Showing posts with label Buddy Holly. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Buddy Holly. Show all posts
November 17, 2025
June 5, 2017
Bob Dylan finally delivers his Nobel Prize lecture...
... just in time to collect the $900,000, the NYT tells us.
Here's the audio:
Text here. I haven't listened/read yet, but I'm going to do both right now and I'll add to this post as I do.
ADDED: In the first sentence, Bob accepts that task implied by the prize, "wondering exactly how my songs related to literature." He shows his wondering, "in a roundabout way."
1. When he was 18, he saw Buddy Holly in concert, and he saw in Buddy "[e]verything I wasn't and wanted to be." The in-concert feeling was "electrifying." It wasn't just the words but the entire "presence" of the man and the music. Buddy "looked me right straight dead in the eye, and he transmitted something." Buddy passed on his powers, and then Buddy passed on out of this world.
2. Bob got a copy of a Leadbelly recording of "Cottonfields," and that "transported" him, as if he'd been "walking in darkness and all of the sudden the darkness was illuminated. It was like somebody laid hands on me." He doesn't say religion, but he uses the language of religion. He's a convert to folk music. It's "more vibrant and truthful to life" than the "radio songs" he grew up with. He starts to play: "By listening to all the early folk artists and singing the songs yourself, you pick up the vernacular. You internalize it." You get to "know that Stagger Lee was a bad man and that Frankie was a good girl." Bob absorbed "all the devices, the techniques, the secrets, the mysteries" and, as he wrote songs, figured out how to "make it all connect and move with the current of the day."
3. He credits "typical grammar school reading" for giving him "principals [sic!] and sensibilities and an informed view of the world." He lists Don Quixote, Ivanhoe, Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels, and Tale of Two Cities, but he wants to talk in depth about 3 works of literature, Moby Dick, All Quiet on the Western Front, and The Odyssey.
4. Moby Dick—"Everything is mixed in. All the myths: the Judeo Christian bible, Hindu myths, British legends, Saint George, Perseus, Hercules – they're all whalers. Greek mythology, the gory business of cutting up a whale. Lots of facts in this book, geographical knowledge, whale oil – good for coronation of royalty – noble families in the whaling industry... We see only the surface of things. We can interpret what lies below any way we see fit." What's that Bob Dylan song with Captain Ahab, I start wondering, but it's hard to search for at bobdylan.com because in the song — "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream" — it's Captain Arab (but I called it up by searching for "collateral," remembering, as I did, the line "They asked me for some collateral/And I pulled down my pants").
5. All Quiet on the Western Front — "You don't understand why the war isn't over. The army is so strapped for replacement troops that they're drafting young boys who are of little military use, but they're draftin' ‘em anyway because they're running out of men. Sickness and humiliation have broken your heart. You were betrayed by your parents, your schoolmasters, your ministers, and even your own government.... You've come to despise that older generation that sent you out into this madness, into this torture chamber.... Then a piece of shrapnel hits the side of your head and you're dead. You've been ruled out, crossed out. You've been exterminated. I put this book down and closed it up. I never wanted to read another war novel again, and I never did." Bob doesn't come out and say, and that's where I got my protest music. He says: "Charlie Poole from North Carolina had a song that connected to all this. It's called 'You Ain't Talkin' to Me,'" and he quotes those lyrics, protest song lyrics.
6. The Odyssey — the story of "a grown man trying to get home after fighting in a war." "He's a travelin' man, but he's making a lot of stops," says Bob, gesturing at but not naming Ricky Nelson, whose song "Travelin' Man" begins "I'm a travelin' man, I've made a lot of stops, all over the world." Bob talked about that song in his memoir "Chronicles: Volume One": "One afternoon I was... pouring Coke into a glass from a milk pitcher when I heard a voice coming cool through the screen of the radio speaker. Ricky Nelson was singing his new song, 'Travelin’ Man.' Ricky had a smooth touch... He sang his songs calm and steady like he was in the middle of a storm... I had been a big fan of Ricky’s and still liked him, but that type of music was on its way out. It had no chance of meaning anything. There’d be no future for that stuff in the future." Ricky sang those "radio songs" (see #2, above). Bob identifies with the travelin' man Odysseus. He speaks of himself in the second person: "You too have had drugs dropped into your wine. You too have shared a bed with the wrong woman. You too have been spellbound by magical voices, sweet voices with strange melodies... You have angered people you should not have. And you too have rambled this country all around. "
7. Bob asks: "So what does it all mean?" But he won't say what it means: "I've written all kinds of things into my songs. And I'm not going to worry about it – what it all means. When Melville put all his old testament, biblical references, scientific theories, Protestant doctrines, and all that knowledge of the sea and sailing ships and whales into one story, I don't think he would have worried about it either – what it all means."
