Remembering the Danelectric sitar and 1968: Joe South, Vincent Bell, Reggie Young, et al.

I was listening to B.J. Thomas’ original version of “Hooked on a Feeling” earlier today and it occurred to me that lots of great songs from about 1968 and 1969 featured the electric sitar—which, as it turns out, was an ordinary electric guitar modified to drone and sound like the Indian instrument.

Both “Hooked on a Feeling” and the wonderful Box Tops hit “Cry Like a Baby” featured Memphis session guitarist Reggie Young, playing a Danelectro Sitar. In between those two songs, Joe South played a Danelectro on “Games People Play.” He can also be heard playing a Danelectro on such songs as “Don’t it Make You Wanna Go Home” and Aretha Franklin’s “Chain of Fools.” (Listen to the very beginning of these songs.)



The inventor of Denelectro/Coral’s electric sitar was a guitarist named Vincent Bell. Above, I’ve posted a 1967 video with Bell introducing the instrument. (Reference is made to the Beatles. On “Norwegian Wood” [1965], George Harrison plays a cheap Indian sitar, which, at the time, he did not know how to play.)

Bell played electric sitar on the Lemon Pipers’ weird and wonderful (well, weird anyway) “Green Tamborine.” Interestingly, on the video (above), a guitarist (not Bell) is seen fake-playing an Indian sitar. That pretty much tells you all you need to know about the recording industry.

You’ve gotta love this stuff! (Note: singer Alex Chilton was 16 years old when he made this video [above]. He is likely the only musician seen here who actually performed on the recording.)

The singer for the Box Tops—Alex Chilton—went on to become a celebrated cult figure, first as the leader of Big Star (remember the transcendent "September Gurls"?), then, more or less, as a solo act. Such was his reputation that he was asked to produce the Cramps (hear the masterful hiccups of "I Can't Hardly Stand It")! 

I caught him solo maybe five years ago, and he was terrific, if laconic and weird. He's notoriously, um, difficult.

Here he is (below) at a recent concert in Europe, singing his first and biggest hit, "The Letter." At the end, he confesses his love to a member of the audience. Alex, you are way cool.


Oddly, Chilton's voice has grown "younger" over the years. Go figure.

Somebody requested this, I think. It shows Raghu in a parade, St. Patty's Day, maybe 20 years ago.

Rebels in the night, cops in the bushes

In my day, it was streaking. Remember? Pretty idiotic.

Nowadays, college students gather in their underwear to run like idiots in the night. This typically occurs just before finals.

In today’s OC Register, Marla Jo Fisher describes last night’s “Undie Run” at UC Irvine.  

Marla talked to one 18-year-old—among about 150 participants—who explained her actions as follows: "I felt it was time to open up and be free, rebel against social norms — without breaking the law."

I remember when rebelling was a dicier kind of thing. Something riskier than, say, defiantly neglecting to say “excuse me” upon sneezing.

Things do get a bit wild sometimes on these Undie Runs. Marla notes that, at OC’s last Undie Run—at Chapman University near sleepy downtown Orange—students “broke” the plaza fountain.

They did say, “excuse me,” though.

Last night at UCI, there were cops. Writes Marla, they “stood discreetly back in the shrubbery.”

One young woman decided not to participate, explaining that there were “too many strangers.” —Probably those creepy cops.


The run involved a circuit, which ended at a flagpole. The kid who arrived there first evidently “whooped.” Said she: "It felt really good to be free from all that stress, from finals and some issues at the dorm."

Issues at the dorm? No doubt Buffy and Scooter had a noisy spat. The entire dorm is in a tizzy.

My Gawd.

Photo: OC Register
VIDEO: UCI Undie Run

Oh my

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Jim Cramer Pt. 2

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Important Things w/ Demetri Martin

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Jim Cramer

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Grade inflation—and deflation—in higher ed

This morning’s Inside Higher Ed (Grade Inflation Seen Rising) reports that Stuart Rojstaczer, a retired Duke University professor who is responsible for GradeInflation.com, has released another analysis that suggests that grade inflation continues in higher ed.

