[Read this post with Whitney's punk playlists as the soundtrack.]
Scream was one of the pioneering bands in the legendary D.C. punk scene of the early 1980s. You may be more familiar with Minor Threat or Government Issue, but the very first full-length LP released by Dischord Records was Scream's. Dave Grohl was the band's drummer for a time late in the decade.
But their original (and current) drummer is named Kent Stacks. And when he was stricken with cancer recently, the D.C. punk community did what it does, and came together.
Scream will be headlining a benefit show on June 2 at Black Cat. Ian MacKaye is going to be there, as will seven other bands spanning the 40+ years of punk in the nation's capital.
And so will my kid. By herself. I sent her the link to the story above and she bought tickets. She also bought tickets to see The Circle Jerks at Black Cat in July. I'll join her for that one. She's got a half-dozen Richmond-area punk shows on her calendar later in the summer. (And if we can count Rage Against the Machine and Run the Jewels as punk-adjacent, I'm seeing them with Mark and the Teej in August.)
Two things offering different perspectives about an unspeakably shitty thing. One from a poet. One my teacher wife posted on Facebook. We're lost. And we've lost.
Kids Who Die
This is for the kids who die,
Black and white,
For kids will die certainly.
The old and rich will live on awhile,
As always,
Eating blood and gold,
Letting kids die.
Kids will die in the swamps of Mississippi
Organizing sharecroppers
Kids will die in the streets of Chicago
Organizing workers
Kids will die in the orange groves of California
Telling others to get together
Whites and Filipinos,
Negroes and Mexicans,
All kinds of kids will die
Who don’t believe in lies, and bribes, and contentment
And a lousy peace.
Of course, the wise and the learned
Who pen editorials in the papers,
And the gentlemen with Dr. in front of their names
White and black,
Who make surveys and write books
Will live on weaving words to smother the kids who die,
And the sleazy courts,
And the bribe-reaching police,
And the blood-loving generals,
And the money-loving preachers
Will all raise their hands against the kids who die,
Beating them with laws and clubs and bayonets and bullets
To frighten the people—
For the kids who die are like iron in the blood of the people—
And the old and rich don’t want the people
To taste the iron of the kids who die,
Don’t want the people to get wise to their own power,
To believe an Angelo Herndon, or even get together
Listen, kids who die—
Maybe, now, there will be no monument for you
Except in our hearts
Maybe your bodies’ll be lost in a swamp
Or a prison grave, or the potter’s field,
Or the rivers where you’re drowned like Leibknecht
If you have the access to the new HBO documentary on George Carlin, do yourself a favor and spend the four (4) hours to soak it in. It's worth it for a host of reasons:
- Most obviously, for the laughs. There are hundreds of jokes in there. Real belly laughs. Ones I'd seen many times, plus loads more I hadn't.
- Then, for the sardonic truths. Head-shaking cynical acknowledgments about the shortcomings of humankind, civilization, and especially organized religion. Powerfully relevant right now.
- The appreciation for a 45-year career that saw a man simultaneously evolving into a new version of himself and yet unabashedly (save for Carlin v1.0) dedicated to the consistent theme of being allegiant to his truest self.
- The story. His life, the travails and true loves, his huge successes and pointed failures, his family saga, and his rocket ride through drugs, alcoholism, sobriety, and health challenges.
He wouldn't want you to take a lesson, but he would want you to be entertained. And I was.
[This video has language not suited for high volumes at many of your in-person workplaces]
Pete Davidson, Aidy Bryant, Kyle Mooney, and Kate McKinnon are all planning to leave Saturday Night Live after this season. Davidson and Bryant had some very funny moments. Mooney was okay. But we're here to celebrate McKinnon, who is pretty damn high up the list of best SNL ensemble players of all time.
You might be here for her RBG impression, or her sendup of Elizabeth Warren, or her turn as a cat lady, or her teaming up with Bryant to play lesbians washed ashore on Gal Gadot's island of amazon warriors. But for me, this is the best thing McKinnon did on SNL, which is high praise, indeed.
The legendary writer (sportswriter seems not enough to fully encompass his insights into the human condition) Roger Angell passed at the age of 101 today.
