Tulsa World

by Jason Powers

WeekendNewshoundPoster

Marshall Brewing Co. brewed a special beer for the Tulsa World Weekend magazine that will only be available Sunday at The Hop Jam festival.

Vote now: Vote for your favorite local beer here

Hop Jam is right around the corner, and guess who has a beer named after them?

LaughSpin

If the show were a tearjerking Diane Sawyer interview or CNN Crimes of the Century episode, this would be where Kimmy’s story ends. But, being a sitcom, where the goal is tears of laughter, not of sorrow, the ending of her nightmare is really the beginning of her new life, with all its bumbling and awkwardness. And Kimmy Schmidt, played by an adorably winsome Ellie Kemper, embraces living free with the kind of wide-eyed vigor normally reserved for hyperactive toddlers. She moves to New York City, eats candy for dinner, and scores a full-time gig as a nanny/housekeeper/general member of The Help to the wealthy Voorhees family. She befriends a motley crew of Manhattanites and never lets on that she’s a woman with a past; she wants to be accepted as is, without any exhaustive pity from strangers. She is focused on moving forward, even as her fashion sense and vocabulary reeks of the past. (Kimmy has been kidnapped since 1998; she’s full of rainbow-colored garments and Hanson references). She is, as the title asserts, and the narrative demonstrates, unbreakable.

Tulsa World

As the contest to determine the opening band for The Hop Jam ramps up, Tulsa fans will get a first-hand look at some of the contestants and some of the beer to look forward to on May 17.

The Hop Jam Pub Crawl is set to start at 7 p.m. Thursday at McNellie’s, 409 E. First St., before heading down the street to grab more beer and more music.

Herald Sun

Hanson Day, May 6

Back in the late 90s three brothers with luscious hair and a talent for infectious tunes burst on to the world pop scene, winning the hearts of millions of teenage girls who insisted on playingMMMBop 1000 times a day, driving their families crazy.

No one was more proud of the trio’s success than the governor of Hanson’s home state Oklahoma, who in 1998 declared May 6 Hanson Day.

Fans still celebrate to this day, flocking to Tulsa for an annual weekend of festivities hosted by the band.

klatchs-tratsch

Was ist der peinlichste Song auf deinem iPod?
Ich glaube es ist „MMMbop“ von den Hansons (lacht).

What’s the most embarrassing song on your iPod?
I think it is “MMMbop” by Hanson (laughs).

HereIsTheCity

As is the case with all the great pop songs, you can identify Stand By Me by its opening few notes.

Mike Stoller’s simple bassline, built around a 50s doo-wop chord progression, is decorated with little more than the faint ting of a triangle and the scrape of a gourd guiro – yet the effect is instant. King’s gospel-infused vocals followed this approach: the strength of his feelings imparted with no need for histrionics.

Fifty-five years after it was written, King’s original version still wields the kind of emotional heft that can reduce people to tears, and get others on their feet at weddings. Yet not everyone saw its magic at first. King had originally intended the song for his band the Drifters, before he left that group in 1960 – it was only after a songwriting session with Stoller and Jerry Lieber had come to an end, and they asked if he had any other songs in the locker, that he put it forward. “I wasn’t trying to make a hit,” he told the Guardian in 2013. According to King, legendary producer Jerry Wexler was even less aware of its magic: “He hated it because we’d gone into overtime in the studio with an expensive orchestra.”

Such disregard for the budget probably didn’t bother Wexler for long. Stand By Me was a top-five hit in the US, and the list of names who went on to cover it includes not just John Lennon – who delivered an iconic performance of it on the Old Grey Whistle Test in 1975 – and Earth, Wind & Fire founder Maurice White, but also Muhammad Ali and the writer Stephen King.

King’s novella The Body inspired Rob Reiner’s 1986 film Stand By Me, and the inclusion of the original version of the song on the soundtrack helped make it an even bigger hit in 1987, when it topped the UK singles chart. The renaissance continued shortly afterwards when Stand By Me was one of several soul classics to appear on adverts for Levi’s 501 jeans. Such ongoing success thrilled King, who vowed to keep performing the song “as long as I’m breathing”.

On paper, Stand By Me seems a simple song, and certainly King wrote it with simple intentions: a love song to his partner at the time, Betty Nelson. Pop songs are seldom expected to mirror the lives of the artists who created them, but it certainly adds a sparkle to the song to know that Nelson would go on to celebrate five decades of marriage with the man who sang to her: “If the sky that we look upon should tumble and fall / All the mountains should crumble to the sea / I won’t cry, I won’t cry / No, I won’t shed a tear / Just as long as you stand, stand by me.”

It’s especially fitting that a song about enduring love – a love able to survive, no matter what trials and traumas it encounters – was built equally strongly to stand the test of time.

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