Neil Young is releasing A Letter Home, an album of cover songs from artists like Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Bruce Springsteen, and Gordon Lightfoot. For Record Store Day, Young’s album in vinyl form is already available for order from Third Man Records. The independent record label was founded by musician-singer-songwriter Jack White, who helps out on Young’s new album.
Rolling Stone reports that the songs on the new album are: 1. “Changes” (Phil Ochs); 2. “Girl From The North Country” (Bob Dylan); 3. “Needle of Death” (Bert Jansch); 4. “Early Morning Rain” (Gordon Lightfoot); 5. “Crazy” (Willie Nelson); 6. “Reason To Believe” (Tim Hardin); 7. “On The Road Again” (Willie Nelson); 8. “If You Could Only Read My Mind” (Gordon Lightfoot); 9. “Since I Met You Baby” (Ivory Joe Hunter); 10. “My Hometown” (Bruce Springsteen); 11. “I Wonder If I Care As Much” (Everly Brothers).
Young has played several of these songs in concert, but many of them have yet to appear live. One of the songs I am most excited about is Young’s interpretation of “Changes,” by the great Phil Ochs. The classic song is one that Young has performed live, and below is his performance of the song at Farm Aid in 2013 in Saratoga Springs, New York. The video starts at the point Young starts playing the song, but you can back it up a little if you want to hear him talk more about Ochs and then get angry at the audience for trying to rush him.
Which Neil Young cover do you most want to hear? Leave your two cents in the comments.
One of my favorite episodes of the U.S. series The Office is the season four episode entitled “The Dinner Party.” In the show, Michael Scott (Steve Carrell) and Jan Levinson (Melora Hardin) invite some guests from the Dunder Mifflin office for dinner, and the tension in their relationship plays out to make the most awkward party since the Donners.
In the episode, Jim notes to the camera, “Michael and Jan seem to be playing their own separate game, and it’s called ‘let’s see how uncomfortable we can make our guests.’ And they’re both winning.” One of the most uncomfortable moments comes from a wonderful song, “That One Night,” by The Hunted.
The Hunted
The Hunted is the fictional band led by Hunter Raymond, the young man who had worked as Jan’s assistant. As Jan plays the CD on the stereo in “The Dinner Party” episode, the awkwardness ramps up when we realize that Hunter is apparently singing about losing his virginity to Jan (“You took me by the hand/ And made me a man.”).
Below is the cringe-worthy clip of when Jan first plays the song.
The song appears again at the end of the episode when Jim reveals to Pam that he stole the CD, a sweet gesture to make Pam laugh. Jim’s act is also a sympathetic theft so that Michael no longer has to hear the song. Jim plays the CD in their car as the song then plays over an epilogue showing the dinner guests after the party.
Who Created “That One Night”?
Unfortunately, there is no real album by The Hunted, but the song works perfectly in the episode of The Office. When a comedy uses an original song for comic effect, it is a challenge for the song to sound believably real while being funny too. “That One Night” hits it out of the park on all counts.
Who are the geniuses behind “That One Night”? In the series, actor Nicholas D’Agosto (born April 17, 1980) portrayed Hunter Raymond. D’Agosto appeared in two episodes during the third season, his voice appeared in another episode, and his image graced the CD cover for “That One Night” in “The Dinner Party” episode.
The actual singer on “That One Night,” though, is Todd Fancey, a singer-songwriter who is the guitarist for The New Pornographers. Fancey also wrote the catchy music for “That One Night,” while writing and producing team Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg wrote the lyrics.
The Lyrics?
There are no “official” lyrics for the song posted on the web. So, there seems to be a disagreement about the words Fancey sings.
Some say that part of the chorus says “so raw, so right,” while others claim he sings “so wrong, so right.” Another source claims the words are “so rock the ride all night all right.”
I have always thought the disputed words were “so wrong,” not “so raw.” That interpretation makes the most sense, but I understand how one may also hear it as “so raw.”
While we never got a tour or a full album from The Hunted, we loved the band’s music for that one night. Oh yeah.
Update and Alternate Version of “That One Night”
In April 2017, Rolling Stone featured an interesting oral history about the episode. One of the revealing facts was that Fancey also put together a more polished longer version of “That One Night” with alternate lyrics. While it is interesting to hear, one can see why The Office went with the version they did. Below is the alternate version.
What is your favorite episode of The Office? If you also love “The Dinner Party,” check out these deleted scenes. Leave your two cents in the comments.
