fit the bill in any case, it was the best material they ever got. Although the album was assembled from a putative hodgepodge–a hit from their debut album combined with material Smokey had written for himself, the Tempts and/or other acts–it coheres like a concept LP because Smokey was a conceptual artist and because this is the rare, possibly unique, "tribute" album where the subject of the tribute is producing it himself.
Call it their Rubber Soul….unless of course it makes more sense to call Rubber Soul, released nine months later, the Beatles' natural answer to The Temptations Sing Smokey.
"The Way You Do the Things You Do"–Berry Gordy had been trying to break the Temptations (previously the Primes–the only better name change was the Primettes becoming the Supremes) for a while and finally gave them to his best friend with the instruction to "get some hits on these guys." This was the breakout, with Smokey switching the emphasis from Paul Williams' gravelly baritone to Eddie Kendricks' ethereal tenor, and then using one of Marvin Tarplin's indelible guitar lines and the Tempts' own clever harmony arrangement (beefing up every other line in the verses, call and response alternating with close harmony in the chorus) to get Eddie within range of a Smokey Robinson lead. In the fifty-five years since, it's never been off the radio.
"Baby, Baby I Need You"–One of the last sides recorded with original member Al Bryant just after Robinson took over the reins but before David Ruffin replaced Bryant. Did I mention they were just fine with close harmony? This is the closest the album gets to their doo wop roots and gorgeous.
"My Girl"–Smokey was determined to get a showcase for Ruffin. He got it. This is one of those records that's now so deeply embedded in the culture it feels like it must have been breathed into being rather than composed but what's really miraculous is how complicated the simple arrangement sounds. It fills the ear the way "I Get Around" fills the ear, but it's devoid of spectacle, all nuance and shading. Well, maybe except for that opening guitar line (from Marvin Tarplin again).
"What Love Has Joined Together"–A straight remake of one of Smokey's own hits with the Miracles. Not even Eddie Kendricks could match the purity of Smokey's tenor, but he gets inside the song all the same and with the others answering in the background I'm sure no woman receiving the message was heard to complain.
"You'll Lose a Precious Love"–Notable for David Ruffin using his tenor voice, bleeding into falsetto on the choruses. It was as beautiful as his rough baritone and hints at roads not taken. Tantalizing.
"It's Growing"–Here, Ruffin, already firmly established, does something even Smokey couldn't do, sliding from tenor to baritone to blue falsetto with miraculous ease, matching the movements to one of Robinson's most trenchant lyrics. The group's "Hey, hey, heys" would have stolen the moment from anyone else. Another hit.
"Who's Lovin' You"–Another remake of one of Smokey's own hits. Here Ruffin, a Mississippi native who lived in the South until he was sixteen and whose family gospel group shared bills with the likes of Mahalia Jackson, shows why he could have cut it on the southern soul circuit. The others had all been born in the South, too, so they had no trouble keeping up. Gently, though. Gently. That's the Smokey influence.
"What's So Good About Goodbye"–Eddie takes on Smokey's original again but this time the backing is stronger, more distinctive. If you can remove the memory of Robinson's version (one of his most spectacular leads), this is beautiful on it's own terms. The Tempts and their producer both knew how to play to their own strengths.
"You Beat Me to the Punch"–Paul Williams, the quiet man displaced by the spectacular Ruffin, accepts his assignment and gives it his special touch. The others were capable of reaching melancholy as required. Williams lived there, even on upbeat material like this, a hit for Mary Wells, who Smokey had already gotten a bunch of hits on.
"Way Over There"–Here Kendricks uses the rougher part of his voice to fine effect. The Tempts push hard, like a gospel group aiming for the charts. Good thing, because it took a might effort to get within ver-r-r-r-y close calling distance of Smokey's original.
"You've Really Got a Hold On Me"–Poor Eddie. This was Smokey's signature tune at the time, and the Beatles had done a superb cover. Everybody decided to take it easy, not to compete with the intensity the song had brought out of the lead singers in its two already famous versions. In context, though, it works, a setup for the close.
"(You Can) Depend On Me"–A coda, which nonetheless delivers. One of Smokey's earliest efforts (so early Berry Gordy helped out with a co-write–a reminder that the Boss was no small genius as a music man), it floats where his original soared, but it's a beautiful closer. Makes you want to start over…..Hey Marvin, what's that guitar line again?
Note: The Temptations Sing Smokey, barely noticed by White America in 1965, spent 18 weeks at #1 on the newly instituted Billboard R&B album chart, a record that would not be surpassed until Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life spent 20 nonconsecutive weeks at #1 in 1976-77. Stevie's record would stand (though tied by Rick James' __ in 1981) until Michael Jackson's Thriller arrived in 1983 and changed the game forever. Thriller struck deep, but new marketing techniques would soon allow LPs to spend a year or more at the top of the Pop or R&B album charts without leaving a mark on the culture crumbling around them. I don't consider the inability/unwillingness to grant the final degree of creative license even to Smokey Robinson and the Temptations in their moment and the ensuing collapse the least bit coincidental. And throwing awards at those who survived to old age doesn't make up for any of it.
Another of rock and soul's many lessons for those who come after.
Posted in TRACK-BY-TRACK	| Tagged Al Bryant, Berry Gordy, Bob Dylan, David Ruffin, Eddie Kendricks, Marvin Tarplin, Mary Wells, Paul Williams, Rubber Soul, Smokey Robinson, The Beach Boys, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Supremes, The Temptations	| Leave a reply
THE LAST TEN ALBUMS I LISTENED TO (Winter 2018, Countdown)
Posted on December 22, 2018 by Nondisposable Johnny
10) Poison: Greatest Hits 1986 – 1996 (1996)
Merry Christmas everybody! i like my hair metal straight with no arty pretensions. In the wake of punk, especially, hair metal bands had one refreshing quality. They made no bones about being in it for the groupies. About half of this soars and the rest doesn't sink so low that it amounts to more than a minor distraction.
9) David Bowie: Hunky Dory (1971)
I don't really have a go-to David Bowie album but, if I did, this early entry might fit the bill. The man could write hooks and, over the course of a mere album (especially a good one from when he was giving everything he had to put himself over), his voice doesn't wear thin. Plus, with "Changes" he was already signalling how far he could take fake naivete, which was only as far as it could go.
8) Gary Lewis & the Playboys: The Complete Liberty Singles (2009)
What an aesthetic! A plastic concept were Gary and the boys to be sure…but they made some fine pop records from their earliest days. And, as I had not noticed on a previous listen to two, Gary kept getting better as the sixties and his popularity waned in unison. This lays out the whole story so, along with stalwarts like "Just My Style" and "Little Miss Go-Go" you get an extra disc's worth of lost sixties' pop that reminds you just how good you had to be in those days to not get lost . Then there's genuinely weird-but-catchy stuff like "I Saw Elvis Presley Last Night" which Lewis apparently wrote after seeing Elvis the night before.
7) Bob Dylan: Live 1964 Concert at Philharmonic Hall, The Bootleg Series Vol. 6 (2004)
This has musical value. It's a good, typical concert from Dylan's folkie phase. The big difference is that it's near the end–the moment just before the Voice of His Generation stabbed his original audience in the eye by going Rock and Roll.
Here, Dylan the master showman has his New York audience eating out of his hand, hanging on every sung or spoken word. You can still hear and feel the spell he cast. The highlight comes at the top of the second disc, right after he's returned from the intermission to do his nine hundredth great version of "Talkin' World War III Blues."
This is the one where he mocks the Shangri-Las and Martha and the Vandellas and his audience laughs right along.
Or is it the about-to-be-left-behind audience he's mocking?
People argue about this, but it's worth remembering that when the Voice of His Generation wanted to name-check "inauthentic" pop stars he had previously tended to use Fabian, the son of a Philly beat cop, who, like Martha Reeves and Mary Weiss, had fought his way out of tougher circumstances–and tougher neighborhoods–than Robert Zimmerman's.
Right after that Joan Baez comes on and kills the buzz.
There's no album that better explains the anger some of Dylan's audience felt when he "betrayed" them a few months later (first at Newport, then all over the world). Listening to this, there is no reason to believe the voice of their generation would ever be anything but completely at one with them.
6) Mary Wells: Looking Back 1961 – 1964 (1993)
Invaluable set from Motown's first big solo star. "My Guy" wasn't all that typical of her style, but it shows just how many directions she might have taken had she not made the fateful decision to become the first Motown star to walk away. I don't know if she needs a two-disc set, but she certainly needs more than one. One of history's great "what-ifs" sure, but there's more than enough here to justify a bigger place in the pantheon, at Motown and elsewhere.
5) War: Outlaw (1982)
The greatest band of the 70s was mostly a spent force by the time this came out. But the two strongest tracks, "Outlaw" and "Cinco de Mayo" were on a par with their best, and you can hear bits and pieces elsewhere of what might have been a new vision, had they still been young and hungry.
4) Jr. Walker and the All Stars: Nothin' But Soul, The Singles 1962-1983 (1994)
A great journey through the party funk of the mid-sixties, backed up with Junior's plaintive vocals once somebody figured out his ragged-but-right timbre could work on ballads. Twenty years worth of never losing what he had, with the highlight being perhaps Motown's great lost single. Tell me again why he's not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?
3) Lynyrd Skynyrd: Nuthin' Fancy (1975)
There are people who still think this–the second greatest band of the 70s third LP–is their weakest. If that's true, it's a measure of just how great they were. There weren't ten bands in the decade who made one as good. And not one where the lead singer would start off an album by writing a fierce ode to gun control and, without taking a breath, dream of shooting down his "Cheatin' Woman" exactly one track later.
2) Fats Domino: The Fats Domino Jukebox (2002)
I finally broke down and bought a single disc of Fats' best on CD. The old two record set from Imperial is still the best "short" compilation but this does a nice job of getting to the highlights, beginning with the true dawn of rock 'n' roll. Perhaps because I've been doing some side projects (more word soon!) that turn a strong spotlight on rock and roll's first decade, the most intriguing track this time around was "The Valley of Tears" a straight country record from 1957 which went top twenty pop and #2 R&B and represented everything Nashville feared might be riding over the hill if they didn't get the white rock and rollers under control. They shut down crossover within a year, even if it meant telling country stations not to play Elvis and the Everly Brothers. And that's exactly what it meant. These days, and not coincidentally, country, pop and r&b are all dead things. Except when you reach back.
1) Various Artists: A Very Special Christmas (1987)
One of the great rock and roll Christmas albums. At what is probably the low point, Bon Jovi pulls off a credible "Back Door Santa." Elsewhere, everyone from RUN-DMC to Bono to Alison Moyet to (gasp) Sting go to the limit. And there are tracks that go beyond the limit: Bruce Springsteen (live, where's he's always best) managing a version of "Merry Christmas Baby" that escapes the long shadows of Charles Brown's original melancholy and Elvis Presley's cataclysmic transformation to inject an improbably merry vibe that's just as valid; John Mellencamp's re-orienting "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" to an Indiana farmhouse; Bryan Adams' blasting through "Run, Run Rudolph"; and, to close things down, Stevie Nicks, who believes in witchcraft if she believes in anything, giving a definitive reading of "Silent Night," the stateliest devotional hymn on earth, proving yet again that God will always move in a mysterious way.
Merry Christmas to all my readers!
…Til next time.
Posted in Lists...	| Tagged A Very Special Christmas, Alison Moyet, Bob Dylan, Bon Jovi, Bono, Bruce Springsteen, Bryan Adams, David Bowie, Elvis Presley, fabian, Fats Domino, Gary Lewis & the Playboys, Hunky Dory, Joan Baez, John Mellencamp, Jr. Walker and the All Stars, Live 1964 Concert at Philharmonic Hall, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Martha and the Vandellas, Martha Reeves, Mary Weiss, Mary Wells, Nuthin' Fancy, Poison, Run-DMC, Stevie Nicks, Sting, the Everly Brothers, the Fats Domino Jukebox, The Shangri-Las	| 2 Replies
MY FAVORITE MOTOWN RECORDS (Not Quite Random Favorites….In No Particular Order)
Posted on July 23, 2017 by Nondisposable Johnny
By major act (and as prelude to a piece on Motown's real importance in the sixties–coming….some day!).
Since the object is to honor the records, I used mostly studio recordings or lip synchs. The major exception is Smokey solo on "Sweet Harmony." You know, if you only click one, yaddah, yaddah. I included the important acts who passed through Motown on their way to bigger, better things, because, well, they made great records on Motown, too. I stopped with acts who were at least signed in the 70s.
And I added my favorite one shot at the bottom–because God knows there were plenty of those!
