Name: Keno
E-Mail: keno@fairpoint.net
Subject: Poll Post for the week starting Monday, June 6
Date: Sunday, June 05, 2022
Time: 10:11:13 PM
Remote Address: 8.41.160.9
Message ID: 321223
Parent ID: 0
Thread ID: 321223

Poll Post for the week starting Monday, June 6

It’s a brand-new week, and on every Monday morning at midnight (ET) of each week I of course start up our 3 new Rock polls, so let me start talking about those new polls in this Poll Post, looking at the Stones poll first, which enters week 1,192 of voting and week 83 of rating the Stones songs. This week’s question will ask this: Rate the Stones song “Street Fighting Man” , from zero (lowest) to 10 (highest).

“Street Fighting Man” 45 Single U.S. cover (L), French single cover (R)

Week 2 of rating the Brian Jones era of Stones songs, and this week we look at one of their most important songs ever, "Street Fighting Man". Now I'm not supposed to say stuff like that which shows favoritism when talking about a song we're rating, since I'm running the poll. But there's a handful of songs where I can get away with saying that since, well, there isn't a Stones fan alive who doesn't know that this song was so important and well-loved by the band's fans when released, and nobody is gonna influence another to vote a higher rating for this song because of something I might say here. Bottom line, if you don't love this song you ain't a Stones fan, and only Stones fans are supposed to be voting in these fan polls anyway, since, well, we're only looking for the opinions of Stones fans for the Stones polls (and yes, the same deal applies to the Beatles poll, it’s for Beatle fans only, and as the Rock poll is for Rock fans only), and all that is old news, anyway.

Originally titled "Pay Your Dues" when first written in late 1967, the music to this song was recorded first along with totally different lyrics, and with its different title. The song was at first about a Native American Indian chief, and after the song was recorded and in the can, Mick Jagger, who wrote the lyrics to the song, decided he didn't care for what he had written and totally rewrote new lyrics that dealt with a totally different subject. Mick had attended an Anti-Viet-Nam war rally, as he was no different than most other young people of the day - who were almost all against this insane war, and because of his attending the rally, this tune became a protest song, with the song's new lyrics coming directly from the rally he attended and what he saw in the streets that day. The song became known as the band's most political song ever made (even if Jagger’s lyrics to the antiwar song “Blinded by Rainbows” years later, was even more political). Yet this one didn't do too great on the charts in America, since it was banned in more than half the country from seeing any air play, as not only did the establishment of the late '60s hate such kind of songs that made people think, this was when Pig “Fuckface” Nixon was in power and he too just didn't wish for such a song with such lyrics to be heard (yep, he was no different from the GOP leaders of today, they just never change!). He and his people got many cities and radio stations to ban the song from getting any air play. Even in the democratic city of Chicago it was banned, too, since while they had a Democrat as mayor, well back then that didn't mean too much (hell, it was a Democrat president, the Pig LBJ, who made the war blow up in the first place), as the Chicago mayor at the time, like Pig Nixon, was a total fascist pig himself (Richard "I hate anybody who isn’t a pig like me” Daley was his name) who flat out hated hippies, Yippies, rock music and the Stones (always remember the Chicago 8 7. Only 3 of these heroes are still alive today).

The original lyrics to the song, back when it was still known as "Pay Your Dues", was recorded along with the song's music in February of 1968. Then the lyrics were changed and re-recorded in late March - early April of that year, while the only change to the music was in the removing of the wonderful sounding electric violin part, played by Traffic's Ric Grech (and a major mistake removing that from the song, as it should have been left in there, since it gave the song a true acid feel to it, which would have sounded great with the new lyrics). The song was then released on Beggars Banquet in December of '68, which was the first Stones album produced by Jimmy Miller, who is looked at by most fans as the greatest producer the Stones ever worked with and who got the group to play their best music together as a band.

There are no electric guitars played on this song, even if many fans were sure they heard them blasting away. Keith Richards noted that what sounds like them are 2 acoustic guitars and the sitar, which were recorded, quoting Richards, "through a cassette player with no limiter". The sitar's twang and the tambour's drone also led to the confusion as to those who insisted there were electric guitars indeed playing on this song. It's also questionable as to who was playing the bass on this song, Richards or Bill Wyman, as both played bass in the studio for the song, but it's believed that it was Richards’ bass that may have been used on the track in the end. Anyway, here's the lineup to this ditty: Mick Jagger – Vocals, Percussion; Keith Richards – 2 Acoustic Guitars, Bass (?); Brian Jones – Sitar, Tamboura; Charlie Watts – Drums; Bill Wyman: Bass(?); with Nicky Hopkins – Piano; Dave Mason – Shehnai; Jimmy Miller – Claves. To rate this week’s song, just click on the following link: Stones Weekly Poll.