8. Bob just wants to be alive, like Achilles, who told Odysseus that it's no good being dead: "And that if he could, he would choose to go back and be a lowly slave to a tenant farmer on Earth rather than be what he is – a king in the land of the dead – that whatever his struggles of life were, they were preferable to being here in this dead place." Bob doesn't mention it, but he's got a song called "Temporary Like Achilles." ("Achilles is in your alleyway/He don’t want me here, he does brag/He’s pointing to the sky/And he’s hungry, like a man in drag...").
9. Bob began "wondering exactly how my songs related to literature," and he ends saying "songs are unlike literature." "They're meant to be sung, not read." They're "alive in the land of the living."
Here's the audio:
Text here. I haven't listened/read yet, but I'm going to do both right now and I'll add to this post as I do.
ADDED: In the first sentence, Bob accepts that task implied by the prize, "wondering exactly how my songs related to literature." He shows his wondering, "in a roundabout way."
1. When he was 18, he saw Buddy Holly in concert, and he saw in Buddy "[e]verything I wasn't and wanted to be." The in-concert feeling was "electrifying." It wasn't just the words but the entire "presence" of the man and the music. Buddy "looked me right straight dead in the eye, and he transmitted something." Buddy passed on his powers, and then Buddy passed on out of this world.
2. Bob got a copy of a Leadbelly recording of "Cottonfields," and that "transported" him, as if he'd been "walking in darkness and all of the sudden the darkness was illuminated. It was like somebody laid hands on me." He doesn't say religion, but he uses the language of religion. He's a convert to folk music. It's "more vibrant and truthful to life" than the "radio songs" he grew up with. He starts to play: "By listening to all the early folk artists and singing the songs yourself, you pick up the vernacular. You internalize it." You get to "know that Stagger Lee was a bad man and that Frankie was a good girl." Bob absorbed "all the devices, the techniques, the secrets, the mysteries" and, as he wrote songs, figured out how to "make it all connect and move with the current of the day."
3. He credits "typical grammar school reading" for giving him "principals [sic!] and sensibilities and an informed view of the world." He lists Don Quixote, Ivanhoe, Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels, and Tale of Two Cities, but he wants to talk in depth about 3 works of literature, Moby Dick, All Quiet on the Western Front, and The Odyssey.
4. Moby Dick—"Everything is mixed in. All the myths: the Judeo Christian bible, Hindu myths, British legends, Saint George, Perseus, Hercules – they're all whalers. Greek mythology, the gory business of cutting up a whale. Lots of facts in this book, geographical knowledge, whale oil – good for coronation of royalty – noble families in the whaling industry... We see only the surface of things. We can interpret what lies below any way we see fit." What's that Bob Dylan song with Captain Ahab, I start wondering, but it's hard to search for at bobdylan.com because in the song — "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream" — it's Captain Arab (but I called it up by searching for "collateral," remembering, as I did, the line "They asked me for some collateral/And I pulled down my pants").
5. All Quiet on the Western Front — "You don't understand why the war isn't over. The army is so strapped for replacement troops that they're drafting young boys who are of little military use, but they're draftin' ‘em anyway because they're running out of men. Sickness and humiliation have broken your heart. You were betrayed by your parents, your schoolmasters, your ministers, and even your own government.... You've come to despise that older generation that sent you out into this madness, into this torture chamber.... Then a piece of shrapnel hits the side of your head and you're dead. You've been ruled out, crossed out. You've been exterminated. I put this book down and closed it up. I never wanted to read another war novel again, and I never did." Bob doesn't come out and say, and that's where I got my protest music. He says: "Charlie Poole from North Carolina had a song that connected to all this. It's called 'You Ain't Talkin' to Me,'" and he quotes those lyrics, protest song lyrics.