Because I'm nothing if not a half-ass, I'm going to offer two passages from his work. The first, from the collection Game Time: A Baseball Companion is universal. The second from 1972's The Summer Game, speaks to a pair of Gheorghies but stands in for all of us.
“It is foolish and childish, on the face of it, to affiliate ourselves with anything so insignificant and patently contrived and commercially exploitative as a professional sports team, and the amused superiority and icy scorn that the non-fan directs at the sports nut (I know this look - I know it by heart) is understandable and almost unanswerable. Almost. What is left out of this calculation, it seems to me, is the business of caring - caring deeply and passionately, really caring - which is a capacity or an emotion that has almost gone out of our lives. And so it seems possible that we have come to a time when it no longer matters so much what the caring is about, how frail or foolish is the object of that concern, as long as the feeling itself can be saved. Naïveté - the infantile and ignoble joy that sends a grown man or woman to dancing in the middle of the night over the haphazardous flight of a distant ball - seems a small price to pay for such a gift.”
“This was a new recognition that perfection is admirable but a trifle inhuman, and that a stumbling kind of semi-success can be much more warming. Most of all, perhaps, these exultant yells for the Mets were also yells for ourselves, and came from a wry, half-understood recognition that there is more Met than Yankee in every one of us. I knew for whom that foghorn blew; it blew for me.”
Kapil Dev is one of the most famous cricketers in history. That's irrelevant to this post. But I figured you should know who he is before I quote him.
The actual point of this post is to celebrate a couple of GTB:TNGers (TNG in this case meaning The Next Generation). Dev once said, “The next generation has always been and will be better than the previous one. If it is not, then the world would not be moving forward.” Speaking from my own experience, my kids and their friends are kinder, more compassionate, more tolerant than I. And I believe that my generation can say the same thing about our ancestors.
We have some visual evidence from GTB:TNG to show a little bit of that next generation's creative chops. For starters, AQ, daughter of KQ and Mr. KQ, made this video celebrating her grandfather for a class project in this the final semester of her college career. It's beautiful and heartfelt on top of being really well done. Bonus footage of KQ!
My own kidlet and her friends also had a class assignment that involved video production. Setting aside my questions about how this relates to the AP English curriculum standards, I enjoyed it because it features a lot of kids that I've known since they were toddlers. And there's one edit that stopped me cold - the kids did a great job creating drama in something that could've been trite. In my very humble and completely unbiased opinion.
Wherein we pay tribute to dingy bars of yesteryear which served us well on many long-forgotten nights of revelry-cum-debauchery. Three at a time, like shots of Jäger.
The Texas-Wisconsin Border Café Richmond, VA Closed 1999
Ah, the Tex-Wis. The cream of the crop in dive bars in The Fan in the 90's. Lone Star beer in the bottle, widow-maker chili in the bowl. Badger-State-born VCU Arts school profs (later a Dean) and Texan named Donna built a place where you could get Tex-Mex plus brats and cheese and all the cheap swill you could guzzle, Animal heads and license plates adorned the walls, and they had bands quite a bit. It was written that "The Texas-Wisconsin Border Cafe’s divey, eccentric nature attracted everyone from musicians to judges, and rockabilly and blues bands, including Drive-By Truckers, played for cash and unlimited PBR."
We used to go in there for the cheap suds and the chicken-fried steak. The place was often packed, always loud, and you could count on getting yelled at by the waitresses. Our buddy Coby was a budding attorney then, and this was his dive of choice. He's a partner with a large national firm now, and he'd give quite a bit to have this gem still nestled in the edge of the Fan.
So sad, the Texas-Wis A place that we all miss Though our arteries do not With Rolling Rock on tap Lord, I hated that crap Especially served hot
Whitlow's on Wilson Arlington, VA Closed 2021
WOW! That's what the mugs they'd give you used to say. Whitlow's-On-Wilson. This staple of the Clarendon neighborhood of Arlington was a good little family bar . . . that kept buying up parts of the block and expanding until it was a big one. It was a strange combo of seeming a half-step up from our greasy spoon super-dives but never really classy in the least. It was a plain old neighborhood bar. And often packed to the gills.
