September 13, 1975

Posted on September 13, 2023 by admin

A curiosity in my personal chronology: I remember what I was doing from 10 pm to 11 pm Central on Saturday, September 13, 1975. I was 14 and the start of high school was just a few weeks behind me, but that wasn’t so important that evening. During that hour, I was parked in front of our living room television, a black-and-white set because my mother didn’t convert to color until it was impossible to buy black-and-white. That didn’t bother me a bit.

Because the Internet never ceases to amaze, it took me only a few seconds to find the local TV schedule for San Antonio that day, to confirm what I already knew: the 10 pm slot on Channel 12, which was the ABC affiliate, was given over the Space: 1999. Not just any episode of that show – sold to U.S. markets in syndication, so not in prime time – but the first episode, “Breakaway.”

As the most expensive British television program up until that time, the show got quite a buildup, so it was no accident I tuned in. Martin Landau and Barbara Bain, as I recall, had plugged it on The Tonight Show not long before. (That too is online, at least as difficult-to-hear audio.)

So I watched that evening, and every week for a short time afterward. The physics of the premise — the Moon blown out of orbit and traveling the stars — was like something out of the Irwin Allen playbook, but even so the show started with some promise. As time passed, however, its essential dopiness became all too clear.

I think of this when I recall that I saw the first episode of Saturday Night Live on October 11, 1975. Or rather, the last two-thirds of it, switching channels after Space: 1999 was over at 11 Central. My reaction was, What is this? Then I think I remembered that a live comedy show had been slotted for that time, as it had been promoted as well. Within a few weeks, I didn’t bother with Space: 1999 any more, and took up SNL, as many of my peers did.

Despite its failure as science fiction, Space: 1999 did have one thing going for it, something I occasionally still enjoy. Namely, the kick-ass introduction.

Visually, it teases with quick-cuts of the episode ahead, as well as reminders of how the hapless residents of Moonbase Alpha got into their situation, and a sequence that fixed the fictional events of September 13, 1999 in one’s mind (and, lots of crashing space ships!). Aurally, there’s a rousing blend of orchestral passages, jazz and a funky electric guitar by British composer Barry Gray (d. 1984) that had early ’70s all over it.

Late Summer Tomatoes

Posted on September 6, 2023 by admin

Heard the rumble of thunder at some distance during the wee hours this morning, but upon looking outside after dawn, no rain came of it, at least here. We’ve had a few dry weeks now, with the local grass retreating to its brown state till water comes again.

From our back yard. We’ve been watering our small tomato crop through the dry days.

The quarter came from the Royal Canadian Mint facility in Winnipeg, and I picked it up somewhere near Lake Superior last month, and exported it to the United States.

There were more tomatoes in the dish until recently, today in fact, smaller in diameter than the quarter, but we ate those. Man, garden tomatoes are good. I’m hardly the first person to notice that, but it’s worth repeating.

Did some reading about the late singer and businessman Jimmy Buffet today. This paragraph made me smile.

“Mr. Buffett’s original idea for Margaritaville was ‘to expand the opportunity for as many people to experience the lifestyle immortalized in his iconic song as possible,’ according to the statement on the company’s website,” the New York Times reported. “The company had $2.2 billion in gross annual revenue last year.”

The lifestyle immortalized in his iconic song? That of a drunken layabout? You don’t need to visit a resort to do that.

Gary Wright also died recently. That makes two popular musicians who first had hits in the 1970s. You know what that means, according to unfalsifiable popular notions. Number three dead ahead, and I do mean dead.

The Wawa Goose

Posted on August 20, 2023 by admin

Whatever else you can say about the township of Wawa, Ontario, the goose comes first. I can’t call Wawa famous, but to the extent the town is known in the wider world, the goose puts it on the map.

The current goose is only a few years old, the second steel-bodied bird to stand on the site, which originally sported a chicken-wire and plaster goose erected in 1960 that lasted only a few winters. The statue calls attention to Wawa, which was its sole original purpose, since the brand-new Trans-Canada highway had bypassed its main street.

