"They'd better check out the whole life before they give something like that. Rescinding shames the organization. By the way — for legal folks — did they rescind the offer before he accepted? Also, it's stupid to give a 'lifetime' award for someone who's associated with ONE song. I know there's at least one other Don McLean song, the one about Van Gogh (an artist who limited his domestic violence to his own body), but McLean isn't a 'lifetime' sort of achiever."
A comment I made over on Facebook, where my son John posted a link to "Lifetime Achievement Award Announced Then Rescinded For Don McLean" ("A lifetime achievement award has been offered — and rescinded — for 'American Pie' singer Don McLean.... McLean pleaded guilty to domestic violence assault, which was dismissed after he met the terms of a plea agreement").
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55 comments:
I cant remember if I cried
When I read about his battered bride
But something touched me deep inside
The day the lifetime achievement award died.
So, let me get this straight. Polanki rapes a young woman, then skips bail and flees the USA but he gets standing O's and Academy Awards. But MacLean can't get an award because of "domestic Violence" which resulted in no jail time.
BTW, the only award he should have gotten is the "Boomer Self-pity Award" - I hate that song. American Pie = crap.
I still love the song.
Best video of it is the Grand Rapids lip dub.
https://youtu.be/ZPjjZCO67WI
It always makes me think of my Bultaco Pursang. I loved that scoot.
John Henry
I never understood what was good about the song besides giving the DJ an extended bathroom break.
I like the song but don't understand the award.
OK. UCLA students who are pretty dense.
I once infiltrated their card stunt section and changed the card stunts at half time.
Soon only the Perfect, I.e., loyal Democrats, will be allowed to receive any award.
The song is just OK in a hootenanny sort of way, but Weird Al’s parody is hilarious.
Lifetime Contingency Award
Why do people use “pleaded”, not “pled”, “lighted”, not “lit”, “wreaked”, not “wrought”, & c., & c.?
Always liked the song, it's fun to sing along to. My high school English teacher (sophomore year) spent a few days class time analyzing the lyrics (felt like weeks) but gave up because none of us miscreants would take the analysis seriously. We just wanted to sing.
American Pie is the only notable song contribution MacLean created. Hardly constitutes a 'Lifetime Achievement'. If there were a Shooting Star award, this would qualify. One hit Wonder?
Is there a bloggers Hall of Fame?
Top lady!
“wreaked”, not “wrought”
Because wrought means worked.
I liked "Castles in the Air" and, the very best of his songs, "And I Love You So". The Perry Como version of that second song has been occasionally used as background music on a few Korean dramas I've watched, which is always a bit weird to hear like that.
Ahh, I see the woke Left crowd is now trying to hold rock n rollers to this high, ex post facto moral standard. Nice!
Have they heard of Ike and Tina Turner? They need to abolish all of Ike's records. Had a violent streak.
DeVinci’s Notebook sings “Enormous Penis”
Now that’s a great song!
Past recipients included Julie Andrews, Ella Fitzgerald and Ray Charles.
Ray Charles had 12 children with ten different women, only one of those women did he marry. If we're keeping score, Ray Charles harmed more people, and society, more seriously than Terry Jacks. I mean Don McLean.
He also recorded a beautiful ballad called the Mountains of Moor.
At some point we became as a country unable to appreciate people's professional accomplishments because of their private acts. In the days of Ty Cobb, Errol Flynn, Billie Holiday, we could admire them for what they did on the field or screen or stage, even while we did not necessarily approve of their private lives. Perhaps (Fatty Arbuckle? Dalton Trumbo?) there has never been a clear bright line, but it does seem that we've moved that line so that private actions trump public accomplishments in many many cases. I guess private divorce is ok as long as its for the right reasons, and drug use is ok as long as it doesn't lead to racist or misogynistic actions.
@ Molly
The rap on Ty Cobb is all bullshit. Fabricated by a hostile newspaper writer.
Re: McLean.......Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy!
