While The Office continues its march to its final episode, this week’s episode “Livin’ the Dream” featured Andy Bernard (Ed Helms) singing a surprisingly touching “I Will Remember You” to say goodbye to his friends at Dunder Mifflin, although the emotion of the moment is later countered by Andy taking a dump on David Wallace’s car. For a limited time, you can capture the full episode on NBC (Andy’s song starts around the 34-minute mark). Otherwise, you can catch the original “I Will Remember You” by Sarah McLachlan on YouTube. Maybe Andy’s song moved me because anytime I hear a Sarah McLachlin song I now thing of poor suffering animals.
Anyway, the special hour-long The Office episode had some touching moments that seem to be setting up the end of the series on May 16. While I could speculate and make predictions, as a long-time fan I just want to enjoy the final ride. But we do now know that Michael Scott (Steve Carell) will not return for the finale (May 5, 2013 Update: Maybe we don’t know, as TVLine is now reporting Carell will make a cameo in the finale).
In past episodes, one character we could be sure would not give us a touching moment was Michael Scott’s friend Todd Packer, who has two thumbs and was the subject of another episode that featured excrement. As we noted in an earlier post, NBC’s website is featuring short videos of former regular guest stars on The Office looking back on their time on the show. In this video, David Koechner, who played the obnoxious Todd Packer, talks about the fun he had on the show: “It is a play, so let us play.”
[December 2014 Update: The NBC interview video is no longer available for embedding, but you may watch it on YouTube or instead below you may watch one of Koechner’s classic appearances on The Office.]
Like many of the characters in the American version of the The Office, Packer is based on a character from the original British version of the series, Chris Finch, who was played by Ralph Ineson.
What is your favorite Todd Packer moment on “The Office”? Leave your two cents in the comments.
For these and other reasons, in recent years states like Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, New Mexico and New York also have stopped using capital punishment. Other state legislatures continue to consider bills to abolish the death penalty.
“Green, Green Grass of Home” and Its Twist Ending
Thinking about Maryland’s death penalty, I remembered a hit song from the 1960s called “Green, Green Grass of Home.” Claude “Curly” Putman, Jr. wrote “Green, Green Grass of Home,” which is probably his biggest hit song along with Tammy Wynette’s “D-I-V-O-R-C-E.” He also co-wrote the George Jones classic “He Stopped Loving Her Today.”
“Green, Green Grass of Home” belongs in a unique group of songs that have a twist ending. The song begins with the singer talking about a trip home, but in the last verse, we learn that it was all a dream. Although there is no specific reference to the death penalty or executions, the verse makes clear that the singer will die at the hands of the state in the morning. Then I awake and look around me, At the four gray walls that surround me, And I realize that I was only dreaming, For there’s a guard and a sad old padre, Arm in arm we’ll walk at daybreak, And at last I’ll touch the green green grass of home.
Putnam performs a clever sleight of hand in the song. In the opening part of the song, he draws in the listener to see the singer as a human being. The singer has feelings we can relate to, because everyone has been homesick.
Only after we connect with the singer does Putnam let us know that the singer is on death row. Had the song begun by telling us the singer was condemned, we would have seen him in a different light and judged him as something other than human. But like Steve Earle’s “Over Yonder,” the song “Green, Green Grass of Home” lets us see the humanity even in the worst of us, which is pretty cool.
But Porter Wagoner was the first one to have a hit with “Green, Green Grass of Home” in 1965. Check out this performance and note the subtle special effects where the prison bar shadows appear at the end.
Tom Jones Version
The next year in 1966, Tom Jones had a hit with the song. His version went to number 1 on the U.K. charts.
This TV rendition of the song goes for a less subtle approach than the Porter Wagoner shadows. Here, Tom Jones sings from a jail cell. The setting of the song, though, kind of spoils the surprise ending.
Jerry Lee Lewis Version
Tom Jones was inspired to record “Green, Green Grass of Home” after hearing it on Jerry Lee Lewis’s 1965 albumCountry Songs for City Folk. While it is easy to remember Lewis’s place in rock and roll history, sometimes his excellent country work is overlooked.
Here is Lewis’s version.
Joan Baez Version
Joan Baez gives a unique version by being one of the rare woman’s voices to tackle the song. It is appropriate because there currently are approximately sixty women on death rows around the country.
Baez does a nice job in this performance from The Smothers Brothers Show.
Finally, Lewis and Jones have performed “Green, Green Grass of Home” together.
The lyrics of the song constitute a soliloquy that does not lend itself to being a duet. But it is still cool to see the great Tom Jones singing with the legend who inspired him to record one of his biggest hits.