6. The Odyssey — the story of "a grown man trying to get home after fighting in a war." "He's a travelin' man, but he's making a lot of stops," says Bob, gesturing at but not naming Ricky Nelson, whose song "Travelin' Man" begins "I'm a travelin' man, I've made a lot of stops, all over the world." Bob talked about that song in his memoir "Chronicles: Volume One": "One afternoon I was... pouring Coke into a glass from a milk pitcher when I heard a voice coming cool through the screen of the radio speaker. Ricky Nelson was singing his new song, 'Travelin’ Man.' Ricky had a smooth touch... He sang his songs calm and steady like he was in the middle of a storm... I had been a big fan of Ricky’s and still liked him, but that type of music was on its way out. It had no chance of meaning anything. There’d be no future for that stuff in the future." Ricky sang those "radio songs" (see #2, above). Bob identifies with the travelin' man Odysseus. He speaks of himself in the second person: "You too have had drugs dropped into your wine. You too have shared a bed with the wrong woman. You too have been spellbound by magical voices, sweet voices with strange melodies... You have angered people you should not have. And you too have rambled this country all around. "
7. Bob asks: "So what does it all mean?" But he won't say what it means: "I've written all kinds of things into my songs. And I'm not going to worry about it – what it all means. When Melville put all his old testament, biblical references, scientific theories, Protestant doctrines, and all that knowledge of the sea and sailing ships and whales into one story, I don't think he would have worried about it either – what it all means."
8. Bob just wants to be alive, like Achilles, who told Odysseus that it's no good being dead: "And that if he could, he would choose to go back and be a lowly slave to a tenant farmer on Earth rather than be what he is – a king in the land of the dead – that whatever his struggles of life were, they were preferable to being here in this dead place." Bob doesn't mention it, but he's got a song called "Temporary Like Achilles." ("Achilles is in your alleyway/He don’t want me here, he does brag/He’s pointing to the sky/And he’s hungry, like a man in drag...").
9. Bob began "wondering exactly how my songs related to literature," and he ends saying "songs are unlike literature." "They're meant to be sung, not read." They're "alive in the land of the living."
January 1, 2014
"On the Road," "Atlas Shrugged," "Endgame," and "The Cat in the Hat" would all come into the public domain in 2014...
... if the copyright law were what it was before the 1976 Copyright Act. As it is, you need to wait until 2053.
As for music, beginning today, you could put out recordings of "That’ll Be the Day," "Peggy Sue," "Great Balls of Fire," and "Wake Up, Little Susie," with the kind of freedom that you have with an ancient folk song.
Via Andrew Sullivan, who also links to this list of artists whose works do hit the public domain, including Beatrix Potter, so here you go...
As for music, beginning today, you could put out recordings of "That’ll Be the Day," "Peggy Sue," "Great Balls of Fire," and "Wake Up, Little Susie," with the kind of freedom that you have with an ancient folk song.
Via Andrew Sullivan, who also links to this list of artists whose works do hit the public domain, including Beatrix Potter, so here you go...
February 10, 2013
"A more obviously historic site in Duluth is the Armory" where "Dylan caught Buddy Holly's tour two days before Holly's fatal plane crash."
"Dylan was at the front of the crowd and spoke later of making eye contact with Holly, a moment fans in Duluth think of as a kind of mystical passing of the baton from one rock 'n' roll generation to the next."
From an article about traveling through Bob Dylan's Minnesota.
This post gets my "religion substitutes" tag. That's a pretty creepy example. Why is that worth saying? Poor Buddy Holly died at the age of 22. He was only 5 years older than Dylan. There was no one generation to the next! Buddy Holly only exemplifies the 1950s for us because he didn't make it out alive. But he would have fit in just fine with the 1960s. The Rolling Stones had a hit with "Not Fade Away" in 1964. The Beatles covered "Words of Love":
From an article about traveling through Bob Dylan's Minnesota.