Last week at the Stones poll we voted on this question: Rate the Stones song “Yesterday’s Papers”, from zero (lowest) to 10 (highest).

“Yesterday’s Papers” From the Italian Promo 7" vinyl single record / 45)

Well as is usual, we saw a major return of voters last week, even if it was a major holiday week in the States, thanks to the fact that we weren’t rating a newer Stones song. “Yesterday’s Papers” scored what most of their ‘60s and ‘70s songs have scored so far, a 10 for its top rating, bringing in 41.5% of the votes. To see the full, final results from this poll, just click here: Stones Weekly Poll - week 1,191. Or, to see just where in the rating standings this song landed, just click on here: Stones Song Ratings & Standings - List Page 5.

Okay, let’s boogie on over to this week’s Classic Rock Poll, where we enter week 831 of polling, and here's the new question we’ll be looking at for the next 4 weeks: What's the greatest rock duo/duet ever recorded? (Part 1 of 4).

Rock duo/duet songs

We got some wonderful duo/duets to choose from in the next 3 weeks and it may not be easy for some to do that since there's some great songs to pick from, and it will be interesting to see which 8 songs per week will be chosen to have another go in Part 4. I'll bet that there will be some real good ones that won't make it into the final round that should be in there.

Now, do you understand the difference between the 2 words, duo/duets? Most don’t, if you go by what they officially mean. Officially, a duo is when 2 people sing the lead in one song, but a duet is actually when 2 different instruments are playing the lead together in a song - but no, that isn't the kind of duet we'll be looking for in this poll, since many if not most think a duet is also when 2 people sing together at the same time in a song. Officially it isn't, but it's used for that so often enough that I will use both words here to mean the same thing in the question (and since that’s what most people call a duet). So, for our list, we are mainly looking at duos only, and for that, the 2 singers do not have to be singing at the same time as long as both sing the lead vocals for about half the song each. Also listed in the poll will be duo sung songs performed in rock groups, which technically isn't officially considered a duo since there's others in the band playing and maybe singing backing vocals on the song. But then again, such performances are considered duos by most of us, as long as only 2 of the artists in the group are singing the lead, I'm including such songs in our list of songs that we are choosing from. I'm also listing songs where there's more so only one vocalist singing the lead, but while the song clearly also has backing vocal harmonies sung by 2 together as a duet. Only a few such songs are like that, and no, they can't be singing just backing vocals together, it's got to be a main part of the song's vocals to be listed. Heck, the The Righteous Brothers were considered one of the greatest singing duos ever, yet that's how most of their songs were made, and I wasn't going to skip any of their hit songs. So these 2 word's meanings goes way beyond their official meaning.

We will have a total of 72 songs to choose from in the next 3 weeks and then in Part 4, we're vote on the top 8 songs voted on per week - as long as there's no ties for the last spot. So, we have 24 songs to consider each week for the first 3 parts of the poll, so let's have a look-see now at the ones we will choose from in Part 1 by clicking on this link: Classic Rock Poll . As is usual, I do not link to any songs for you to hear first before you vote when we have these many songs to choose from, since it would take me a night and a day to first search for each song on the Net, and then set up and code such links. Yes, it would take more than 2 hours plus work per 24 songs, per week, to set up such links, and while that's not hard work, it's still a lot of long tedious work, and hey, I do have other things in life to do, too. So that's why I don't add in any more extra work to these polls unless it means coding only 2 to 4 songs per poll, but 24 songs per week are just too many. But guess what? If you need to hear some of the songs before you vote, you can find all of them at YouTube, on your own, if you just look them up when you get there!

In last week's voting, we answered this question What is the best rock song about sleeping? .

