“Out Of Time”,the front sleeve from the Stones 7” Decca single
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Name: Keno
E-Mail: keno@fairpoint.net
Subject: Poll Post for the week starting Monday, Aug 23
Date: Sunday, August 22, 2021
Time: 11:18:39 PM
Remote Address: 8.41.160.9
Message ID: 320987
Parent ID: 0
Thread ID: 320987
Another new week has begun and the same can be said for this week’s Poll Post, as it begins right here - and now. Of our 4 weekly polls, I always start off writing and typing about the Stones Poll first, which enters week 1,151 of polling, and where we been rating each song released by the Stones. So, this week's question will ask: Rate the Stones UK version of the song “Out Of Time”, from zero (lowest) to 10 (highest)
“Out Of Time”,the front sleeve from the Stones 7” Decca single
Okay, so you all – well most of you, already knew, what was gonna be the question and song to be rated this week, since I noted it here last week, and yes, it’s the long UK version of “Out Of Time”, and the only version (for now at least) that we will only look at and rate – so just forget about the shorter U.S. take of the song (which I actually like just a bit better, since this number, IMO, sounds better as a shorter song). Now, I won’t note that this Jagger/Richards number was actually a Jagger/Richards/Jones written number, since it was Brian Jones who came up with the main music for this song, which he played on both the marimbas, and on the piano. But since Jones wasn’t (once again) credited for his work thanks to Jagger, Richards, and their manger Andrew Loog Oldham (who at this point was actually more to blame for this BS than the Glimmer Twins), I just won’t write about it or bring it up here…Okay?... But wait…. What did most of you just think to yourselves, that I should bring it up? Oh, well, I guess that’s why I did just bring it up while telling you I wasn’t gonna bring it up, since after all, all Stones fans should always be reminded who really wrote the music to some of their biggest songs of the ’60s, as on several of them the true writer wasn’t credited, as hard-nosed and smart Stones fans already know this to be a fact.
Anyway, this song was a big hit indeed, back in the day. To rate this song, just click on the following link: Stones Weekly Poll.
Last week at the Stones polls we answered this question: Rate the Stones song “Downtown Suzie”, from zero (lowest) to 10 (highest)
“Downtown Suzie”, from Metamorphosis
This Bill Wyman song did very well last week, even better than I was thinking it would do, as it scored a 10 for its top pick (I had a hunch it would score a 9, which is what I rate it myself, but that shows what I know!). Now, while it’s 24.4% of the 10 vote is the second smallest percentage for any “10” rated Stones song to generate in total votes, it still scored a 10, and a 10 is the highest honor that any song can receive, period. Bill should be proud, too bad more of his songs weren’t allowed on the Stones albums.
To see the full final results from last week’s poll, just click here: Stones Weekly Poll - week 1,150. Or to see the updated rating standings for this ongoing series, and see which Stones’ 10 rated song scored a bit less than this one, or to see where all of the other songs rated and landed in the standings (from the other 10s, down to as low as one song that only scored a 2) in past polls, just click on here: Stones Top Picks - Page 3, List Page 5.
Let’s take a look now at this week’s Classic Rock Poll, where we enter week 791 of voting, and for this one we vote in 2 different Rock Polls for the week. This week’s first question asks: Who was the most underrated member of the band, Foreigner?.
Foreigner The original band from 1976: (L-R): Dennis Elliott, Ed Gagliardi, Al Greenwood, Mick Jones, Lou Gramm, and Ian McDonald
We will look at this hard rock band, up until around 1990 or so, when the last of the original members left the band, other than guitarist Mick Jones, who to this day is still in the band and never left.
Foreigner, a British-American Rock supergroup, was originally formed in New York City in 1976 by British guitarist and songwriter Mick Jones (but no, not the same guy with the same name who was in the Clash), along with fellow Briton and ex-King Crimson member Ian McDonald, and also with American vocalist Lou Gramm. They soon added keyboardist Al Greenwood, and bassist Ed Gagliardi (both Americans), and drummer Dennis Elliott (another Brit). So they were truly a British-American group, with Jones being the one who came up with the band's name.
Gagliardi was the first one to leave the band, in ’79, after playing on their first 2 albums, and he was replaced by bassist Rick Wills. So these are the 7 members who we will look at in the poll.