Capital Punishment After “Green, Green Grass of Home”
One may only speculate about the impact of the song on society or society’s impact on the song. But in 1965-1966 when the song was a big hit for Porter Wagoner in the U.S. and for Tom Jones in the U.K., the death penalty was at low levels of popularity in those countries.
Great Britain would abolish the death penalty on a trial basis in 1965 and abolish it permanently in 1969. In the U.S., executions ground to a halt in the late 1960s as courts considered court challenges to the U.S. death penalty.
Within a decade, after states passed new laws, the U.S. death penalty machine began chugging along in the late 1970s, even as other countries continued to abolish capital punishment. But more recently, since the turn of the century, several states have joined the other states and countries that have decided the death penalty is unnecessary, uncivilized, and wasteful of resources.
Maryland has now joined those civilized states and countries. The end of the death penalty, unlike “Green, Green Grass of Home,” is not a dream.
What is your favorite version of “Green, Green Grass of Home”? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Eighty years ago this week, Willie Hugh Nelson was born on April 29, 1933 in Abbott, Texas. Nelson is still going strong making music, and he using his annual birthday concert to benefit the West, Texas volunteer fire department that was affected by the recent fertilizer plant explosion that killed fourteen people and injured many others.
We have highlighted some of Nelson’s songs in other posts, and the man has such a range it is hard to select one song to celebrate the special occasion. So here are several spanning the birthday boy’s career.
Here is some early Willie Nelson from before the long hair and the beard. In this video, he performs a medley of songs at the Grand Ole Opry. One of the songs he performs is “Night Life,” which he wrote and which became a hit for Ray Price. Nelson also played bass for a time in Price’s band. Nelson also performs part of his classic ‘Crazy,” which of course was a big hit for Patsy Cline.
Around 1970, Nelson left Nashville and moved back to Texas, where he became an “outlaw.” Here in this performance from 1974, Nelson performs “Good-Hearted Woman,” which he wrote and recorded with Waylon Jennings.
Here is a 1975 performance of “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.” The song was written by Fred Rose, but the song is forever linked to Willie Nelson after he covered the song on his great concept album, Red-Headed Stranger (1975).
Here is one you might have missed, a more recent song from Nelson. Nelson is a great interpreter of a range of styles and songwriters, which he shows here in a cover of “Gravedigger,” a Dave Matthews song. The song appeared on Nelson’s 2008 album Moment of Forever.
Finally, here is something even more recent showing Nelson’s sense of humor. Conan O’Brien recently showed Willie Nelson’s audition tape for the role of Gandalf in Hobbit 2. Of course, there is some of Nelson’s pot humor as well as a short rendition of “Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Orcs.”
Whether you like early Willie, Outlaw Willie, or modern Willie, put on some music today.
What is your favorite Willie Nelson song? Leave your two cents in the comments.
This weekend, country singer Marty Brown posted a video tribute to George Jones with Brown appropriately singing Jones’s classic song, “Who’s Gonna Fill Their Shoes.” Regular readers of Chimesfreedom know that we are big Marty Brown fans, so we cannot pass up posting Brown’s touching tribute here.
“Who’s Gonna Fill Their Shoes” was written by Troy Seals (who co-wrote “Seven Spanish Angels“) and Max D. Barnes. George Jones released the song as the title track on a 1985 album of the same name. “Who’s Gonna Fill Their Shoes” mentions a number of country music legends including Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Patsy Cline, and Willie Nelson. Apparently because Jones recorded the song it does not mention him, but as Marty Brown notes in his introduction, Jones left some pretty big empty shoes.
What is your favorite tribute to George Jones? Leave your two cents in the comments.
At the recent annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner M.C.’d by Conan O’Brien, one of the highlights was this short film where director Steven Spielberg announced that after Lincoln (2012), he decided the logical choice for his next movie is Obama, about our current President Barack Obama. In the video Spielberg explains why “Daniel Day-Lewis” was the natural choice for the lead. Pres. Obama shows a good sense of humor here, too, even poking fun at his ears. Check it out.
What is your favorite part of “Obama”? Leave your two cents in the comments.
. While it is easy to remember Lewis’s place in rock and roll history, sometimes his excellent country work is overlooked.
(2012), he decided the logical choice for his next movie is Obama, about our current President Barack Obama. In the video Spielberg explains why “Daniel Day-Lewis” was the natural choice for the lead. Pres. Obama shows a good sense of humor here, too, even poking fun at his ears. Check it out.