In the old days, there was one time of year when you knew that all of the TV shows were starting their new season of shows. But in this era of random season endings and seasons divided up, we have to rely upon word of mouth. So I am here to inform Louis C.K. fans that after a nineteen-month break, season four of Louiebegins May 5 on FX. Get ready — or set your DVRs or set up your computers or cell phones or however you kids watch TV these days. The promo features Louie jumping off a bridge.
The new season features fourteen episodes, but they will run with two episodes back-to-back over seven weeks.
What is your favorite episode of Louie? Leave your two cents in the comments.
On April 15, 1947 as a soft breeze blew across Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, Jackie Robinson took his position at first base to play his first official Major League Baseball game for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Robinson was 28 years old, having served in the U.S. Army and played in the Negro American League before Dodger general manager Branch Rickey recruited Robinson in 1945 to join the Dodger organization.
On this date against the Boston Braves, Robinson broke the color barrier that had existed in baseball for more than fifty years. The last such player before Robinson was catcher Fleetwood Walker who played for the American Association’s Toledo Blue Stockings in 1884.
Robinson’s major league career that began that day would not be easy. But Robinson triumphed over the hate he encountered, both as a man and as a player, making him the greatest hero of any sport.
Baseball eventually recognized his accomplishments too. On this date in 1997, Major League Baseball retired his number 42, making it the first number retired for all teams.
Robinson’s Major League Debut
To go back and relive that sunny day at Ebbets Field on this date in 1947, listen to this 2007 NPR interview with writer Jonathan Eig, who wrote a book about Robinson’s first year called Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson’s First Season. The interview discusses the historic game played this date in 1947.
Movies About Robinson
In 2013, a very good movie bearing the name of Robinson’s number 42 was released. But another earlier movie from 1950 told his story starring Jackie Robinson himself in The Jackie Robinson Story.
Below is the entire film, although the sound quality is not great. The recreation of his Major League debut begins around the 54-minute mark. The movie condenses events to give Robinson a triple on a day the first baseman went hitless. In the real game, he did score the go-ahead run after reaching on an error.
Another Rookie Debuting On This Date
Finally, here is a trivia question about that April 15, 1947 game. On that date, one other rookie besides Robinson took the field for the Dodgers that day, who was it?
As explained in the video above, the other rookie was Spider Jorgensen. Jorgenson was called up on such short notice that he did not have a glove. But his new teammate Jackie Robinson loaned Jorgensen one of his gloves.
Using that glove, third-baseman Jorgensen fielded a ball hit by Boston’s Dick Culler, throwing it to Robinson at first base to make the first out of the game. The Dodgers won by a score of 5–3.
John Steinbeck‘s novel The Grapes of Wrath was published on April 14, 1939. The book, which recounts the struggles of the tenant farmers Joad family moving from Oklahoma to California, went on to win the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. It also helped Steinbeck win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962. Steinbeck’s book seeped into popular culture, aided by a great John Ford movie as well as songs.
Less than a year after the novel’s publication, 20th Century Fox released John Ford’s vision of The Grapes of Wrath in January 1940. The film starred Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell, and John Carradine, and it contained some differences from the book, and in particular the ending.
While the book was written as an indictment of the greed that led to the Great Depression, the conservative Ford maintained some elements of that vision while also giving the story a somewhat more optimistic ending. The Grapes of Wrath thus became one of those instances where a novel and its movie version both attained greatness even with some significant differences.
The film would go on to inspire others. In particular, the speech by Tom Joad (Fonda) would inspire both Woody Guthrie and Bruce Springsteen to write songs. Check out our post about the story behind Guthrie’s “Tom Joad,” a song written at the request of a record company during an all-night session after Pete Seeger helped Guthrie find a typewriter.
Bruce Springsteen used his stark “The Ghost of Tom Joad” as the title track of his somber 1995 album. In 2014, though, he released a new version of the song on High Hopes that features the raging angry guitar of Tom Morello, highlighting the defiance in Tom Joad’s speech. While Springsteen’s original acoustic version captures the sadness of the novel, his rock version of the song might be more comparable to John Ford’s vision. Check out this performance featuring Springsteen, Morello, and the E Street Band from Allphones Area in Sydney, Australia from March 2013.
What is your favorite version of “The Grapes of Wrath”? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Neil Young is releasing A Letter Home, an album of cover songs from artists like Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Bruce Springsteen, and Gordon Lightfoot. For Record Store Day, Young’s album in vinyl form is already available for order from Third Man Records. The independent record label was founded by musician-singer-songwriter Jack White, who helps out on Young’s new album.
. The interview discusses the historic game played this date in 1947.