The Marvelettes "Playboy" (1962)
The Miracles "The Love I Saw in You Was Just a Mirage" (1967)
Mary Wells "The One Who Really Loves You"(1962)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7ZSaebUhoE
Marvin Gaye "Too Busy Thinking About My Baby" (1969)
Martha and the Vandellas "Honey Chile" (1967)
The Supremes "Reflections" (1967)
The Temptations "Don't Look Back" (1965)
The Four Tops "Standing in the Shadows of Love" (1966)
Stevie Wonder:"I Believe (When I Fall in Love With You It Will Be Forever)" (1972)
Gladys Knight & the Pips "It Should Have Been Me" (1968)
The Isley Brothers "This Old Heart of Mine (Is Weak for You)" (1966)
Jr. Walker & the All Stars: "Way Back Home" (1971)
Marvin and Tammi "If This World Were Mine" (1967)
Spinners "We'll Have it Made" (1971)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agnhZ9O-GZw
The Jackson 5 "ABC" (1970)
Diana Ross (solo) "Upside Down" (1980)
Smokey Robinson (solo) "Sweet Harmony" (1973)
Jackson 5 (solo) Jermaine: "That's How Love Goes" (1972)
The Commodores "Sail On" (1979)
Rick James "Superfreak (Part 1)" (1981)
Lionel Richie (solo) "Deep River Woman" w/Alabama (1986)
And, my favorite one shot (or, if you like, one big shot), in a close run over Brenda Holloway's "Every Little Bit Hurts" and R. Dean Taylor's "Indiana Wants Me" (which I'm guessing not a lot of people remember was a Motown record):
Jimmy Ruffin "What Becomes of the Brokenhearted" (1966)
Always loved that there was no question mark.
Posted in Not Quite Random Favorites...	| Tagged Berry Gordy Jr., Brenda Holloway, Diana Ross, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Jimmy Ruffin, Jr. Walker & the All Stars, Lionel Richie, Martha and the Vandellas, Marvin Gaye, Mary Wells, Michael Jackson, R. Dean Taylor, Rick James, Smokey Robinson, Spinners, Stevie Wonder, Tammie Terrell, The Commodores, The Four Tops, The Isley Brothers, The Jackson 5, The Marvelettes, The Miracles, The Surpemes, The Temptations	| 13 Replies
THE LAST TEN ALBUMS I LISTENED TO…(Winter, 2016 Countdown)
Posted on December 9, 2016 by Nondisposable Johnny
10) Trio (Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt) The Complete Trio Collection (1987-1999) (2016)
This collects the two albums the superstar "trio" made in the eighties and nineties, plus an extra disc of unreleased and alternate takes.
The released albums were always a little too pristine for my taste. Hearing the tracks all at once didn't exactly reverse that judgment, though it did allow me to fully appreciate the sheer craft-work driven improbability of it all.
Given the restrictive natures of both Harris's and Ronstadt's art–we're talking about two people who always had a hard time loosening up–it shouldn't come as a big surprise that the real keepers are on the throwaway disc. The women who were never all that comfortable with the spotlight light up when it's off, while Dolly just keeps on being Dolly. In that context, it seems no more than natural that "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues," a great song that's been searching for a home for decades, would finally get the definitive take it deserves.
2) Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers Echo (1999)
A modern blues, filled with all the hit-maker's recognizable touches and a lot of things too many people assumed he couldn't do besides.
Maybe that assumption was rooted in not paying enough attention. If so, I certainly do not exempt myself.
One effect of getting to know this album in recent years has been a better understanding of just how deep those hits had to strike–again and again, back when it seemed they lived entirely on the surface–in order to reach one generation after another in a way that was almost unheard of for any other rocker of his generation. Singling out the first cut is a little obvious, but first cuts are for leading you in. This leads you in.
8) The Orlons Best of (1961-1966) (2005)
Auteurs of the Watusi and, you might think, the most faceless of the handful of girl groups who sustained even a modest string of hits.
While I wouldn't say personality was their strong suit, this still sustains easily over half a decade and twenty sides. "Wah-Watusi" aside, they may never have been trend-setters (even that was a cover). But they kept up, no small thing when the Pop World was moving as past as it did during the years in question.
And, as often happens with these "obscure" artists, there's a knockout hidden in the shadows that will lay you flat if you have your back turned.
7) Fleetwood Mac Rumours (1977) (2-Disc version, aka Ghost Rumours, released 2004)
I always loved the English spelling. Made it seem like it should be some kind of genteel sequel to a Cat Stevens album.
I know it's sold a bajillion copies (thirty, forty million, like that) and been played to death…but it never wears out. Certainly not in 2016, when it sounded more contemporary than ever and stayed at the top of my playlist for the year. Another thing I like about it is that it broke contemporaneously with Punk Rock, which it buried then and buries now, not least because it's a lot more "punk" than "God Save the Queen"…if by "punk" we mean "alive."
Of course, these days it's become even stronger. This edition restores Stevie Nicks's "Silver Springs" to its original running order (the 3-Disc version released subsequently puts it at the end for some reason) and includes a disc of outtakes that, for once, deepens and contextualizes the finished product. You can click on the link above for my full take on all that. But in case you don't make it over there, this little killer should still not be missed.
6) Mark Chesnutt The Ultimate Collection (Complete MCA Singles: 1990-2000) (2011)
Playing next to Patty Loveless or even George Strait on the radio in his golden decade, Chesnutt seemed like a real if modest talent who reached an epic high now and then.
From this distance, across thirty tracks and a quarter of a century, he seems more like a minor miracle. He certainly wasn't afraid of competition. He doesn't embarrass himself on Don Gibson's "Woman (Sensuous Woman)" or John Anderson's "Down in Tennessee," and bests Waylon on "Broken Promise Land," which is one of those epic highs I mentioned.
It's not like I didn't know he had a solid best of in him. "Brother Jukebox," "Bubba Shot the Jukebox" "It Sure is Monday"–the titles alone always could bring a smile. But this sustains, in part, because his most epic high point of all–as great a song ever written about the intricacies of not breaking up–came early and two long discs gives the listener time to develop some perspective.
If you click the link, be sure to crank the volume.
5) The Easybeats The Definitive Anthology (1965-1969) (1996)
Speaking of cranking the volume.
Here's fifty-six tracks that make a case for the boys who built the bones of Australia's not-exactly-inconsequential rock and roll legacy by being the greatest garage band this side of Paul Revere and the Raiders.
I'm not gonna say they ever quite got up to "Friday On My Mind" again but not many got there once and, of those who did, few outside the legends sustained anything like this level of interest. Of course, they should never have taken on "River Deep, Mountain High," but it brought a smile to think they had the nerve to try. And smile was what just about every other one of these fifty-six tracks made me do as I listened to them chase every trend of the era and catch one after another for the briefest, most transient, most exhilarating moment. Pick to Click: "Good Times" (which sure sounds like it cops at least one of its riffs from the Orlons' "Don't Hang Up").
4) The Platters The Ballads (1953-1959) (2013)
Shelter from the storm.
If ballad singing is ever given its proper place in the Rock and Roll Narrative, the Platters' lead singer, Tony Williams, will be as celebrated as Chuck Berry. Until then, you can search around for ways to hear him: this is the best I've found.
Great as any individual cut–or any short compilation–may be, you can't really feel the weight of Williams' accomplishment until you dig into something like this: thirty-three slices of heaven right here on earth.
And in one respect,Tony was even greater than Chuck Berry. Plenty of guitar players have forged out past Chuck on some ground or other that he broke open. No ballad singer has ever gotten past this anywhere…unless maybe it was Tony Wiliams.
.3) The Isley Brothers Givin' It Back (1971)
A sly turn of the cards: Here, the Isleys cover mostly white acts, though not necessarily the ones who had spent the previous decade so profitably covering them.
It might have been conceived as a gimmick, but they dug in too deep for it to come across that way on record. "Ohio" meant more in their hands than any other, not just because they cross-bred it with Jimi Hendrix's "Machine Gun'," but because they were from Ohio. Unlike say, Kent State survivor, Chrissie Hynde, who grew up being persecuted by the white middle class in Akron and got out as soon as possible, they never left home spiritually, no matter how far their feet roamed.
I wonder if that's why I–who always heard "Fire and Rain" as a great record even in its callow original–find their cover illuminating far beyond the usual "black people are deeper" shuck and jive? I've stated it before, but this is the sound of some lost soul looking for his people over the next hill. Pick to click: "Cold Bologna" (the only cut besides "Machine Gun" that doesn't "give back" to a white boy).
2) Dwight Yoakum Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc. (1986)
Thus began the odd, often glorious career of Dwight Yoakum, slick traditionalist.
Right there at the beginning–too clever title and all–I don't hear the concept quite working. Pleasant enough but not as inspired as its rep. So when I put this one on it's mostly for background music.
Same thing this time.
This time, like every other time, I left what I was doing and came into the room for this.
1) Martha & the Vandellas Live Wire: The Singles 1962-1972 (1993)
Martha Reeves might be due a Vocalist of the Month essay pretty soon, so I'll leave any deep thoughts for later. This beautiful thing was part of a three-artist series released in conjunction with similarly glorious 2-Disc sets on the Marvelettes and Mary Wells. There's not a weak track on any of them.
What I hadn't realized before was that if Dwight's "South of Cincinnati" ever needs a sister record, it's right here, in Martha's finest vocal, equal to anything the powerhouses at Motown ever managed and, unlike most of the theirs and most of hers–which were only "Dancing in the Street," "Heat Wave," "Nowhere to Run," "In My Lonely Room"– half-hidden by time.
Posted in Lists...	| Tagged Cat Stevens, Chrissie Hynde, Chuck Berry, Dolly Parton, Don Gibson, Echo, Emmylou Harris, Fleetwood Mac, George Strait, Givin It Back, Jimi Hendrix, John Anderson, Linda Ronstadt, Mark Chesnutt, Martha & the Vandellas, Martha Reeves, Mary Wells, Patty Loveless, Paul Revere and the Raiders, Rumours, Stevie Nicks, The Easybeats, The Isley Brothers, The Marvelettes, The Orlons, The Platters, Tom Petty, Tony Williams, Waylon Jennings	| 3 Replies
STANDING TALL (Lesley Gore, R.I.P.)
"Tom Doniphon, you listen to me. Where I go and what I do is none of your business. You don't own me!"
(Vera Miles to John Wayne in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance–1962)
"Don't tell me what to do/And don't tell me what to say"
Lesley Gore "You Don't Own Me" (1964)
DI: Fans have always told you how important song has been to them. Are you making "a statement" even today?
LG: No question about it. It's the one song – after some 40 years, I still close my show with that song because I can't find anything stronger, to be honest with you. It's a song that just kind of grows every time you do it. It might mean one thing one year and "boom," two years later, boy it can mean something else.
(Digital Interviews with Lesley Gore, May, 2003)
When the late Charlie Gillett published the first important history of rock and roll in 1969, he dubbed the flood of hit records by young women from the early and mid-sixties "Girl Talk." However problematic that phrase was, it was positively enlightened compared to the "girl group" moniker which gained currency soon after and has been used as short-hand ever since by everyone from the boys' club that re-defined rock 'n' roll's quasi-official narrative in Gillett's wake in strict accord with their own needs to those doctrinaire feminist scholars who are so often in the habit of accepting all the wrong things.
One group that never accepted the term was a number of the "girl group" participants themselves.
I don't know how Lesley Gore felt about it, but Arlene Smith (14 when she basically invented the concept with the Chantels), Mary Weiss (15 when she defined the apotheosis with the Shangri-Las) and others always saw themselves as a vital part of a larger tradition and always understood that the term was meant, consciously or subconsciously, to segregate them from that tradition.
As it happened, it worked to separate them by more than gender.
Make of it what you will, but no other "genre" name in rock and roll or any other form of music has ever needed to not only cordon off its practitioners by gender, but also further subdivide them by race, age, number and anything else that can be brought to bear.
This was made somewhat easier by an odd circumstance. With the exception of Weiss, all of the concept's signature lead group voices, were black (Smith, Shirley Owens, Ronnie Spector, Martha Reeves, Gladys Horton, Diana Ross, Darlene Love). Meanwhile, except for Dionne Warwick and Mary Wells, the signature solo voices were white (Brenda Lee, Connie Francis, Dusty Springfield, Lulu, Petula Clark, Jackie DeShannon, Nancy Sinatra and, of course, Lesley Gore). So just in case gender wasn't handy enough on its own, some of these voices could be conveniently cut from the bunch by race…or age…or number…or just vocal inclination.
Further divisions were managed by siphoning off various groups or singers into some other category (anything would do).
Wells, The Marvelettes, Martha and the Vandellas and the Supremes were "Motown." Clark, Springfield and Lulu (along with Cilla Black and Sandie Shaw, big stars in England who had limited success in the States) were "British Invasion." Warwick was "Supper Club Soul" or "Adult Contemporary." Lee and Francis were "Teen Idols" (or "Countrypolitan" or just "Pop") and so forth.
