POPnews - January 13th

[Johnny Cash first recorded Folsom Prison Blues in 1955, which is when his zeal for prison reform was born; he had to wait a dozen years, however, to see his dream of performing live for prisoners made a reality... That's when Columbia Records executive Bob Johnston finally let him do it, even going so far as to produce the groundbreaking album himself. Cash's empathy for that segment of the population least likely to receive it was a hallmark of his unique brand of humanism, and accounts for much of his popularity still.]
1435 - The papal bull Sicut Dudum was promulgated by Pope Eugene IV, banning the enslavement of baptized black natives in the Canary Islands by raiders from rivals Portugal and the Kingdom of Castile, who both laid claim to the mid-Atlantic island chain; it was intended to strengthen a previous encyclical, Creator Omnium, which he'd published in December 1434. Like most such documents it was largely ignored, even upon fear of excommunication, although it was later clarified in Pope Nicholas V's Romanus Pontifex of January 1455 that the enslavement of unbaptized blacks was still perfectly alright, since they were 'the enemies of Christ'... And because, y'know, that's what Jesus would do.

1547 - Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey was sentenced to death; the little-known life story of this 'flamboyant and controversial' courtier is told in the book Henry VIII's Last Victim: The Life and Times of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey by Jessie Childs.

1766 - Denmark's King Frederick V died; he was succeeded by his son, who reigned as Christian VII.

1822 - The design of the Greek flag was adopted by the First National Assembly at Epidaurus.

1840 - The steamship Lexington caught fire four miles off the coast of Long Island, sinking early the next morning with the loss of 139 lives; there were just four survivors.

1842 - Dr. William Brydon, a surgeon in the British Army during the First Anglo-Afghan War, became famous for being the sole survivor of an army of 16,500 when he reached the safety of a garrison in Jalalabad.

1847 - The Treaty of Cahuenga ended the Mexican-American War in California.

1898 - Emile Zola's open letter to the people of France entitled J'accuse exposed the Dreyfus Affair.

1908 - Pennsylvania's Rhoads Opera House in Boyertown caught fire, killing 171 people.

1913 - Delta Sigma Theta Sorority was founded on the campus of Howard University as the second black Greek letter organization for women; its mission from the beginning was to engage in social activism.

1915 - An earthquake in Avezzano, Italy, killed 29,800.

1939 - Australia's Black Friday bush fires burnt 20,000 square kilometres near Melbourne claiming the lives of 71 people.

1964 - Sectarian rioting erupted in the Indian city of Kolkata - resulting in the deaths of more than 100 people.

1968 - Johnny Cash recorded his landmark album At Folsom Prison live at California's Folsom State Prison backed by June Carter, Carl Perkins, and Cash's band, the Tennessee Three. Cash actually recorded two shows there that day, with 13 songs from the first show and two from the second eventually making it onto the album.

1972 - Prime Minister Kofi Busia and President Edward Akufo-Addo of Ghana were ousted in a bloodless military coup by Col. Ignatius Kutu Acheamphong.

1974 - Seraphim was elected Archbishop of Athens and All Greece.

1982 - Shortly after takeoff Air Florida Flight 90 crashed into Washington DC's 14th Street Bridge and fell into the Potomac River, killing 78 (including four motorists); the crash also caused a commuter train to derail, killing 3 more.

2001 - An earthquake struck El Salvador, killing more than 800.

2004 - Serial killer Harold Shipman - a medical doctor believed to be responsible for the deaths of between 218 and 450 of his patients during the Shipman Inquiry - was found hanging in his cell at Wakefield Prison - which action thrilled the tabloid press and Home Secretary David Blunkett but which dismayed the families of his many victims and potential victims.
*
share on: facebook

All In The Family: "Meet The Bunkers"

On this day in 1971 a show which was definitely not your parents' sitcom made its debut on CBS. Only to say that All in the Family 'made its debut' is like saying a hurricane or an earthquake made its debut; what it did accomplish was nothing short of a revolution, sweeping aside its anodyne predecessors like the dust in which it left them...



Not only did Meet The Bunkers introduce a more honest generation gap than had ever been seen on television before into American living rooms, it promoted dialogue on taboos on a scale and to a degree which had never even been attempted, and have rarely been handled so elegantly since. It was and is a show conservatives and liberals alike could and can watch, laugh at - even think it's on their side, and not be wrong in either case. The series' overall message seemed to be: isn't it better to laugh at our differences than come to blows over them? At a time in which young people and the authorities were clashing in the streets - sometimes fatally - a show like this, which could so effectively clear the air on the vital issues of the day, seemed less like a sitcom and more like a public service...



Initially, however, producer Norman Lear had to talk Carroll O'Connor into doing it; a lifelong liberal, O'Connor worried about what his portrayal of arch-conservative Archie Bunker would do to his reputation. So while he initially accepted the role to mock the kind of character Archie was, over time O'Connor came to understand the kind of fear and lack of critical thinking which goes into making any bigot; over the course of the series he even helped bring the character to a kind of rapprochement with the rapidly changing world in which he found himself stranded.