"“wreaked”, not “wrought”"Because wrought means worked."
This got me poking around in the OED and into the specific phrase "wreak havoc," and this (in the entry for "work"):
"P8. to work havoc: to cause destruction, chaos, or disorder; to wreak havoc.
Frequently with work in past tense or past participle form wrought, which is sometimes interpreted as the past tense or past participle of wreak; cf. wreak v. 8b."
I think that means: The present-tense phrase is/should be "work havoc," but people started saying "wreak havoc" because they saw the past tense, "wrought havoc" and wrongly imagined that the present-tense was "wreak." Interesting!!
And through this route, the word "wreak" acquired new meaning, like "work" — "To cause or effect (harm, damage, etc.)."
So what's the original meaning of "wreak"? The OED says, " To drive, banish..." (going back to Old English) and then "To give expression to (a feeling)" and "To avenge, and related uses."
"I guess private divorce is ok as long as its for the right reasons, and drug use is ok as long as it doesn't lead to racist or misogynistic actions."
Are you being sarcastic? Its hard to tell on the internet. Because if you aren't...
Wrought Iron. Not Wrecked Iron.
"never understood what was good about the song besides giving the DJ an extended bathroom break."
Same here. I got pretty tired of "rock 'n' roll" that didn't actually rock.
Trust the art, not the artist.
Blogger Bay Area Guy said...
Have they heard of Ike and Tina Turner? They need to abolish all of Ike's records. Had a violent streak.
He beat Tina Turner to death!
I've had a crush on Tina Turner since the 60's
Still do.
John Henry
Blogger Mary Beth (the commenter) said...
I liked "Castles in the Air" and, the very best of his songs, "And I Love You So".
Great songs both. I never knew he wrote them.
Thanks for increasing my knowledge base, Mary Beth.
John Henry
Don McLean is a well-known dirtbag but if this is the new standard for awards in the entertainment industry then they might as well stop giving them out now.
"American Pie" and "Vincent" are both wonderful songs. But I think we own one of his greatest hits albums, and have never even managed to listen to the entire thing. The idea of a lifetime achievement award for that seems really weird.
“Killing Me Softly” another great song from the 70’s, has some sort of convoluted connection to him
So I happen to have some friends in the Nashville songwriter mafia. I got this story about Don McLean from one of them.
Don had just finished playing a show in some folk club in Greenwich village or somewhere, and he's packing up his gear, and some fan comes up to him and says "Hey, Don, can I ask you a question?"
"Sure!"
"That song... 'American Pie.'"
"Yes?"
"What does it MEAN?"
Don: [closing and latching his guitar case.] "It means I never have to write another fucking song again."
Jackson Browne has the same issue in his past.
The Christian concept of forgiveness and redemption is an important cultural norm. Or it used to be. If there is nothing people can do to repent then they are isolated. And a lot of isolated people is not good.
Musicians and groupies.
Groupies become wives.
It's an eternal cycle.
Watch the current Ted Bundy flick. Serial killers of women attract a mob of groupies.
“Killing Me Softly” another great song from the 70’s, has some sort of convoluted connection to him
"According to Lori Lieberman, who performed the original recording in 1971, the song was born of a poem she wrote after experiencing a strong reaction to the Don McLean song "Empty Chairs", writing some poetic ideas on a napkin at the Troubadour Club after seeing him perform the song, and then relating this information to Norman Gimbel, who took her feelings and converted them into song lyrics."
Then it gets messy.
I am reminded of the line in Woody Allen's 2002 film Hollywood Ending:
Carol, send some flowers to Haley Joel Osment with a card. "Congratulations on your Lifetime Achievement Award."
Haley turned 14 in 2002.
Watch the current Ted Bundy flick. Serial killers of women attract a mob of groupies.
Chris Watts strangled his wife and kids and got groupies.
Martin Luther King was a sexist who abused women. Worse, he plagiarized.
Winston Churchill was a chauvinist pig and a drunk.
