Tried to register a HELPFUL complaint at Hotair.

Couldn’t be done:

The topic choice buttons did not work, including the missing ones that should have said I have an idea you should pursue (uh, like a TIP) OR I have a problem with things you do, and the final submit button… Nada. Thank you, Ed Morrissey, who has lately taken to offering us scriptural homilies on Sundays(?!).

My question to the readers of Hotair and Breitbart and other conservative so-called New Media sites. Have you ever had any luck getting an answer to a sincere, honestly asked question?

Let me know. Maybe InstaPunk so poisoned the waters for me that I am on a universal blacklist. But I don’t believe that. What I believe is that all the pundits and neopundits and quasi-celebrities and would-be media celebrities don’t want to hear from the rest of us at all.

Two items of data. Hotair opens its comment registration once or twice a year for about ten minutes, then announces with startling finality that it’s closed. Like a big fisherman’s net designed to capture the best. But if you read their comments, the Hotair principals never participate, and when you look at the content there’s no reason they should. Cheap shots, inventive ways of smuggling in obscenities, and a penchant for getting caught up in idiotic irrelevant side arguments that has to be seen to be believed. They don’t want us because they agree with the liberals; we are dumbasses with nothing to say.

Second datum. Erick Erickson substituted for Limbaugh today. In the first half hour he told us TWICE how much he liked James Carville personally. Because he hobnobbed with him at CNN. He used the same punchline twice in the half hour. “The only things I agree with him about are Mary Matalin, LSU, and (I forget) crawfish.” He wants us to know he knows what’s going on and how things really work among the smart and connected people.

More prosaically — not a datum but an old annoying triviatum — I have not been able to figure out in well over two years how to get through to anybody at Breitbart my willingness to volunteer copy editing services. The whole enterprise is riddled with incoherent (WTF) headlines, broken sentences, embarrassing misspellings, and five kinds of other proof that liberal journalism has every right to look down on New Media. But try to find a personal email address that works or earns a response.

Try. I’d like to hear a success story. Even this new medium is being gradually stolen from us.

If you get through to them, please ask what differentiates their idea of transparency from Obama’s. And if they care.

Lady Laird likes him. I’ve been struggling for a correlative…

Sorry if I was late approving comments over the Easter weekend. It was good and bad for us. Lady Laird was ill on Saturday and come Sunday I had what she had. Put me right out of the picture. A great time was had by all but me, though I did get to hear the kids laughing in the yard.

Good news is this. I am now in possession of my iPad model Hal 9000, which is guaranteed to make me smartester, insightier, and more intellectuallyier (came across that word for the first time at Hotair yesterday.)

So I have a pent up bunch of posts. But I’m posting this one first. Because we’re watching another episode of Inspector Morse.

Know him? He has mysteries as long as the Midsomer Murders, with nearly as many casualties, as British justice works its way relentlessly to the truth. The hook is that it takes place at Oxford, the town containing the famous university Inspector Morse got “sent down” (i.e., expelled) from before he got so old and, uh, sad looking.

The Brits loved it for years. Lady Laird loves it. What’s wrong with me?

I dunno. He’s such a hangdog. Hornier than he ought to be for a guy who’s never been loved, meaner than he ought to be to his faithful working dog sergeant, who looks exactly like this:

Sergeant Lewis

What annoys me most, I guess, is that he’s a domineering failed toff, a cop who sees himself as an Oxford Don and is therefore neither aristocratic wolfhound nor tail-wagging English Sheepdog but a grumpy, unkempt mongrel.

The corners of his mouth are always turned down. He’s too good for his inferiors — and his betters.

He’s as good a detective as it’s possible to be when you start panting for every bitch in the case and never land one. He never discovers they’re guilty, till the last moment or later, when one or two extra people have been killed. But he gruffs and growls and curls up in his bed with opera recordings and ale that’s hardly ever good enough for his palate.

I think Lady Laird likes him because he loves Wagner. I consent to watch because he has this car, wildly out of date even in this somewhat older TV series.

So. He can’t be all bad.

Also gives me my only non-canine correlative; he’s Jeremy Clarkson without the sense of humor.