According to Rojstaczer, the average GPA at private colleges is now up to 3.3 (a B+). At public colleges and universities, it is now 3.01 (a B). Big public universities in the South and some liberal arts colleges have experienced the most inflation in recent years.

Says IHE,

Rojstaczer's findings will probably resonate with professors, many of whom regularly bemoan grade inflation and say that students are conditioned to expect good grades just for showing up, and that professors who refuse to go along get punished with harsh course evaluations. Many professors who are off the tenure track or who are pre-tenure report great fear of being punished by students (and then not rehired) if they gain a reputation for tough grading, and studies have found correlations between being an easy grader and earning good ratings at RateMyProfessors.com. [My emphasis.]

Rogstaczer notes that, at Brown University last year, most undergrade grades were A’s.

The issue matters, Rojstaczer said, because "the alternative is a student body that frequently misses class, never prepares in advance, studies about 11 hours a week if they are 'full time' students, and drinks itself into a constant stupor out of boredom. That's not an acceptable alternative anywhere." [My emphasis.]

Some experts (Rojstaczer is not an expert, though he has gathered an impressive amount of data) think that Rojstaczer is making too much of this problem. Clifford Adelman (of the Institute for Higher Education Policy) for one remarks, “‘If grade inflation is so rampant, how come at least a third of kids who start in four-year colleges don't graduate?’"

According to Rojstaczer, community colleges seem to be bucking the trend:

As to community colleges, [Kay McClenney, director of the Community College Survey of Student Engagement] said that her center's focus groups and surveys have found that students and professors at two-year institutions are on the same page on standards: both groups worry about and would oppose anything that suggests that "expectations of students may not be high enough." And she said that close student-faculty interaction at community colleges encourages frank evaluations. "Teaching and learning is what community college faculty do."

Guess so. Still, I think we need to buck a bit harder.

Postcard from the Recession

The little guy is off to school at 7:55 AM and had just enough time to pose with his latest first grade civics project - a "patriotic" poster. He had to choose three symbols (you can see them here) and then compose a paragraph that identified and explained each one. He is particularly proud of his Statue of Liberty, which, he reminded his parents was a gift from the French.

Tonight the entire family will attend the OUSD board meeting where they assume the board will vote to close his elementary school.

Sigh.

The ripple affect in this canyon community will be sad and scary.

The Los Angeles Times has been running a series of op-ed essays under the banner "Postcards from the Recession." Sunday, Susan Straight wrote from Riverside, suggesting that the people out there are our canaries in a coal mine. Yesterday Gustavo Arellano reported from Anaheim. Today Lisa See explores the effects on the Westside (L.A. that is). Rebel Girl has been using the essays in the classroom where, she notes, the attention of the students is unusually rapt.

Yeah, but we'll be dead by then

The OC Register (Global warming could displace 110,000 on OC coast, report says) reports that

Sea level rise driven by global warming could flood parts of the California coast in coming decades, with Orange County’s among the most vulnerable in the state, a new state-commissioned report says.

The report by an independent Oakland research group, the Pacific Institute, says nearly half a million people statewide — and 110,000 in Orange County — could be at risk by the year 2100 under some climate change scenarios….
…
The $335,000 study, requested by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s climate action team and paid for by Caltrans, the state Energy Commission and the Ocean Protection Council, is based on scientific estimates from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the U.S. Geological Survey on coastal effects from rising sea levels. Those, in turn, were based on work by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an international team of climate scientists….

I’ve cropped one of the report’s maps to show only Southern California. (See above.)

Looks like Newport Beach will be especially hard hit. That's Republican territory, isn't it? They'll just say the report is bullshit.

My recommendation: they should move OC GOP headquarters and the Newport Beach PD down there near the water—you know, where they shot the Minnow leaving for that fateful "three-hour tour" on Gilligan's Island.