Ably aided here by Jean Stapleton as Edith Bunker, Rob Reiner as Mike Stivic, Sally Struthers as Gloria, and Mike Evans as Lionel Jefferson, they and the rest of the cast would eventually guide their massive audience through eight perilous years of the 1970s without either repressing or denying the volatility of the times, but rather by embracing it. Now, thanks to the magic of DVD, you too can embrace All in the Family all over again...
*
share on: facebook

Pop History Moment: "All In The Family" Debuts

On this day in 1971 the first episode of All in the Family - entitled Meet The Bunkers - introduced the world to five characters - Archie Bunker, Edith Bunker, Mike Stivic, Gloria Bunker-Stivic, and Lionel Jefferson - who in their way would encourage greater dialogue about social issues in America than ten times as many do-gooders and do-badders (also known as politicians) could ever dream of doing. No issue was too sacred for them - many even too taboo at that point for most living rooms - and the touchiest issue of them all (even to this day) race was discussed more than any other.

For the next eight seasons (including five consecutive years as the number one show in the country) the sitcom antics emanating from that drab lower-middle-class home in Astoria electrified viewers as Archie (played to the hilt by Carroll O'Connor) struggled to cope with a changing world and his own role in it as both a white male and paterfamilias.

By no means, though, were the uber-liberal Mike (Rob Reiner) and Gloria (Sally Struthers) always right, which is what made the show as great as it was (and still is); the show's break out character, however, was Edith. As portrayed by Jean Stapleton Edith was, in the words of series producer Norman Lear, a kind of Christ figure - long-suffering, wise and compassionate.

All in the Family was itself based on a British sitcom called Til Death Us Do Part, created by Johnny Speight and aired on the CBS television network. It spawned the equally popular spin-offs Maude and The Jeffersons, the less popular shows Gloria and 704 Hauser and inspired Hanna-Barbera's animated series Wait Till Your Father Gets Home; so popular was the show that even its spin-offs had spin-offs. Good Times spun off of Maude, and Checking In spun off of The Jeffersons.
*

share on: facebook

In Memoriam: John Singer Sargent

Proof of John Singer Sargent's genius is not in the pudding, but rather in the impasto; any further proof one might require should come from the envy of his success shown by his contemporaries and the critical drubbing his work received while he was alive. Indeed, the work which was Sargent's favourite and which is today considered his finest work - 1884's Portrait of Madame X - was widely panned when it was first shown. There's a lesson in there somewhere for today's cultural workers of all kinds, but I can't quite put my finger on it...

Sargent's career was prolific, resulting in more than 900 paintings, 2000 watercolours, and numerous drawings; he is renowned for his portraits - whether socialites, writers, or politicians - but he created landscapes as well. Later in life he also took up sculpture.

Born on this day in 1856, Sargent was fortunate enough to train in the progressive atelier of Emile Auguste Carolus-Duran; Sargent's mentor favoured the alla prima method of painting which freed painters from a hidebound methodology that had been in use ever since the Renaissance, and would give rise to Impressionism.

Although born in Italy to American parents, Sargent spent most of his professional life in England; when one of his better known patrons, Edward VII, recommended him for a knighthood, though, he declined the offer.

Since most of his work was generated for commission, successive generations of artists have not venerated Sargent or his work anything like his considerable skills would suggest; English art critic Roger Fry, of the Bloomsbury Group, sniffed at Sargent's work in 1926, saying it lacked aesthetic quality. Then, as now, the successful, popular artist (whose acclaim, in this case, protected a scandalous private life from public approbation) is seen as worse than useless, while the wretch in the garret is the only 'real' artist.

Yet surely an essential component of aesthetics is the desire of people to look at the work, and today - more than eighty years after his death - ordinary people are still looking at the work of John Singer Sargent, despite what the pretentious might perceive as its shortcomings.
*
share on: facebook

"Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean" by Ruth Brown

Once the most popular female R&B singer in the world, Ruth Brown led a famous battle against Atlantic Records and lost, following which her once-glittering career went into a sharp decline; rediscovered in the 1970s, her comeback included more than concerts, but TV and movies as well. In 1979 she appeared in the short-lived (and much-mocked) sitcom Hello, Larry, and in 1986 she portrayed Motormouth Maybelle in John Waters' classic movie Hairspray.

Although she died in November 2006, today would have been her eighty-second birthday; here we see her in an early performance, assaying one of her classics, Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean.
*
share on: facebook

Remembering... Texas Guinan

Already famous in vaudeville and silent films as America's first movie cowgirl - nicknamed 'Queen of the West' - shortly after Prohibition was introduced Texas Guinan opened a speakeasy called the 300 Club at 151 W. 54th St. in Manhattan...

Her clarion call - 'Hello suckers!' - greeted young and old, famous and obscure alike, and they not only loved it, they loved her for it. Her patrons didn't come for the caustic greeting or stay for the over-priced turpentine passing for hooch but to rub elbows with the cream of society and to rub far naughtier things with the parade of scantily-clad dancers she employed; Ruby Keeler and George Raft were just two of the future stars who found fame (and Heaven knows what else) while working for her...

Riding high on her newfound notoriety as a proprietress, Guinan returned to the movies. Queen of the Night Clubs (1929) and Broadway Through a Keyhole (1933) both saw her playing thinly veiled versions of herself; equally thinly veiled portrayals of her have been assayed by Mae West in the George Raft movie Night After Night (1932) and Gladys George in The Roaring Twenties (1939). She's also been portrayed on film by Betty Hutton in Incendiary Blonde (1945) and in Splendor in the Grass (1961) by Phyllis Diller.  Sadly, a rumoured musical of her life starring Madonna seems unlikely to surface...

