Monday’s Music Moves Me: Sign Language and Songs With Time Measurements

Michelle’s idea for today’s theme is “songs in sign language,” where we’re supposed to play two songs interpreted in sign language as well as the original song. I’m going to cheat a bit, because these videos of people interpreting the original songs use the original songs as the soundtrack.

I actually have some experience with this: I used to be in Music Ministry at my church, and a couple of times a month the Mass we did was interpreted for the deaf by a very nice woman. She would “sing” along with us. Anyway…

Pharrell Williams, “Happy”

“Let It Go,” from the movie Frozen

And now, a list of songs with measures of time in the title. That’s “hour,” “minute,” “second,” “day,” “week,” “month,” and “year.” I looked for “century,” “fortnight,” “eon,” etc. but couldn’t find any. Maybe if you can think of any, I’ll play your ideas next week. That’ll give me time to think of more…

Wilson Pickett, “In The Midnight Hour” Wilson Pickett was a great R& singer whose songs regularly crossed over to the Pop charts. This song hit #1 on the R&B chart and just missed the Top 20, coming in at #21.
The Dominoes, “Sixty Minute Man” This song is marked as maybe the first rock & roll song. Whether or not it is, I’ve loved it since I heard it in the movie Bull Durham, maybe the best baseball movie ever, at least tied with Field of Dreams, both of which star Kevin Costner, who does very well with baseball movies or in movies where he plays a baseball player.
Jake Owen, “Eight Second Ride” The title refers to the amount of time a bull rider has to stay on the back of a bull to consider it a successful ride. Professional bull riding has two sets of stars: the riders and the bulls.
Dinah Washington, “What A Difference A Day Makes” The original version of this, which has been done by Esther Phillips, Angelina Jordan, and Amy Winehouse, among others.
The Beatles, “Eight Days A Week” Originally on 1964’s Beatles For Sale in the UK, it was issued as a single by Capitol Records and later appeared on the 1965 album Beatles VI.
The Anomalies, “Employee Of The Month” Don’t know much about either the band or the song, but YouTube suggested it and I thought it sounded good.
Frank Sinatra, “It Was A Very Good Year” This was written by Ervin Drake and first done by The Kingston Trio, but Frank did the definitive version of it.
The Doobie Brothers, “Minute By Minute” When Donald Fagen and Walter Becker turned Steely Dan into a recording-only band, they cut everyone else loose. Guitarist Jeff “Skunk” Baxter and Michael McDonald ended up joining The Doobie Brothers and making them sound like Steely Dan.
Tears For Fears, “The Working Hour” The ’80’s were arguably a great time for music, and Tears for Fears were arguably one of the reasons why. This is from their 1985 Songs From The Big Chair album.
The Beatles, “A Day In The Life” I know, two Beatles songs, but I don’t care. This is from the Fab Four’s 1967 album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, which I maintain is one of the better albums from the period.

And that’s Monday’s Music Moves Me for July 30, 2018.

Monday’s Music Moves Me is sponsored by X-Mas Dolly, Callie, Cathy, Alana, Michelle and Stacy, so be sure and visit them, where you can also find the Linky for the other participants.

Writer’s Workshop: Riffing On “Time”

I might start a new feature on the blog called “Riffing,” where I take a word (say, “time”) and just start improvising over it. I know that’s what Stream of Consciousness Saturday is, or at least should be, as well as all those prompts where Mama Kat tells us “write a blog post inspired by the word: _______________.” In this case, she said the word is “time.”

I’ve written a lot about time over the six years or so I’ve been carrying on with this craziness called The Sound of One Hand Typing. I went looking for all the times I wrote about time, and ended up with 200+ pages (5 entries each) of posts where I used the word itself, so that was pretty much useless. At some point, I should probably sit down and go through the 2,207 posts (including this one) I’ve written and do a better job of coming up with tags, so all I would have to do would be to enter the tag (e.g. “time”) and have all the posts magically pop up. I know it sounds like a waste of time, but it would at least help me when I get an assignment like this one, to see what I’ve already said so I don’t repeat myself which, if you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you know I do a lot of.

Here’s my favorite graphic about time.

Oh, and this one.

The A to Z Challenge for 2018 is history, but I still have comments to reply to and visits to make. If you left me a comment and I haven’t replied, rest assured I’ll get to you and reciprocate your visit, if I haven’t already. So many blogs, so little time. Next year’s challenge will be the tenth. I already have my theme, and it’s oddly appropriate. That’s all I’ll say about it for right now.

And that’s all I’ll say about time for now.

Time #JusJoJan

Today’s Just Jot It January prompt comes to us from JoAnna over at Anything Is Possible!, although I know she has a new blog or two. To quote Groucho Marx, today’s secret woid is TIME.

Thing is, though, I wrote about time last Saturday. And a few months before that. And at the end of my very first A to Z Challenge. I’ve talked about time a lot here on the blog.