Rob and I spent a good amount of time there. We shot lousy stick and talked to a (very) few females with lousier shtick. Our Cowboy barkeep Manny quit the 'boy in the early 2000's and defected to Whitlow's, where our fraternity brother Jay's fiancée was already catching shifts. Hence, our increased attendance there. Thursday nights were Mug Nights, $5 for the mug and $2 refills on the cheap stuff all night.
Whitlow's was never one of my favorite DC area bars, but it was always solid, and it was always there. Any people I'd meet who lived up that way in the 17 years since I vacated the area would always have been Whitlow's drinkers at some point. It was a mainstay . . . or at least it was until a year ago.
So sad, my Whitlow's mug And the beer that I would chug Gone for evermore I'll miss the drunk times spent But I shall not lament That long line out the door
The Weeping Radish Brewery Manteo, NC Grandy, NC Closed 2022
Okay, okay. So the Radish was never a dive per se. It was a brewery, and it was a German restaurant, and it happened to have a little barroom. That little room was our dive, a hideaway in which you could congregate a group of knuckleheads once a year to drink between 1 and 3 liters of rather strong German beer, throw darts, play Ms. Pac-Man, gather in a circle for a xenophobic drinking game, and ultimately fall down and get pinned under a tiny cup of horseradish made of lead. You know, the usual kind of joint.
Dave, rob, and others spent the summer of '91 in Nags Head, and they came back with stories about this microbrewery (North Carolina's oldest, 1986) with super strong beer, and you drink a big mug of it and get hammered. Real juvenile stuff. So then we graduated from college and got jobs and girlfriends and came down for a summer vacation with friends . . . and drank big mugs of the super strong beer and got hammered. Dave like the Blach Radish blend, while Rob and I enjoyed the Fest. Lesser palates would get the Corolla Gold. Evan asked for PBR every year.
Oh, the stories. Many too esoteric to enjoy, but just know that the 12-24 of us would leave the comfy confines of the Martha Wood deck mid-sunny afternoon -- after drinking for hours -- to drive over the bridge into Manteo, annex the barroom, and drink a couple of beers before returning home. Wrecked. On those special occasions, we wouldn't go straight home, as the go-karts were en route, but we wised up after a handful near-incarceration/death experiences. One year, we traipsed in to hear the bartender say, "Oh, lord, has it been a year already?" It was a ritual.
Sometime around the turn of the millennium, about the same time that a sect within the OBFT crowd called Brothers Against the Radish (BAR) won favor and negated our annual death sojourn, the Weeping Radish moved out of Manteo and full-time into its farmhouse on the mainland in Grandy. We never went. And this article I read yesterday indicates that the Radish is closing its doors for good. Fare ye well, Radish Weepers, and keep 'er between the lines on the way home.
The Radish packed a punch One time rob e'en lost his lunch Liter mug in hand The tale we'd later tell We told the Radish, go to hell We were actually banned
You know the drill... don't look for this stuff on Spotify or the major streaming services.
Did You Know??? The Smithereens' Pat DiNizio and Suzanne Vega worked together at an office in the early 80's. By the end of the decade, they were both on the charts. After he died a few years ago, she wrote:
“I met Pat DiNizio when I was in my early 20s, in 1983. He needed a job, I had a job for him, so for a while he was my assistant, a receptionist in an office at a typesetting company in midtown New York. He called his mom in New Jersey every morning, first thing. Unfortunately, a couple of months later, my boss told me I had to fire Pat, which I then did. I was gone myself in a few months, as I had gotten a record deal. We both laughed about that later, and he asked me to sing on the track, ‘In a Lonely Place,’ which I’ve always been proud of. I loved doing the video, too. I ran into Pat constantly through the years, and he was always the same: smart, funny, driven, confident but never arrogant. Full of soul. Playing at his 60th birthday bash so recently brought it all home for me. I was shocked to learn of his death. He is still a part of my life. I feel the loss.”
This song is cool, and should be on Spotify. The Smithereens' entire album Especially for You is MIA there.
The Grey Album... I haven't heard much about it in a while, and you'll never see it on the big streamers, so here you go.