Born on this day in 1884, Texas Guinan's life 'closed out of town' - to use the showbiz parlance - while on tour in Vancouver; it's there she contracted amoebic dysentery and died in November 1933, one month before the repeal of Prohibition.
*
share on: facebook

Now Showing - "A Fine Romance: First Meeting"

The husband and wife team of Michael Williams and Judi Dench were already well-respected actors when they decided to undertake Bob Larbey's sitcom A Fine Romance in 1981; it would prove a wise choice, as the 26 episodes over four series would eventually garner nine BAFTA award nominations and win two, for Dench's performance, in 1982 and 1985.



Concerning a very different kind of star-crossed lovers than Williams and Dench had been classically trained to portray, A Fine Romance handles the entirely modern subject of social ineptitude amongst the middle-aged with a typically British elan; acting as ideal foils for Laura (Dench) and Mike (Williams) are Laura's sister Helen (Susan Penhaligon) and brother-in-law Phil (Richard Warwick), whose own seemingly perfect marriage fuels much of Laura's insecurity...



This episode of A Fine Romance - which, appropriately enough, was the pilot - is posted here today in memory of Michael Williams, who died on this day in 2001.  In addition to various stage and screen collaborations, their 30 year marriage produced a daughter, known as Finty Williams; Williams also has a son named Sam.
*
share on: facebook

In Memoriam: Alexander Hamilton

The more I read of Ron Chernow's massive biography Alexander Hamilton - which is one of those books where the more you read the more it seems there is of it to read - the more obvious it becomes that Hamilton's life and achievements warrant every word; 300 pages in and I find myself dreading the arrival of page 731, where it ends, almost as much as I fear that once I get there the ending will have somehow been moved back another 200 pages!

Born on this day in either 1755 or 1757 (record-keeping in those days being so much more conducive to myth-making than it is today) Hamilton's shocking early life - he was born, for instance, out of wedlock - or rather his zeal to overcome its stigma, seems to have motivated him to achieve as much as he did. Fortunately, his ambition was wedded to precocity and he lived in such interesting times that he was able to; alas, his predilection for scandalous behaviour must have been inborn. Even today he is not as fondly remembered as he might be because of it.

Orphaned in 1768, he arrived in New York City to study at King's College (the forerunner to Columbia University) in 1773; there he was soon embroiled in the cause of American Independence following the Boston Tea Party, which occurred within months of his arrival in the Thirteen Colonies.

As the first shots were being fired at the Battle of Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts he joined a New York militia company called the Hearts of Oak in 1775; the following year he distinguished himself at the Battle of Harlem Heights, and thereafter he became close friend and confidante of General George Washington, whom he served as Chief of Staff.

As one of the most learned and eloquent framers of the US Constitution, Hamilton's imprimatur was all over the new government after September 1789; though officially he was the first Secretary of the Treasury (and so one of only two non-Presidents still featured on US currency - the other being the redoubtable Benjamin Franklin) his vision of a strong central government, advocacy for the placement of the capital at the site where it is today, and push for the creation of the US Coast Guard, represent just some of his positive innovations. He was also one of the founders of the Federalist Party; the introduction of the partisan element to American politics can be considered one of his negative contributions.

Already the principal author of the Federalist Papers, a series of essays which went a long way toward defining the new nation, in 1801 Hamilton founded the New-York Evening Post.

Yet even at this pinnacle, scandal was waiting to unseat him; his reputation was badly damaged by a liaison he conducted with Maria Reynolds which at one point involved his being blackmailed by her husband. Already married to Elizabeth Schuyler himself (since 1780) the whole mess caused Hamilton's resignation, which became the young Republic's first sex scandal; fortunately his enemies (who by now were legion) had no access to the wartime letters Hamilton had exchanged with either John Laurens or the Marquis de Lafayette - laden as they were with allusions to 'the unspeakable vice of the Greeks*' - or things would have been much worse.

In the end, of course, it was yet another scandal which brought about Hamilton's death; easily the most famous duel in US history, in July 1804 tensions between himself and Vice-President Aaron Burr which had been simmering for years boiled over when Hamilton slandered Burr by implying he'd been involved in an act of incest. They met at the Heights of Weehawken (New York state had long since outlawed duelling, but New Jersey hadn't) where Burr fatally shot his nemesis.

Hamilton was removed to his country estate, The Grange, where he died of his injuries the following day, July 12th; he was 49. The home where he died is now preserved as a museum.

*Butt sex between two dudes.
*
share on: facebook

"No More Drama" by Mary J. Blige

While in the past the video for No More Drama had been unavailable to me for embedding - forcing me to rely on an entirely adequate live performance in lieu of it in 2009 - on this day in 2010 I received a pleasant surprise... As I was engaged in my usual hunting and gathering for the day's posts there, in all her diva glory, was Mary J. Blige and the embed code for her very moving video!