This post gets my "religion substitutes" tag. That's a pretty creepy example. Why is that worth saying? Poor Buddy Holly died at the age of 22. He was only 5 years older than Dylan. There was no one generation to the next! Buddy Holly only exemplifies the 1950s for us because he didn't make it out alive. But he would have fit in just fine with the 1960s. The Rolling Stones had a hit with "Not Fade Away" in 1964. The Beatles covered "Words of Love":
The Beatles' version was recorded on October 18, 1964. John Lennon and Paul McCartney, who were fans of Holly, harmonized on their version, holding to the vocal and instrumental sound of Holly's original as well as they could. When they had played this song in their early days at the Cavern Club in 1961 and 1962, Lennon and George Harrison were the vocalists. Ringo Starr played a packing case on this song as well as drums, to achieve a similar sound to Holly's "Everyday."When that recording was made, Holly would have just turned 28. The Beatles — at the height of their popularity — were doing their best to sound like the man who had died 5 years earlier. Even if you are a soft touch for spiritualistic claptrap, the "baton" was Buddy's to keep, and it's nothing but sad that we didn't get to hear what he would have done in the 1960s.
October 26, 2011
"The Steve Jobs' iPod Autopsy: Apple Innovator Stuck in the '60s."
Says Spin:
"His iPod selections were those of a kid from the '70s with his heart in the '60s"...What if your iPod contents were splattered across the headlines? Would you be embarrassed?
In fact, loaded on his iPod were a total of 21 Dylan albums, including all six volumes of the singer's bootleg series, but no studio recordings more recent than 1989's Oh Mercy, Isaacson writes. The artists appearing next most frequently on Jobs' iPod were the Beatles, with songs from seven of their albums, followed by the Rolling Stones, with six albums. Others making the cut: Aretha Franklin, B.B. King, Buddy Holly, Buffalo Springfield, Don McLean, Donovan, the Doors, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, Johnny Cash, John Mellencamp, and Simon and Garfunkel, plus the Monkees' "I'm a Believer" and Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs' "Wooly Bully."
February 6, 2009
Buddy Holly "got as close as anyone has to the essence of rock 'n' roll...."
"No one will ever do what he did. Sure, there are imitators -- he's very easy to imitate. But no one can do it with that purity and innocence anymore. There will always have to be a layer of irony or allusion."
Jac has 5 videos by artists in the Buddy Holly "nerd rocker" tradition. He wouldn't add a 6th one, which I recommended, so I'm putting it here:
And, by the way, the angels want to wear my red shoes....
Jac has 5 videos by artists in the Buddy Holly "nerd rocker" tradition. He wouldn't add a 6th one, which I recommended, so I'm putting it here:
And, by the way, the angels want to wear my red shoes....
February 3, 2009
August 21, 2007
Obama's rock and roll gaffe.
Obama's not showing much respect for Iowa history:
By contrast:
Barack Obama has spoken in many venues -- high school gymnasiums, college basketball courts, union halls -- but none has been as unusual as the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, where he talked to a group of Iowa Democrats last week.And what do they think of a candidate who gives a speech here and doesn't mention him?
The Surf Ballroom is the scene of the last concert played by rock 'n' roll stars Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson just hours before they were killed in a plane crash on Feb. 3, 1959.
And it is a place frozen in time with wooden booths, a linoleum floor and murals of palm trees and beaches.
Obama didn't mention the '50s rockers in his speech, but earlier this summer former Arkansas governor and Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee came here and made a video commemorating Holly, Valens and The Big Bopper. It can be seen on YouTube....
The walls are filled with photos of Holly and include many of his gold albums.
The piano once used by Ellington has been preserved. The Pepsi machine used by Waylon Jennings (who played in Holly's band and gave up his seat on the plane to the Big Bopper) remains in the kitchen. The phone Holly used to call his wife, Maria Elena, in New York is still there, and so are the sinks in the green room Holly used before making his appearance on stage.
"That'll be the day" anything changes in this cultural mecca still cherished by Iowans and others who revere Buddy Holly.
By contrast:
May 16, 2007
John Lennon Day.
ADDED (THOUGH IT SHOULD BE UNNECESSARY): This post is about... well, first, Phil Spector. He's on trial for murder, you know! And second, the absurd notion that there should be a national holiday for every hero. Come on! I love John Lennon, but he shouldn't have his own holiday. Martin Luther King, Jr.... that was special. Basically, there's no Duke Ellington Day, no Louis Armstrong Day, no Bessie Smith Day, no Buddy Holly Day, no Elvis Day. Get it? And John Lennon wasn't even an American! There's only one "Day" for a nonAmerican in America. 2, if you count Christmas. The category is closed.
March 21, 2006
"American Idol" -- the final 11.