None of this was exactly untrue. I make the distinctions myself at times.
But the trick to the official rock and roll narrative was that, once separated from the already hidebound ethos, these outliers were never let back into their moment.
I mean, if you wanna start a fight with a Rock Critic, try calling Dionne Warwick (twenty-one when she recorded her first big hit) or Brenda Lee (fifteen when she recorded hers) a Girl Group singer.
The effect, when used in tandem with the "male-producer-as-svengali" syndrome I've addressed pretty relentlessly on this blog, was and is to blunt the force and magnitude of the first mighty surge of cultural power ever spear-headed by a collective of young women in the history of American music.
Or, for that matter, pretty much any age women anywhere.
In any cultural (as opposed to social or political) context.
The effect of the "girl talk" moment, both as symbolism and underlying reality, was of that part of the audience which had fought their way to the front rows at Elvis and Jackie Wilson concerts in the fifties (and, yes, fainted at Frank Sinatra concerts in the forties, though in those days they mostly stayed in their seats), literally stepping forth from the audience and taking the stage themselves.
Few of them wrote their important hits (Smith and DeShannon were rare exceptions). Even fewer produced and none ever received proper credit. So, mostly, they seized the moment by singing.
Sing they did. Brenda Lee, Dionne Warwick, Dusty Springfield, Darlene Love, Arlene Smith, Mary Weiss, Ronnie Spector, Jackie DeShannon. No genre, style or sensibility, however named, was ever graced with greater voices, and, amongst that cacophony, it fell to then seventeen-year-old Lesley Gore, she of the perfect pitch and Sarah Lawrence pedigree, to sing their anthem, the one record that most assuredly marked the future off from the past, even as the storm of the British Invasion (a genre, like any but the one Lesley Gore was slated into, where no distinction needed to be made between groups or individuals, men or women, teens or twenty-somethings, no matter how many of its acts were four or five guys with guitars) seemed to wash every other future away.
'You Don't Own Me," (it's title and ethos copped from a John Ford movie even in the unlikely event the songwriters never saw it) wasn't her biggest hit."It's My Party" made #1, while "You Don't Own Me" was stopped at #2 by the symbolic-as-hell and real-as-hell phenomenon that was "I Want To Hold Your Hand". It may not have even been her greatest vocal. I'm partial to "She's a Fool" myself and there's plenty of other competition.
But it's the one that truly escaped time and found a life that was not and is not in any way bound by its original moment.
My memory plays tricks on me and I've never been able to track the quote down, but I'm willing to swear on anything you want that, somewhere, there's an interview with Gore where she said it was also the one song she knew would be a hit.
When she was asked how she knew, she had a simple answer:
"Because I read my fan mail."
Call her anything you want. Can't mark the future off any plainer than that.
Time came for Lesley Gore today at 68.
Well…not really….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAzoc9wijm0
Posted in R.I.P.	| Tagged Arlene Smith, Brenda Lee, Charlie Gillett, Cilla Black, Conie Francis, Darlene Love, Diana Ross, Dusty Springfield, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Gladys Horton, It's My Party, Jackie DeShannon, Jackie Wilson, John Ford, John Wayne, Lesley Gore, Lulu, Martha and the Vandellas, Martha Reeves, Mary Weiss, Mary Wells, Nancy Sinatra, Petula Clark, Ronnie Spector, Sandie Shaw, She's a Fool, Shirley Owens, The Beatles, The Chantels, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The Marvelettes, The Shangri-Las, The Supremes, Vera Miles, You Don't Own Me	| 10 Replies
PSYCHOLOGY 101 (Great Quotations)
Anybody who spends any time here at all knows I'm highly skeptical of the "Svengali" theory of rock (or just culture), which holds that pretty much every great vocal ever delivered by a "non-writer" in the last sixty years was coaxed by a record producer. This theory extends so far that it even takes in Elvis from time to time (especially in the Sun days).
But it is especially all-encompassing when it is applied to great records sung by young women of whatever ethnicity and produced by young white (or at least crit-illuminati approved) males. Read the standard rock "histories" and you might come away thinking that Mary Weiss and Ronnie Spector and Darlene Love and Mary Wells needed Shadow Morton or Phil Spector or Smokey Robinson to go to the bathroom for them.
Heck, even the likes of Dionne Warwick and Dusty Springfield weren't immune, and, coming forward in time, neither were Donna Summer (who actually wrote many of her hits and produced more than a few, but that's another story for another time) and Linda Ronstadt.
So it's pretty funny to discover that, once upon a time, along about 1970, the one Rock-era, non-writing woman who pretty much is immune from this particular style of condescension found herself resisting a song that she didn't think she could do anything with.
Here's her producer, Richard Perry, from an interview in 2011:
"She wanted to cancel the session….I said 'I'll cancel the session right now if you want. But I can't believe that Barbra Streisand would back down from a challenge.'"
The ploy worked. They didn't cancel the session. And the challenge ended up being this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXsF9zrtDS4
The record (covering the great Laura Nyro) ended up being Streisand's first top ten record since "People" in 1964, as well as the first (and best) of many rock-tinged hits (several of them duets with the aforementioned Ms. Summer) in the years following.
But she didn't need to wait for the charts to validate her response to Perry's challenge. To finish the quote:
"After we did the first take…I called her in for a playback because it was clear that this was going to be a very special record….And while it was playing, she whispered in my ear 'You were right and I was wrong. But it's nice to be wrong!'"
Okay, as Svengali moments go, it wasn't exactly Phil Spector locking his wife in the house and making her watch Citizen Kane every single day, but I'm glad Perry was on the job this particular day…and I bet Barbra is too!
(NOTE: All this was brought to the forefront of my ever-wandering attention this week after Streisand's "Back to Brooklyn" special ran last weekend during the local PBS station's pledge week. She spent the first part pulling off an outfit that wouldn't have looked out of place on a Shangri-La in the year she hit with "People." And both her voice and her singing (which way too many people need to be reminded aren't quite the same thing) were better than I've ever heard them be. Which is saying something….And just as a final note, the intro to the video here is a tad strange, but I loved the sound….A needle dropping on Promo vinyl of a classic 45 and then running in the groove. Doesn't get any better than that. UPDATE: Scratch that last, the video disappeared. Perils of YouTube. But you can still enjoy the record!)
Posted in Great Quotations	| Tagged Barbra Streisand, Darlene Love, Dionne Warwick, Donna Summer, Dusty Springfield, Elvis Presley, Laura Nyro, Linda Ronstadt, Mary Weiss, Mary Wells, People, Phil Spector, Richard Perry, Ronnie Spector, Shadow aMorgon, Smokey Robinson, Stoney End	| 4 Replies
WHAT IMPRESSED ME THIS WEEK (When the Singers Ruled Motown and I Spy Goes Places We Haven't Caught Up To Just Yet)
Posted on August 18, 2013 by Nondisposable Johnny
Hitsville U.S.A.: The Motown Singles Collection 1959–1971 (Disc One)
"Disc One" runs through the latter part of 1964. It's nowhere near a complete record of the label's hits from the period–not even of its really big hits. But it's a telling overview just the same.
For anyone who may not know, "Motown" was the brain-child of Berry Gordy, Jr., who, along with Fats Domino and Elvis Presley, was one of the three truly essential men in the rise of rock and roll from a sub-genre of rhythm and blues to the cultural cataclysm that was already well established by the time the Beatles arrived in America.
What is less well known–or at least recognized–is how much early Motown depended almost completely on singers.
Mind you, this is before the Temptations or the Four Tops or the (generally underrated) Supremes. And before Marvin Gaye or Stevie Wonder or even Smokey Robinson became the powerhouse geniuses of later years. This was the era of the Marvelettes and Mary Wells and one shots like Barrett Strong and the Contours.
But on the first fourteen tracks of this particular collection, which run from Strong's "Money" to Little Stevie Wonder's "Fingertips–Part 2″ and cover four full years, there is not a single case where the lead vocal isn't the strongest element on the record (with only the wild, doo-wopping vocal arrangement on the Contours' "Do You Love Me" coming anywhere close to one-upping the lead).
Mind you, a good bit of the writing, producing and arranging talent that would mark mid-Sixties' Motown's glory run was already in place.
So were most of the crack session men who became known as the Funk Brothers.
But none of them were quite there yet, especially in the first year or two, when any new label's very survival is at stake.
What was there was a glorious run of fantastic lead vocals. If the Supremes are underrated (far too often dismissed as producer's pets–as though that has ever really opened a door for anyone who didn't have the talent to step through it to begin with), then the Marvelettes and especially Mary Wells are, outside of the usual cult circles, criminally neglected.
Later on, even singers as great as the Temptations or the Tops' Levi Stubbs or Marvin Gaye did not have to CARRY records the way the label's early vocalists did. Beginning with Martha and the Vandellas' "Heat Wave" in the summer of 1963, the rest of the label's talent pool began rapidly catching up. By the time the label's really big acts broke through, the instrumental tracks alone on records like "My Girl," or "Come See About Me" or "Uptight" or "Heard It Through the Grapevine" could have carried many a lesser talent to the top of the charts.
But there at the foundation, Barrett Strong (whose vocal on "Money" is every bit as great as John Lennon's on the epic Beatles' remake–it's the rest of the track that comes short) and the young, still unpolished Smokey Robinson and Gladys Horton and Mary Wells and all the rest had to put it over on their own.
And they did.
The rest of the box lets you hear how much Berry Gordy learned from the experience–how deeply he understood the importance of voices. Because he spent the rest of the decade not only developing the locals (Tempts, Tops, Supremes and so forth) but rounding up singers like Gladys Knight and Ronnie Isley and the Spinners from afar.
Then, of course, he forgot.
Not only did he let much of that talent slip away at the end of the decade (with Knight, the Isleys and the Spinners becoming three of the biggest acts of the seventies elsewhere) but he lost the knack–or perhaps the will–to seek out new talent of the same caliber. From 1970 onward, only the Jacksons and the Commodores came anywhere close to matching the singers of Motown's earliest days, let alone its peak.
Not coincidentally, they were the label's biggest acts as it passed–also not coincidentally–from being an iconic cultural force to being that greatest of all American Dreams….a successful business enterprise.
Pity, that.
I Spy: Season One (1965)
The Robert Culp/Bill Cosby spy series has been sitting on my shelf for a few years, saved for a rainy day. Lots of rainy days this week, so I began working my way in.
Nicely done for its period, meaning for any period. Of course it has weaknesses, but good things are always good. Played by two white guys it would have been just as enjoyable, assuming the second white guy was as gifted and relaxed in the role as Bill Cosby–unlikely but not entirely impossible.
But what's really striking about this "groundbreaking" series is that, unlike pretty much every other dare television has ever taken (including, I suspect, the ones it is taking right-now-this-very-minute-in-case-you-hadn't-heard!), it's precisely the groundbreaking element–the easy, natural relationship between the two leads–that hasn't dated.
I don't mean that their relationship feels contemporary. Just that it feels like a world that never arrived.
Robert Culp's commentary on several early episodes stresses that this particular sort of interracial relationship "had never been done," (at least on television) and he's right about that. The closest any white/black relationship had come anywhere on-screen to feeling so naturalistic was actually the Mammy/Scarlett duet pulled off by Ms. McDaniel and Ms. Leigh in you know what.
But Culp and Cosby went that one better because they stepped outside of the time-space continuum and made the impossible–a black American and a white American interacting on a daily basis in a public space with no sliver of race laying between them, as though history had never happened–seem easy as pie.
Culp says in his commentary that it was a conscious decision between himself and Cosby to make race a nonissue–that their statement would be to make no statement.
But I don't think he gave himself and his co-star enough credit. There is nothing harder than making a statement by making no statement and this particular nonstatement statement has never been made quite as convincingly since.
So good for them. Good for Robert Culp and Bill Cosby, who turned out to be a couple of splendidly unique human beings.
Shame about the rest of us.
Posted in What Impressed Me This Week	| Tagged Barrett Strong, Berry Gordy Jr., Bill Cosby, Elvis Presley, Fats Domino, Gladys Horton, Gladys Knight, I Spy, Levi Stubbs, Marvin Gaye, Mary Wells, Motown, Robert Culp, Ronnie Isley, Smokey Robinson, Stevie Wonder, The Commodores, The Contours, The Four Tops, The Funk Brothers, The Isley Brothers, The Jackson 5, The Marvelettes, The Spinners, The Supremes, The Temptations	| 2 Replies
WHAT DID


