Second Thoughts

for OSL Episode 3, airdate 9/23/26

Second Thoughts: Episode 3

Part of the fun putting On Second Listen together is that the listening doesn’t stop when the show does. One song sends us looking for something, which leads to something else, and pretty soon Wednesday’s two hours have acquired a few footnotes too good to keep to ourselves.

So, a few second thoughts after Episode 3.

The Chiffons get the last word

We spent part of Wednesday’s show listening to songs that sounded perhaps a little too much like something that came before them—including George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord” and the Chiffons’ 1963 hit “He’s So Fine.”

And we let the Chiffons have the last word: we ended the segment with their own 1975 recording of “My Sweet Lord.”

What we didn’t explain was just how pointed that choice was. The recording appeared while the copyright case was still making its way toward court, and one history of the group describes it as an act of “sarcastic retribution.” The group whose recording Harrison had inadvertently echoed turned around and recorded the song that echoed it.

And yes, they could legally do that. Once Harrison had released “My Sweet Lord,” U.S. copyright law allowed other performers to make their own cover recordings through the mechanical-licensing system. They didn’t need Harrison to approve the joke.

There may be not be a more On Second Listen way for a copyright dispute to end!

About those bleeps...

Listeners to our Radiohead pairing may have noticed that the OSL production department made absolutely no attempt to conceal its handiwork. The offending words in “Creep” were replaced with good old-fashioned BEEPS.

But does the FCC actually have a list of forbidden words—something like George Carlin’s famous “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television”?

Not exactly. The FCC’s treatment of indecency is contextual rather than a simple blacklist of naughty words. Indecent and profane material is restricted on broadcast radio between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m.; our Wednesday morning broadcast falls rather decisively inside that window.

So perhaps our bleeps were prudent even if not executed with subtlety. Radiohead, now featuring percussion by the FCC.

Who put the French in “Psycho Killer”?

Why is there French in Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer”? The answer, it turns out, is not David Byrne.

Bassist Tina Weymouth’s mother was French, and French was spoken in her home. Her husband and Talking Heads drummer Chris Frantz recalled that Byrne wanted the middle section of the song to switch into another language, so Weymouth supplied the French. When Talking Heads later went to France, French listeners told them that nobody actually talked that way—it sounded comically old-fashioned, almost Napoleonic.

Which somehow makes “Psycho Killer / Qu’est-ce que c’est?” even better.

And James Taylor’s “Ananas” wasn’t his last excursion into French. His 2006 Christmas collection includes “Mon Beau Sapin,” a French rendition of “O Christmas Tree.”

We may have to remember that one in December.

An American in Paris

Josephine Baker’s French connection went considerably deeper.

Born in St. Louis, Baker became a sensation in Paris in the 1920s and ultimately made France her home. During World War II she worked with French intelligence and the Resistance; in 2021, France honored her with induction into the Panthéon.

So when we heard Baker singing Cole Porter in French on Wednesday, this wasn’t simply an American singer trying out another language. France became an enormous part of Baker’s life and identity.

The drummer behind the gold teeth

One thing we’d like to make a habit of in Second Thoughts is giving a little attention to musicians we hear on the program but never name.

This week, that leads us to Jeff Porcaro, later the drummer for Toto, who was behind the kit on Steely Dan’s “Your Gold Teeth II.”

And apparently it was no easy day at the office. The song jumps among unusual meters, and Porcaro struggled to find the feel Steely Dan wanted. Donald Fagen sent him home with a Charles Mingus record featuring drummer Dannie Richmond. Porcaro listened for a couple of days, came back—and got it.

By Katy Lied, Steely Dan had become the kind of studio project in which an extraordinary young drummer could be sent home to listen to Mingus before everyone tried again.

That’s a pretty good second listen.

And then there was Fleetwood Mac

Our “Part I/Part II” segment included Fleetwood Mac’s extraordinary “Oh Well”—and for listeners who principally know the Stevie Nicks/Lindsey Buckingham incarnation, it may have sounded as though we had accidentally played an entirely different band.

Fleetwood Mac itself may be a good example of something On Second Listen keeps finding: the name can stay the same while almost everything underneath it changes.

This was Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac, still rooted in British blues. And even within “Oh Well,” Green was showing two very different sides of himself: the hard electric attack of Part I and the strange, largely instrumental, semi-classical Part II. Green later described them as his two musical extremes.

Part II is unusual right down to the personnel: Green plays not only guitar but bass, cello and percussion; Jeremy Spencer plays piano, with Sandra Elsdon adding recorder. Too bad Christopher Walken wasn’t on hand to call for “more cowbell.”

And one personal second thought: I first encountered “Oh Well” through Joe Jackson, who covered it on his 1991 album Laughter & Lust. If Peter Green’s original was new to you on Wednesday, give Jackson’s version a listen too. Sometimes a second listen actually comes first.

We’ll be back Monday with a preview of Wednesday’s show. Stay tuned.