The title track of Blige's 2001 fifth album No More Drama, produced by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, was the second single from the album, and climbed charts around the world; featuring a sample of Nadia's Theme (more popularly known as the theme to the soap opera The Young and the Restless), the song's message is one which is eagerly embraced by the Pop Culture Institute, the majority of whose drama involves finding and keeping videos posted despite the constant depredation on them by various ill-willed record labels.
*
share on: facebook

The House of Grimaldi: The Death of Honoré II

It was under the rule of Honoré II that the Lords of Monaco became Princes, which titular distinction they still hold today; other than that, an eerie resemblance to Ron Jeremy and a brief biographical outline are about all that we know about the first royal Grimaldi. Yet within those few details of a life is enough excitement for several Hollywood films - or else one European one...

Born on Christmas Eve 1597 to Hercule, Lord of Monaco, and Maria Landi, Honoré's father was murdered when the boy was just six, at which time he ascended to the throne of Monaco under the stewardship of his uncle Frederico Landi, prince of Val di Taro; his uncle's loyalty to the Spanish meant that Monaco would be occupied by Spanish troops, which occupation would endure until 1614.

Monaco's traditional allegiance with France was later upheld by Honoré II, who sought the support and protection of Louis XIII, resulting in the Treaty of Péronne in 1641; as a result of this, Honoré lost his Spanish titles, for which he was compensated with the title Duke of Valentinois, a title still borne by the Princes of Monaco today.

In February 1616 Honore married Ippolita Trivulzio, which marriage resulted in the births of at least four children: Louis, Maria Ippolita, Giovanna Maria, and Teresa Maria. Honoré II died on this day in 1662, at which time he was succeeded by his son, who became Louis I.
*
share on: facebook

"We Belong" by Pat Benatar

In the video for We Belong, from her 1984 album Tropico, Pat Benatar is great with child; a rare ballad for the leather-lunged Queen of Stadium Rock, the song was her last major hit. Still, it's a pretty good swan song for a career that entailed thousands of concert appearances and millions of records sold; which makes it the ideal song to finish out a hat trick of videos for her birthday.
*
share on: facebook

In Memoriam: Sal Mineo

His breakthrough role in the film Rebel Without A Cause (1955) is haunting still, likely because his own tragic end contributed in its way to the film's reputed 'curse'; like Mineo himself, his costars James Dean and Natalie Wood also met untimely deaths.

Born in The Bronx on this day in 1939, Sal Mineo began attending acting and dancing schools at a young age with the support of his mother; he appeared on Broadway in Tennessee Williams' play The Rose Tattoo (1950) and opposite Yul Brynner and Gertrude Lawrence in The King and I (1951).

Following the success of Rebel it was easy for Hollywood to typecast him, and he subsequently played a string of juvenile delinquents, even though his character in that film was no delinquent himself. Late in his career he was still being typecast, more often than not as outright criminals.

Mineo recorded a string of songs in the mid-Fifties - two of which went as high as the Top 40 - and later he further demonstrated his musical abilities by playing the drummer Gene Krupa in the 1957 movie The Gene Krupa Story. As suddenly as his star had risen, though, so did it fall; his last film role came after a long respite from Hollywood (during which time he appeared in plays and on television) when he played Dr. Milo in Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971).

Mineo was murdered in February 1976 during a botched mugging; his killer, Lionel Ray Williams, was sentenced to life in prison but was paroled in 1990.
*
share on: facebook

The Late, Great Paul Lynde

These twinks today have it so easy; they have so damn many role models it isn't even funny. When I was earning my fairy wings in the Seventies all we had were Charles Nelson Reilly and Paul Lynde; fortunately for all concerned, though, both of them were hilariously funny.

While I loved them both like the gay uncles I never had (and one day hope to become) Lynde was by far my favourite, probably because he was more overtly bitchy; it took me a long time to get over that predilection. There are those who might say I have a long time yet - these are the real bitches.

In addition to his portrayal of Uncle Arthur on Bewitched, Lynde became notorious for his appearances on Hollywood Squares, in which he was so camp they could have changed his name to KOA. His caustic one-liners are today the stuff of legend.

When he died, on this day in 1982, his body was discovered by Paul Barresi, a man who would later have as great an impact on my adult life as Paul Lynde had on my childhood. Lynde was only 55 at the time, but the coroner who examined him said his heart was that of a man in his 80s; a lifetime of drinking (and, it was rumoured, amyl nitrate) meant that one of the funniest men of the 20th Century likely self-medicated himself to death.
*
share on: facebook

"Shadows Of The Night" by Pat Benatar

From Pat Benatar's 1982 rock/New Wave hybrid album Get Nervous, it's Shadows of the Night, with its cool WWII-era inspired video, costarring the then-unknown actors Judge Reinhold and Bill Paxton; keeping in mind, this video was released two years before Jonathan Demme's film Swing Shift, starring Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell, with which it shares an ethos.
*
share on: facebook

Remembering... Paul Henreid

In the 1942 film Now, Voyager - a perennial favourite of ours here at the Pop Culture Institute - suave European Paul Henreid romanced the plain Boston spinster right out of Bette Davis and left in her place a soigne Back Bay socialite; in the process he committed one of the greatest moments in the American cinema to celluloid. By lighting two cigarettes at the same time and handing one to her, he made a necessarily chaste scene - especially in light of that era's repressive on-screen censorship - undeniably erotic...

