It’s My Party Ain’t It-Singer/Songwriter Leslie Gore Passes On At 68…  

 

 

 

Sure we were all filled with baskets, buckets, barrels, name your container of teenage angst and teenage alienation back in the hard Cold War red scare early 1960s. Our music, rock and roll, classic as in Elvis, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Jerry Lee, Wanda Jackson and then shortly thereafter the rock settle down became less, well, rock-like and more like music our parents would approve of. But in order to sell to our generation, or even have a chance to get a hearing you needed to speak “angst” and “alienation.”

That is where the late Leslie Gore fit in as she spoke to mainly young females, who as it turned out were the discretionally money spenders on records and such,  as we guys, or at least this guy, just sat around and cadged a few songs played on the corner pizza joint jukebox. And what Ms. Gore spoke of was that eternal, infernal boy-girl thing that was disturbing lots of young women then with her lonely midnight by the telephone sense of things. Of some Johnny not calling, or showing up, for the party, of some Jimmy who thinks he could brand her as his personal with a smile (What did we know then of same-sex longings at least in public but usually put down by derogatory fag-dyke baiting on my corner boys then).

While personally I did not care all that much then for Ms. Gore’s songs like It’s My Party or You Don’t Own Me (which now seems like a very powerful pre-feminist movement song) you could not in, say 1963 and 1964, get away on a date at that pizza parlor mentioned above without after putting your three selections for a quarter in you did not select at least one Leslie Gore tune to “appease” that date. After checking on YouTube to listen to a few Gore songs today to see if I missed something back then I still don’t care for her music. These days though I am very prone to say something about those who made the music of my youth and who are beginning to pass from the scene more frequently than I like to see. RIP