40 years ago this week, Clash drummer Topper "The Human Drum Machine" Headon was sacked from the band for outrageous drug addictions, and nothing was ever the same for The Only Band That Matters. After that, Mick Jones was dumped, which is like booting Paul McCartney. And then three stiffs were scooped up for one final album called Cut the Crap. Later disowned. The "Cut the" part was superfluous. Anyway, they never recorded this tune for the record, but it and the song "This Is England" represent the only listenable latter-day Clash cuts. Worth a listen. God bless Joe Strummer, even if he destroyed what he loved.
David Lowery from Camper van Beethoven and Cracker is now a professor at UGA telling kids how not to get screwed in the music biz. Half of both bands' stuff is greyed out on Spotify. This tune was always one of my favorites.
Total Coelo. "I Eat Cannibals." Ridiculous. Fun.
Fun? You want fun? Have some Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Reaction. Never on Spotify.
Imagine a U.S. military and civil service comprised of large numbers of former college athletes. A fellow named Dave Maloney already has and thinks that it could address several concerns.
The military struggles to attract and retain quality candidates, and is in many ways exhausted after two decades of conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, college athletics is in the midst of seismic change owing to court rulings that permit athletes to make money from their abilities, as well as pandemic-related cuts to hundreds of Olympic sports programs at schools all over the country. There’s also a choking level of student debt that has reached $1.75 trillion, according to Forbes.
Enter Maloney.
He proposes a plan in which the Department of Defense foot the bill for athletic scholarships in sports other than football and basketball, in exchange for some yet-unspecified obligation after athletes leave school – military, civil service, government support, whatever. He frames it as a “21st century pathway to service.”
Maloney points to a 2018 report by the Heritage Foundation, based on Pentagon study, that 71 percent of young Americans between the ages of 17 and 24 would be ineligible for military service, with the primary reasons inadequate education, obesity and criminal records. As opportunities for Olympic sports athletes diminish after high school, and the cost of education skyrockets, any potential scholarship aid for those who wish to continue to compete can be a lifeline. Former college athletes, in turn, provide a driven, disciplined, educated, physically fit group of candidates for military or public service.
Win-win, as Maloney sees it.
“The Department of Defense just went to Congress with its initial budget for next year,” Maloney said in an interview with the sports business website Sportico. “It’s the largest budget ever, and yet we’re seeing a decrease in our technological capabilities, and we’re seeing a decrease in any interest in service. What does that tell you? Talented people don’t want to work at decaying institutions. You’ve got to gut-punch it.”
Indeed, the Pentagon requested a $773 billion budget for fiscal year 2023. That includes $1.32 billion in “recruiting and advertising” costs for the four major branches of the military, as well as billions more in training. In comparison, the 100-plus public FBS schools spent $653 million on scholarship costs outside of football and basketball in 2020-21, according to Sportico’s financial database. In other words, the money’s available, if the Pentagon and the NCAA are willing to reconsider and alter standard practices.
Maloney’s idea hasn’t been stuffed into a wingnut corner of the basement because of who he is and what he does. He’s a former track athlete at Auburn who owns a Houston-based software and analytics company that is a contractor for the Air Force. He began circulating the framework of his plan last fall through the Pentagon and Congress himself and through several paid advisors, including retired four-star Army and Air Force generals and a retired Navy vice admiral. No current high-ranking government or military officials have endorsed his idea, but he hasn’t been dismissed out-of-hand.
When Sportico described the plan to Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick, he said, “We happen to have one of the more vibrant ROTC programs in the country, so we’re already involved in the military. I have about 101 questions, but would I listen? Sure.”
Reggie Love, an advisor to former President Barack Obama and ex-Duke basketball player, told Sportico, “We have not changed the process in how we build out new talent for the military in quite some time. So even if this is not a successful venture, forcing us as a country to have a deep philosophical review of where we’re going and how we get there is always helpful.”
As always, the devil is in the details, and among the many questions are: what manner of service? Active duty military or non-combat support? Would scholly recipients have a say about their path? How and to whom is aid awarded? Is it left to individual sports programs and coaches, or would the Department of Defense want control? Do women’s sports and Title IX considerations figure into the equation? How would DoD funding, whether large or supplemental, affect scholarship limits?