Later that year he played Victor Laszlo, the hero Ingrid Bergman would have forsaken for the cad played by Humphrey Bogart but - in the end, and due entirely to Bogie's sacrifice - didn't, in Casablanca. It was a role with which Henreid was already familiar, having escaped deportation from England to his homeland (and almost certain incarceration) thanks to the intercession of his colleague Conrad Veidt.

Few careers in Hollywood have opened with that kind of one-two punch; while none of his subsequent work would be as beloved as these two roles, his success in them afforded Henreid - born in Austria on this day in 1908 - that most priceless of assets: star quality.

Which is not to say that Henreid wasn't admired right up until his death in March 1992; he's one of the few people to have received two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for film and another for television.
*
share on: facebook

Pop History Moment: The London Underground Opens

It was on this day in 1863 when, thanks to the efforts of Charles Pearson, Londoners first began minding the gap...

The original portion of the Underground (popularly known as the Tube), ran between Paddington and Farringdon; it's still in service today as part of the Hammersmith and City line, and is coloured salmon on current maps.

30-40,000 passengers were carried that first day, on steam-powered trains which ran every ten minutes; electric trains were first introduced in 1890. From those humble beginnings, the London Underground has grown into the longest in the world, with 400 km (250 miles) of track serving a similarly record-setting 270 stations, which between them see 1 billion passengers every year*. Understandably, with that many users, the tube map itself has become as iconic as the symbol you see above.

*Only the systems in Paris and Moscow see more.
*
share on: facebook

"Love Is A Battlefield" by Pat Benatar

It was one of the MTV era's first smash hits, a story video so perfectly melded with a solid pop-rock song that even today, if played at any venue where Gen-Xers are assembled, all will fall into its dance steps as if by habit.

Love is a Battlefield featured the first electronic elements of any Pat Benatar song, signalling the deep inroads European pop had made into the world of American rock; originally appearing on her 1983 album Live from Earth both the song and the video were so popular as to be ubiquitous.
*

share on: facebook

Happy Birthday Pat Benatar

Every so often there's an event here at the Pop Culture Institute that gets me as excited as Dick Cheney at a Halliburton shareholders' meeting; today it's the birthday of a woman whose incendiary voice and incandescent stage presence blazed a trail for women in music...

The 1970s was the era of cock rock: big hair, tight clothes, soaring falsettos... And those were the men! In the midst of it all - 1977 to be exact - came a diminutive Polish-Irish hybrid from Staten Island who showed everyone (regardless of chromosomes) how it was done.

In 1979 Pat Benatar's debut single Heartbreaker raced up the charts; that first album, In the Heat of the Night, also yielded the single We Live For Love. The hits continued: 1980's Crimes of Passion gave us Treat Me Right, You Better Run, Hell Is For Children, a cover of Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights, and a single so blazing it still has the power to wow: Hit Me with Your Best Shot.

Having not merely overcome her sophomore slump but kicked it to death, Benatar and her guitarist husband Neil Giraldo continued to churn out the hits; 1981's Precious Time featured Fire & Ice and Promises in the Dark, and 1982's Get Nervous Anxiety (Get Nervous), Looking For a Stranger, Little Too Late, as well as that year's ubiquitous Shadows of the Night.

In 1983 Benatar brought her live show to all those who couldn't get to it, with the album Live from Earth, which featured 2 studio tracks, including her masterwork Love is a Battlefield; that single also appeared in 1984's Tropico, along with We Belong.

By the time her seventh album in seven years - aptly entitled Seven the Hard Way - appeared it was time for Benatar to pull back. After promoting the singles Sex as A Weapon and Invincible (which was far more memorable than the movie it was written for, The Legend of Billie Jean) Benatar took three years off to rest and spend time with her young family.

Since then she's released five more albums, only one of which charted any singles - All Fired Up, from the 1989 compilation album Best Shots, was big in the UK - even as they charted new territory for her artistically. Currently she lives in a remote location on Maui, where she farms organically with her husband and two daughters, Haley and Hana.
*
share on: facebook

POPnews - January 10th

[Even though some of his adventures are unavailable due to the censorious nature of political correctness, those Tintin books still being reprinted continue to delight fans more than eighty years after they first began appearing.]
49 BCE - Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon, sparking both a civil war and a cliché.

681 CE - Pope Agatho died; he was succeeded by Leo II who, although he'd been elected shortly after his predecessor's death, wouldn't be crowned until August of the following year.

1276 - Pope Gregory X died; he was succeeded by Innocent V eleven days later.

1475 - Moldavia's Prince Stephen III defeated the Ottoman Empire's Hadân Suleiman Pasha at the Battle of Vaslui, near the town of Vaslui in what is now eastern Romania.

1645 - Archbishop of Canterbury William Laud was beheaded at the Tower of London for opposing Puritanism and for his support of King Charles I.

1662 - Monaco's ruling Prince Honoré II died; he was succeeded by his son, Louis I.

1776 - Thomas Paine published his famous pamphlet Common Sense.

1810 - The marriage of Napoleon Bonaparte and Josephine de Beauharnais was annulled.

1842 - Sir Charles Bagot arrived in Kingston to become Governor-General of what was then the newly-created Province of Canada, succeeding Lord Sydenham; although ordered by the British government to resist the colonist's demand for responsible government, Bagot did allow Robert Baldwin and Sir Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine to form a ministry on the basis of their parliamentary majority.

