dept of musical coincidence

Posted on July 4th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs.

We heard two versions of "I Am Woman" in the course of the day -- neither of them the original. The first was deliberate: I got the reissue of Betty Wright's (of "Clean Up Woman" fame) Hard to Stop from the library, and it leads off with a lively and impassioned cover of "I Am Woman". The liner notes, naturally, sneer at the vocal on Helen Reddy's original -- never mind that Reddy wrote the song, which the sneerer doesn't bother to acknowledge, since after all the only thing that redeems the song is Wright's singing. I very much doubt that Wright held Reddy in the contempt that the hipster music hack does.

The second was a disco version in a movie Velma was watching because it had bit parts played by a couple of piano bar acquaintances. It also had a disco version of "Dream Weaver".

5 comments.

RJ Johnson

Comment on July 4th, 2007.

Curiosity compels me to inquire what movie Velma was viewing. It sounds like the sort of thing I'd enjoy.

Kip W

Comment on July 4th, 2007.

National Lampoon did a parody version of the song. The song itself is fairly straight, but on the record, Gilda Radner is singing it and being bullied by a director who keeps telling her to sound stronger, and she responds with helpless whining.

Ah, Gilda, we hardly knew ye. (Interesting how the meaning of that phrase has shifted. Well, kind of interesting.)

Scraps

Comment on July 5th, 2007.

RJ, it was a movie called Trick, and since it co-stars Tori Spelling, I don't know how much anyone could enjoy it.

Kip, one of the things I can't help noticing while watching the complete first season of Saturday Night Live is how much abuse Gilda Radner takes. There is a sketch that's pretty much a direct rip of that National Lampoon routine, in which John Belushi plays a director (supposedly Sam Peckinpah) who repeatedly attacks an increasingly flustered Gilda Radner when she doesn't deliver lines to his satisfaction.

Kip W

Comment on July 5th, 2007.

Yeah, the "beat up Gilda" routine got old. The thing that made "I'm A Woman" a little different was that she's supposedly portraying a strong character, and it was all verbal. I liked Gilda's "Judy Miller Show" where she's just the kid jumping up and down and announcing her life. I knew somebody just like that.

Still, I have to confess to laughing at "I Loathe Lucy." Mostly because I did. Not that I don't respect Lucille Ball for forging a comedy career for herself, but the persona she chose is one I can't watch for two minutes in a row.

Your last two anti-spam words have been "Narf" and "Poit." How does that prove I'm a person? Oh well; I wonder what I'm going to do today...

Scraps

Comment on July 6th, 2007.

Talking animals are people!

I hated I Love Lucy too, though that's a hatred from childhood and I ought to give it a fair chance as an adult.

I loved The Judy Miller Show too, partly because Radner captured that manic ADD girl thing so well and partly because they were perfectly written (I'm embarrassed to have forgotten the name of the writer; I know Veronica Geng names the writer in one of the afterwords in Love Trouble.)

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