Music Sunday: The "Acting Singers" Edition

Still recovering from a very long Saturday (I had another SCA event to attend), so Music Sunday is going to be short and sweet today, and with a little help from Wikipedia in the for of birthdays for the day.

As it turns out, the singer of one of my favorite movie songs was born on this day in 1948. Lulu sang the title song from "To Sir, With Love" (1967), as well as playing a featured role in the film as Barbara Pegg, a student in a class of working-class kids in one of the poorer parts of London. The film starred Sidney Poitier and was one of the top money-makers 0f 1967. Here is how the song appears in the film:



It is also the birthday today of Adam Ant, another British singer who has dabbled in acting as well as music. Hew as born on November 3, 1954, and was at his most popular in the early 1980s, first with Adam and the Ants and then as a solo act. "Goody Two Shoes" (1982) was his first solo single, and a hit. It is an interesting song, upbeat and trendy for the time while it contained some pointed social commentary about the press and its intrusion on and speculation about the lives of celebrities:



Don Henley covered pretty much the same territory the same year in a song that was more serious and maybe more cynical, but which I like a lot better, "Dirty Laundry". This song tackles the whole issue of how the news media seem to have turned into one big tabloid and, by extension, it's intrusion into the lives of the rich and famous. The song was a solo hit for Henley, but in this clip he performs it with the Eagles in a live show earlier this year:



And, pulling back from that tangent...

Other British singers have dabbled in acting. One of the most notable is Sting. Besides being quite successful both as a member of The Police and as a solo act, he has appeared in several films. But, since this is Music Sunday and not Movie Monday, here is a clip of the video for "We'll Be Together" (1987), from his album "...Nothing Like the Sun". In the video, he calls on his acting as well as his musical abilities, playing two characters:



There are many more musicians who have appeared in films, sometimes as themselves, sometimes in smaller or larger roles and portraying others. Which, of course, means that there could be a second installment of "Acting Singers" in Music Sunday's future.

Music Extra: Summer Songs...

As I wrote here the other day, spring fever has set in around here in a big way. Only, it isn't quite spring yet even though the temperatures we've seen here locally have seemed more like summer. Well, early summer, since in the middle of summer it isn't unusual for this region to see temperatures past 100 degrees F. The last couple of days it has been in the mid-80s F, which can on occasion be the low temperature at the height of summer. But, when it's been in the 50s F for highs as recently as a couple of weeks ago, mid-80s feel like summer. We've even been running the air conditioner.

Now, it would be nice if I could give in to my spring fever, but with volunteer work, looking for a real job, and working on writing a book, I've been more than busy - as my sporadic posting here this week has indicated. So, I've been resisting the lure of sitting outside in the warmth with a good book and a glass of lemonade and getting on with the things I need to do. This hasn't been as difficult as it might seem, though, since the warm weather also means that things are blooming - with a vengeance - and that means the onset of allergy season. Since I'm allergic to multiple things that grow around here, every time I stepped outside yesterday I started either coughing or sneezing or both.

At any rate, I thought that before I have to go back out into the warmth and the allergens later today to go to a meeting at CVP, I would share a few songs that resonate with the apparent season around here.

First of all, here is George Harrison singing "Here Comes the Sun" at the Concert for Bangladesh in 1971. It seems an appropriate song since even though it hasn't rained as much as it should here locally over the winter, it has been cloudy a lot, and it is nice to see the sun:



This kind of weather is baseball weather, and the season is coming soon. So there's this song, "Swing", by Trace Adkins, which is about baseball, and also about striking out or not in that other spring pastime - love, lust, and romance:



That isn't exactly a traditional baseball song. For that, there's John Fogerty's "Centerfield":



There are a lot of songs about summer. Some of them are just about summer, and some of them are about, well, more. One of these is "The Boys of Summer", by Don Henley. It's too nice a day to engage in serious analysis, however, and so I'll just leave this here for you:



An older summer song, "Summer in the City" (1966), by The Lovin' Spoonful, contrasts summer days and summer nights:



It's possible that where you are reading this from, summer weather hasn't arrived yet, or is just going away if you happen to be in the Southern Hemisphere. But, is there really a bad time for a summer song? As far as I'm concerned, summer is a state of mind as much as it is a season. Then again, I grew up in Southern California, where you can have summer-like weather on any given day of the year, so my perceptions on the subject might be slightly skewed.