Tuesday, June 06, 2023

Cynthia Weil

Cynthia Weil passed away.  C.I. offered to come over here and blog for me tonight.  She said she'd note Cynthia's passing.  Cynthia was a successful songwriter and you probably know something she wrote -- probably like something she wrote.  

She was a songwriting team with her husband Barry Mann.  Back in the sixties, she was one of the better know songwriting teams.  There was Mann-Weil and there was Carole King & Gerry Goffin and there was Nick Ashford & Valerie Simpson.  They were all husband-and-wife teams.  


With her husband and others, Cynthia wrote such American pop standards as "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling," "On Broadway," "He's Sure The Boy I Love," "Walking In The Rain," "We've Got To Get Out Of This Place," "Kicks," "Make Your Own Kind Of Music," "It's Getting Better," "New World Coming," "Just Once," "The Last Time I Made Love," "Baby Come And Get It," "Somewhere Out There," "I Will Come To You," "He's So Shy," "If Ever Your In My Arms Again," "All of You" (Diana Ross and Julio Iglesias -- identifying since that's a common title), "Running With The Night," "Here You Come Again," "Uptown," and many, many more.  


WIKIPEDIA notes:


Weil was born in New York City on October 18, 1940. She grew up on the Upper West Side and the Upper East Side of Manhattan in a Conservative Jewish family.[3][4][5] Her father was Morris Weil, a furniture store owner and the son of Lithuanian-Jewish immigrants, and her mother was Dorothy Mendez, who grew up in a Sephardic Jewish family in Brooklyn.[4] Weil trained as an actress and dancer, studying theater at Sarah Lawrence College, but soon demonstrated a songwriting ability that led to her collaboration with Barry Mann, whom she married in August 1961.[3][6] The couple had one daughter, Jenn Mann. Weil became one of the Brill Building songwriters of the 1960s, and one of the most important writers during the emergence of rock and roll.[2]

Weil and her husband went on to create songs for many contemporary artists, winning several Grammy Awards as well as Academy Award nominations for their compositions for film. As their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame biography put it, in part: "Mann and Weil's... [works went from] epic ballads ('On Broadway', 'You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'') to outright rockers ('Kicks', 'We Gotta Get Out of This Place') [and they also] placed an emphasis on meaningful lyrics in their songwriting. With Weil writing the words and Mann the music, they came up with a number of songs that addressed such serious subjects as racial and economic divides[,] 'Uptown', ...and the difficult reality of making it in the big city ('On Broadway'). 'Only in America'... tackled segregation and racism, making it rather too controversial for the Drifters, who were the intended artists. 'We Gotta Get Out of This Place' became an anthem for [the] Vietnam soldier, antiwar protesters, and young people who viewed it as an anthem of greater opportunities."[6]

In 1987, she was inducted with her husband into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 1988, Weil won two awards at the 30th Annual Grammy Awards for co-writing "Somewhere Out There" from the animated film An American Tail: Song of the Year and Best Song Written for Visual Media.[7]

In 2004, Mann and Weil's They Wrote That?, a musical revue based on their songs, opened in New York. In it, Mann sang and Weil related stories about the songs and their personal history.[6] Weil and Mann were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010 in the Ahmet Ertegun Award category.[8] "From the bottom of my heart and with the greatest humility," Weil said in her acceptance, "I thought you guys would never ask."[9] In 2011, Mann and Weil received the Johnny Mercer Award, the highest honor from the Songwriters Hall of Fame.[10]

In 2015, Weil published her first novel, I'm Glad I Did, a mystery set in 1963.[11]

Weil died at home in Beverly Hills, California, on June 1, 2023, at age 82.[3][2][12]


Cynthia actually didn't work in the Brill Building.  She was on the same street but, like Carole King, she worked at a different building.  From Ava and C.I.'s "Can we get a fact check on aisle five? (Ava and C.I.):"


They don't correct their errors.  Ever.  And they don't require anyone to be factual when writing about music.  Which is how you get Harvey Kubernik's "Carole King's Monumental TAPESTRY Album" published at PBS' website February 15, 2011.


Harvey lies, "Sedaka also introduced Carole King and Gerry Goffin to Don Kirshner, who helmed a publishing company, Aldon Music, with Al Nevins. King and Goffin subsequently worked with Nevins and Kirshner’s Aldon Music (in the Brill Building)."

 

No, Harvey, just no.

 

PBS might let you lie, but we're not going to.  From RUSS & GARY'S "THE BEST YEARS OF MUSIC:"


An interview with American pop music songwriter Toni Wine by Song Facts (SF):

Toni: There were really two huge buildings that were housing publishing companies, songwriters, record labels, and artists. The Brill Building was one. But truthfully, most of your R&B, really rock & roll labels and publishing companies, including the studio, which was in the basement and was called Allegro Studios, was in 1650 Broadway.

SF: But you were associated with the Brill Building?