Internationally acclaimed chef José Avillez invited me to illustrate and animate some ingredients for the opening credits of his new tv show on SIC Mulher, Combinações Improváveis.
Each week, the show's last recipe is for kids, so the idea was to bring a little bit of the children's universe into the show.
The video was brilliantly shot and produced by Boa Onda Produções.


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Healthcare IT News released the Best Hospital IT Departments, with MU Health Care's Tiger Institute landing top rankings among other large hospitals.
MU's strides in precision medicine can be conceptualized as "big data" that uses rapidly accumulating information systems related to the genome, metabolome, microbiome, environment, biosensor technologies, and individual behaviors, among others. Although precision medicine is more than just genomics, these data sets are particularly relevant for many areas of physician practice.
However, the EHR is rapidly becoming a platform that uses new standards, such as HL7 FHIR (Fast Health Interoperability Resources) and SMART (Substitutable Medical Applications and Reusable Technology). These platforms enable third-party developers to rapidly integrate next-generation applications into EHRs.
The EHR can already capture the phenotypic and clinical information to enhance personalized medicine. We believe this capability presents a unique opportunity for precision medicine at MU.
In January, we held a retreat to identify areas where MU faculty can make unique scientific contributions that do not largely duplicate research at peer institutions.
We chartered four interdisciplinary teams to identify pilot projects in the domains of oncology, cardiovascular disease, autism spectrum disorders, and "Beyond Next Generation Sequencing".
Through these pilot projects, we will grow biospecimen collection standards, storage protocols, information analytics and workflows needed to support each of these initiatives.
We charged a fifth team with developing a proposal for a technology-enabled, clinical decision support precision medicine project.
Through these pilot projects, we will expand the technical manpower needed to enhance the biomedical informatics infrastructure at MU.
Industry partnerships represent a source of potential research funding. As such, we are building on our successful engagement with our first partner, and are investigating other industry partnerships.
With one partner we aim to develop an application for the efficient collection, organization, and presentation of tumor board data and references.
Efforts are underway to build Phase II of the project, which impacts development using SMART on FHIR technology. We are having conversations about where we want to take the relationship over the next five years — beyond the end of the project.
We are also talking with two premier device companies. One proposal is a Joint Research Data Center that will merge implanted rhythm management device data with MU's clinical data to explore and develop new predictive models for cardiac interventions.
An early demonstration project focuses on our ability to integrate a cloud-connected enteral feeding device into the Cerner EHR. This demonstration project will help develop a research platform for putting translational device-related decision support into practice.
Over the next year, MU looks to extend our leadership in the Greater Plains Collaborative (GPC). Initially funded by the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute, this Community Data Research Network (CDRN) represents a critical opportunity for continuing to expand research funding.
Many GPC members use competing EHRs, so participation is an opportunity to demonstrate MU, Tiger Institute, and Cerner capabilities in the data sharing arena. As a full participant in the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Network, we continue to enhance our Common Data Model (CDM). This work enables participation in nationwide trials, such as Aspirin Dosing: A Patient-Centric Trial Assessing Benefits and Long-Term Effectiveness, "ADAPTABLE" clinical trial.
Our next milestone is to enhance the CDM with American Community Survey data to enable participation in a nationwide diabetes study called Natural Experiments for Translation in Diabetes.
I2B2 continues to be a centerpiece of our data-related cyberinfrastructure plan. Our focus has been on both ensuring quality of I2B2 and continuing to enhance with new datasets.
Over the next six months, we will move a copy of this tool to our local environment. This will increase the scale of this critical asset to support researchers and make us more agile in the marketplace.
In the past, we would often support research with a time-intensive, one-time build of a research dataset. In the future, we will direct those same resources at enhancing the existing I2B2 clinical ontology with geospatial and publicly available data (such as the American Community Survey Data).
In early 2017, the MU Research Computing Support Services group successfully completed the security review process for a High Performance Computing (HPC) environment capable of storing/processing ePersonal Health Information.
This Secure4 environment lets us do large-scale health and bio-informatics projects, such as data mining and predictive algorithm development.
Our first demonstration projects center around the availability of HealthFacts data in the HPC environment.
With more tools and infrastructure in place, along with well-defined common goals, we look to a future in which our partnership can further enhance research at MU.
In 2018 we will focus on how to bring Cerner and Tiger Institute capabilities together to further our clinical research priorities and mission. In this environment, we look to maximize the benefit from industry partnerships.
Through the GPC CDRN and our participation with the Kansas City Area Life Sciences Institute, we are solidifying our relationship with University of Kansas Medical Center on the Kansas City side.
A recent Clinical and Translational Science Award partnership with Washington University is a move toward strengthening our relationships in the St. Louis area. The objective is to streamline the environment to enable researchers to take discoveries and turn them into clinical practice with Bio-Medical Informatics as a key enabler.
Through these partnerships, we will grow MU's iconic standing in the research community.
In July 2017, Tiger Institute Board of Governors agreed to move forward with the implementation of Cerner's revenue cycle to replace existing systems for registration, scheduling, patient accounting, and practice management.
Our goal is to finalize contracting by end of 2017 and kick off the project in the summer of 2018. A clinically integrated revenue cycle will benefit the health system by helping further prepare us to compete in the future.
Single sign-on streamlines our users' login experience by ensuring the username/password used to log into all computers is the same as the credentials required to sign into all Cerner Millennium applications.
Our users like having one set of credentials to remember, and calls to the Help Desk for password resets dropped significantly.
Finally, single sign-on was a prerequisite for several health system-wide projects and required for projects to meet their timelines.
With Follow Me Technology users can log into a virtual desktop running on specific hardware within the health system and have that same session "follow" them whenever they log into another PC.
This time saver completely changes our users' workflows. No longer do they have to sign into each computer they use. Instead, they sign into all applications once at the beginning of the day. This capability saves significant amounts of time once a user is properly trained and comfortable with the new workflow. iAccess "tap-and-go" functionality, in which users log in with their badges, is coming soon.
With the aging Pyxis dispensing system, MU Health Care opted to undertake a system-wide replacement with the integrated RxStation solution. Beginning in August 2016 with the pilot, through August 2017, Tiger Institute completed the largest-to-date implementation of RxStation. Nine semi trucks delivered the components needed for customizable configurations across the health system.
Benefits to pharmacy include further decentralized dispensing of medications, automated reconciliation of controlled substances, and integration of formulary and patient management within the EHR. Pharmacy now offers more than 90% of available medications through the automated dispensing cabinets, compared to less than 40% with Pyxis, a 56% increase. Medications filled at cart fill with Pyxis was at 42% and now has dropped to less than 5% with RxStation, an 89% decrease.
Nursing can now see the patient record and queued medications at the dispensing cabinet and have immediate access to verified medication orders. They can queue up their medications from their workstation prior to approaching the cabinet, minimizing any wait times. Nurses can also create any needed patient/drug labels at the station.
At MU Health Care, our emergency department (ED) is maxed out and we are in the middle of an expansion project. We must streamline care and transitions within the ED to minimize patients leaving without being seen and deliver better outcomes.
Therefore, in collaboration with Cerner's Emergency Medicine group, Tiger Institute developed the National Emergency Department Overcrowding Score (NEDOCS) component for display on the ED Real Time Dashboard.
The NEDOCS algorithm provides an overcrowding score based on factors in the ED, including number of waiting patients, free beds in the institution, and ED patients on ventilators — among others.
We can solve overcrowding and improve patient experience by sending alerts to providers and hospital administration when the ED patient volume begins to surge. The surge plan is designed to provide methods for floor and ED staff to mitigate the factor(s) contributing to department overcrowding, and to get patients seen and moved to the appropriate level of care more quickly.
Hospital administrators, floor personnel, and ED staff proactively implement the part of the surge plan which fits their area — all with the goal of decreasing the load on the ED. By managing surges well, we predict better outcomes and improved patient satisfaction scores.
The development work done at Tiger Institute is available to the broader Cerner ED Dashboard client base. The NEDOCS component and alerting system now provide value to more than 15 health systems.
Advancements in portal technology continue to make it easier for patients to access their health care records.
A patient launches his or her account by matching name, date of birth, and phone number. Then the portal sends a verification key to the patient's cell phone on record. Once the patient enters the confirmation key, they access their personal health information and begin taking a more active role in both health and care.
The framework below shows how the portal informs, engages, and empowers our patients and helps patients become partners with us in their health care and supports the community.
A diabetic patient can easily review when they last documented a vision check, a foot check, or had a Hemoglobin A1C test run and the result of that test. As time draws near for their next clinical exam, the patient can schedule an appointment using any computer or mobile phone. Patients can send and receive secure messages with their provider to ask and answer simple questions.
The portal is an indispensable tool for our patients and increases participation in their own self-care.
The patient portal is an important piece of patient engagement. Seeing your physician's notes after a visit is groundbreaking, and it's a huge step forward. Giving our patients easy access to their own health information helps create engaged and loyal patients.