It works. You only need to pull off the Trans-Canada to see it, and then you stand a chance of going further into town (pop. 2,700). Though I spent a couple of hours in Wawa, and saw and did other things, the goose persuaded me to stop about mid-day on August 3. Well, maybe. With a name like Wawa, I might have stopped anyway. But the experience wouldn’t have been nearly the same.

Wawa has taken to its goose wholeheartedly. Follow the road into town and you’ll see other, more volant unofficial geese.

Look a little closer, and there are even more geese. It’s geese all the way down. This can be found on the wall outside of the township’s offices. Based on the township seal, looks like.

A small goose at a small historic cemetery in Wawa.

Pretty much any fact about the Wawa Goose is a fun fact, but I’m only going to cite a few from the Northern Ontario Travel (NOT) web site and other sources. The most fun of the fun facts, in my opinion.

• The goose is 28 feet tall, 22 feet long, and has a wingspan of 20 feet, according to NOT. [What, no metric measurements?]

• One Dick Vanderclift, Dutch immigrant and ornamental wrought iron specialist from Sault Ste. Marie, created the second goose. I assume the third one hews pretty close to his original design.

• One Al Turcott, owner of a Wawa dry goods and clothing store – back when that could make you a prominent local citizen – ponied up for most of the money to build the original.

• “The Canada Goose is not an official symbol of Canada,” NOT says. “Only the beaver and the maple tree have this cultural status.”

[What committee decides – no, I’m not going down that rabbit hole.]

• “Stompin’ Tom Connors sang the song ‘Little Wawa’ about a goose that stayed behind when her lover Gander Goo got shot down with an arrow!” NOT exclaims. “Bet you didn’t know that one!”

I sure didn’t know that one. Stompin’ Tom Connors (d. 2013) only now has come to my attention. Quite a thing in Canada, he was. This isn’t “Little Wawa,” but it is Stompin’ Tom.

Wait, Conan O’Brien is Canadian? No. No reason he couldn’t be, but he’s from Massachusetts. He clearly knew what his Canadian audience wanted.

Turtle Creek Parkway, Tanks and White Line Frankenstein

Posted on August 7, 2023 by admin

Tooling along one of southern Wisconsin’s two-lane highways a week ago Friday, the radio station I happened to be tuned into – I’m not giving up terrestrial radio on road trips – introduced a new song by Alice Cooper, with a few words from the artist himself. That got my attention. Alice Cooper, shock rocker of my adolescence, is still making records?

He is, at the fine old age of 75. I never was a big fan of his, except of course for “School’s Out,” but I was glad to hear that all the same. Keep on keeping on, old guy.

For my part, I kept on driving, passing the greens and golds of high corn and the utilitarian buildings that support farming, intersections with gravel roads, hand-painted signs and, now and then, another vehicle. It was an obscenely pleasant July day, clear and warm and not nearly as hot as much of the rest of the country.

The new song came on. Title, “White Line Frankenstein.” Remarkable how consistent Alice Cooper has been through the years. What does he sound like, now that he’s a senior shock rocker? Sounds a lot like young Alice Cooper. A good showman finds something that works and sticks with it, and there’s no arguing his showman abilities.

About half way through the song I was inspired to pull off to the side of the road near where a rail line crossed the road, and take pictures.

Missed the last half of the song, but oh well.

Near Beloit, Wisconsin – close to the town of Shopiere, but not in any town, is a spot called Turtle Creek Parkway, a Rock County park. At four acres, it’s the rural equivalent of a pocket park, with its star attraction across a field next to Turtle Creek: the Tiffany Bridge, or the Tiffany Stone Bridge, vintage 1869, which as far as I know is still a working railroad bridge. (Tiffany is another nearby town.)

More than 20 years ago, I visited the bridge, accompanied by small child and pregnant wife. It wasn’t a park then, just a wide place in the road to stop. Enough people must have stopped there for the county to get a hint, I guess, and acquire and develop the land by adding a boat launch on Turtle Creek, a small rental event building, and a small parking lot.

Regardless, it’s hard to take a bad up-close picture of the structure.

Just a hunch: the arches are too sturdy to destroy in a cost-effective way, so it abides.

Rather than return to the Interstate right away, I headed out from Shopiere onto the small roads where I eventually heard about Alice Cooper. Not long before that encounter, I spotted a tank in the hamlet of Turtle, Wisconsin.

