__
For the amusement of my fellow Boomers, particularly Generation Jones. Suzy Parker reports for WaPo:
In 1964, Lesley Gore belted out “You Don’t Own Me” and a feminist song was born. It’s still resonating in the 21st century as debate over women’s issues bubbles in the United States before Nov. 6…
The video, labeled as “YouDon’tOwnMePSA,” is the mastermind of Sarah Sophie Flicker, a law school graduate, filmmaker, trapeze artist, mother and leader of New York’s The Citizens Band, a cabaret collective that makes political statements.
She writes in an e-mail to PAPER magazine about the video: “Personally, I’m struck by the fact that we are teetering dangerously close to a situation where my daughter won’t have the same rights I’ve enjoyed my entire life and that scares the heck out of me. Women constituted 60% of last elections voters. We can win this thing. We just have to agitate, motivate, and get out the darn vote!”
She asked several friends including Carrie Brownstein, a guitarist and vocalist in Wild Flag and star of “Portlandia,” teen fashion blogger Tavi Gevinson, creator of the website “Rookie,” who recently asked for an interview with President Obama, and Miranda July, a popular performance artist….
I do remember the original being considered rather daring, by our sophisticated third-grade standards.
************
Apart from combatting the Regressive Party, what’s on the agenda for the evening?
BGinCHI
Breaking News:
Mitt Romney still a liar.
PsiFighter37
About to exercise. Not worried about the polls anymore. Not worried about the media bullshit trying to spin Romney as having momentum. Only 2 more weeks left of this bullshit – but the bullshit doesn’t end then. We’ve got to stay engaged and make sure (especially if there’ a GOP House) that shit manages to get done.
Going to be booking my tickets to Cincy weekend before Election Day to do some good old-fashioned GOTV later tonight. I haven’t done GOTV since 2008, but I am looking forward to it. I’ve donated a lot; now it’s time to put feet on the pavement and make sure we win the state that should assure Obama a second term.
geg6
My youngest sister was born in ’64. I turned six that November. I loved that song. Then and now. Lesley Gore was the awesome.
Linda Featheringill
You are a youngster, aren’t you? :-)
BGinCHI
@geg6: What was it like in the Olden Times?
/born in ’66
Ben Franklin
@efgoldman:
Dang. I thought I was the antiquarian—1949
Maude
Leslie Gore was in college when she was recording. She was charming and polite.
At the time, the song was accepted.
BGinCHI
I’m glad you old timers are here and not wasting your time on those early bird specials.
Baud
@PsiFighter37:
Awesome.
PsiFighter37
Apparently Richard Mourdock saw Todd Akin step on his dick when talking about rape and said, “I bet I can stomp on my dick harder“:
I hope national Democrats (and Joe Donnelly) make this asshole pound some serious sand over that statement. Oh, and let’s hang it around Mittens’ neck while we’re at it, too.
gbear
@BGinCHI:
Listening to the radio was awesome. Really. Awesome.
Everything else was meh.
And don’t even think about teh gay…
Maude
@BGinCHI:
LOL
Linda Featheringill
@efgoldman:
I can sympathize. After all, I was born mumble-cough-mumble years ago, myself.
elmo
@BGinCHI:
Tell me about the old days, Dad! (born in 66, but in DECEMBER)
Plans for the evening: Marriott room service pizza and a glass of wine. Even with the company card and a generous travel allowance, I can’t bring myself to pay the prices at the various riverfront restaurants around my (admittedly nice) hotel. Traveling away from home for a week, and lonely as hell. I’m actually working at 9 pm, because it feels connected to home.
I’m flying all day tomorrow, and my Kindle battery chose this week to deny all efforts to recharge it. So I have two thick paperbacks purchased at the airport, and I’ve already finished one of them.
#firstworldproblems FTW
Ben Franklin
@efgoldman:
Yeah we gummers can laugh about Ensure, but the toddlers can’t handle jokes about Gerbers
beltane
Before my time. You people are making me feel very young.
gbear
@BGinCHI:
I bought a bag of Oreo cookies yesterday and I’m sneaking into them like a 4-year-old this evening.
gbear
ETA: damned double post…
General Stuck
Nah, that wasn’t the first woman’s lib song with a hippy twist. That would be this one, that was also the first free love song. Though I was just beginning to understand that kind of stuff.
It was the very first record I ever bought, at the time along with Roy Orbison – Pretty Woman, both were 45 rpm. But that was okay, since I was like 11, stepping into the whirlwind of puberty.