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text:
Cardiology Research and Reviews
Research Article of American Journal of Cardiology Research and Reviews
Isabel Pizarro Veas
Laboratory of Bioinorganic and Environmental Analytical Chemistry, Department of Chemistry. Faculty of Basic Sciences. University of Antofagasta, Antofagasta, (Chile).
The intracellular As-protein binding in cytosol and methanol–water extract of the auricle and saphene tissues of As impacted people was evaluated by bidimensional size exclusion FPLC-UV-ICP-MS. The fractionation of cytosol using Superdex, Phenomenex and MonoQ HR 5/5 columns, shows that As is distributed in a wide range of contiguous fractions of each column, being 8, 25, 50 % the percentages of As in the collected fractions, respectively.
In the methanol: water extracts a similar study than performed with the cytosol using preparative gel chromatography on Sephadex G-75 and Shephadex G-100 columns and the MonoQ HR 5/5 anion protein exchange was carried out. A very low As (<1 % of total As) and protein contain were found in the different fractions of both SEC fractionating series. A similar As–protein association to that found in the cytosol after fractionating with MonoQ HR 5/5 was observed for auricle and saphene.
Inorganic and methylated As speciation in the 20 – 26 cytosol fractions obtained within the Phenomenex column was performed by HPLC–ICP–MS using the Hamilton PRP-X100 column. Only As (III) and As (V) were present and the results obtained shows that the As (III)/As(V) ratio is constant in most cases.
Direct evidence of the existence of As–binding peptides in auricle and saphene vein from arsenic impacted human beings has have been obtained which was previously reported by means of novo peptide synthesis.
Keywords: Arsenic Species Binding Proteins; Cardiovascular Tissues; Cardiac Patients; Chile
Isabel Pizarro Veas. ARSENIC SPECIES BINDING PROTEINS IN CARDIOVASCULAR TISSUES FROM CARDIAC PATIENTS OF CHILE. American Journal of Cardiology Research and Reviews, 2021, 4:16. DOI:10.28933/ajcrar-2021-10-1205
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33.I. Pizarro, M. M. Gómez, P. Fodor, M. A. Palacios and C. Cámara, Biol. Trace Element Research.2004, 129-143.
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