Another former Wisconsin National Guard tank, an M60A3.

It’s part of a plaza honoring veterans of the area. Interesting to run into another tank in southern Wisconsin so soon after the last one. I decided to keep an eye out for tanks on the rest of the drive, and sure enough I spotted more as the drive progressed.

Montserrat: Camí dels Degotalls

Posted on June 25, 2023 by admin

Serrated mountain. Yes, we could see that. And by that, I mean understand why Montserrat is called that. Actually seeing the serrated peaks rising over the Santa Maria de Montserrat, a Benedictine abbey some 30 miles northwest of Barcelona, was a little difficult on late morning of May 22.

Seeing the countryside below was no mean feat either.

Still, the abbey complex was visible enough. Besides, the clouds burned off as the day went on.

During our look around, we made an acquaintance with these figures.

We found a path, more-or-less level, that wound away from the complex. Along with the clouds were cool temps, a little below 20 C., making for a pleasant extended walk. With views.

Even better, almost no one else was on the path, unlike the fairly crowded abbey complex. After barely any time at all, the path takes you to a memorial to two famed Catalans. I won’t pretend I didn’t had to look them up: Josep Rodoreda and Jacinto Verdaguer. Each had a distinguished career as a composer and a poet, respectively.

They collaborated on a piece called “Virolai de la Virgen de Montserrat” (1880); music by Rodoreda, lyrics by Verdaguer.

Soon, depictions of the Madonna and Child were to be found on the mountain side of the path, at regular intervals.

Tile embedded in stone. Quite a variety. A small sample:

The path, and the Madonnas, keep going for quite a ways.

Eventually, the Virgins petered out. At some point, the path had left the grounds of the abbey, which are quite extensive, and entered Montserrat Nature Park. Or maybe we didn’t get that far, but anyway we turned around about a half-hour in, so that made a full hour.

I didn’t know, until after we’d returned from Spain, that we’d taken a walk on a part of the Camí dels Degotalls. From what I can piece together, it is the starting link in one of the feeder trails into the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route. How about that. We had no idea that we’d hit the pilgrim trail, though an hour on the trail might better be called a micropilgrimage.

I enjoyed one particular paragraph from a machine translation I got (Catalan to English) for this page.

The itinerary is available to everyone. The Paseo de los Degotalls is very close to the walls that collapse from the plans of the trinity, located 200 meters above the path. Below, with the Pyrenees in the background, the plain boils with vitality.

We’ve Stringbeans and Onions, Cabbages and Scallions, and All Kinds of Fruits and Say —

Posted on May 3, 2023 by admin

I’ve been lax, letting the 100th anniversary of “Yes, We Have No Bananas,” go unmentioned until now. The song was published on March 23, 1923. The only popular song about Greek grocers that I know, except maybe for “I’ve Got The Yes! We Have No Bananas Blues.”

I found an article that promises the story behind the song, and offers some detail about the fruit trade in New York, past and present.

“The story of New York produce goes far back beyond Hunts Point,” says an article on the web site of a company specializing in credit rating and market information for the produce industry, referring to the Hunts Point produce market in the Bronx, an enormous operation.

“The city’s colorful history includes the Banana Docks of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which were located at Old Slip in lower Manhattan,” it says.

Banana Docks, New York City

The article goes on to say that the songwriters took their inspiration from a Greek fruit stand owner who said the famous line to him, but the account published in Time magazine in the summer of 1923 is, I think, more believable. Especially since it quotes the songwriter himself only months after the monster hit song came out.

“I am an American, of Jewish ancestry, with a wife and a young son,” songwriter Frank Silver told Time. “About a year ago my little orchestra was playing at a Long Island hotel. To and from the hotel I was wont to stop at a fruit stand owned by a Greek, who began every sentence with ‘Yess.’ The jingle of his idiom haunted me and my friend Cohn. Finally I wrote this verse and Gohn [sic] fitted it with a tune.”

It was the first song Silver ever sold. For a most harmonious recording of it, listen to the Mellomen version. With Thurl Ravenscroft. (!) For a sing-along version that also happens to be an early product of the remarkable and mostly unsung Fleischer Studios, and thus has a surreal edge to it, watch this video.