1863 - The London Underground, the world's oldest underground railway, opened between London Paddington station and Farringdon station.

1901 - The first great Texas oil gusher was discovered at Spindletop in Beaumont.

1922 - Arthur Griffith was elected President of the Irish Free State.

1927 - Fritz Lang's cinematic masterpiece, Metropolis, had its world premiere in Berlin.

1929 - The comic book character Tintin, by Hergé, made his debut in Tintin in the Land of the Soviets.

1942 - Elizabeth Monk and Suzanne Pilon became the first female lawyers in Quebec.

1957 - HM The Queen invited Chancellor of the Exchequer Harold Macmillan to become Prime Minister of Great Britain following the resignation of Sir Anthony Eden over his mishandling of the Suez Crisis.

1962 - As part of its Apollo Project, NASA announced plans to build the C-5 rocket booster, which later became better known as the Saturn V moon rocket, and which would be used to launch all 17 Apollo moon missions.

1971 - Masterpiece Theatre premiered on PBS.

1982 - The Freezer Bowl - the NFL's coldest game in terms of wind chill, at -37°F - was won by the Cincinnati Bengals who defeated the San Diego Chargers 27-7 and advanced to Super Bowl XVI.
*
share on: facebook

"Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue" by Crystal Gayle

Birthday wishes go out today to Crystal Gayle, whose 1977 country hit Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue achieved considerable crossover success - owing in part to the lady herself, whose classiness in interviews, concerts, and public appearances endeared her to many...

The youngest of eight children and sister to fellow country music legend Loretta Lynn, Gayle's career has been more low-key* than that of her iconic sibling, but has still seen its great moments: We Must Believe in Magic - the album which spawned the monster hit shown above - was the first by a female country artist to be certified platinum**, Gayle herself became the first person in history to record a television concert on the Great Wall of China and, on a personal note, she teamed up with Pop Culture Institute favourite Tom Waits to record the soundtrack*** for Francis Ford Coppola's 1982 film, One from the Heart.

While it might not seem like much to the casual observer, it was during the period of Gayle's collaboration with Waits that he met his future wife, Kathleen Brennan - a relationship which would cause the paradigm shift in Waits' music that brought about the end of the so-called Asylum Years of his early career and inspired the more innovative work he's done since, a process of ongoing experimentation which has expanded the frontiers of American popular music in ways too numerous to mention.

Wait! What were we talking about? Oh yeah... Pretty song, pretty lady, happy birthday!

*And certainly far less controversial!
**No doubt helped as much by its #1 position on the country charts as its #2 position on the pop charts.
***For which Waits would earn an Academy Award nomination in the category of Best Musical Score.
*
share on: facebook

Happy Birthday Your Potential Highness

I had almost convinced myself that, after an eight-year on-again off-again engagement any announcement Our Wills was planning to marry birthday gal Kate Middleton was going to seem anti-climactic - until, that is, the news came in December 2010...  Even now that it's had time to sink in those of us who feel it's our business are still going ever so slightly ape-shit!

Prince William was on the record as saying that he'd like to marry at the age of 28, which age he turned in June 2010; official reports (meaning wags at the British tabloids) had long claimed that the marriage would take place in 2011 - in advance of the whole brouhaha in 2012 of the Olympics and the Queen's Diamond Jubilee.  We now know the date will be April 29th.

In the meantime all that remains for the rest of us is to watch and wait...
*
share on: facebook

"Diamonds and Rust" by Joan Baez

Birthday wishes go out today to Joan Baez whose greatest success was born of the folk revival of the 1960s, and whose stamina for performance and activism thankfully remains undimmed...

Diamonds & Rust was one of her biggest hits; written in 1975, it recalls an event from a decade earlier in which she meets her lover at a seedy motel in Greenwich Village. But who exactly is the lover? There are those - even Baez herself - who seem to think the song is about Bob Dylan, but then she's done what she can to muddy this by counter-claiming the song is about her ex-husband David Harris.

Personally, I don't think it matters, as the song itself is a poignant reminiscence about a lost time and an equally lost love into which the listener can easily project their own time, place, and lover...
*
share on: facebook

"Tableau" by Countee Cullen

Locked arm in arm they cross the way,
The black boy and the white,
The golden splendor of the day,
The sable pride of night.
From lowered blinds the dark folk stare
And here the fair folk talk,
Indignant that these two should dare
In unison to walk.
Oblivious to look and word
They pass, and see no wonder
That lightning brilliant as a sword
Should blaze the path of thunder.
*
share on: facebook

Remembering... Countee Cullen

When he died - on this day in 1946 at the age of only 43 - Countee Cullen was among the foremost black writers in the world; although he said he strove to be a poet first and a black poet second, his work is rife with black imagery (as it would be) and he can reasonably be thought of as a poet who happened to be black.

One of the few writers acclaimed during the Harlem Renaissance to have outlived the hype, Cullen's childhood is shrouded in mystery. He is now thought to have been born in Louisville, but abandoned by his mother as an infant; he made his way to Harlem, where at the age of fifteen he was adopted by Frederick Ashbury Cullen, pastor of Harlem's Salem Methodist Episcopal Church and co-founder of the National Urban League.