Toni: Well, music from those days, people kind of condensed the area to the Brill Building area. That always bothered me, because the Brill Building is its own building and 1650 is its own building. It’s New York City… there are lots of streets, but these two buildings happened to be, basically, diagonally from each other. And the Brill Building housed different organizations. They were more of the Tin Pan Alley building. According to a lot of interviews and a lot of stories, they say that all the music was in the Brill Building. We weren’t. We were in 1650. Carole King, Barry Mann, Gerry Goffin, Cynthia Weil, Howie Greenfield, myself, and tons of people, a lot of times are written as being housed in the Brill Building. We weren’t. We were in 1650 Broadway.

SF: I guess what I’m getting at is the songwriters were not associated with each other in those two buildings. So it’s not like you would get sent over to one building from the other or anything.

Toni: No. Wherever their companies were, that’s where they were basically housed. I mean, we all loved each other, we were all brothers and sisters going to each other’s offices. We just didn’t work in each other’s offices. And a lot of people refer to the Brill Building, because the Brill Building has gotten great publicity, where 1650 did not get great publicity. But boy, we had a lot of music coming out of there.

 

Who you gonna believe -- a PBS liar or Toni Wine who co-wrote the eternal classic "A Groovy Kind Of Love" and worked in the same building as Carole King?

 

Check out Marcia's "10 great songs that Cynthia Weil co-wrote."

Closing with C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"


Tuesday, June 6, 2023. A new group of losers announce they'd like to be President of the United States, one gets booed on THE VIEW, another doesn't grasp that his own party can't stand him, a third doesn't realize that the made up party that's given him a nomination does not have ballot access in a single state, but for all their stupidity, Lauren Boebert still manages to top them as a public disgrace. 


Senator Ted Cruz was basically button holing any reporter he could yesterday to repeat (over and over), of the debt ceiling vote last week, "It gave Joe Biden and the Democrats four-trillion-dollars."  We note that not because I think Cruz is correct but because this is a very popular take among the right-wing.

So what to do if you had made comments like Ted Cruz ahead of the vote but then didn't vote?  What would you do then?

Daniel Dale and Morgan Rimmer (CNN) report:

 On Saturday, Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado posted a video on Twitter in which she claimed that she had intentionally skipped Wednesday’s key House vote on a bill to suspend the nation’s debt ceiling.

“No excuses: I was ticked off they wouldn’t let me do my job, so I didn’t take the vote,” Boebert said, going on to allege that the voices of individual House members had been stifled during the legislative process. “Call it a no-show protest, but I certainly let every one of my colleagues and the country know I was against this garbage of a bill.”

But Boebert’s claim of a deliberate “protest” absence is contradicted by her own words in the congressional record. After the vote ended on Wednesday, Boebert submitted an official statement in which she said she had been “unavoidably detained” for the vote and would have voted against the bill had she been present.    

 And Boebert’s claim is further called into question by CNN footage from the House steps in the moments after the vote concluded.

Less than a minute after the vote was finalized, CNN photojournalist Jake Scheuer captured video of Boebert running up the steps as a CNN associate producer [Morgan Rimmer] mentioned that the vote had just been closed. Boebert stopped running for a moment to turn back and ask, “They closed it?” After the associate producer confirmed, Boebert continued her dash toward the building entrance.   


Yes, we're back to it again.  We noted it yesterday but it just can't be a one day thing.  At THE DAILY BEAST, Ursula Perano writes:

When Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) was caught on video missing a critical vote last week to prevent a default on the debt—and then tried to spin her absence as an act of conscience -- she didn’t only earn widespread derision and gawking on social media.

The archconservative congresswoman also gifted her leading Democratic rival, Adam Frisch, a moment that crystallized his case against her for the 2024 election: that she simply isn’t showing up for the job she was elected to perform.

“Besides excused absences for sick family members and other family emergencies, I'm not sure why anyone would be late, let alone practically skip a vote,” Frisch told The Daily Beast in an interview on Monday.

“I don't know what was taking her away from voting on one of the most important bills that the Congress is going to probably have this year,” he added.

For his part, Frisch said he would have voted for the legislation that paired an extension of the federal government’s borrowing authority -- which averted a default -- with spending cuts and other concessions to Republicans, though characterized it as “not perfect.” 

And that's certainly a solid take.  

But there's so much more there.  

It goes to character.  You grandstand about how important this vote is and then you miss it.  Instead of owning up to that, you wait a little bit, you tape a video where you lie and say you skipped the vote to protest the bill and you release that video.  Think about that.  Grasp that you are a member of the US Congress and you and your team invent a lie to cover for missing the vote, strategize to come up with the lie, go to the trouble of not just being George Santos and lying to the press about it as you speak to them, but actually tape your own video that you release to the public yourself with this lie.

It goes to stupidity, absolutely.  She knew at least a few members of the press were present.  She surely didn't realize that they had video and thought it would be her (lying) word against the press present.  

But it goes to character, immaturity and dishonesty.

This is eighth grade s**t.  This is so immature.  What adult does this?  

And it shows such disrespect for every one of her constituents.  

Since yesterday morning's snapshot, KRDO has filed another report.







Boebert has done nothing since being first elected but agitate and self-promote. She is only interested in — and maybe only capable of — engaging in high-pitched diatribes that draw cameras and MAGA supplicants. If it does not benefit her directly, she has no time for it.