We've been telling you for quite some time now that everyone's favorite foul-mouthed teddy bear, 'Ted' is coming back to the big screen. Well we have the first trailer for you, and it looks just as raunchy and hilarious as the first film. Mark Wahlberg is back, but I didn't see Mila Kunis anywhere this time. But, Amanda Seyfried and Morgan Freeman show up. There is an excellent Samuel L. Jackson joke and everyone's worst nightmare at a sperm donation center. I can't wait to see this. Enjoy the trailer. 'Ted 2' opens June 26th.
This entry was posted on Thursday, January 29th, 2015 at 12:19 pm	and is filed under Film, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
« See What Big Name Actors Have Joined the 'Wet Hot American Summer' Cast!


text:
The Ex-Mormon Feminist Who Paints Women's Naked Bodies
By Nat Roe and Libby Coleman
Because not all of Utah is devout.
Reported & written by Libby Coleman
Video by Nat Roe
Photography is one way to start a fight. Exhibit A: a black-and-white photo of a woman with "Fuck You Governor Herbert" painted across her nude body. She holds up a middle finger over her vagina.
Cat Palmer, the woman behind the camera, posted the image to social media. Droves of women tagged Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, a conservative Republican, until, Palmer claims, someone from his social media team blocked her account. (Herbert's camp says the photo violated Facebook's policies and that they never blocked Palmer.)
Palmer, a self-described "photographer, provocateur and activist," doesn't back down in a fight, even when she's clearly David to the government's Goliath. Her work thumbs its nose at gender inequality and religious hypocrisies as much as it celebrates the act of free expression. She has parodied the Last Supper, photographed numerous women with shaved heads and shot nude women with statements painted on their bodies about how — radical concept — they should get to make decisions about those bodies. In short, Palmer has shaken up Utah's art scene, exhibiting at Planned Parenthood and winning accolades such as best feminist of the year. "Cat's been really visible, forging her own path in the state," says art critic Scotti Hill.
You let her leave the house looking like that?
With dyed hair and a tat of the Salt Lake City skyline on her left leg, the petite 37-year-old doesn't look like a former Mormon. When Palmer was growing up in Southern California, her family was religious. Her mom married at 16 and had her soon after. Palmer ended up moving in with her grandparents, opting for hot-pink dreadlocks and vintage dresses paired with Chucks rather than somber, pressed white shirts and black pants. She picked up a camera at age 15 and started photographing local up-and-coming bands. "People would say things about me to [my grandparents]. You know: 'You let her leave the house looking like that?' " Her grandparents' response? "So what? She's not hurting anybody." All the while, Palmer regularly attended church services (her grandmother was a prominent member of the chapter).
Cat Palmer
Source Courtesy of Cat Palmer
In 2006, though, the presidency of George W. Bush helped change Palmer's worldview and, she says, "fueled a lot of my art." Palmer slowed down the pretty-picture-taking and started taking photos that emphasized powerful women and the resistance to norms. Soon, she found it hard to explain her work to her community. Just imagine the scene when her elderly neighbor and assigned visiting teacher from the Mormon church heard about what Palmer had been up to one particular day: "I was photographing three sisters with gas masks on with writing all over their bodies in front of bombs." As might be expected, the conversation didn't go over well, and Palmer left the church soon after. (The neighbors eventually patched things up.)
Only half the residents of Salt Lake County are Mormon, compared with some 60-plus percent across the state, according to The Salt Lake Tribune. This divide crosses over into politics too. Salt Lake County was one of only two counties, out of 29, to go blue this past election and fuels the Democratic seats in the state Legislature. Salt Lake City is decidedly more progressive than the rest of Utah, with residents electing an openly gay mayor in 2015. As Salt Lake City continues to grow, some of its residents are increasingly influencing art across the state. "The art scene in Utah is evolving," says gallery owner Diane Stewart. "It's becoming more progressive, more varied, and collectors are responding."
In the past, some community members would disapprove of certain art, with the result being few people willing to support the work. One influencer in particular — former Brigham Young University curator Jeff Lambson — put provocative contemporary art front and center and helped "move the needle in Utah," Stewart says. Palmer, who has experienced some pushback, still has a lot to protest — including Utah's major gender pay gap, the fact that only a few women hold seats in government and the controversy over whether or not to pull funding for Planned Parenthood. "Because of the repression," she says, art brings "balance." Which is why, when Trump was elected president, Palmer moved quickly to launch a photo series, the third installment of "Keep the Politicians Out of Our VAGINA."
*Editor's note: In the video, Cat Palmer refers to Salt Lake City as having the only openly gay mayor in the U.S. In fact, there are others, including Ed Murray of Seattle.
Nat Roe Follow Nat Roe on Twitter Follow Nat Roe on Facebook Contact Nat Roe|
Libby Coleman Follow Libby Coleman on Twitter Contact Libby Coleman
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From concert halls and nightclubs to recording studios, audio engineers and musicians are pumping up the volume more than ever before.
And as hearing loss begins to take its toll, they're also facing the music.
According to the House Ear Institute (HEI), "Advances in the electronics industry have made possible clean sound production at higher sound pressure levels.
Although perceived loudness is subjective, many audiologists estimate that each increase of 10 dB doubles the volume of a sound.
That means that modern audio professionals' working environments are up to 3 times noisier than those of their predecessors!
In my previous post on 10 steps to combating hearing loss, I discussed how you can protect your hearing in everyday environments.
What additional steps can audio engineers and musicians take to safeguard against hearing loss?
Forget about tissue or cotton – these homemade devices only reduce noise by about 7 dB. Foam earplugs are better, but the best are custom-fitted earplugs designed to cut decibels without muffling high frequencies.
2. Be alert to noise levels in your environment.
Buy a sound pressure level meter and measure SPL against the OSHA requirements.
3. Turn down your monitors.
Prolonged exposure to sounds in excess of 85 dBs is risky behavior — particularly if you're using headphones.
4. Increase distance between you and the sound source.
This means standing at an angle from the source, not in front of it.
5. Take breaks during long sessions.
Give your ears a rest. Take a walk someplace quiet, if possible.
Although these tips seem like common sense, what's even more common is musicians and engineers routinely ignoring them.
Earplugs and other hearing protection devices may not be 'cool' — but neither is hearing loss!
If you've already experienced hearing damage, a wide range of products exist to enhance your life, even if you don't have (or need) a hearing aid.
Assistive Listening Devices (ALDs) include everything from loud alarm clocks to portable personal amplifiers that boost the sound of everyday conversations.
Call AudioLink at 1-800-263-0112 or email us for a free consultation on assistive listening devices that can enhance your life in the face of mild hearing loss.
What additional steps can audio professionals take to protect their hearing?