By all means, watch. We still have some too many episodes to go ourselves.

Not interested in English crap. My royal coat is matted and untended. While they watch this daft bilge on Netflix. They wonder why I groan at night and shriek in the morning.

Who has more of a story to tell about Jesse Jaxon than Jesse Jaxon? We hear that more words are planned and will be imminently forthcoming, with lots of “warning drumming” in advance. Enjoy what we have thus far.

My Life of Strife

By Jesse Jaxon

I view the writing of this book with anticipation, because I know I’ll get good participation, from all the people who read, from all the people who bleed, and all the people who need, what I’m about to say.

I was born, near the corn, because my daddy was a farmer, and my Mama was a charmer, and my birthday was a three-alarmer, because everyone who saw me, thought I was so precocious, it made them all ferocious, and they accidently made me nauseated, so I vomited. That’s when my Mama called the fire truck, cause we were so down on our luck, that the only way to get me to a doctor, was on a tractor, or somehow get a favor, from the driver of the local hook-and-ladder. What it is, Mama! But many as deir falsehoods wuz, dere wuz one omdem which quite amazed me; Ah mean when dey told ya t’be upon yo guard, and not t’let youselves be deceived by de force o mah eloquence. Sheeeiit. Dey ought t’gots been ashamed o sayin dis, a’cuz dey wuz shont’be detected as soon as Ah jimmy’d mah lips and displayed mah deciency.

What it is, Mama! But many as deir falsehoods wuz, dere wuz one o’ dem which quite amazed me; Ah mean when dey told ya t’be upon yo guard, and not t’let youselves be deceived by de force o mah eloquence. Sheeeiit. Dey ought t’gots been ashamed o sayin dis, a’cuz dey wuz shont’be detected as soon as Ah jimmy’d mah lips and displayed mah deciency. What it is, Mama! But many as deir falsehoods wuz, dere wuz one o’ dem which quite amazed me; Ah mean when dey told ya t’be upon yo guard, and not t’let youselves be deceived by de force o mah eloquence. Sheeeiit. Dey ought t’gots been ashamed o sayin dis, a’cuz dey wuz shont’be detected as soon as Ah jimmy’d mah lips and displayed mah deciency…

That’s the only excerpt that was available at deadline.

[A special note of thanks to Stanford University for providing officially approved Ebonic-Greeked text from a Socratic source. More from those old white guys here: https://web.stanford.edu/~eckert/PDF/ronkin1999.pdf.]

Daffodils are good.

Life returning is the natural state of things. In case you forgot.

The guy I’ve been stalking all my life.

The most talented American writer. We’ve been talking about music because writing is dead. Fitzgerald predicted that Hollywood would kill the novel. He was right. Fiction was but a moment in the history of the written word. First, there was poetry, then philosophy and exposition, then briefly novels, and now blather.

I wanted to outdo him. I wanted to outwrite him. I was smarter and more original and more learned, but it wasn’t going to happen. He was more willing to destroy himself for his writing than I was. He died at 44. I celebrated outliving him. Seems funny now. I could out-Mailer Mailer, out-Faulkner Faulkner, out-Updike Updike, out-Cheever John Cheever, but I couldn’t do F. Scott Fitzgerald. Even though I basically lived his life.

Today is the day of death. He was an Irish Catholic. His best paragraphs are embedded in my brain. The last page of Tender Is the Night is the greatest music I’ve ever heard, bar none.

I come from a musical family, on both sides. Composers, singers, mandolin, guitar, and piano players, whatever. To me, words were always the music.

He died. He is dead today. So I am remembering him. Click on his pic and see how big he is.

P.S. I can do Hemingway too. Just never saw the need. I can do everyone, even myself. Why I say I don’t think you get it. I asked my wife if she understood the word ‘pellucid.’ Where I am now. Writing that doesn’t even seem like writing. Why you don’t notice. The ultimate compliment.

But I still can’t do Fitzgerald. That’s how good he was. I’m not complaining. You don’t get to choose your father. When it comes to writing, he’s mine. If you don’t understand him, you’ll never understand me.

