Pop Culture from an Alternate Dimension

       Since today the United States celebrates declaring independence from Great Britain 250 years ago I put together this collection. To start off, all rise for the National Anthem. Written by Francis Scott Key in 1814, it is traditionally played before baseball games. This version Jimi Hendrix adapted for his appearance at Woodstock. "The Liberty Bell March" belongs here for two reasons: it was written by John Philip Sousa, who has USA in his name and it's named after an American icon, as seen in National Treasure . Ironically, when most people hear it, they think of the British comedy troupe Monty Python. "Yankee Doodle Boy" was written by George M. Cohen in 1904. I chose the version from the 1942 movie, Yankee Doodle Dandy , where James Cagney played Cohen. "Saturday in the Park" is by a band named after an American city. Since a lot of Americans will be in parks today frying hot dogs and drinking Coca-Cola, this seemed appropriate. The song ...

       Glenn Frey has been featured on this blog as a musician before (such as last week's post) but this week is Glenn Frey: Actor. He made a mini-movie music video for his song "Smuggler's Blues" which, essentially, got turned in an episode of Miami Vice  called "Smuggler's Blues" with Frey cast in a featured role. In 1986 he was in Let's Get Harry  with Robrt Duvall and Gary Busey, directed by Alan Smithee (who was also featured on this blog before). In 1989 he was in seven episodes of the series Wiseguy . The 1993 series South of Sunset looked like his big acting break. He was cast in the lead as a Beverly Hills detective. Aries Spears (of MadTV and Josie and the Pussycats ) was his co-star. It looked like they were trying to get a  48 Hours  kind of vibe. Spears even does a variation of Eddie Murphy's routine about the first black president.       Ironically the pilot was not scene where the series took place because it w...

       This would be a follow up to the 1982 Eagles album from an alternate reality that I posted in December. For this I chose four songs from Don Henley's 1984 album Building the Perfect Beast , four songs from Glenn Frey's The Allnighter , one song from Timothy B. Schmit's Playin' It Cool , and one from Joe Walsh's The Confessor . For Henley I only wanted to use songs that he helped write so I didn't use "All She Wants to Do Is Dance", despite it being a huge hit. I wound up choosing "The Boys of Summer", "Not Enough Love in the World", "Sunset Grill" and "Land of the Living". Frey's supplied "Sexy Girl", "Smuggler's Blues", "Living in Darkness" and "New Love". From Schmit I pulled "Something's Wrong" which has Don Henley on drums & backing vocals and Joe Walsh on guitar. Speaking of Joe, like Henley, I wanted to choose a song Walsh wrote. I pic...

       I recently started going through my original posts and added playlists. When I got to The Eagles album No Fun Aloud I wanted to re-do the package design. The songs remain the same.      What if the Eagles kept putting out records after  The Long Run ? For this I chose "I Found Somebody", "Party Town", "All Those Lies" and "I Volunteer" from Glenn Frey's 1982 album  No Fun Aloud.  From Don Henley's 1982 album  I Can't Stand Still  I chose the title song (with harmony vocals by Timothy B. Schmit), "Long Way Home" (with backing vocals by Schmit),  "Nobody's Business"  (with Schmit   on bass) and I had to include "Dirty Laundry", not only was it huge in the charts but it has Schmit doing backing vocals and bass, as well as Joe Walsh doing a guitar solo. In place of Glenn Frey doing a cover of the oldie "Sea Cruise" I put in Timothy B. Schmit cover of "So Much in Love" from the ...

  Back in July I imagined what an Eagles album would sound like in 1982 after they broke up. This one is kind of the reverse: what would their first album be like if Joe Walsh was with them at beginning. Most of it is from The Eagles self-titled 1972 album with a couple of songs from Joe Walsh's Barnstorm album from 1972. I replaced "Early Bird" (which starts with "Early in the morning...") with Walsh's "Birdcall Morning" (which starts "Early birdcall morning..."). I also excised "Take the Devil" to make room for "I'll Tell the World" from  Barnstorm . As usual, here is a link to the playlist:  https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCHnLE0OxajFq-lBRfeJWbwLok1JlN_jC&si=v6HBzjw_xztG_qlQ Enjoy and tell your friends.