pingouin's New Writeups

September 29, 2001 (idea)

2001-09-29T12:31:58Z

I need to clean out my Message Inbox and start afresh; if I haven't responded to you in the past year, don't take it personally -- it's hard to get in a noding groove (or /msg groove) when large chunks of your day are spent juggling three projects, hunting four boogs, and answering five questions. Grooveless I have been. It's not the kind of workplace that would frown upon my noding; the suits, who would object, hand down their memos from on high and wouldn't know me from a delivery person anyway.

So I've got this huge backlog of msgs that make me dread looking at the Inbox (you have 177 more messages); to save time, my reply to you (yes, you -- you know who you are) is somewhere in this handy-dandy list of replies.

"Yes, I know."
"No problem, I don't mind."
"Yes, I read it, and liked it. Very good."
"We begin bombing in five minutes."
"That was due to the old E1 512-byte limitation on writeups."

…

This Diamond Ring (thing)

2001-09-26T13:23:07Z

A song from the young, aspiring, floundering Brill Building trio of Al Kooper, Bob Brass, and Irwin Levine. An interview excerpt from Stephen Bishop's book Songs in the Rough:

Stephen Bishop: "This Diamond Ring" must have been written about 1964 or 1965?

Al Kooper: I would think 1962 or 1963.

SB: That early?

AK: Yeah. It didn't come out until later, but we wrote it in 1962 or 1963. We wrote it for The Drifters.

SB: Did you do a demo of it back then?

AK: We did. It was a black demo. My friend Jimmy Radcliffe sang the demo.

SB: When you look back at that now, how do you feel about it? Do you feel proud of it?

AK: I always hated the Gary Lewis record, because it was an R&B song and they took all the soul out of it. Later, I cut it on an album of mine Act Like Nothing Is Wrong (United Artists -- December '76), and…

It's a crime, not a war. (idea)

2001-09-21T16:21:29Z

If this, written by Russ Nelson (nelson@crynwr.com), has already been posted, let me know, and I'll ~~nuke~~ get rid of it.

I don't often [ab]use my position as the publisher of content on www.quaker.org. Today, I feel led to do so.

The people who did this have committed a crime, not an act of war. Friends should encourage people to think of it this way. Instead of giving in to the war fever, instead of listening to the media's cries of "WAR!", we should be looking for evidence and clues. And we should present those to a court, possibly the court of public opinion. The criminal should be given his chance in court, just like all criminals in a free society.

Perhaps the criminal is being sheltered by a rogue state. If that is the case, then maybe, just maybe a military action will be needed to extract the criminal from its protection. But again, it won't be a war, it will be an enforcement action.

It…

Al Ferrara (person)

2001-09-17T23:19:47Z

Born 1939. Nicknamed "The Bull", a home-run hitter's name, for in his large (for that era) frame lay the promise of homers galore. In reality, he became a journeyman National League outfielder in the 60's (can you say "late-inning replacement"? I knew you could). He mostly kept the benches warm, when at the major league level, for the Los Angeles Dodgers, playing a (very) small part in their 1963, 1965, and 1966 NL championship seasons -- he probably didn't do enough to qualify for Dodgers World Series rings in '63 and '65, having only 125 combined at-bats. In his only post-season appearance, he had a pinch-hit single in the '66 Series.

He gained significant playing time in 1967 (though none in '68), but this was the beginning of LA's post-Koufax, post-Drysdale descent into utter mediocrity. Ferrara was rescued by an even worse fate -- he became one of the original…

That Ragged Old Flag (thing)

2001-09-17T13:06:11Z

There was one of them, "Ragged Old Flag" that I didn't even have any control over. It came out faster than I could write it down. You've heard of people who write a song in ten minutes. "Ragged Old Flag" was one of those songs. Then I recorded it at a Columbia luncheon at the House Of Cash and the applause is from the Columbia recording people who where in convention there. Chuck Cochran arranged the most unusual orchestration (and Earl Scruggs played the banjo). -- Johnny Cash

In the spring and summer of 1974, you couldn't avoid hearing this spoken-word-plus-accompaniment (the obvious fife and drums, etc., and a kitchen-sink, encyclopedic approach to 4th-of-July music, IIRC) on your local country radio station, and it also ascended into the lower reaches of the Top 40 charts. Inspired, loosely, by the Byron MacGregor hit version of Gordon Sinclair's "The Americans" (a.k.a. …

Magazine (thing)

2001-07-26T15:08:00Z

The old E1 "Magazine (the band)" node. Adjust your hard-links accordingly.

Howard Devoto's post-Buzzcocks band, taking their ethos further, into the realm of art-rock, with the addition of keyboards and songs about "My Tulpa" and such. They had their greatest success with Magic, Murder, and the Weather, and the geeky-Motown "About the Weather", but rather than cash in on what could have been a lucrative run of hits, Devoto shut the thing down. Alumni include John McGeoch and Ben Mandelson of Siouxsie and the Banshees, and composer Barry Adamson.