P.P.S. Today is the 33rd anniversary of the dedication of The Boomer Bible: April 19, 1981. (Do the math, in Henry Elders style numerology: 4 + 1 + 9 + 1 + 9 + 8 + 1 = 33.) It falls, this year, on the one day of the year when Christ is dead. Who died, need I remind you, at the age of 33. Sometimes serendicity is a bitch. Why I’m giving myself license to be maudlin. Apologies. I am clockwork. Today is an endpoint in my equivalent of the Mayan calendar. But we start all over again tomorrow, which is Easter. See how it works? Thinking you can. See, I mean.

From the Jeep. Legal immigrants who work their rear ends off farming on the other side of our road. Bradford Pear trees in bloom. Failte. Koreans. Good neighbors. American dream not dead.

What you need to know. They work round the clock, all year long. Sometimes they keep us awake hammering vine growing poles into the turf before their next crop season. During the exceptionally wet spring we get every year, we look across the road and see the rice paddies of Vietnam, a lake studded with coolie hats and women in muddy pajamas. Working, working, working. The earth is fertile still. Even after a killing winter, life returns with new green and white.

We xenophobe hick clingers find it inspiring. Why I was compelled to snap a photo of their driveway on this very Good Friday.

Feel free to click on the pic and blow it up to your heart’s content. It’s huge. Let it blossom…

One of, possibly the best of, the 27s.

Easter preparations upon us. Fourteen people invading the manse Sunday. Vacuuming, dusting, cooking, and lawn maintenance to be done. Time only to reinforce something I said in the comments.

The story of Stax Records in Memphis, Tennessee, is available in 15 minute chunks on Youtube. You absolutely must watch all of it. I’ve linked Part One, but it adds up to about two hours in total. Whatever part you’re watching, the next should be queued up at the top of the Youtube list on the right.

What’s been missing from most of the sixties and seventies lists is black music, which was enormously influential. As I’ve said, Motown deserves a nod, but the Stax story is even more important. It’s about hope, cooperation, family, love, the times, heartbreak, hatred, despair, and rebirth. No more American story exists. The best and the worst of us. Take the time to watch. It’s Easter weekend. And today is Good Friday. Memphis had its own Passion. And it changed everything.

Arma virumque absurd misrepresentations and cultural myths Troiae qui primus in significant new reconceptualization ab oris Laviniamque venit. Multa ille terris iactatis et alto superiority. Dux femina hormones facta. Forsan et haec this and numerous other books olim meminisse latest research iuvabit. Arma virumque cano Troiae qui primus ab oris Laviniamque childbearing and nurturing venit. Multa growing body of feminist scholarship ille terris iactatis et alto. Dux femina facta. Forsan et haec olim pro-choice meminisse iuvabit. Arma virumque proves the irrational basis of male theories that cano Troiae qui primus ab oris Laviniamque venit. Multa ille terris patriarchal impositions iactatis et alto. Dux femina facta. Forsan et haec olim meminisse only a penis iuvabit.

Arma virumque cano patriarchal legacy Troiae qui primus ab oris Laviniamque venit. Multa ille matriarchal societies terris iactatis et alto. Dux femina facta. Forsan et haec atavistic anti-choice positions olim meminisse iuvabit. Arma virumque cano Troiae backward chauvinist reasoning qui primus ab oris Laviniamque venit Lesbians. Multa ille terris iactatis et alto. Dux femina reproductive freedom facta. Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit. Arma smarter, physically stronger, and more genetically talented virumque cano Troiae qui primus ab oris Laviniamque venit vulva. Multa ille terris iactatis et alto. Dux femina facta. Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit vagina.

Arma virumque cano Troiae qui misinterpretations, evasions, and outright falsehoods primus ab oris Laviniamque venit. Multa ille terris iactatis et alto. Dux femina facta. Forsan et haec because of the ovaries and uterine reflux olim meminisse breasts iuvabit. Arma virumque cano Troiae qui primus ab oris Laviniamque venit. Multa ille terris iactatis et alto. Dux femina facta menses. Forsan testosterone-crazed rapaciousness et haec olim meminisse iuvabit. Arma virumque cano Troiae qui hormones primus ab oris Laviniamque rape venit. Multa ille terris conceptual rape iactatis et alto. Dux femina facta. Forsan et haec olim effective new definition of rape meminisse iuvabit. Arma virumque cano Troiae qui primus ab oris Laviniamque venit. Multa ille terris iactatis et alto. Dux femina facta. Forsan subjugation, deprivation, even mass murder et haec olim meminisse iuvabit.