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Dr. Gary North: Why the Internet Reformation Must Win
By Staff News & Analysis - May 15, 2013
Mises' Answer to Would-Be Conspirators: You Will Lose … Over half a century ago, Ludwig von Mises made a crucial observation. The capitalistic social order, therefore, is an economic democracy in the strictest sense of the word. In the last analysis, all decisions are dependent on the will of the people as consumers. Thus, whenever there is a conflict between the consumers' views and those of the business managers, market pressures assure that the views of the consumers win out eventually. – Gary North's Specific Answers
Dominant Social Theme: This Internet is good, but it is already in the service of government.
Free-Market Analysis: A leading hard-money economist of the modern era has just written an eloquent analysis about why what we call the Internet Reformation must inevitably have its day.
We've never had any doubt that the Internet would mimic the Gutenberg press in tearing down the accepted wisdom of the time and building up something else.
Today the Western world is in chaos. France has slipped into recession, England is in recession again, the Southern PIGS are in flames and Brussels is trying to move Europe to a federal system against the will of the majority of Europeans.
Physical gold and paper gold have diverged in terms of price and everyone who follows these things knows it is likely a deliberate divergence. Economic stresses are effecting the world's major empire, as well, the United States, where President Obama's reign has come under a sudden, powerful attack.
The scandals in which the IRS has already admitted to attacking constitutionist organizations like the Tea Party, Fedgov spying on press institutions like the AP and, of course, the ongoing Benghazi investigation that left US ambassadors dead under murky circumstances have all pushed the Obama administration off course.
Whatever Obama had hoped to do in his second term will likely suffer from this trio of scandals. He will be lucky if he is not impeached.
The BRICs – and China especially – are propping up the world's economy but China is struggling with inflation and a flattening demand curve for the consumer trinkets it produces in such large quantities. Like Japan before it, China is suffering the aftereffects of a great fiat-money binge.
Never in the history of mankind has a civilization used central bank supermoney to such great effect, building up what passes for modern civilization in about three decades. Of course, awed observers miss the point that much of this building-up is government mandated and government planned.
At least some of it as about as valid as the empty cities that China keeps building. Any civilization that bases its growth on monopoly printing presses has been built on a shoddy, shifting foundation. Japan has discovered that, as well, though its current government has decided that the cure to monopoly printing is more of it.
Unheralded among all of this is what we have been pointing out one way or another for at least a decade, and that is what Gary North has just pointed out as well: There is a revolution occurring among the consumer class, the beleaguered and tattered middle classes of the world.
They are indeed using the Internet to educate themselves about the world and their aggregate position in it. The reality of the Misesian point of view that North represents continues to grow, thanks in large part to Lew Rockwell et al. and affiliated facilities.
But in a larger sense, the Internet Reformation is not confined to any one point of view or party. It is part of what we've called in the past the hive mind. It is being driven by the same mysterious cultural give-and-take that produces fashion and disseminates new ideas around the world.
Gary North explains this via economics. Here's some more:
Like Mises' disciple Murray Rothbard, I am a student of conspiracies. They all have this in common: the seek leverage through the state. They instinctively know that Mises was correct, that they are the servants of customers in a free market order. So, they seek to rig the markets by means of the state.
Once a person comes to grips with Mises' observation, conspiracies appear less formidable. The state is a weak reed when compared to the long-run effects of liberty. The free market prospers under liberty. It expands its control over production and distribution.
This leads me to the topic at hand.
Alex Jones and Paul Watson wrote a really interesting report on the CEO of Google, Eric Scmidt. He is a big supporter of Obama. They say that he is behind a new organization, Zeitgeist. It is a supplement to the Bilderberg organization. It may be about to absorb Bilderberg.
I have been fascinated for almost half a century with the attempts of various conspiratorial groups to influence the affairs of men. This has been the goal of power-brokers for as long as we have records of human societies. The quest for power, by way of specialized knowledge and behind-the-scenes influence, goes back to the story of the Garden of Eden. Men are always trying to get shortcuts to power. They want to have inside information. They want to be the powers behind the throne, at least in those cases in which they are not convinced that they sit on the throne.
One of the basic themes of writers who specialize in conspiracy historiography is at the people on the thrones are really not the true source of their own power. It becomes difficult to maintain this when you are dealing with somebody like Josef Stalin or Adolf Hitler. When you get a true megalomaniac on the throne of power, and he personally tells everyone what to do, on pain of death, it is difficult to maintain that there are any powers behind the throne. These rulers seem to have a kind of built-in sniffer that enables them to locate people who think they are the powers behind the throne, and those people tend to disappear.
Nevertheless, when it comes to the exercise of power, every person on a throne is dependent on information. The better the information he has access to, the more effectively he can wield power. The difficulty is this: people do not want to tell strongmen on the throne that what they had been told before is a pack of lies, or worse, utter nonsense. That can get you killed. So, the quality of the information that flows upward to the person on the throne is always suspect. So, the man on the throne attempts to have multiple pipelines of information. But the more pipelines of information there are, the more confusing events get.
The flow of accurate information is the crucial resource. The person without accurate information is flying blind. I think that this, more than anything else, is what brought down the Soviet Union in 1991. The more complex that a society gets, the more difficult it is to gain access to reliable information.
… The Internet was the product of DARPA. DARPA is a military research organization. The reason the Internet was invented in the late 1960s was because of the threat of nuclear war. The military wanted a communication system that would withstand multiple nuclear attacks. It had to be decentralized. So, they invented the Internet to provide this decentralized communication system. But what grew out of that project is vastly beyond anything that anybody could have conceived in the late 1960s. The whole world is being restructured by that project …
The same is true of the bright fellows who think that this massive decentralized flow of information can in any way be controlled by a group of technicians at the top of the system. There is no top of the system. That is the whole point. That was why the Internet was invented. It was specifically designed so that there would be no top to the system. In this respect, it is clearly the most ingenious technological invention of all time. It was centrally planned to be totally decentralized.
… We are back to the dilemma that was posed centuries ago by a Scottish philosopher named Adam Ferguson. He discussed society as the product of human action, but not of design. Anyway, it is not of human design. In our day, the premier exponent of that position was F. A. Hayek. Hayek made it clear that the decentralized knowledge that the free market can draw upon is vastly greater than the knowledge possessed by any committee. Centralized knowledge cannot compete effectively with decentralized knowledge, when people who possess this decentralized knowledge seek out ways of profiting from it. The more intensely capitalized the free market is, the better the knowledge available to entrepreneurs.
… We have here an exponential growth of knowledge. It is not simply that this knowledge exists; it is that this knowledge can be shared so inexpensively. It also can be sold. The algorithms that are used by market traders are beyond the ability of the traders to shape pricing. They are price predictors, not price shapers. Nobody is fast enough to beat an algorithm to the punch.
… We know the Federal Reserve System is eventually going to fail. Why? Because the Federal Reserve System is premised on the assumption that a relatively small committee of people that Ph.D's in economics are capable of making decisions based on the flow of information that is provided by a lot of other people with Ph.D's in economics. The information that is collected by government agencies is sent up the pipeline, and a small committee at the top is supposed to be able to analyze this information, and then set monetary policy to shape the general outcome of the economy.
… This is why I really do not pay a lot of attention to the Bilderberg, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Trilateral Commission. Ultimately, they are going to lose, just as their British equivalents and predecessors lost, 1914-1945. The digital genie is out of the bottle. His great gift to mankind is that he keeps selling his services at ever-lower prices. He serves ever-more people by cutting prices. Nobody can get him back in the bottle.
We are excited by this analysis, which includes three main points on which we've based The Daily Bell and our vision of the Internet Reformation. First, the Internet was indeed built by DARPA, but as we've often pointed out, two Steve's in a garage basically invented the personal computer that allowed people unexpectedly to gain access to the DARPA-built Internet. The rest is history, and has been driving government-types mad ever since.
Second, North points out with great eloquence that what has occurred is Hayekian in a most profound sense. While we have our troubles with Hayek, there is no doubt that his vision of spontaneous order has proven out once again if one takes the time to analyze the development of the Internet.
North doesn't mention it but the Internet is, in fact, a living example of the best pattern of human existence, which is a form of anarchy – which merely means the absence of the guiding hand of government. What the Internet has achieved and will continue to achieve is a testimony to the free flow of ideas and the untrammeled human spirit.
Finally, North makes the point that the information that beats at the heart of the Internet will eventually sweep away the conspiracies and devious plans of those who wish to harness the Internet for their own controlling purposes.
In fact, this is just what happened during the era of the Gutenberg Press when those who sought to control the printing press with various false flag operations including perhaps the Reformation itself found out that their plots simply contributed to the same creative destruction that they were trying to counteract.
Look around. Whether the West's growing chaos is deliberate or not, the absence of an ability to start a world war and the impossibility, currently, of controlling the Internet is eroding the modern order. Global warming, the war on terror, the European Union and a half-dozen other fundamental globalist memes are under severe attack. The methodology of control has been fully exposed in the 21st century and there is no turning back.
We are not predicting a clear or easy victory for freedom and free-market thinking, by the way. We have never predicted anything but that the elites of our day may eventually conclude it is in their best interest to take a step back. They apparently did so during the Gutenberg era when the democratic state was invented to take the place of the divinity of kings.
After Thoughts
We want to thank Dr. North for his eloquent article. From our perspective, what he says is both logical and true … and more than that it is inspiring. The logic of economics throws its weight behind the Internet Reformation and we believe, in the shorter term anyway, it will tip the balance. In the longer term, the human struggle continues, but that is a story for another day.
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The track touches Malga Meleit from where it crosses the south side of Mont Arvenis with a breathtaking view over the Val di Lauco and the Tagliamento basin. From Malga Claupa continue for Terlessa and finally we reach Cludinico, in the square opposite the Mining Museum.
slopes of Mount Arvenis where, upon reaching the maximum innovation element, opens the Malga agareit basin. Reached the junction, continue along the main track and you reach Malga Meleit.
Just before the hut he leaves the dirt road and take the right path that, crossing the southern flank of Mount Arvenis, leading to Malga Claupa; the old military trail winds along the steep slopes of the mountain and among ups and downs a little 'challenging and views zafiato gear hub, you will admire the plateau extending co Laurence and the Tagliamento river basin.
After a last challenging effort will take you to Malga Claupa and from here, take the dirt road that turns left, you descend, without major difficulties, at a time of Terlessa and its gentle meadows; Terlessa from the road becomes paved, you meet a right secondary road, in the midst of virgin forests, leading to a time of Cludinico, in front of the Mine Museum.