Foreigner was a major hit from the very start, with their first of four albums, the self-titled Foreigner (1977), Double Vision (1978), Head Games (1979), and 4 (1981) being certified at least 5x platinum in the U.S. in the first few years after their releases, with their fourth LP 4 reaching #1 in the States. They had a slower start in the UK, where their first 3 albums didn’t sell too well at all (only their second LP even charted over there, but only reached #34, while it was #2 in the U.S.). But 4did well in the UK, reaching #5 on the main charts, and then their fifth album, 1984’s Agent Provocateur, hit #1 in the UK (while reaching #5 in the States). After 1987’s Inside Information didn’t sell as well (#15 U.S. and only #64 in the UK), they no longer had another big selling LP after that, other than their last studio album released in 2009, Can't Slow Down, sold moderately in the States (at #29).
While they were known more so for their albums, they also had several big time hit singles, with 1984’s "I Want to Know What Love Is" by far their biggest hit, yes, a ballad from these otherwise hard rockers, that went to #1 in the U.S., UK and in another 6 countries.
But with all that said, who in this band do you feel was the most underrated? To vote in this week’s first Rock poll, just click on here: Classic Rock Poll, and when you get to this page, choose “Poll 1” to vote in this poll.
For this week’s VS Rock Poll, we ask this: “Father & Son” by Cat Stevens vs “Forever Young” by Rod Stewart, which song about fatherly advice to a son is better?
VS 
Cat Stevens’ “Father & Son” VS Rod Stewart’s “Forever Young”
These 2 songs were both written about fatherly love and the advice they give to their sons. Of late I've been perhaps more in tune to the Cat Stevens song, since my youngest child, who actually is my grandson, but whom I raised, is now 21 and about to become a father himself in the next couple of months. I'm very pleased that he's been asking me for advice on this new phase of his life, and the truth is, amongst other things, it's got me in turn thinking about these 2 songs that we will look at this week (actually, it's also got me thinking about a third song, the Bob Dylan song of the same title as the Rod Stewart song, which some say is a rip-off of the Dylan song, and I'll write about that in just a bit).
But I'll talk about the Cat Stevens song first, since it was released first, in 1970... We lost a lot of rockers to drugs so many years ago in both the 1960s and '70s, and sometimes, at least a few of us got to thinking, what would rock music had been like had all of those rock stars, lived, since by the mid '70s we had lost so many Rock superstars. Yet we also lost a handful of rockers to something totally different, that being religion, and one of those superstars was Cat Stevens. Once he embraced Islam, he totally left rock music and put down his guitar for a good 30 or so years. I could never understand his reasoning for this change in his life, since he claimed that after reading the Koran, that he felt that it was such a beautiful book and he had a calling to the religion after he read it. Yet I read the Koran myself when I was 21 years old, after my wife and I's roommate, a Muslim from France, moved out of a house that we at first shared with him for a few months, and when he left, he left his holy book behind. To me, after reading that book, I saw nothing but hate coming from it, with what it had to say about this religion that among other things, seemed so suppressive to me (I really knew nothing about the religion until I read the book, as our roommate never talked about his religion to us). So just how did the Cat see beauty in that book? How could he embrace a religion that seemed to be filled with orders to hate others who weren't Muslims, and stated (more than once) that everybody else who wasn't a Muslim, were their enemies, and that all Muslins had to wage war against non-believers. Now I do understand that there's different versions of the Koran, so I want to believe that Stevens, a peaceful hippie of the '60s, read a totally different version of the book than the one I read.
But let me just talk about this wonderful song that the Cat wrote way back in 1969, 8 years before his life as a folk-rocker would end. While “Father and Son" was written about an older father and his now grown son, the official video, from late 1970 that I linked to at the poll page, features a preteen boy with a very old man who's smoking a pipe, and he looks to be the boy's grandfather, if not his great grandfather. But when Stevens wrote this song a year earlier, before he became very sick with tuberculosis, it was more a song about one's child who's coming of age. In fact, the song was first written for a movie that Stevens was starting to write, and he was writing it from the perspective of a father and son in a Russian family during the Russian Revolution (which took place between 1917-1923). The son wants to join the revolution, but his father wants him to stay home and work on their farm. But the movie never happened, as Stevens had gotten so ill with tuberculosis that he almost died from it and lost several months to it and then his recovery, and because of that, he abandon plans to write the script, so the film was never made. The song ended up instead being the first one written for his upcoming and soon to be excellent album Tea For The Tillerman. So no, the song wasn't about he and his dad, nor about he and his son (who wasn't born yet). While the video linked to was released in late November of '70, I can't find any other info on it. I do wonder who the old man in the video was (was he an old actor perhaps)? Or was he just a regular guy and somebody's grandpa? But that's me, I wonder just how much longer he lived for after this video was made, or for that matter, what became of the little boy in the video once he grew up, and who was he? He must be around 60 years old today.