"She has no range," says Barry Manilow about Mandisa. He means that she can sing well throughout her large range. Apparently, he uses words to mean the opposite of what they mean. Tonight should be amusing, with Barry guiding the kids through the songs of the 1950s. And Mandisa was thrilling! "A very sexy performance... like a great stripper's song," says Simon. "I absolutely loved it."
Bucky Covington sings the great Buddy Holly hit "Oh Boy," and Simon calls it "a pointless karaoke performance," which makes John come out and say "That's true of every 'American Idol' performance," and I'm all, "Did you hear Mandisa? Do you want to hear Mandisa?" Answer: "No."
"You give me fever... fever all through the night." Paris Bennett, she's 17, people. Barry's uneasy with that. But she does it well.
Chris Daughtry -- my favorite -- sings "I Walk the Line." Wow! The judges don't wheel out their stock phrase "You made it your own," but in this case, he really did. He got all alternative, really Ed Kowalczyk, I think. Simon: "You are the first artist we've had on the show who's actually refused to compromise." Ha! Who is most insulted by that line? I'm going to say Bo Bice. [UPDATE: Reading Television Without Pity, I see that Live actually did a version of "I Walk the Line." At least last week, when Chris did the Chili Peppers version of "Higher Ground," the band was mentioned. I tend to think that Live was mentioned in the practice session, but edited out for the show, so I wouldn't accuse Chris of wrongly taking credit.][IN THE COMMENTS: The question is raised whether Chris did the Live version, which I have never listened to myself. Nevertheless, I think it's damned strange that Chris's version made me think of the lead singer of Live if he wasn't doing the Live version! Admittedly, both guys have bald heads and sing in the grunge mode.]
Katharine McPhee, they love her. I thought it was a little screetchy and unsubtle, but she's good, and she's very pretty.
Barry gives some insight into what's so exciting about Taylor Hicks: he sings way high, but it doesn't sound like it's high. Hicks is doing a Buddy Holly song too: "Not Fade Away." "My love is bigger than a Cadillac."
Lisa Tucker is in serious danger, I think. She's too young to make enough of an impression in this group. When she tries really hard -- and she does -- she ends up seeming like a little hypercharged robot. I like the song, "Why Do Fools Fall In Love?," but I hear the original playing in my head, and by comparison, she seems weak.
Oh, but wait, there's still Kevin Covais. He needs to go soon. And yet, he does amuse us so much. Aw, but he sang "When I Fall in Love" so sweetly (after Barry told him to be vulnerable, and he got it). Even Simon accepts this. Poor Lisa!
Elliott Yamin. He sings "Teach Me Tonight." It's very complex and difficult, and he sings it quite well. How far can he go if he is the best singer, but the worst looking?
Barry Manilow doesn't know the song "Walking After Midnight"! Bizarre! It's Kellie Pickler's song tonight. Barry tries to get her to find the deep emotional meaning in the song, and she doesn't really find it. But they all love her.
Ace Young strains desperately through "In the Still of the Night." They're trying to help him. They've put him last, and they've found a 7-year-old girl to introduce him. He does a sweet long falsetto "niiiiiiightttt" at the end that might just save him.
Summary: Lisa's leaving.
ADDED: I just want to say how much I like Barry Manilow. Not his music, which isn't to my taste, but him as a person. Unlike Stevie Wonder and various other guests, he did not do the show to get the kids to sing his songs, and he took his role as a music teacher seriously. He really analyzed each performance and came up with concrete help and never seemed to be at all about self-promotion. I know you could say that this nice-guy thing is just his gimmick, but if it is, it works well, and maybe more people ought to try it.
Bucky Covington sings the great Buddy Holly hit "Oh Boy," and Simon calls it "a pointless karaoke performance," which makes John come out and say "That's true of every 'American Idol' performance," and I'm all, "Did you hear Mandisa? Do you want to hear Mandisa?" Answer: "No."
"You give me fever... fever all through the night." Paris Bennett, she's 17, people. Barry's uneasy with that. But she does it well.