Basically, there’s no such thing as time. Only length. One trip around the Sun is a year, One spin on the Earth’s axis is a day, and the number of spins around the axis in one full trip around the Sun is the number of days in a year. We decided that there were sixty seconds in a minute, and sixty minutes in an hour, because sixty was a lucky number in some ancient civilization (the Sumerians or the Phoenicians, I think). I think it was the Sumerians, I’m not sure. There are 360° in a circle, and 3600 seconds in an hour, so each second is 0.1° around the circumference of the earth.

And at that point, my math breaks down. You’ll just have to take my word for it.

What Time Is It When The Clock Strikes 13? #socs

The answer, if you remember Bennett Cerf’s Book Of Riddles, was “time to get a new clock.” As I started working in computers, where everything is done on a 24-hour clock, the answer became “1:00 PM.” Not quite as funny as the original, but then, the original wasn’t all that funny. I take that back: It was funny when I was ten. So were all of Bennett Cerf’s riddles. Bennett Cerf was a funny guy. Watch reruns of What’s My Line? from the 1950’s if you don’t believe me.

Time is sort of an obsession with me, so clocks are also of great interest. When I was growing up, I wanted to get my watch to the exact time. In those days, there was a number you’d call, CAthedral 8-5000. There a woman’s voice would tell me, “At the tone, the time will be, one fifty-six, and fifty seconds… (boop)… At the tone, the time will be, one fifty-seven, exactly… (boop)…” That would go on all day and night. Most people just got the time and hung up. I was the kind of kid that would sit there and listen for an hour or until my mother asked, “Johnny, who are you on the phone with?” And I’d tell her, “The time lady.” She’d roll her eyes, wave me off, and tell me to get off the phone.

Of course, nowadays you can get the exact time by looking at your phone or computer, because the time is synchronized, ultimately, with the cesium clock maintained by the US Naval Observatory (at least in the US; there are other cesium clocks around the world). There are clocks and watches that synchronize themselves with WWV, the time service of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which broadcasts on shortwave frequencies 2.5, 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 MHz. Clocks and watches are actually synchronized with WWVB, which just broadcasts a digital signal specifically for that purpose at 60 kHz on the longwave band.

If you’re still reading this, you’re probably wondering why I’m so interested in time. No reason. Just am. When you think about it, time is an artificial construct. Cats can’t tell time, for example. Mary got into the habit while Tuffy (one of the cats) was still alive of opening cans of food at 3:00 in the afternoon. That was during Daylight Saving Time; when DST ended, the cats started nagging her at 2:00. They can’t tell time. They just know they’re hungry.

Albert Einstein once said, “The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.” Others have probably said that, too, but it’s true. We’re the only people obsessed with time and the passage of it. I’ll be 60 in March, Jim just turned 58 yesterday, Kip turned 57 in November. Mom died on Good Friday 2000, Dad on January 25, 1967. Mary and I will be married 38 years on January 28. And so on. But it’s all relative. What’s a year? 365 days, 366 in leap years. What’s a day? 24 hours, 1440 minutes, 86,400 seconds. Why? Why is it important? Because we say it is.

In the end, that’s what everything boils down to. Here’s a song, “The Syncopated Clock,” by Leroy Anderson.

I wrote all this stuff because Linda Hill gave me the prompt “-clo-” and I came up with “clock.” It’s all for Stream of Consciousness Saturday, and you can learn all about it at her site (just click the link).

For the end of Daylight Saving Time…

Another disruption of our circadian rhythms happens this weekend. Yes, Daylight Saving Time ends in the US and probably Canada at 2:00 AM this Sunday. If you’re still up then, you can set your clock back to 1:00 AM, or if you’re like me (and most of you are), you can set your clock back one hour before bedtime. Or, just let it set itself automatically, if you have a clock connected to the Internet (e.g. the clock in your computer) or if you use your phone as your watch, like I do.

PunjabiGraphics.com | Daylight Saving | Forward this Picture

Anyway, I put together a playlist of five songs (out of the hundreds of songs available) with “time” in the title. These are the ones I thought of off the top of my head. You’ll notice there are a couple of songs from the 1980’s mixed in here. Hope you like them!

Time of the Season – The Zombies: I featured this song when I did the Zombies during my British Invasion series on Two for Tuesday. This song reached #3 on the Hot 100, and hit #1 in Canada and on the Cash Box survey in 1969.
Time (Clock of the Heart) – Culture Club: This is an extended version (the “ultimix” version) of Boy George and crew’s 1982 single, which reached #3 in the US and #4 in Canada. It was certified gold in Canada.
No Time – The Guess Who: Off their 1970 album American Woman, this song reached #1 in Canada and #5 in the US that year.
Time After Time – Cyndi Lauper: The followup to her 1983 hit “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun,” this lovely song reached #1 in both the US and Canada that year. It was certified Gold in the US and Platinum in Canada.
Time Has Come Today – The Chambers Brothers: This is the long version, clocking in at over eleven minutes. You have been warned. A great example of psychedelic rock mixed with R&B, it was their most successful single, reaching #11 on the Hot 100 in 1968. The Time Has Come, the album it came from, reached #4 on the Pop Album chart and #6 on the Black Album chart, so clearly the album (long) version was preferred.