Having shown promise as a poet from a young age, Cullen never contemplated any other career; following his graduation from the mostly white DeWitt Clinton High School, he attended New York University. As he had in high school, at university he worked for the school publication, joined Phi Beta Kappa, and was awarded the Witter Bynner Undergraduate Poetry Prize.

While still an undergraduate Cullen began working for The Crisis, under W. E. B. Du Bois, who would one day become his father-in-law; he later obtained his Master's degree from Harvard.

In 1928 Cullen married Nina Du Bois, but the marriage broke after just two months when he and the best man went to Europe on his honeymoon, leaving Nina behind. He would later marry Ida Mae Roberson and, despite his affairs with other men, seems to have been more considerate of her feelings. That same year Cullen was named a Guggenheim Fellow.

Though his life was short his career while alive was prodigious: he published 7 books of poetry, 3 novels (including 1931's One Way To Heaven), and in the last year of his life also wrote a play. His sudden death - of uremia and high blood pressure - was a shock to the literary community.
*
share on: facebook

"The Rain, The Park and Other Things" by The Cowsills

Today would have been the 63rd birthday of Bill Cowsill, lead singer, guitarist, and founding member of the 1960s group The Cowsills, whose sweet harmonies charted three hits during that decade's folk music revival, of which this was arguably the biggest; The Rain, The Park and Other Things reached #2 in the US in 1967. The other two were 1968's Indian Lake, and 1969's Hair, the title track from the musical. The band was the inspiration for TV's classic show The Partridge Family; their sound is generally described as bubblegum pop.

Later a fixture of the Vancouver and Calgary music scenes - and key in the development of the alt-country movement founded in those two cities - throughout the 1980s and 90s (where he would mentor singer-songwriter Jann Arden) Bill Cowsill died in Calgary in February 2006 of emphysema, following a long battle with drug addiction. He was also afflicted with Cushing's syndrome and osteoporosis.
*
share on: facebook

"I'm Afraid Of Americans" by David Bowie

I figured since it's David Bowie's birthday, and since I'd already shown a 70s video and an 80s video, I'd better now show a 90s video of his - in this case I'm Afraid of Americans, from the 1997 album Earthling; lest those of you out there who are sensitive to such things become overwrought and insensible with worry that either Bowie or I are engaged in even more (or, indeed, any) America-bashing I should first let you know that the title is ironic. The clues are subtle, but they're there:

• the song comes from an album called Earthling, which Bowie clearly is not, so how could a song he wrote with that title also be literal
• it was written and recorded in 1997, when Americans were much less scary than they would become circa 2001-2006
  
• in it, Bowie is in collaboration with industrial music pioneer and noted American Trent Reznor, of Nine Inch Nails fame
• since Bowie doesn't appear to be afraid of Trent Reznor he's probably not afraid of anyone
  
• Bowie lives at least part of the year in New York City, a well-known place in America
• as the song's lyricist and co-composer (alongside Brian Eno) he says it's not - therefore he should know - and,
• it just isn't, okay?!?
  

If anything, the song (and especially its video) satirizes the paranoia with which much of the rest of the world views America and its people, seemingly inured to the horribility of their own populations. After all, as the lyric says 'I'm afraid of Americans / I'm afraid of the world'; let's not forget kids, it's not Americans that are awful, it's humans in general...

I hope that helps put your collective minds at ease...
*

share on: facebook

Prince Albert Victor: The Lost King

The tradition of disappointed heirs to the throne is one of the British Crown's most durable ones. Edward VII was already an old man before he succeeded Queen Victoria; as great as he eventually became, at first George VI's appeal was a pale shadow of Edward VIII's popularity; Elizabeth II's youth was sacrificed to duty; and even the current Prince of Wales has waited and waited*...

In his own generation, Prince Albert Victor - son of the future Edward VII and Queen Alexandra - was intended to be King, only to die young and thrust an unprepared George V onto the throne. Fortunately, the British Crown has another tradition, that of those who ascend it to not merely rise to the occasion but exceed all expectations...

Yet another of the Royal Family's redoubtable traditions is that each of its generations has a member whose memory is plagued by scandal, and in this case Prince Albert Victor more than fills the bill. Already considered a suspect in the Jack the Ripper murders when they began to occur in August 1888, from the moment the Cleveland Street Scandal broke in July 1889, his name was forever linked to the last royal taboo, namely that of homosexuality - the mere existence of which is seen as the principal threat to an organization founded on heredity.

Although widely travelled as a naval cadet at a time when most people lived and died within five miles of where they were born, the Prince known to his family as Eddy was far from worldly, with even his kindest biographers referring to him as 'thick'. Born on this day in 1864 at Frogmore House (located in the Home Park near Windsor Castle) early on the Prince's tutor John Neale Dalton referred to his pupil's brain as 'abnormally dormant', whereupon it was suggested that a military career was likely the best option. It wasn't. No matter what the field of study, Eddy was ill-suited to learning, and from a young age expressed grave misgivings about fulfilling the role he was expected to undertake.

By 1891 his grandmother the Queen had brokered a marriage between Eddy and an impoverished German Princess, Mary of Teck; before they could be wed, though, Eddy perished in an influenza pandemic in January 1892...