Remember that the NCAA permits only a fraction of the scholarship numbers for Olympic sports related to their roster size. Baseball has only 11.7 scholarships for a roster of 30 or more. Men’s soccer and wrestling are allowed a max of 9.9 scholarships, lacrosse 12.6 scholarships with rosters at least twice that size. Men’s tennis gets 4.5 scholarships, women’s tennis eight and field hockey 12. Most Olympic sports athletes are only on partial scholarship, if they receive money at all. Would Pentagon scholarship money take up the total amount for athletes who commit to post-graduate service at some programs, and thus exclude those who said ‘no thanks’ and only want to compete and attend school?
Maloney also believes that the DoD and Federal government could benefit from the billions of dollars that colleges spend identifying and recruiting prospects. They also could benefit from the abundant youth recruiting services that rank everyone from wrestlers to baseball players to lacrosse players to track athletes and volleyball players nationally and in their states, and which are often invaluable to college recruiters.
Maloney
Coincidentally, which is to say not coincidentally at all, Maloney’s company, Orchestra Macrosystems, is capable of aggregating info from high school sports recruiting databases to give the Feds and DoD a one-stop shop about athletes and potential candidates, maintain up-to-date info on kids, coordinate messages from college coaches and Federal recruiters, and as he puts it “leverage the recruiting prowess of NCAA coaches and recruiting budgets of NCAA schools to engage high school students possessing the physical, academic, and leadership qualities sought by the federal government and collegiate sports programs alike.”
Larger questions beyond logistics and execution of Maloney’s ideas might run along the lines of: As a society, do we really want to dangle the promise of higher education and athletic participation in exchange for military or government service? If the lack of qualified candidates is as potentially dire and the threat to national security that some in the military describe, why not shelve the volunteer force and re-institute the draft? Since we’re no longer in a direct shooting war, what are our actual personnel needs?
I expect no de-emphasis on our military, conflict or not. Given the money spent and those that benefit from it, our nation’s history and makeup, and our preoccupation with WMD here and abroad, and the places we might use them, that battleship has sailed. Maloney's plan may not carry, but don't be surprised if something similar comes down the road.
It's the natural way of things for older generations to baffle at the ideas, popular culture, and mores of the young. I consider most of the Gheorghieverse to be fairly hip for our increasingly advanced ages, but there are things I personally struggle to grasp, even as my kids navigate them with effortless fluency.
Here's a recent case in point.
As noted often in this space, my eldest daughter is a rare and wondrous thing. She's all instinct and Id, an in-the-moment being who thrives on human contact, novelty, and expression. She amazes me on a regular basis.
Or, I guess I should say, they amaze me on a regular basis.
Several months ago, while at dinner in Richmond, my kid told me and my wife that they identify as non-binary and prefer they/them pronouns. Flippantly, I said, "How does that work? Can I identify as tall?" And my child, who's generally a sunny person and not quick to anger, got genuinely pissed at me because they thought I was making light of a pretty major development in their life.
So I'm writing this post as a way to begin to think through my feelings and understanding of a topic that's honestly really confusing to a 51 year-old cis white dude.
On the right, my brilliant loon of a child
I had a really excellent conversation with my kid last week about their perspective. I came at it very much seeking to learn and understand. I know more than I did before, but I'm still a work in progress. But the gist of it is that they reject the expectations that society places on us from birth, where we're socialized as two genders. That binary socialization doesn't fit everyone's concept of their being.
If you know my kid, you'll get that the whole notion of rejecting expectations and norms is pretty dead on in terms of keeping with their history. As you might note from the picture that accompanies this post.
They said something during our conversation that has stayed with me, even as it remains a paradox. "I feel more woman than man, and more boy than girl." This from a person that likes to wear slinky cocktail dresses and Doc Martens when she goes to metal shows and enters the fray of the mosh pit. I get it. I think.
I've got work to do. I still call them her reflexively, but they're forgiving of that. I wrestle with the biological versus emotional/intellectual elements of a non-binary identity, but they tell me it's not about biology at all - they're very comfortable with their physical body.
The entire thing, like my kid, is endlessly fascinating. And that's...one to (continue to) grow on.
Life at the Cracker Factory has been downright draining over the past several weeks. I'm on the horns of a personnel dilemma that feels a lot like a no-win situation. I'm hoping to drink a lot this weekend and by doing so experience so sort of epiphany.