text:
Lesbianism: A Study in Female Homosexuality
With a New Father-Daughter Dialogue
by David H. Rosen and Rachel Rosen
Foreword by Evelyn Hooker
This new edition of Lesbianism allows one to understand lesbianism as a way of life. The original 1965-1966 research study is included in its entirety. Unlike Freud, who based his view that lesbianism was a mental disorder on a single case study, this breakthrough and innovative research project concerns interviews and psychological testing of 26 lesbians who were not psychiatric patients. And, as one would predict, these lesbians were not disturbed, as far as mental health was concerned. The original research was done before homosexuality was removed as a mental disorder. It seems odd today to even consider Freud's view as accurate. We have come a long way in recognizing that one's sexual preference is just that. This study was a pioneering one that disproved a false idea that lesbianism was evidence of an emotional disorder. And this 2020 edition includes a conversation about the book with Rachel Rosen, who is a lesbian. The dialogue between the author and his daughter provides insightful questions and a true understanding of lesbianism.
David H. Rosen MD is the author of such wide-ranging books as: Transforming Depression: Healing the Soul Through Creativity (1993), The Tao of Elvis (2002), The Healing Spirit of Haiku (2004), and Time, Love, and Licorice (2015).
Rachel Rosen is a seasoned facilitator, educator, and the founder of S.P.A.R.K. She believes that intentional conversations are vehicles for change. With a Masters from Stanford and extensive training in DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion), organizational and leadership development, the S.P.A.R.K. approach is grounded in theory, practice, and a commitment to antiracism. She and her wife live in Austin, Texas with their doggy Ella. Connect with Rachel at spark@rachelvrosen.com or @rachelvrosen on Instagram.


SpaceStar Ordering Limited (trading as EmberLight Pro-Creative Tools) was established in 2011, we collectively have extensive backgrounds in a number of growth Creative Industries and business operations. With a shared love of electronic music performance and new forms of creative expression, each of them is personally connected to all of the tools in our product range.
Chris is a qualified audio engineer & SAE graduate who has extensive experience in live show production for many high profile events as lead-tech (University of Waikato - Gallagher Academy of Performing Arts). With a lifetime experience in music, production, recording and a love of all things electronica Chris brings his skills to EmberLight providing live event production, engineering and technical support. He is based in Auckland.
Quinn's achievements in the ICT and Telco Sector include consulting and negotiation at an Executive level with the major Telco players in New Zealand includng; Telecom Wholesale, Chorus, TelstraClear, CityLink, Vector Communications, Kordia, Telco in a Box, 2Degrees mobile, Skinny Mobile and others.
He also has a background in music production and has been professionally DJing for 18 years in New Zealand, Fiji, Japan and South Korea.


text:
Q: Unique/useful combinations of a full name in a logical order Imagine you have a person. His full name is Robert Jack Senior. I am trying to make a script searching with only useful combinations of his name in a logical order.
This means that I will first try to search with Robert Jack Senior, then Robert Senior then Robert Jack then Robert. This is the most logical order in my opinion. If you think otherwise let me know!
So far I have figured out how to get all unique combinations. However, in my opinion the script will take unnecessary long for searching all combinations even though this has higher accuracy.
So my question is: how do I exclude all the unnecessary combinations and put them in a logical order and do you agree with me removing combinations?
The reason I am asking this is because a full name can also consist of just a first name and last name. So no middle name. The code must be consistent with these variations. Unfortunately, I could not think of a solution yet.
My code:
from itertools import chain, combinations

fname = 'Robert Jack Senior'
fname = fname.split(' ')
all_subsets = list(chain(*map(lambda x: combinations(fname, x), range(1, len(fname) + 1))))
all_subsets = [' '.join(subset) for subset in all_subsets]
print(all_subsets)

Output:
['Robert', 'Jack', 'Senior', 'Robert Jack', 'Robert Senior', 'Jack Senior', 'Robert Jack Senior']

As discussed before the desired output (again, in my opinion) would be:
['Robert Jack Senior', 'Robert Senior', 'Robert Jack', 'Robert']

A: This code always base the order and combination on the first name given name_split[0] which is Robert in this case. Try this:
name = 'Robert Jack Senior'

def get_name_combinations(name):
    name_split = name.split()
    return [' '.join(name) for i in range(len(name_split) + 1) for name in combinations(name_split, i) if name and name[0] == name_split[0]][::-1]

print(get_name_combinations(name))

output:
['Robert Jack Senior', 'Robert Senior', 'Robert Jack', 'Robert']

A: What if you do the following:
Firstly search with the normal name, if no results are found then go on with the combinations.
Hope this helps.
Best, Ismail

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Army Arrests Suspected Killers of Former Commandant Command Sec. School, Ibadan
EFCC Strengthens Existing Collaboration With NYSC
in Breaking News, Recent News
The 2 Div. Nigerian Army, Ibadan, on Wednesday paraded six suspects for allegedly killing Col. Anthony Okeyim, former Commandant, Command Secondary School, Apata, Ibadan.
The lifeless body of Okeyim was found at the premises of the school on December 12, 2016.
Okezie was few days away to be decorated with his new rank, Brigadier, when he was killed.
The command had earlier informed the public that the late Okeyim died as a result of rise in intracranial pressure from intracranial hemorrhage caused by fracture of the skull.
Parading the suspects before newsmen, the Deputy Director, Public Relations, 2 Div. Nigerian Army, Col. Timothy Antigha, said that investigation conducted showed that the suspects played varying roles in the killing of Okeyim.
Antigha said that the alleged killer of the senior officer stole his Samsung X4 phone and this helped in arresting the suspects.
He said that the suspects went to the Command Secondary School, Apata, with their Toyota Camry Car to kill the officer in his house.
Antigha said that one of the suspects was a student of the school who was expelled earlier by the school authorities over alleged theft.
He said that the student gave the other suspects the logistics leading to the death of the senior officer.
Antigha said that the Army was able to arrest the suspects with active collaboration of the Oyo State Police Command and Department of State Services.
He said, "On behalf of the General Officer Commanding 2 Division, Maj.-Gen. Chukwunedum Abraham, I thank the Nigeria Police and Department of State Services, Oyo State Command, for their support.
"Without the support, very little progress would have been made in unearthing the circumstances surrounding the death of the late senior officer."
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