At first for this week's poll, I was thinking of placing the Bob Dylan song, "Forever Young", that was released in 1974, up against the Rod Stewart song that had the same title (and written in 1988), but decided against it since the two songs are really almost exactly the same 2 songs. Stewart in fact, got a hold of Dylan and asked him if he would have a problem with his new song, since it was really nothing but a cover of Dylan's tune, with some of the lyrics being different, and Dylan told him it would be cool - but only as long as he was given co-writing credit for the song, and he was. Dylan had written his song for his oldest son many years earlier, and Stewart wrote his song 14 years later for his 2 oldest sons, whom he felt he had abandoned as a father while on the road all of the time being a rock star. Stewart’s song is also a lot like the Cat Stevens song, too, as it's about a father giving his son important advice about life for when he is grown. The video for this song, was directed by Eric Watson, and it starred Rod along with a young boy named Alex Zuckerman, a child actor who was in several other films and one TV show, and who then left show business once he grew up in the late ‘90s. But both videos are heartwarming. So I really couldn't help but wonder what kind of person could not like these songs or their videos, after reading 2 very rude comments about the Stewart video at a message board that I ran into when searching for info on the song. The 2 posters who made the rude comments about Rod and his song, must either hate fatherhood, or they perhaps they hate little boys, or maybe both, as they objected strongly to what the song was about. I can only think that adults who hate children (and as we know, a small number of adults do), must have had very sad childhoods themselves, and I bet lead sad lives as adults, and never been parents, either. I sometimes think after living almost 70 years in this mean, cold world, that I never would had made it without my kids, since they really did make life worthwhile for me anyway, and perhaps that’s why I like both songs (and yes, I dig the Dylan song, too).
Now while I did write here about both of the videos, I must, as always, remind everybody that they aren't what we are looking at or rating this week, we are just comparing the 2 songs and will choose the one that we like better. The videos are linked to so we can hear the songs before we vote to choose the best one of the two.
Here are the lineups for the two songs: "Father & Son: Cat Stevens – Lead Vocals; Acoustic Guitar; Alun Davies – Acoustic Guitar, Backing Vocals; Harvey Burns – Percussion; John Ryan – Double Bass... For "Forever Young": Rod Stewart – Vocals; Michael Landau – Guitar; Andy Taylor – Guitar; Jim Cregan – Acoustic Guitar; Kevin Savigar – Keyboards; Bernard Edwards – Bass; Tony Brock – Drums. To vote in this week’s VS poll, just click on this link: Classic Rock VS Poll, and when you get to this page, choose “Poll 2” to vote on this question.
Last week in the first Rock Poll we asked this question: Who was the most underrated member of the band, Derek and the Dominos?.
Derek and the Dominos on tour in 1971, this was their main and best known lineup
Only keyboardists and sometime vocalist Bobby Whitlock, and bassist Carl Radle, had any chance in this poll out of the 6 members listed. Whitlock was the top pick, beating out Radle by 12 votes. To see the poll’s full final results, just click on the following link: Classic Rock Poll, week 790, Poll 1. Or, to see “The most underrated member of each rock band” list, and who’s on there from the other bands that we answered this question for already, click on: Top 10 List Page, Page 16, and you will see this listing at the very top of the page.
In last week’s Rock VS poll, we asked: The Monkees' cover of “(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone” VS their cover of “Last Train To Clarksville”, with both songs written by Tommy Boyce & Bobby Hart. Which one is the better cover?
VS 
The Monkees’ “Last Train To Clarksville” VS “ (I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone”. Single’s front covers
“Last Train To Clarksville” won this poll question with 50.2% of the vote. You can look over the results from this poll by clicking on the following link: Classic Rock VS Poll, week 790. Or, to see the results on the VS list page, just click on here: Rock VS Page 2, List Page 10, and when you get there, head on down to the bottom of the page to see the results.
We finish up this Poll Post each week talking about the Beatles Poll, where this week we enter week 542 of voting, and we are answering questions about The Beatles videos. This week’s video poll question is: Rate The Beatles' video for “Free As A Bird” from zero to 10 (Click here for the video)
“Free As A Bird” Beatles single released cover, with the drawing by John Lennon, taken from his 1964 book In His Own Write
“Free As A Bird” is a single released in December of 1995 by the Beatles. The lyrics and some of the music were first written by John Lennon in 1977, and at first was to be used on his and Yoko’s 1980 album Double Fantasy. He recorded the vocals while playing the piano at his NYC home at The Dakota, as a home demo, then decided to leave it off the new album since he felt it needed a bit more work, which he never got back to doing.
