{"id":4876,"date":"2015-11-03T20:20:36","date_gmt":"2015-11-04T01:20:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/?p=4876"},"modified":"2015-11-03T20:20:36","modified_gmt":"2015-11-04T01:20:36","slug":"elton-john-ticking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/2015\/11\/03\/elton-john-ticking.html","title":{"rendered":"Elton John: Ticking"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\tElton John&#8217;s <em>Ticking<\/em> is a life-long favorite song that I remember listening to as a first-grader in Laos. This live version is one with which I was unfamiliar before now, and which seems a little disjointed compared to the studio version, but certainly acceptable.<\/p>\n<p>I have been digitizing my LP records and sending most of them to slaughter (i.e., the Salvation Army) but <em>Caribou<\/em>, the album this song concludes, will never leave my possession. I would say that I want to be buried with this album but i expect to be cremated. Maybe I should instruct that my body be cremated along with this LP record and a handful of others. Holy crap that&#8217;s an awesome idea.<\/p>\n<p>I had to wait for the Internet to learn, once and for all, that <em>Ticking<\/em> is not based on actual events. The Kicking Mule bar in Queens never existed, no hail of police bullets gunned down a disturbed &#8220;male caucasian with a gun&#8221; who had &#8220;gone berserk in Queens&#8221;, at least not in this specific type of scenario.<\/p>\n<p>My belief that this song was based on actual events might have been guided by the Al Pacino movie <em>Dog Day Afternoon<\/em>, which is the first movie I ever saw. I saw <em>Dog Day Afternoon<\/em> in Laos around the time I first heard this song. As a first-grader one doesn&#8217;t necessarily process facts versus assumptions very well, but I seem to remember being told that if <em>Dog Day Afternoon<\/em> was based on real-life events (it was) then this contemporaneous song must also have its roots in fact. Wrong-o.<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes I wish facts were harder to come by. This song is still a favorite but it had a lot more power for me when I thought it was based on actual events.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"1080\" height=\"608\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/0nsoOwD8D88?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span>\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Elton John&#8217;s Ticking is a life-long favorite song that I remember listening to as a first-grader in Laos. This live version is one with which I was unfamiliar before now, and which seems a little disjointed compared to the studio version, but certainly acceptable. I have been digitizing my LP records and sending most of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-listening-watching","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paumAn-1gE","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4876\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}