Chris Daughtry -- my favorite -- sings "I Walk the Line." Wow! The judges don't wheel out their stock phrase "You made it your own," but in this case, he really did. He got all alternative, really Ed Kowalczyk, I think. Simon: "You are the first artist we've had on the show who's actually refused to compromise." Ha! Who is most insulted by that line? I'm going to say Bo Bice. [UPDATE: Reading Television Without Pity, I see that Live actually did a version of "I Walk the Line." At least last week, when Chris did the Chili Peppers version of "Higher Ground," the band was mentioned. I tend to think that Live was mentioned in the practice session, but edited out for the show, so I wouldn't accuse Chris of wrongly taking credit.][IN THE COMMENTS: The question is raised whether Chris did the Live version, which I have never listened to myself. Nevertheless, I think it's damned strange that Chris's version made me think of the lead singer of Live if he wasn't doing the Live version! Admittedly, both guys have bald heads and sing in the grunge mode.]
Katharine McPhee, they love her. I thought it was a little screetchy and unsubtle, but she's good, and she's very pretty.
Barry gives some insight into what's so exciting about Taylor Hicks: he sings way high, but it doesn't sound like it's high. Hicks is doing a Buddy Holly song too: "Not Fade Away." "My love is bigger than a Cadillac."
Lisa Tucker is in serious danger, I think. She's too young to make enough of an impression in this group. When she tries really hard -- and she does -- she ends up seeming like a little hypercharged robot. I like the song, "Why Do Fools Fall In Love?," but I hear the original playing in my head, and by comparison, she seems weak.
Oh, but wait, there's still Kevin Covais. He needs to go soon. And yet, he does amuse us so much. Aw, but he sang "When I Fall in Love" so sweetly (after Barry told him to be vulnerable, and he got it). Even Simon accepts this. Poor Lisa!
Elliott Yamin. He sings "Teach Me Tonight." It's very complex and difficult, and he sings it quite well. How far can he go if he is the best singer, but the worst looking?
Barry Manilow doesn't know the song "Walking After Midnight"! Bizarre! It's Kellie Pickler's song tonight. Barry tries to get her to find the deep emotional meaning in the song, and she doesn't really find it. But they all love her.
Ace Young strains desperately through "In the Still of the Night." They're trying to help him. They've put him last, and they've found a 7-year-old girl to introduce him. He does a sweet long falsetto "niiiiiiightttt" at the end that might just save him.
Summary: Lisa's leaving.
ADDED: I just want to say how much I like Barry Manilow. Not his music, which isn't to my taste, but him as a person. Unlike Stevie Wonder and various other guests, he did not do the show to get the kids to sing his songs, and he took his role as a music teacher seriously. He really analyzed each performance and came up with concrete help and never seemed to be at all about self-promotion. I know you could say that this nice-guy thing is just his gimmick, but if it is, it works well, and maybe more people ought to try it.
October 16, 2005
You know something is happening here, but you don't know what it is. Do you?
Tales of interviewing for a job in Gender Studies, from the Chronicle of Higher Education (via Poliblogger):
Side note: The sign on the door of the unisex bathroom was "a block of prose in rather small writing explaining the gendered politics of the public toilet." (For Althouse opinion on transgender bathrooms, start here.)
My faculty guide led me into a comfortable room in the Multicultural/LGBT Student Center, where about 12 students were gathered around open boxes of pizza and bottles of soda on a coffee table. A few looked up and smiled at me, and my faculty escort called one of them over and introduced her.Now it's the interviewee's turn to introduce herself. Will she follow the group's format and give a go-by pronoun? There are three good reasons to do so: 1. It will help her get the job she wants, 2. It's friendly and polite to adopt the convention of a group you join (if each member had stated his (!) favorite color at the end of the introduction, it would be casual and nice to state yours), 3. I had a third reason, but if it was so good, why have I forgotten it? (Maybe you can think of one.)
"Leslie, this is Dr. Haladay from the University of California. I'll leave her to speak with all of you until around 7:30, then I'll come and take her over to the job talk."
"OK," said Leslie, a pale young woman with short black hair and Buddy Holly glasses. "Nice to meet you, Dr. Haladay. Should we start off by introducing ourselves?"
Leslie asked the students to assemble in a circle and told them what was happening. "OK, we're starting with introductions, everybody, so why don't we all say our name, our year in school, our major, and our pronoun. I'll start."
I suddenly felt like I was back in the stairwell trying to decode one of the fliers. Pronoun? I didn't have time to dwell on it.