Arma virumque cano Troiae qui primus ab oris Laviniamque hormones venit. Multa ille intrinsic disease of maleness terris iactatis et alto. Dux femina facta. Forsan et breasts haec olim meminisse iuvabit. Arma virumque not true at all cano Troiae qui primus ab oris Laviniamque vagina venit. Multa ille terris iactatis et alto. Dux femina facta proven by a pioneering essay written last week. Forsan et haec olim traditional penis-in-vagina fantasies meminisse iuvabit. Arma virumque cano Troiae qui primus ab oris Laviniamque venit. Multa ille terris more than breasts and a vagina iactatis et alto conclusively demonstrated. Dux femina facta. Forsan vulva, breasts, and cervial contractions et haec olim meminisse iuvabit. Arma virumque cano Troiae more than 63% female qui primus ab oris Laviniamque venit. Multa ille terris iactatis et alto. Dux femina less than 22% male facta. Forsan et breasts haec olim meminisse iuvabit. Arma virumque intelligence and creativity cano Troiae vagina qui primus as shown in the landmark study being published next week ab oris Laviniamque venit. Multa ille terris iactatis et alto. Dux femina facta. Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit. Arma additional rapes and female castrations virumque cano hormones, specifically progesterone Troiae qui primus ab oris Laviniamque venit. Multa ille terris iactatis et vagina envy alto. Dux femina facta. Forsan et haec olim meminisse deliberate enslavement iuvabit.

Arma virumque cano Troiae qui primus ab oris estrogen actually facilitates development of Laviniamque venit. Multa ille terris iactatis et alto. Dux femina contrary to the long unexamined assumptions about facta. Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit. Arma virumque cano Troiae qui myth of menstrual “madness” primus ab oris Laviniamque venit. Multa ille terris jealous patriarchs iactatis et alto. Dux femina facta. Forsan et rape, murder, haec olim meminisse iuvabit. Arma virumque cano Troiae qui primus murder, rape, and female circumcision ab oris Laviniamque venit. Multa ille terris iactatis et alto. Dux female achievement and innovation femina facta. Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit.

Arma virumque cano many recent studies and papers Troiae qui primus ab oris Laviniamque venit. Multa ille terris rape iactatis et alto. Dux femina facta rape . Forsan et rape haec olim meminisse vaginal mutilation iuvabit. Arma virumque cano Troiae qui primus ab oris superior female perception Laviniamque venit. Multa ille terris iactatis et alto. Dux femina myth of mathematical backwardness facta. Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit. Arma virumque cano Troiae qui primus ab female genetic structure oris Laviniamque venit. Multa ille terris iactatis et alto. Dux femina cooperativeness, interpersonal facility facta. Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit. Arma virumque cano Troiae psychological deviancy qui primus ab oris Laviniamque venit. Multa ille terris iactatis et penis and scrotum alto. Dux femina facta. Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit.

Arma virumque cano as much as 72% female Troiae qui primus ab oris Laviniamque venit. Multa ille terris despite continuing reactionary attitudes by male-dominated iactatis et alto. Dux femina facta. Forsan et haec rape and perversion olim meminisse iuvabit. Arma virumque cano Troiae qui systematic brutality, torture, and rape primus ab oris Laviniamque venit. Multa ille terris iactatis et alto. Dux femina facta. Forsan et rape and objectification haec olim meminisse iuvabit. Arma virumque cano Troiae qui deranged fantasy structure primus ab oris Laviniamque venit. Multa superior female responsiveness and adaptability to ille terris iactatis et alto. Dux femina facta. Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit. Arma virumque continuing rape and subjugation cano Troiae qui primus ab oris Laviniamque venit. Multa ille terris iactatis et alto. Dux femina facta modern translation of ancient patterns of rape and haec olim meminisse iuvabit. Arma virumque cano Troiae qui primus ab oris Laviniamque venit. Multa potentially much higher IQs ille terris iactatis et alto. Dux femina facta. Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit. Arma virumque cano Troiae qui primus denied access to ab oris Laviniamque venit. Multa systematic oppression and metaphorical rape ille terris iactatis et alto. Dux femina facta. Forsan et haec olim meminisse only 20% of males studied iuvabit.