MikeJ
@gbear:
Everyone remembers the Beatles but nobody remembers the Singing Nun had a #1 hit.
I wasn’t alive at the time, but I’d guess there was more crap on the radio than good stuff. And if you went looking there was great music to be found. Same as it ever was.
Linda Featheringill
Off on a tangent:
http://www.webpronews.com/u-s-life-expectancy-down-for-white-women-with-less-education-2012-09
Life expectancy dropping for white women with less formal education. Hmmmm.
elmo
@Ben Franklin:
Hey, I like Ensure! It tastes like Boost. Mom went through the stuff by the case when she was sick, and I used to sit with her and share.
James E. Powell
I wish I had more confidence that the anti-Free Women policies of Romney and the Republicans would move voters, men and women, to vote against them. But I don’t. I see ads, I read Op-Eds, and many blog posts. But I don’t see the Romney and the Republicans paying for it. Not like the auto bailout.
Libby
I remember when that song came out too. Probably her best work.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
Rachel is absolutely DESTROYING MoneyBooBoo. It’s a beautiful thing to watch.
Honus
Bruce Springsteen played a free acoustic set at a GOTV rally here in Charlottesville this afternoon at the pavilion a block from my office. (He’s got a paying gig in the 15000 seat JPJ Arena tonight). Obama was at the Pavilion a month ago, and the Dali Lama was there in between.
I quit work at 2 and walked down the street and sat on the grass on a sunny day and listened to Bruce sing a few songs and talk about how much he liked the president. Not a bad afternoon.
Alexandra
Yay. Someone acknowledges Generation Jones. Culturally, well in my head at least and the people I tend to hang with, we’re not really Boomers, but closer to Generation X.
Mind you, Sarah Palin is one of us. Errr…
Hill Dweller
Maddow just eviscerated the Romney campaign for their indifference to foreign policy. It was a thing of beauty.
arguingwithsignposts
@PsiFighter37:
There is no really good way for Christians to square an omniscient, omnipotent, all-loving god with suffering and death without a lot of handwaving. When it all comes down to it, at least this douchebag is being consistent. (not that I agree with him)
General Stuck
@efgoldman:
square
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@MikeJ: I looked up the Billboard Top 100 from the 60s. I disagree, 1965 was awesome. Sure, a lot of clunkers but the majority were really good.
BGinCHI
@elmo: July here. Get to bed you whippersnapper.
Also, Marriott owned by crazy right wing family.
BGinCHI
@Honus: Former Virginian bartender here. Early 90s.
eemom
Yay, an old people thread! And one where I am NOT old enough to remember the song when it came out (though I do know it). btw, have I mentioned I’m obsessed with being 50?
geg6
@Alexandra:
But Obama is one of us, too. So, I think overall that trumps Caribou Barbie.
gbear
@MikeJ: The thing that was cool about it was that format on top 40 radio was still wide open, so you could hear The Beatles, Johnny Cash, Sammy Davis Jr, The Singing Nun, Roy Orbison and Leslie Gore on the same station one after the other. These formatted radio stations now can get off my lawn.
BGinCHI
@eemom: That’s a milestone. I am going to feel that one when it comes, I think. 40 was easy.
Spaghetti Lee
Cripes. All the old people in this thread talking about being old, yet I’m the one who just fucked up my back moving a chair. I guess I was born physically old as well as mentally old.
Narcissus
Man, you people are old.
Old.
Spaghetti Lee
@gbear:
I actually thought it was kinda the other way around, i.e. a ‘Classic Rock’ station playing the Clash and the Grateful Dead one after the other, when those two fanbases hated each other back in the 70’s.
opie_jeanne
I had the 45 of this song when it came out.
Raven
The bride was on the road this weekend so we just caught up on “Call the Midwife and Boardwalk Empire.” Great drama.
JoyfulA
The Payola years.
dance around in your bones
@PsiFighter37:
What kind of a fucking Gawd does he believe in?
You know I would just love to stomp all over Todd Akins dick personally. Probably Gawd would approve.
Barring that, I wish he could get pregnant and have to carry that baby to term, whether it was from a casual encounter, a ‘legitimate rape’, or in.cest.
What a mofo. Jebus H. I have no words for such stupidity except swear words, which I am sure you can all fill in.
P.S. I remember every word to “You Don’t Own Me’ and it’s still a great song.