25 years after their break-up and 15 years after Lennon was murdered, his surviving Beatle bandmates Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, released a studio version of the song while including Lennon’s home demo in their work, making this number the first new Beatle song in 25 years. McCartney had asked Yoko Ono beforehand for unreleased material by Lennon, to which the three remaining former Beatles could contribute for a new song, and Yoko gave him 4 half-done songs, including this one. It was the best pick, as the way Lennon sang the song, it sounds just like the way John sang while in the Beatles – in their later years anyway. Paul, George and Ringo wrote extra music for the demo to fill in the sound, and the song became a hit of course, reaching #6 on the main U.S. charts while reaching #2 on the singles chart. The song also reached #2 in the UK and was a world wide hit.
The video was put together at the same time as the song was and was directed by Joe Pytka and depicts, from the point of view of a bird in flight, many references to 10 different Beatles songs, "Penny Lane", "Paperback Writer", "A Day in the Life", "Eleanor Rigby", "Helter Skelter", "Piggies", "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill", "Strawberry Fields Forever", "Doctor Robert", and "The Fool on the Hill". But besides that, it also has been estimated to contain between 80 and 100 allusions to the Beatles' story, music and lyrics in the video. Although the flying bird can be heard at the beginning of the video, it is never seen.
The lineup for this second to last Beatle release (“Real Love”, another song of John’s that Yoko gave Paul on that day noted above, came out later, after this song) was: John Lennon – Lead Vocals and Piano; Paul McCartney – Lead and Harmony Vocals, Bass, Acoustic Guitar, Synthesizer; George Harrison – Lead and Harmony Vocals, Slide Guitar, Acoustic Guitar, Ukulele (heard at the songs’ closing); and Ringo Starr – Drums and Backing Vocals… with Jeff Lynne – Electric Guitar, Backing Vocals.
To cast your vote in this poll, just click on the following link: Beatles Weekly Poll.
Looking back at last week’s Beatles poll, we asked: Rate The Beatles' live video for “A Hard Day’s Night” from zero (Lowest) to 10 (Highest) (Click here for the video)
“A Hard Day’s Night” Beatles Live Video
Like just about every other video made by the Beatles (and remember they weren’t called “videos” back in those days, but “film promos”, this one was a pure winner – even if this wasn’t a promo at all, but a live filming of a Beatles concert. 75.9% of the fans who voted gave this one a 10, most of the rest voted it a 9 (24%). Just 2 voters gave it less than a 9 rating, and both of those votes were an 8 (or just 0.1% of the vote).
To see the final results of the actual vote count, just click on: Beatles Weekly Poll – week 541. To see the results on the Beatles/John Lennon Videos and Movies list page, just go to this page: Beatles/John Lennon Videos and Movies, and look under the “Video Ratings” standings.
This week’s Poll Post close is a lot shorter than last week’s – which was perhaps the longest close I ever wrote, since I had to explain all of the links that were included in the close. If you are a Stones fan of the ’60s and missed last week poll post, you should check out that close and check out the cool links found within it.
In the meanwhile, one person wrote me a nice email about the other thing I noted last week in the close, hoping that the polls – that’s all of the domain’s polls, don’t die come November. But I would say at this point that’s there’s a better than 50/50 chance this will happen, unless I can find another host with a old server that can operate the old and outdated ASP programing, which our polls and this Poll board (including the old Gasland board’s archives, that this board used to be and still contains) run on. I cannot stay with my current host after November, and it’s looking very slim for me finding somebody to build a new polling system. So, what’s left is finding a new host with an old server, so this old program can go on working. I should note, unlike when I closed down Gasland a few years ago – well that was something that I very much wanted to do – while ending these polls and closing them down isn’t something I wish to do. I would love to keep them going, but time isn’t on my side any longer and soon I’ll be out of time. So, at this moment, time isn’t waiting for me!... In the meanwhile, we all need to think positive – on everything. Our entire world seems to be falling apart right now, in part thanks to COVID and those who refuse to get vaccinated, which is what’s keeping the virus going, and killing off so many everywhere on the planet – and in the U.S., it’s mainly killing Republicans and conservatives. As a strong liberal, no, that brings me no joy, as while I hate right wing politicians (and those insane insurgents from Jan 6), right wing regular folks have always been kind people and friends of mine, even if today where I live there’s so few of those kind of folks around here. But if the right doesn’t stop making this virus a political issue, and get their asses vaccinated (well, just a shot or 2 in one of their arms, actually), there will be that many less right wingers around, as they are now the main group of people who are now dying in the U.S.A., while 99% of us libs are all vaccinated. So if you haven’t gotten the jab yet, what are you waiting for – a painful death? So instead of that - go and get the shot and live a long, happy life.
Keno
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