During the customary mourning period the ill-fated fiancee became friendly with her former paramour's brother, the Duke of York, and rather than letting an eminently suitable Protestant bride go to waste, the pair initially united in an official show of grief were soon also united in matrimony in the Chapel Royal at St. James's Palace**.

Eddy's legacy, then, wasn't a disappointing reign which may have ended in the abolition of the monarchy but the only honourable setting aside of an unsuitable heir in favour of one whose solid foundation has kept the House of Windsor in power even as their cousins across Europe have fallen from grace.

*And is bloody well gonna keep on waiting, if I have anything to say about it...
**So successful was their marriage that George V became one of the first English monarchs to never take a mistress.
*

share on: facebook

In Memoriam: Wilkie Collins

In many ways the popular Victorian novelists Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens functioned as mirrors of each other; each wildly successful in their times, each responsible for overly-sentimental, verbose, and even maudlin yet hugely popular works, and each plagued by illness which fated them to premature deaths, today the latter and his works are studied with a fervour bordering on the obsessive while the former languishes in a semi-forgotten state that is in its way as tragic as the lives of any of the fictional heroines he created.

So why the discrepancy? Possibly Collins' bohemianism didn't sit well with the generation that came after him - the one whose role it was to assess his legacy. While Dickens married young and had children as he frantically wrote himself to death, Collins never married, preferring instead to shack up with a widow named Caroline Graves; also, while Dickens suffered his deteriorating health with a stoicism the Victorians would have considered brave, Collins dealt with his by taking increasing doses of laudanum - so much, in fact, that he not only hallucinated but invented himself a subjective doppelgänger he called 'Ghost Wilkie'.

In fact, much of Collins' 1868 novel The Moonstone was written without his recollection of having written it; I had a similar reaction when I read his 1859 novel The Woman in White, only my memory lapse wasn't caused by laudanum, but rather by Byzantine Victorian verbiage and a heroic quantity of THC. But I digress...

Bornin London on this day in 1824, Collins' father was the landscape artist William Collins; when he was a teenager Collins' family lived in Italy, which left an indelible impression on him. Originally employed as a clerk, after the failure of his first novel Iolani Collins studied law at Lincoln's Inn. When his second novel Antonina was a greater success in 1850 Collins began taking his writing career more seriously. It was following his fateful meeting of Dickens in 1851 that Collins went to work on the more successful author's Household Words; by the time his next few novels had been serialized in All the Year Round Collins' fame was assured. By the time he died in September 1889 he'd published 27 novels, more than 50 short stories, at least 15 plays, and over 100 pieces of non-fiction work. All of which makes his subsequent obscurity all the more odd...

The resurrection of Wilkie Collins began when Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick gave their son James the middle name of Wilkie; while it might not seem like much to most people with lives, it was a big deal to the blogocracy when it occurred in October 2002, and was much commented upon. In fact, it was in reaction to this event that I first read The Woman in White - which fact I'm only partially ashamed to admit.
*
share on: facebook

"Cracked Actor" by David Bowie

David Bowie's song Cracked Actor was originally released on his 1973 album Aladdin Sane; this footage of him performing it is derived from a 1974 documentary of the same name, made by Alan Yentob for the BBC series Omnibus.

The song's shocking story and frank lyrics are as redolent of the 1970s as Bowie's costumes and cocaine-addled demeanour, and point to the genius of the man which continues to grow, even as he passes his 64th birthday today.
*

share on: facebook

World City-Zen: Monaco

Monaco is a place which has long exerted a pull on my interest - and I'm not alone; first settled in the Paleolithic era as early as 300,000 years ago, by the sixth century BCE it was the site of a Phocaean Greek colony where a temple to Hercules was built, which temple gave the area the name Monoikos (or 'lone-dweller') from whence its current name is derived. This Mediterranean-adjacent jewel located in the south of France passed from empire to empire until 1191 when it was granted by Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI to Genoa; a fortress was begun atop the Rock of Monaco in June 1215, from which time the modern history of Monaco can be said to begin.

François Grimaldi captured Monaco on this day in 1297, since which time the city state has been continually in the possession of the House of Grimaldi; while Monaco itself has gradually evolved itself into a principality so has its ruling family evolved into a princely one. Nominally under the protection of France - without whom it and its tax-free status could not exist - Monaco has chiefly been ruled by absentee rulers, who preferred their decadent life at Versailles and Paris over a life of despotism in the sleepy, if lovely, village from which their power and station were derived.

The Franco-Monegasque Treaty of 1861 was the first to formalize this relationship, which has since been refined numerous times, especially whenever the succession has been in question - as it was in 1918. In fact, the parlous state of the Monegasque succession is still a worry, given the propensity of its rulers for philandering and their seeming unwillingness to produce heirs within wedlock.

It was Louis II who first took a hands-on interest in his most important holding, although the modern state is almost entirely the creation of his grandson and successor Rainier III; Prince Rainier did more than diversify Monaco's economy, he put the place front and centre in the world's imagination when, in April 1956, he married the glamourous actress and humanitarian Grace Kelly. Miss Kelly, in fact, did her part to put Monaco on the map even before she'd met the Prince, when she starred in Alfred Hitchcock's 1955 fim To Catch a Thief, opposite Cary Grant.
*

share on: facebook