Thanks, Anne Laurie.
gbear
@efgoldman: ‘Dead Man’s Curve’ rules, man.
Spaghetti Lee
@efgoldman:
I’m sure I’ll be better by tomorrow. It’s just that when I’m in my twenties and getting aches and pains all over the place, I shudder to think what a fragile old geezer I’ll be in a few decades.
gbear
@Spaghetti Lee:
With any luck they still do.
To be honest I quit listening to classic rock stations in the 80’s when it seemed like the stations were run by guys who went brain dead in 1974.
Spaghetti Lee
@efgoldman:
Speaking as the resident young fart, I’d love a top 40 song about sad stuff for once, even the schmaltzy kind, just so there would be something on pop radio where the three most frequent words aren’t ‘party’, ‘club’, and ‘tonight’.
Raven
@efgoldman: . Frank Wilson And The Cavaliers Last Kiss 1964
The Shangri-Las – Leader Of The Pack
Yutsano
@Spaghetti Lee: I’m about to turn 40 and I just had back surgery. Of course I also hauled around large heavy pieces of brass on my shoulders all through high school and college too. So there may be a slight history there.
dance around in your bones
@MikeJ:
Oh fuck, I remember that song. I was 10.
opie_jeanne
@General Stuck: I could have lived without the visual of whatever she was wearing in that video. Actually, it was wearing her.
elmo
@BGinCHI:
Yes, I know, but they have the best beds, the nicest showers, and best of all, THEY ALL HAVE STARBUCKS IN THE LOBBY. At home I never ever go to Starbucks, I make my own coffee in the morning. But I make it thick and strong in a French press, and the only way to reproduce that is to have at least three shots of espresso in my store-bought coffee. So I need an espresso shop in pajama distance when I travel. This is non-negotiable. Find me another hotel chain that has something similar, and I will renounce and abjure my Marriott Rewards membership and give up all my points.
Raven
Anyone remember the Newbeats, Run Baby Run?
Tom Q
@MikeJ: I’m embarrassed to say we OWNED The Singing Nun album. Hey, Catholic family; and I was only 11, so it wasn’t my fault.
It’s true what was said up above: ’62/’63 was, with of course some exceptions, one of the dreckiest times in rock and roll — post all the Berry/Presley pioneers but prior to the British invasion in ’64. The Beatles/Stones/Animals/Kinks wiped out some truly ghastly Top 40 performers.
geg6
@Spaghetti Lee:
And this stopped when? Because I, for one, did not get that memo. I still love The Clash and despise the Dead and Deadheads. AFAIK, there has been no truce called and no treaties signed. And if one does exist, I’m going rogue because the Dead will always suck.
Raven
@gbear: Ever read any of Henry Gregor Felsen’s Hot Rod books?
Spaghetti Lee
@gbear:
I love plenty of songs by both, even though I keep hearing that’s supposed to be impossible, although I do think pre-London Calling clash can be pretty drab. (For extra troll-points, I’ll argue that London, Sandanista, and Combat Rock have more in common with, say, Peter Gabriel than with the Dead Kennedys or the Pistols.)
Linda Featheringill
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyANRiqzfio
Here’s an old song. This was the first popular radio song that I remember. Loved it at the time. [And still think it’s cute.]
Ragg Mopp
Raven
@geg6: Just go fuck yourself with that weak shit.
opie_jeanne
@gbear: Not to mention Jimmy Dean. I think the first song I heard on my own, personal transistor radio was “Big Bad John”.
I think I got the radio in 1961, and that was the year it came out. In Los Angeles, they played a wide range of stuff on the rock stations back then.
Raven
@opie_jeanne: KFWB! Out of Balance.
PurpleGirl
@efgoldman: Also remember The Leader of the Pack…
Raven
@PurpleGirl: Posted above.
Anne Laurie
@Spaghetti Lee:
Wait’ll you do that by stepping down from the commuter train. Or rolling over in bed while impeded by a sleeping dog. Both of which I could, and did, accomplish before I was 40.
opie_jeanne
@Yutsano: Sousaphone?
Raven
Tell Laura I Love Her
Teen Angel
gbear
@Raven: Yep, and their other hit, Bread and Butter. I should have brought up this song when we had the thread a long time ago about songs we thought were sung by women.
Raven
@gbear: I learned today that they were from Haihira Georgia!
WereBear
@Raven: We love Boardwalk Empire. We’ll rewatch late week’s episode.