Arma virumque cano therefore proven to near certainty Troiae qui primus ab oris Laviniamque venit. Multa rape, mutilation, and murder ille terris iactatis et alto. Dux femina nicer, better, smarter, stronger facta. Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit. Arma virumque neverhteless demonstrated cano Troiae qui primus ab oris Laviniamque venit. Multa ille terris criminal tendencies iactatis et alto testosterone. Dux femina facta. Forsan et haec olim meminisse the historical record iuvabit. Arma virumque revisiting old assumptions cano Troiae qui primus ab oris Laviniamque venit. Multa ille dominating female terris iactatis et alto. Dux femina facta. Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit.

Arma political will and group engagement virumque cano Troiae qui primus ab oris Laviniamque venit vaginal liberatio. Multa ille terris iactatis et alto. Dux femina psychosis facta testosterone. Forsan et haec olim meminisse animal instincts iuvabit. Arma virumque cano Troiae never again qui primus ab oris murder, rape, enslavement, and subjugation Laviniamque venit. Multa ille terris iactatis et alto. Dux breasts and buttocks and brains femina facta. Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit. Arma uterine contractions virumque cano Troiae qui primus ab oris Laviniamque venit. Multa ille terris iactatis et alto. Dux femina facta. Forsan menstrual freedom et haec olim meminisse creativity, intelligence, understanding iuvabit. Arma virumque cano Troiae qui primus ab oris Laviniamque penises venit. Multa ille terris iactatis et alto. Dux femina penises facta. Forsan et haec olim rape meminisse rape iuvabit.

Arma virumque cano Troiae qui primus ab oris Laviniamque scrotum psychosis venit. Multa ille terris iactatis et alto. Dux femina facta. Forsan et haec penis removal olim meminisse iuvabit. Arma rape virumque cano Troiae qui primus ab oris “tits and ass” Laviniamque venit. Multa ille terris iactatis et alto. Dux femina facta. Forsan devaluations and humiliations et haec olim meminisse iuvabit. Arma virumque superiority of the female cano Troiae qui primus ab oris Laviniamque venit. Multa regardless of rape and subjugationille terris iactatis et alto. Dux femina facta. Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit penis.

**********

These fellas aren’t sure how they feel about Dorkey’s pedagogy.

We all deserve to know what we come from.

Let me explain where I’m coming from, because I mean no disrespect. My grandfather and namesake, Robert Fisher Laird, had a wealthy, successful father, Samuel Laird. But my grandfather never knew even the name of his own grandfather. Samuel was a bit of an eccentric. He never talked about the past. But he had a prodigious mustache. He left not a cent to his own children. His will left everything to grandchildren he never saw, with no disbursement to occur until after his own sons and daughters were dead. He was somehow committed to making a hole in life containing himself and his children, who wouldn’t even be allowed to know where they came from.

I think we all deserve to know where we came from, the origins of the things we cleave to and hold dear.

That’s what’s motivating my response to Tim’s latest comment explaining his musical past:

…Just so you know where I’m coming from: my parents are too old to be Boomers and listened to a lot of ‘40s & ‘50s era music. My brothers were teens in the mid-80s. Had basically zero exposure to anything from the ‘60s & ‘70s growing up. The Beach Boys were about as close as it got.

Unfortunately, most people I’ve met who really like music from one or both of those decades lionize the Beatles. I decided early on, during a two part history of rock n’ roll lecture I had in elementary school (half of which was devoted to the Beatles), that I didn’t care for the Beatles so much. Glad that you have more information & stories about music during that time other than, “…and then John Lennon was shot and I stopped listening to music because what’s the point?”