Here’s an series idea for a prestige streaming service: Banana Dock Empire. Criminals vying for control of the Banana Docks in 1890s New York. Too bad Daniel Day-Lewis is too old now to play the part of a rising young thug who murders his way into control of the city’s banana supply.

Thursday Nodules

Posted on April 27, 2023 by admin

Did a little shopping at a local grocery store (part of a grocery conglomerate) and saw this display.

The Fourth of July? Really?

The Kingston Trio did a version of “Seasons in the Sun,” in 1964, a song recorded 10 years later to vast popularity by Terry Jacks, one remembered for being as saccharine as a Shirley Temple. One that was on the radio all the time.

The Kingston Trio version has a bitter twist to dilute the sentimentality, which I suspect is closer to the French-language source material. Just another thing I happened across in the YouTube treasure cave.

Not long ago, Yuriko bought an article of clothing at a local store (part of a retail conglomerate), and the clerk forgot to take off the bulky security tag. In trying to avoid a trip back to the store to have it removed, I looked up the matter on YouTube. Musical selections aren’t the only jewels in the cave. Of course, often enough you find cubic zirconia.

One video suggested a technique using two forks that didn’t look remotely easy; another assumed you had a workshop of tools; and a third – my favorite – suggested you simply smash it with a hammer. Never would have thought of that.

Lots of people post images of their meals, usually while there’s still food on the plate. But what about the debris of a good meal? Evidence that you completed the meal, with the hope that you might have enjoyed it.

Chicken bones, in this case. The last leftovers of the Korean chicken we bought about a week ago, and we did enjoy it.

Brand name: bb.q chicken. It is an enormous chain, with more than 3,500 locations in 57 countries. Not quite sure when the northwest suburban outlet we go to opened, but it hasn’t been that long. We drop by once a month or so.

Reasons to be Cheerful, Videos 3

Posted on March 15, 2023 by admin

Back to posting around March 26. It may not quite be spring, and I don’t mean the equinox, but it is time for spring break, for my nonprofessional writing efforts anyway.

Captured a couple of flags in flight not long ago.

Illinois needs a new flag. Remarkably, it might get one. I didn’t know that until this evening, looking around for alternate designs for the state flag. Of course, with a committee working on the matter, there’s no guarantee of a better flag. Even if the state had a design competition, that might not work out either. Guess we just have to hope for the best, or at least the better.

Bet this rock is in the Suburban Boulder Database, which is maintained by the U.S. Geological Survey.

Or it would be, if I hadn’t made that up. The database, that is, not the USGS, which I assume is real, unless it’s a Deep State trick to persuade us dupes that the Earth is round. Yet who else will give us volcano warnings?

I always take a look at plaque-on-rock memorials when I can. I like the economy of the things. No money, or room, for a bronze or marble statue? No worries, affix a plaque.

That one commemorates the 100th anniversary of the founding of Batavia, Illinois, and was dedicated on September 3, 1933. It mentions the first settler in the area, one Christopher Payne, and lauds him and other early settlers “who here broke the sod that men to come might live.”

Maybe, but Payne and his 19th-century passel of children didn’t stay. They soon moved on to Wisconsin.

Never mind what the poet said, March could well be the cruelest month. So it’s time for cheerful tunes.

A wonderful cover of “Honey Pie” by the newly named The Bygones.

Admiration for one Dutch musician can lead to the discovery of others, such as Candy Dulfer.

And of course, a longstanding reason to be cheerful, “Reasons to be Cheerful, Part 3.”

It’s cheerful to recall the first time I remember hearing Ian Dury and the Blockheads — a spring day in Tennessee as I crossed campus. The year, long ago, though at the time it seemed to be the cutting edge of the future. A nearby frat house was broadcasting its musical tastes to all passersby, such as me. The tune: “Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick.” One of the kinds of things I went to college to experience, though I didn’t realize it at the time.

Thursday’s Theme: A Lot of Good Things Get Lost or Kicked Around

Posted on March 2, 2023 by admin

March came in like – an emu? Golden retriever? – came in pleasantly, with temps nearly 60 F. That didn’t last, of course, and chilly air is back today, with snow forecast for Friday, which will melt over the weekend.