Raven
@WereBear: Call the Midwife is great. Wrenching, sad a and funny as hell.
gbear
@Raven: I’d never heard of them before. Love the cover.
Raven
@PurpleGirl: Who also sang one of the great lyrics in music:
Well, what color are his eyes?
I don’t know he’s always wearing shades
Is he tall? Well, I’ve got to look up
Yeah?
Well, I hear he’s bad Hmm, he’s good, bad but he’s not evil
dance around in your bones
@Raven:
I remember both of those, but how about “The Leader of the Laundromat” by The Detergents?
“Down, Down, because our laundry came back brown”
hahahhahahha
Raven
@gbear: I read them in high school and tracked them down a couple of years ago. His kids have reissued the books and I was able to converse with them some. The books usually were about some new kid in town/loner thing. I was always that too.
Raven
@efgoldman: Why’s that? I’m off to bed right now!
Raven
@dance around in your bones: very good
opie_jeanne
@Raven: Lohman and Barkley on the Morning Machine, before they moved to KFI.
KRLA, as well.
Dick Biondi, the skinniest, ugliest DJ in the world. The radio station was at the Pasadena Huntington Hotel, in a little shed next to the parking lot.
WereBear
@Raven: Will look!
Yutsano
@Spaghetti Lee: These things run in cycles. Kurt Cobain probably wouldn’t have been nearly as big if not for most of the overproduced dreck of the late 80s. And punk is essentially a response to disco.
@efgoldman: Fibreglass is for the weak. You ever want to be impressed by a woman watch her sling a brass sousa. It can get seriously epic.
@opie_jeanne:
geg6
@Raven:
Heh. You and Cole. Deadheads. It is to laugh.
To each their own. And may the twain never meet.
More seriously, it truly is just a matter of taste. I find the Dead to be the most boring band ever. I nod off within about 3 seconds into a song, let alone one of those interminable “jams” that go on until you’ll poke knitting needles into your ears to make it stop. ;-) And don’t get me started on the moonbats that follow them around. I got dragged to a Dead concert once about 20 years ago and I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. I’m sure my love of being in a small grungy room in a basement with a lot of crazy punks while the Ramones slam away (or the Clash and the Sex Pistols, who I also saw in small venues) would give you the same reaction. We like what we like and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Poopyman
Who remembers what may well be the first stalker song? I guess I’m a year older than AL, so I would’a been only ten when it came out, but it struck me as pretty weird even back then.
I don’t remember much of a reaction to “You Don’t Own Me”, so I can’t say it caused much of a ripple.
Anne Laurie
@MikeJ: Heck, I liked the Singing Nun — and got to hear it plenty, since I was attending a parochial school run by Dominican nuns. Should’ve known better than to look for it on YouTube, though…
There goes my good mood for the evening.
opie_jeanne
@Yutsano: Fellow band-geek. I played the clarinet.
dance around in your bones
@Linda Featheringill:
It’s like Gangnam Style, but WAY cooler. I only became aware of the old 78’s through a good friend who was a record collector when I was in my twenties, and it was a revelation to me – I got hooked immediately.
Here’s one: The Hottest Stuff in Town (I love the way she says ‘Sold, brother, sold’ at the end).
Also: Red Hot
gbear
@Spaghetti Lee:
Have to disagree. I think the US version of The Clash’s first album is an incredibly hot lp.
Geoduck
@elmo:
This is why I made the very deliberate decision to never start drinking coffee. I don’t need that kind of addiction.
dance around in your bones
Oh Gawd, I identified with this song ’cause this bitch I knew in high school stole my boyfriend.
I still hate her. Even though that ol’ boyfriend is probably residing in a state or federal prison at the moment. I actually spent a night in jail because of him (at age 15).
Story too long to tell.
gbear
@Poopyman: Lol. I sent my sister a CD of Hollies songs and my teenage niece refers to ‘Look Through Any Window’ as ‘that stalker song’. The Hollies had a few songs like that. ‘Stop Stop Stop’ is about getting thrown out of a bar for confronting a dancer.
dance around in your bones
@Anne Laurie:
Seconded.
More good music links please!
parrot
Pendant Piece
David in NY
@arguingwithsignposts:
Don’t even give him that. He’s only consistent, if you can be sure, without committing the sin of pride, that God wants every conception to become a person. This is probably not true, of course, since God allows 20% of all conceptions to be miscarriages. If we don’t know that God wants any particular conception to become a person, then how can he say a conception by means God would certainly disapprove, should have the right to personhood???