"My name is Leslie, I'm a fourth year in comparative ethnic, gender, and global studies, and I go by 'he.'" I stared at Leslie a little too long as I tried to grasp "his" words and readjust my obviously gender-biased and inaccurate first impression.
Then I smiled, probably too much.
The next person in the circle was a young Latina with thick, long hair and a red hair band. "My name is Nana, I'm queer, and I go by 'she,'" said Nana. "I'm in sociology, and I'm about to graduate. Yay!"
Jonny wore a black leather vest and motorcycle boots, and had multiple facial piercings, sparkling blue eye shadow, and a goatee -- and also claimed the pronoun "she."
Side note: The sign on the door of the unisex bathroom was "a block of prose in rather small writing explaining the gendered politics of the public toilet." (For Althouse opinion on transgender bathrooms, start here.)
April 15, 2004
Connecting Jon Peter Lewis to the right 60s pop star from Manchester. As noted last night, Quentin Tarantino likened JPL to 60s British pop star Freddie Garrity (of Freddie and the Dreamers). And I agree that Freddie was awfully geeky, in fact, way more geeky than JPL. And JPL isn't really more geeky than anyone since Freddie: David Byrne was geekier than JPL (and so were a lot of those 70s new wave guys). Freddie tied back to the Buddy Holly line of popdom, and in fact, emphasized his resemblance to Holly by wearing the same type of glasses. We know JPL's favorite 50s star is not Holly, but Elvis, based on key song choices, such as last night's Jailhouse Rock. His dance style is an homage to Elvis (even as it is a touching and open acknowledgement of the impossibility of being Elvis).
The 60s Manchester pop idol that JPL actually resembles, who was much less geeky then Freddie, was the teen-boyfriend cute Peter Noone--"Herman," of Herman's Hermits. Oh, how I loved Herman's Hermits. I still enjoy listening to their greatest hits CD. They should do a British Pop 60s night on American Idol so JPL can sing "I'm Into Something Good."
Manchester bands were an interesting contrast to the Liverpool (and London) bands in the 60s. For some reason, at that time, Manchester produced poppier bands. The greatest one was The Hollies. (How can you not enjoy a Hollies greatest hits CD? Look Through Any Window, Bus Stop, He Ain't Heavy He's My Brother, etc.). Another Manchester band was Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders. I didn't care about them, but the Mindbenders had one truly sublime single after Fontana left the group. I'll never forget the single with the light blue label that I played over and over: "Groovy Kind of Love."
UPDATE: Perhaps a love of Buddy Holly rather than Elvis actually is the explanation of the difference between the Manchester and Liverpool bands of the 60s. The Beatles' love of Elvis is very well known. Freddie's connection to Holly is noted above. The Hollies connection to Holly is right there in the name. How about Herman's Hermits? One of their earliest album tracks was a perfect rendition of Holly's "Heartbeat," which was nice because they also had a hit called "Can't You Hear My Heartbeat?"
FURTHER UPDATE: And now JPL is gone! Goodbye, JPL!
The 60s Manchester pop idol that JPL actually resembles, who was much less geeky then Freddie, was the teen-boyfriend cute Peter Noone--"Herman," of Herman's Hermits. Oh, how I loved Herman's Hermits. I still enjoy listening to their greatest hits CD. They should do a British Pop 60s night on American Idol so JPL can sing "I'm Into Something Good."
Manchester bands were an interesting contrast to the Liverpool (and London) bands in the 60s. For some reason, at that time, Manchester produced poppier bands. The greatest one was The Hollies. (How can you not enjoy a Hollies greatest hits CD? Look Through Any Window, Bus Stop, He Ain't Heavy He's My Brother, etc.). Another Manchester band was Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders. I didn't care about them, but the Mindbenders had one truly sublime single after Fontana left the group. I'll never forget the single with the light blue label that I played over and over: "Groovy Kind of Love."
UPDATE: Perhaps a love of Buddy Holly rather than Elvis actually is the explanation of the difference between the Manchester and Liverpool bands of the 60s. The Beatles' love of Elvis is very well known. Freddie's connection to Holly is noted above. The Hollies connection to Holly is right there in the name. How about Herman's Hermits? One of their earliest album tracks was a perfect rendition of Holly's "Heartbeat," which was nice because they also had a hit called "Can't You Hear My Heartbeat?"
FURTHER UPDATE: And now JPL is gone! Goodbye, JPL!
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