That being said, I do know of the Allman Brothers, just hadn’t heard that particular song before. Well, I haven’t heard most of their songs before. The only one I ever heard played on the radio back when I still listened to the radio was Nobody Left To Run With. Blondie I only knew through Heart of Glass. Rolling Stones I originally only knew because Paint it Black was the theme song for this Vietnam show called Tour of Duty. Same type of story with many other bands of that time. Thanks for filling in the gaps.

But I haven’t filled the gaps. There are two missing decades in Tim’s musical heritage. All our Top 100 lists have as their context the whole history of the music that surrounded our lives growing up. Each of us is like one kayak navigating through the whitewater of everything else we might have chosen. Our choices define us. But those choices are essentially meaningless without comprehending the whole river we’re paddling through.

I’m asking everyone to offer up ten songs available for viewing or listening on the Internet from the sixties and seventies. These are not necessarily your own preferences. They are the definition of the width and depth and speed of the river. And nobody has to do it all. The lists will add up and do their work by accumulation. You can be eclectic, or you can be specific. For example, somebody could do ten iconic Motown songs. Somebody else could do a Woodstock collection. Or somebody could try to find the outer boundaries of all the fads and movements of the two missing decades. You can do more than 10 songs. There’s no penalty for passion. And no disincentive to advocate, explain, recommend, or criticize.

Bear in mind, you’re providing input to someone whose knowledge of the Beatles consists primarily of an elementary school lecture. He loves music. But he is deprived of knowledge of the antecedents of even the things he knows he loves. It’s very like my grandfather not knowing who his grandfather was. And Tim IS asking. It’s not his fault. A hole so big hides itself by its sheer immensity. But he’s working his way through your lists, following the trails of all the individual kayaks.

Let’s help him see and feel the river.

Raebert’s grandfather spoke to me in a dream once. Before I knew what a deerhound was. He told me I was doomed. Notably he didn’t tell me Raebert would help. He just kind of smacked his lips at the company I’d be keeping.

Background singers are important.

Saw a documentary today on Netflix called 20 Feet from Stardom. It’s uplifting and it’s about background singers who never got rich but were on stage with some of the biggest stars.

If I’m clever enough, I can use this as an excuse to answer Tim’s newest questions about my Top 100 list, even though they have nothing to do with background singers, except maybe a little. Here’s his comment.

Few more comments & questions on your list, RL:

– Songs I like which I hadn’t heard before: the Ronettes, I’m No Angel, Good As I Was to You, If You Go Away,

– What is up with Chimes of Freedom?

– What’s the story with Come Dancing? Before my time. Usually the only place I hear that is as one of those music clips the networks play leading into a commercial break during football games.

– Also curious about Dreaming by Blondie. The Smashing Pumpkins did a cover of that song in the ’90s, which is the first place I heard it. The original version is much better.

– Finally, what’s the story with the Sex Pistols? I only know of them in passing. Also before my time. One of my friend’s older brothers liked them.

Still making my way through the rest.

Generation gap. An observation not an accusation. One more reason why this exercise is so productive. Wish we could all dig into it as assiduously as you have done. Here are some answers.

The Ronettes. They were the creation of Phil Spector, recently convicted of murder. Ronnie became his wife and long-suffering victim, but not before she became an international star. Spector had a tiny production studio which inadvertently created what came to be called the “wall of sound.” It was. An oddly two-dimensional rendering of voices and instruments that burst into car radios and made AM stations into concert halls. Ronnie had talent, and the backup singers were the Ronettes. Look up videos from the time. She was so small and frail you can’t believe she could ever have endured the concert schedule she did carry out. Music as punishment and servitude. That’s what remains moving about it. The brave wistfulness in her voice.

I’m No Angel. Can’t believe you don’t know the Allman Brothers. In the old days, bikers had three bands. The Stones, the Grateful Dead, and the Allman Brothers. And maybe they loved theirself some Janis Joplin too. They prized people who lived as hard and close to the edge as they did. I’m No Angel could be considered the biker national anthem. If they had one.

Good As I Was to You. This is an honest to God country tragedy. Lorrie Morgan, country star, was married to Keith Whitley, country superstar. He was a singer of extraordinary talent. He was also, like George Jones before him, a raging alcoholic, and he destroyed the marriage with infidelities and benders galore. She told him it was over, he believed her, and recorded a final hit song on a tape recorder (“Tell Lorrie I Love Her”) before he killed himself. He has been mourned ever since. Lorrie’s side is captured in this song.