The other day, I found a Sears bag tucked away in a semi-storage corner of the house under various things. This made me want to look up how many Sears locations survive. As of November, anyway, when Sears Holdings Corp. emerged from Chapter 11, there were 22.

That’s not even a shadow of its former self. That’s dryer lint of its former self.

I don’t know when we got the bag, or what we bought at Sears that needed such a bag. It’s fairly large, though. About as tall as a kitchen trash bag, so I decided to take its picture and then use the bag for trash. Interesting trademarked slogan. One the company maybe didn’t think through. Where else?™

There’s a lot of possibilities, Sears.

Last week, as mentioned before, there seemed to be overnight microbursts in the area, to judge by the tree branches on the ground afterward. This was the only tree knocked down that I noticed, a few days later, after it had been chopped up somewhat before being cleared away. Note the crust of soil it took with it.

I suspect it wasn’t just the wind, but also the fact that the tree stood in a low-lying area that usually fills up during a rain and takes days to empty, weakening the soil. Besides, it might have been a sick old tree whose roots didn’t have the grip they used to, so bam! Down it came.

But even healthier trees can take a beating if the wind is aggressive enough.

Speaking of fallen things, I learned today that the Hotel Pennsylvania is being demolished. That isn’t news, just that I don’t keep up with everything happening in Manhattan. I stayed there a couple of times in the early 2000s, where the company I worked for at the time put me up. I thought it more solid than grand, but I’m still sorry to see it go.

What else to say but, Pennsylvania Six Five Oh Oh Oh

One more thing about time passage, destruction and decay. Something I found unexpectedly. An algorithm suggested it. Might as well be by chance, then.

A poignant song from the point of view of an abandoned house, included on an album called The Rat Plague of ’66. The kind of thing that happens in Australia. Don Morrison seems to be a singer-songwriter from Adelaide, South Australia.

Christmas ’22

Posted on January 3, 2023 by admin

Christmas morning, 2022, before we opened any presents.

This year’s tree cost as much as last year’s, mainly because it’s shorter than most with a goofy bend atop, and while its trunk begins straight and true, it then detours in an odd direction, giving the tree a tilt usually associated with an impending fall. The stuff of Christmas movie comedies.

Also the stuff of actual falling Christmas trees, in the days when our tree was placed in a bucket weighed down with bricks and then filled with gravel. Stability not guaranteed. At some happy moment in the early ’70s, we acquired a tree-legged tree stand with three screws to secure the trunk, and it worked like a holiday dream. None of our trees ever fell after that.

I wax nostalgic for Christmases of yore, of course. Who doesn’t at least a little? But if I live long enough to be nostalgic about Christmas 2022, I’ll probably take a pass.

Not because of any family strife or other stereotypical situations. Yuriko and I welcomed both of our children home. It’s rare now to have us all in the same room, and a treasure when we do.

Bonus: my brother Jim came as well. I’m not sure why I made his picture at a Batman villain angle, but I did.

Once Christmas Day finally arrived, we had a pleasant time, sitting down to open presents, doing a zoom with more distant family members, and later convening at the table for Christmas dinner.

Some of the days before and after Christmas were a mite stressful, however, because of the great Southwest Airlines FUBAR. Media outlets are missing something by not applying that term to the situation, since it sums it up so nicely.

One more thing about Christmas. A few days ago, I happened on a posting by a fellow who devised a way to track the Christmas songs that a local (Chicago area) radio station plays. During the rest of the year, the station plays “light” music, but come early November sometime it becomes “Christmas FM.”

What did he find? The station played all of 187 different tracks, representing only 101 different songs during its run this year as a Christmas station. Out of a universe of what — thousands or tens of thousands of Christmas and holiday songs? — the station plays only about 100.

Mr. Program Director, how about expanding your list next by at least a few hundred more?

The program director would have deaf ears for such a request. He knows the radio biz, I do not. He has studies. He has focus groups. Or maybe he isn’t a he or a she, but an algorithm. Whatever the case, repetition is king. All I know is that FM radio used to be about variety, and used to be more interesting, and yet somehow made money.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Tag Archives: music