Cleanup Statues on Aisle 6 please.
What's scary is there won't be anyone left to lead our next Civil Rights movement, no one left to rally to country and fight seemingly insurmountable odds to save Civilization from the next Nazi menace.
Joan of Arc was sidelined by the Diversity & Tolerance committee for a book report she gave in the 3rd grade. So instead, we will be marshaling the bulk of our force for a frontal cavalry charge.
I'm not a fan, but I'm even less of a fan of how unforgiving we have become.
Jean Vanier died earlier today. Now that's a man whose lifetime was filled with amazing achievement for the betterment of everyone he encountered. That's the kind of people we need to highlight.
In its moment that song seemed extremely poignant and significant, but then that moment passed. But give it credit. It made us feel that the events of the recent past had been momentous and tragic and had made us great.
Martin Luther King was a sexist who abused women. Worse, he plagiarized.
SJWs: We can start changing the name of all those MLK streets and schools anytime now.
If you live long enough, you get to see posterity. Bill Wyman is now getting into trouble because of that love affair he had with a thirteen year old girl. Are there any rock singers who led exemplary lives? There must be one of two. Paul McCartney wasn't awful, but he wasn't exemplary.
"Ray Charles had 12 children with ten different women,..."
It could have been an innocent mistake. Maybe they all wore the same perfume.
The answer is, don't accept any award from this a$$hole, vengeful culture of ours. It's sick and not likely to get well.
Because wrought means worked.
So, if you are overwrought, you are over worked ?
OK
What lifetime achievement awards will even be possible in the future?
"So, if you are overwrought, you are over worked ?"
You are overly worked up.
OED definition of "overwrought": "Exhausted by overwork; worked to excess. Also in extended use: over-excited; nervous; distraught."
Etymology: "< overwrought, past participle of overwork v. Compare overworked adj."
Shouting Thomas wrote "Serial killers of women attract a mob of groupies."
Look up Mark Twain's "Lionizing Murderers" sketch. There is nothing new under the sun.
Past recipients included Julie Andrews, Ella Fitzgerald and Ray Charles.
And that bitch Julie Andrews enabled & co-operated with that miscreant Dick Van Dyke in the making of "Mary Poppins". Van Dyke's appallingly awful cockney accent** created ear trauma for so many residents of Great Britain that it came close to bankrupting the NHS.
This is all true. I read it on the Internet.
** Seriously, when British actors are asked about accents, and are asked for an example of foreign actors doing bad British accents, they always say "Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins".
r ocean I was not being sarcastic about divorce and drug use: No one would be disqualified from an award because of a divorce (unless the divorce had evidence of wife beating); and no one would be disqualified from an award because of drug use (unless the drug use led to racist or misogynistic words or acts. I guess my more serious point was that we have a moving standard about what is disqualifying: communist sympathies once were, then they became evidence of courage; groping subordinates once wasn't, now it is.
You are overly worked up.
OK Urban Dictionary version,
"The idea of a lifetime achievement award for that seems really weird."
I think the lifetimes of Holly, Bopper, Valens, and van Gogh get rolled into it.
Don McLean:
Everybody loves me, baby, what's the matter with you?
Won'tcha tell me what did I do to offend you?
The Media is now "worked up" about Tiger Woods' medal.
The usual class act, of course,.
Kimmel, however, referred to Woods as the "Pride of Hooters" and compared getting the honor from Trump to "getting an Oscar from Jean-Claude Van Damme."
"Tiger finally gets the Medal of Freedom and Trump finally gets a black athlete to come to the White House to accept something," Kimmel said.
Yup, real classy performance.
McLean is an easy case to deal with. I'm with the commenters who suggest that progressives, if they are logical, have to re-consider the whole rock 'n roll hall of fame. This is surely of more current interest than most of the old statues. Amanda Petrusich in the New Yorker goes in to Chuck Berry among other examples: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-rock-and-roll-hall-of-fame-is-still-alive
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