If You Go Away. Can’t remember which version I put on my list. Hopefully one that retains the French roots. The original title was “Ne Me Quitte Pas,” meaning do not leave me. In my mind it is associated with the American actress Jean Seberg, who found no home in the U.S., emigrated to Europe, made tragic movies in French about being an American expatriate in France in love with ugly Frenchmen, and was gorgeously androgynous with her blonde crewcut and boyish body. She was hot. And she died in 1979, just past the age of 40.

Jean Seberg. She went away.

Come Dancing. In my generation, the Kinks are everybody’s dirty secret, a second favorite even if your first love is Stones or Beatles. Everybody knows Lola. Everybody also knows Celluloid Heroes. But Lola is too obviously famous and Celluloid Heroes is too obviously sentimental. Come Dancing makes us respectable.

Blondie. Dreaming. Again. Amazed that you don’t know Debby Harry was Madonna before Madonna was. But better and cooler. New Wave and also a precursor of disco. She was blonde, sexual, tough, feminine, and talented. Not quite lewd but artfully seductive. She made her stage persona a kind of blank, which is to say she seemed to be detachedly watching you watching her. Irresistible.

About the Sex Pistols. Stunned you don’t know about these guys. In a very real sense, they are the very definition of punk. They had a career that lasted about two and a half years. They burst onto the music scene with a song called “Anarchy in the U.K.,” had one Number One hit, and then self destructed with failed concert dates, drug arrests, and a few fatal overdoses. They hated everyone who came before them, notably the Rolling Stones, whom they decried as a business corporation, and announced their intention to bury them. We can see how that turned out. But Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious left us with this one song, God Save the Queen, which we should all remember. Everything we think of as punk flowed from that one furious eruption of rage.

What’s up with Chimes of Freedom? Hmmm. Where the subject of background singers starts to swim into the picture. Youssouf N’Dour began to become an American star when he sang behind Peter Gabriel in the hit song “In Your Eyes.” Truth is, he’s one of the ultimate megastars of music ever. He is the voice of Africa, a native of Senegal who is possibly the most famous man in the world since Muhammed Ali.

Peter Gabriel reached out to him as a musician, and Youssouf responded.

Full circle. The movie I cited is also about musicians. By definition, they are not stars, but there is one name that is the centerpiece of the film. Merry Clayton. She sang on the Rolling Stones song from the Let It Bleed album called “Gimme Shelter.”

I remember when that album came out. I remember Merry Clayton. I knew her name at once. We all wondered why she wasn’t the new superstar. She was so obviously great, with a range even Mariah Carey would envy. But it never happened.

What did happen? She went on with her life. She didn’t need to be a star. She needed music, and she found it in church, in ways that did not involve rock bands, drugs, and the deals that go with big-time show business.

Most of the backup singers featured in the film are, frankly, the lucky ones. They weren’t seeking celebrity. Most were pastor’s daughters. Singing gospel was their background, and they were used to being backups for preachers. One who wanted more was Lisa Fischer, who turned out to be the first worthy successor to Merry Clayton, on stage with Mick Jagger, singing Gimme Shelter in the 1990s.

It’s all in the film. Music always seems like a right now thing. It’s anything but that. It’s history. Of life. And ourselves.

Merry Clayton. She’s a happy grandmother now. So is Lisa Fischer.

Well? Have I been clever?

ABSOLUTE SHOCK. I recall Peter Gabriel as a young man. He looked like this.

Honestly. It wasn’t that many years ago. Or are you all hiding something from me?

Researching this post, I found an absolutely stupendous performance of “In Your Eyes.” But I’m reeling because he’s sooooo old and sooooo fat I don’t know what to do with myself. The hard thing about these lists. In the movie cited above, there was Sting. About my age. He looks like Lyndon Johnson. I asked Lady Laird, “Good God. Do I look like that?” She said, “No. Do you ever look in the mirror?” But the truth is, I don’t. Look in the mirror. Not anymore.