Alone (Why Must I Be Alone)

"Alone (Why Must I Be Alone)" is a popular song written by Morty Craft. Craft owned a record label, and produced the recording by the Shepherd Sisters on that label. The lyrics were written by Craft's wife, Selma.

While it was the only hit for The Shepherd Sisters (as The Sheps) in the United States (reaching #18 on the Billboard charts on November 11, 1957), in the United Kingdom it was one of a number of hits for Petula Clark (reaching #8 on the UK charts) before she became famous internationally. The Shepherd Sisters' version also charted in the UK, reaching #14, and another version, by The Southlanders, reached #17 on the UK chart.

A remake of the song by The Four Seasons charted in 1964, reaching its peak Billboard Hot 100 position at #28, on July 18. "Alone (Why Must I Be Alone" also went to #8 on the Canadian singles chart. It was the act's last hit single on Vee Jay Records, as The Four Seasons left the label at the beginning of 1964 in a royalty dispute. The Four Seasons recording of the song features a refrain that is whistled.

Love Amongst Ruin (album)

Love Amongst Ruin is the self-titled debut studio album by Love Amongst Ruin. It was released on September 13, 2010.

Background

Writing and recording

After departingPlacebo in October 2007, Steve Hewitt enlisted Lamb bassist Jon Thorne and his brother Nick Hewitt to begin writing and demoing new music at his home studio. Hewitt explained that he decided to write with Jon Thorne because he "wanted to play rock drums against somebody playing upright bass. And that’s what we did and the first thing we ever wrote was "Running"".Julian Cope collaborator Donald Ross Skinner was brought in to oversee and co-produce the recording sessions and the collective relocated to Moles Studio in Bath for three recording sessions with producer Paul Corkett over the summer of 2008. The sessions yielded ten songs, on which Steve performed drums and lead vocals. Mixing began in September and continued for six months before the album was mastered by Brian Gardner in April 2009.

"Bring Me Down (You Don't)" was to be included on the album, but legal trouble with publishers of the band Can resulted in the track being replaced with "Come On Say It". An acoustic version of the song was later released for free via SoundCloud in November 2011. "Come On Say It" featured then-band members Steve Hove, Laurie Ross and Keith York and was mixed ten weeks before the album's release. Other songs which were recorded, but didn't make the cut for the album, were cover versions of "Got To Give It Up" (Thin Lizzy) and "Rise" (Public Image Ltd), the latter being released for free via SoundCloud in July 2012.

Alone (1931 film)

Alone (Russian: Одна, meaning "Alone"), also known in English by the transliterated Russian title Odna, is a Soviet film released in 1931. It was written and directed by Leonid Trauberg and Grigori Kozintsev. It was originally planned as a silent film, but it was eventually released with a soundtrack comprising sound effects, some dialogue (recorded after the filming) and a full orchestral score by Dmitri Shostakovich. The film, about a young teacher sent to work in Siberia, is in a realist mode and addresses three political topics then current: education, technology, and the elimination of the kulaks.

Plot

The film tells the story of a newly graduated Leningrad teacher, Yelena Kuzmina (played by Yelena Alexandrovna Kuzmina). She goes furniture shopping with her fiance, Petya, and in a fantasy sequence she imagines teaching a class of neat, obedient city schoolchildren. Instead, she is assigned to work in the Altai mountains of Siberia. Reluctant to leave, she appeals to remain in the city. Although her request is granted (by a faceless Nadezhda Krupskaya, seen only from behind), she is eventually spurred by the government's condemnation of 'cowards' such as her to accept the post.

Scarecrow

A scarecrow or hay-man is a decoy or mannequin in the shape of a human. It is usually dressed in old clothes and placed in open fields to discourage birds such as crows or sparrows from disturbing and feeding on recently cast seed and growing crops.

Uses

The 1881 Household Cyclopedia of General Information gives the following advice:

The most effectual method of banishing them from a field, as far as experience goes, is to combine with one or other of the scarecrows in vogue the frequent use of the musket. Nothing strikes such terror into these sagacious animals as the sight of a fowling-piece and the explosion of gun powder, which they have known so often to be fatal to their race.

Such is their dread of a fowling-piece, that if one is placed upon a dyke or other eminence, it will for a long time prevent them from alighting on the adjacent grounds. Many people now, however, believe that crows like most other birds, do more good by destroying insects and worms, etc., than harm by eating grain.

Scarecrow (John Mellencamp album)

Scarecrow is the eighth album by John Mellencamp. Released in September 1985, it peaked at #2 on the U.S. chart behind Heart's comeback album, Heart. The remastered version was released May 24, 2005 on Mercury/Island/UMe and includes one bonus track.

This album contained three Top 10 hits, a record for a Mellencamp album: "R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A.," which peaked at #2 in the U.S.; "Lonely Ol' Night," which peaked at #6; and "Small Town," which also peaked at #6. "Lonely Ol' Night" also peaked at #1 on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart, his second chart-topping single on this chart.

In 1989, Rolling Stone magazine ranked Scarecrow #95 on its list of the 100 greatest albums of the 1980s, saying: "Scarecrow consolidated the band's rugged, roots-rock thrash and the ongoing maturation of Mellencamp's lyrics."

Rolling Stone also reported that band spent a month in rehearsals, playing a hundred rock and roll songs from the Sixties before going into the studio. According to the record's producer, Don Gehman, the idea was to "learn all these devices from the past and use them in a new way with John's arrangements."

The Scarecrow (song)

"The Scarecrow" is a song by Pink Floyd on their 1967 debut album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, though it first appeared as the B-side of their second single "See Emily Play" (as "Scarecrow") two months before. It was written by Syd Barrett and recorded in March 1967. This song was one of several to be considered for the band's "best of" album, Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd.

History

The song contains nascent existentialist themes, as Barrett compares his own existence to that of the scarecrow, who, while "sadder" is also "resigned to his fate". Such thematic content would later become a mainstay of the band's lyrical imagery. The song contains a baroque, psychedelic folk instrumental section consisting of 12-string acoustic guitar and cello. Reflecting the experimental nature of many of the band's early psychedelic pieces, all instruments are panned to the extreme left hand and right hand sides of the stereo, with two vocal lines, one spoken and one sung. The US single (Tower 356) was released by Tower Records three times between July 1967 and late 1968. Each time it failed to duplicate its UK success.