Rock songs about sleeping

Another popular question I see, and the song chosen from the 36 songs listed – won in a big landslide, something we rarely see when there’s so many choices to choose from, as “Dream a Little Dream of Me” released first from The Mamas & The Papas, and then a live take of the song sung by solo Mama Cass (it was hard to tell the difference between the 2 versions), took in more than 2 times the vote count than second place pick “Sound of Silence” by Simon & Garfunkel (11.6% to 5.1%), with the Beatles’ “Golden Slumbers” in third place. I should note once we got past first place, the voting was very close between spots 2 thru 12. To see the rest of the results from this poll, just click on the following link: Classic Rock Poll, week 830. Or to see the Top 10 list for this poll, you can do that at this page: Classic Rock Top 10 lists, page 17, and head on down to the very bottom of the page to see the listing. Do note that I need to build yet another new list page, so this listing just might have a new home to be listed on before this week ends.

We finish up this Poll Post with this week’s Beatles Poll, where we enter week 582 of voting and the 16th week of rating the Beatle songs. This week’s question asks this: Rate the Beatles song, “Girl”, from zero (lowest) to 10 (highest).

“Girl” by the Fabs

John Lennon, who wrote the song alone, said in a 1970s interview that while the song had more than one meaning to it, that its main meaning was his desire at the time to find the perfect girl for him to live his life with (mind you, he was already a married man with his first wife, when he wrote this song). He noted that in time he found that girl in his second wife, Yoko Ono. It was also known that the song was also about John and his bandmates love for smoking marijuana, with John using the well-known slang word for weed, which was of course, "girl". But was it also true that the sucking sound heard directly after John sings "ah, girl-girl....." really supposed to be the sound one hears when sucking on a marijuana roach? Well damn, it sure as shit sounds exactly like that, and while John nor any of the other Beatles ever addressed that (not to my knowledge, anyway), I bet it is just that (and if you ever smoked a joint that was down to being a roach, you know exactly what sound I'm talking about!).

Then of course there was the interesting backing vocals sung by Paul McCartney and George Harrison, and which was confirmed a few years later by both of them, that they were indeed singing over and over again, "Tit, tit, tit, tit, tit, tit, tit, tit, tit, tit, tit, tit, tit, tit, tit…", but no, it wasn't meant to be sexual or sexist in any way, it just sounded good to sing there, and it did fit in just swell, so they used it. But who ever came up with that, if it wasn't John, deserved a writing credit (well if it was Paul's idea, he got that credit after all) since it had to be one of the most unusual backing vocals ever sang in a rock song, that along with the roach toking sound added up to this tune containing perhaps the most unusual vocal harmonies heard in a rock song, or better yet, in any song.

The lineup for this number was: John Lennon – Lead Vocals, Acoustic Guitar; Paul McCartney – Backing Vocals, Bass Guitar; George Harrison – Backing Vocals, Acoustic 12-String Guitar; Ringo Starr – Drums.. To vote in this week's poll and rate this song, just click on this link: Beatles Weekly Poll.

Last week at the Beatles poll we answered this question: Rate the Beatles song, “Please Please Me”, from zero (lowest) to 10 (highest).

“Please Please Me” The front sleeve of the U.S. single.

Well yes, another 10, but how could this song's percentage of the votes not be as high as to what their first single, “Love Me Do”, saw, as this one was a better song to my ears, anyway. But to see the full, final results from this poll, just click on here: Beatles Weekly Poll – week 581. Plus, you can also check out the results at The Beatles Song Ratings and Standings page, located at the domain’s Lennon Site and see where this song landed in those standings, as while a 10 rating is still a 10 rating for all songs, it never adds up to the same 10 rating in the standings.

Well, it was a calmer week in America last week, as far as gun violence went, even if there were still 3 more mass shootings last week resulting in several more killings taking place, but sadly that's the norm in this sad country where I and so many of you live. The morons on the far right are now blaming, get this - weed smoking for the gun killings (I know, chances are you read or heard about this already), which just goes to show the people who need to be smoking weed the most, don't. Yet it's a fact that the 18-year-old killer in Texas wasn't a pot smoker at all, but hey, the right has to make up something to blame for this and ignore what the main cause actually was/is - automatic assault weapons being legal. Let’s all fight the bad guys on this one and get things changed come next November, when it’s time to vote out of office, the politicians deep in the pockets of the NRA and gun manufactures. So many more of us are for doing this than doing nothing at all, so let’s make sure we do get out the vote come next November and vote to send sane people to D.C.!

I do hope that you all have a great week ahead!

Keno

• Poll Post for the week starting Monday, June 6 by Keno on 6/5/2022 10:11:13 PM <-- You Are Here
• Duets / Street FIghting Man by gomper on 6/6/2022 12:07:38 PM

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