I await your explanation of how consistent he is.
gbear
I stopped into a Goodwill Store last night and I was blown away when they played this song on their music system. I’ll swear on a stack of bibles that I heard this song in a Goodwill Store. I couldn’t believe it.
arguingwithsignposts
@David in NY: Because if some conception ends in a miscarriage, God clearly intended that conception not to come to term. Duh. He was Teaching Them A Lesson. See Book of Job.
(Did you see me wave my hands there?)
NotMax
@MikeJ
Then, as now, Sturgeon’s Law applies.
Tonal Crow
“That’s not true: it’s a Mitt!”
.
—Overheard at breakfast
dance around in your bones
@dance around in your bones:
Oops – just realized it was Richard Mourdoch who said this bullshit (just saw a clip of him on the TV machine). Todd Akin is still a dipshit, though.
I swear to Gawd/Goddess/FSM/Gaia/Kali/whoever that if MEN could get pregnant they would change their minds about abortion in a microsecond. It’s a HUGE life-changing event, with possibly very serious health consequences.
It’s not like taking a dump, fer Chrissakes.
Lurking Canadian
@dance around in your bones: I could never understand the sequel, “Judy’s Turn to Cry”. Every time I hear it, I want to yell, “Lesley! Grow a backbone! Johnnie’s a douchebag! You dodged a bullet when he left with Judy!”
fuckwit
I read an item about Harry Reid going off on RMoney’s taxes, and I’m now 100% convinced that Reid knows something that is deeply personally damaging to RMoney, and knows it from the inside. I think it’s this: RMoney is a greedy fuck who does not tithe his “fair” share to the Mormon church.
Tithing is a HUGE deal in that religion. It’s a flat tax that they take very seriously. But cheating on tithing is way worse than cheating on your taxes, because if you cheat your taxes, you’re cheating the gummint, but if you cheat on tithing, you’re cheating some imaginary nonsense from some weird-ass planet, or something. It’s bad, like, you can be excommunicated kind of bad.
I can just bet, based on how greedy RMoney is, that he has NOT been giving his fair percentage to the church. And Reid knows this from insiders high up in the church who are NOT happy about this, and knows it’s a significant enough shortfall that it will likely show up in RMoney’s tax returns.
So there. It will cost RMoney the Mormon vote, IFF those returns ever see the light of day. And, for Reid, it’s personal.
dance around in your bones
Ok, just for fun – “Fish Heads” by Barnes and Barnes, 1979.
dance around in your bones
@Lurking Canadian:
You know, you’re right – I hope that bitch Melissa ended up with my dead-end boyfriend. Would serve her right.
ArchPundit
@David in NY:
Closer to 33-40% of all pregnancies. God: The Great Abortionist in the Sky.
ArchPundit
@arguingwithsignposts:
It’s worse than that. At least half of miscarriages happen without the woman even knowing. Quite the fucking lesson being taught.
As a good Presbyterian of the liberal persuasion, I noticed this concept of free will that God gave everyone. It means he doesn’t interfere with our lives. He leaves it up to us to fuck them up all on our own. Fundies don’t really understand this because they want to go bugger their animals, inanimate objects, and children and think if they had free will they would. The rest of us only want to bugger other people who want to bugger us too.
opie_jeanne
@dance around in your bones: Wow!
opie_jeanne
@gbear: I believe you. The Goodwill near us in the Seattle area has terrific costume ideas, all ready for kids and adults, as well as brand new accessories.
Matt McIrvin
@ArchPundit: One way to put it is that if a human being truly begins at conception, it’s nothing less than a radical redefinition of what a human being is: a majority of people who have lived throughout history were not intelligent bipeds, or even babies who died in childhood, but nearly-microscopic balls of cells who died of failure to implant in the uterine wall, with their existence entirely un-noted by the minority of us who can walk and talk. If we took their humanity seriously, we’d be compelled to embark on a massive project to somehow reengineer human reproduction around egg-harvesting and artificial wombs so that no zygote has to die.
PollyUSA
Good video, thanks for posting
Sondra
Bravo. This is a very welcome sanity break. You may have been in the 3rd grade, but I was a Junior in High School and loved this song.
Just for perspective after the great big chuckle, it was the same year all of our political minds were changed forever when we lost JFK.
1964 was not an easy year. My how time marches on. Oh wait, maybe not.