The debt ceiling debate was the perfect example.

Before the vote, Boebert showed up on time and eager to every press gaggle with a microphone. She spent weeks calling for fellow House Freedom Caucus crazies to oppose the deal hammered out by President Joe Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy. She pulled out all the top hits, from lambasting “the swamp” to proclaiming “fake news.”

Rep. Ken Buck’s opposition at least had the benefit of consistent principle. He has never supported a debt ceiling hike and opposed similar measures under former President Donald Trump. Rightly or wrongly, Buck believes the government spends too much and should be held to account when it bumps up against its budget limits.

Boebert is not nearly as nuanced. Apparently she just felt a lack of attention since she had the national spotlight on her during the contentious election of McCarthy to Speaker of the House. In January, she gleefully preened for the lights and flashbulbs as she confounded even the most conservative pundits with her unintelligible rationale.

Eclipsed in the interim by her best frenemy, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has taken on the role of MAGA Translator in Chief for McCarthy, Boebert seemed spoiling for an opportunity to throw herself in front of cameras again. Consequently, when the hint of opposition to the debt plan deal surfaced, Boebert straightened her skirt, flipped her hair and went running to the closest reporters. It is the political equivalent of a Pavlovian bell.

Boebert could not help but undermine her own leadership and party. The opportunity to promote her own brand and social media following pulled more strongly than any political loyalty, much less the best interests of her constituents thousands of miles away. 

Boebert did stop short of calling for McCarthy to be removed from office. A part of the Succession-esque “meal fit for a king” Boebert and company forced McCarthy to swallow in exchange for their support in his Speaker bid, she demurred when asked about whether a snap vote should be called to oust McCarthy. Instead, Boebert replied that she was “focused on taking down this bill.” 

Apparently, she was so focused that she forgot when the vote was scheduled.


But again, I just can't stop marveling over her lack of character.  She plotted her lie.  She thought if the press members who saw her running to make the vote and knew she missed it came forward, she could just deny it and lie and be believed because it was her against the media.  She taped the lie and she released the video with her lie.  


I just can't stop marveling over this.  If she'd run over a person by accident, is this how she'd have handled it?


We talk to our children about reality and responsibility.  Well, most of us do.  Most of us.  Not Lauren.  Which is how she ended up dropping out of high school because she got pregnant and raised a son who, at 17, got a younger girl pregnant and now Lauren's about to be a grandmother.  


She takes no responsibility for her actions and that's apparently torn apart her family and she still can't learn from it.   As Elaine noted:


Boe-Boe.  Next year is an election year and all she has to show for it is hate.  She's not serving anyone.  Hell she couldn't even make the debt ceiling vote after running around getting press on it over and over.  Boe-Boe's a lazy hack.


This is how she acts when she almost lost her seat last November?  A handful of votes (found during the recount) allowed her to retain her seat.  Instead of rolling up her sleeves and getting serious, she's continued to be one of the biggest jokes in the land.


She has some developmental issue that is preventing her from learning.  It's really sad. 


It is sad.  Everything about Lauren's trashy life is sad.




And, as Elaine noted, next year is an election year.  Lauren has so much to live down.


She's not the only one running for election.  Senator Tim Scott wants to be president of the United States -- not president of The Down Low Club, president of the United States.  And what better way to show your maturity then losing it repeatedly on THE VIEW.   To the point, please note, that the studio audience boos you.


That should be quite the campaign.  Meanwhile, former US Vice President Mike Pence made the announcement yesterday that everyone's long expected.  Let's get Karen to a support group for women whose husbands, late in life, come out of the closet.  Oh wait, that wasn't the announcement.  Yet.  No, Mike announced he's running for the GOP's presidential nomination.  




There's so much crazy in the world of presidential campaigns these days.  THE VANGUARD noted one example.



As Ruth observed:

That is THE VANGUARD and they are taking on the nonsense of the People's Party.  That has been the biggest con job in the world.  No candidates came up from it.  Now they are desperate for attention so they go with a celebrity: Cornel West.  The professor must not have many ethics or possibilities if he has taken their nomination.

Taken.

Be clear about that.  It is a supposed political party.  But they did not have a primary, they just handed out their nomination.  That is democracy?

They are a very sad and very mixed up group.


And, as THE VANGUARD pointed out, they don't even have ballot access. Talk about a vanity campaign.


In other news, Chenar Chalak (RUDAW) reports:

The Iraqi parliament will convene on Thursday to vote on the country’s highly-awaited budget bill, after almost three months of studying the draft.

The Iraqi council of ministers approved the federal budget bill for the years 2023, 2024, and 2025 in March, and sent the draft to the legislature. The parliament was set to vote on the budget on May 27, but disagreements within the finance committee, concerning amendments relating to the Kurdistan Region, prevented the legislature from carrying out of the process.

The finance committee is yet to reach an agreement on the divisive amendments, but is set to meet on Wednesday to discuss the latest updates, according to Jamal Kochar, a Kurdish member of the committee.



The following sites updated:





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