I did get a bit of a stress release from watching something so profoundly stupid and silly that it made my sides hurt from laughter. So I thought it would share it to lower the level of discourse here. [Not entirely sure that's possible.] It's a TikTok thing called the Ceiling Fan Water Bottle Challenge. Even the name is stupid.
Returning soon with an actual thoughtful post that's been a long time coming. But for now, dipshittery!
In a far more timely episode than in my post about the nominees announcement, I bring you sort of, kind of, semi-breaking news. The 2022 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees!
Look, I know there are far more pressing, important, newsworthy, debate-worthy topics right now. I also know there are far more depressing, scary, terrible things we could be discussing. How about rock and roll and a committee of propped-up Judgy Judgersons judging people's art and influence to make grand decisions about their merit for inclusion in a special club of artists? Sounds like the right amount of light fare to me!
So . . . it should be pretty fresh in your minds whom the nominees were. Who got in?
Let's start with who did not get the nod.
Beck didn't get in! Wow. I'm sure somewhere out there some yuk-yuk has a "Beck, Loser" joke, but I won't make it. Anyway, I called Beck a "lock" in my predictions, and boy, was I wrong. Everybody's got to learn sometime. I've heard some speculate that he's still young and active enough that the Hall wanted to wait a while, but the Chili Peppers got in a decade ago, and they put a chart-topping album out last month. Anyway, where's it's at for Beck is on the waiting list.
MC5 and the New York Dolls. Eventually the red carpet leading into the hall will be large enough to have fringe, and that's what protopunk is considered, but it will be a while until they kick out what jams these guys' passage into the RnRHoF.
A Tribe Called Quest. Sorry, Z. I'm sure they aren't buggin' out about this scenario, and I'm sure the Hall will find a way to let them in. Not as first-balloters.
Kate Bush, Dionne Warwick, Fela Kuti. Nothing clever here. I thought Ms. Warwick was in, but then again, I thought she was already in when she got nominated last year. Oh, well.
Rage Against the Machine. Morello on the committee, as it turns out, doesn't turn the tide. At least you gheorghies who are seeing them play in August may see some added... rage.
Devo. It's the long, uphill trudge to see these lovable nerds get in. I'll still fight the fight, but it may not ever happen. The myth that all they did was "Whip It" is exactly that.
And now . . . drum roll, please.
Who got in?
Well, Dolly Parton did. If Donny and Marie are a little bit country and a little bit rock and roll, well, Dolly's a whole hell of a lot the former and not so much the latter. That was the mini-controversy that popped up when she gracefully bowed out and the Hall gracelessly kept her on the ballot. Eh... she's awesome, and she said she will accept the induction, anyway. (Fast fact: she got into the Country Music Hall of Fame 23 years ago.) Listen: Everyone knows "Jolene," "9 to 5," and "Islands in the Stream," but don't sleep on pop pleasure like 1977's "Here You Come Again."
Duran Duran! Yes. I enjoyed this band when they first hit US radio stations and MTV when I was 12. I played them loudly from the fraternity house suite when their compilation CD Decadewas released in 1989. And took heat for it. I liked their "comeback album" . . . which was way back in 1993. Hell, I still enjoy their tunes. I will say that their cover of "911 Is a Joke" should be buried deep, deep in a mud hole never to be excavated. I'm psyched for this selection. Fast Fact: their name comes from the villain in the movie Barbarella, best known for an inane outer space plot and Jane Fonda nudity. Listen: All the hits remain fun for me to hear, but even more enjoyable is digging into lesser knowns like "Careless Memories," "The Chauffeur," "New Religion," and "Shadows on Your Side."
Eurythmics. Also happy for them, and I didn't even see it coming. They're both brilliant artists, writers, producers, musicians. I thought the Eurythmics proper catalog might be light, but who am I to disagree? Listen: "Would I Lie to You?" and "Here Comes the Rain Again"; but really, do this. Turn your volume up. Like high. And play "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)." Here that bass drum and keys, followed quickly by everyone's first introduction to Annie Lennox's voice. And imagine that with her spiky red hair, that video threw everyone way off in 1983. Whoa. Actually, don't imagine it; watch it below. Loud.
Pat Benatar. Hell yes. She came on the scene with "Hit Me with Your Best Shot," and she was relentless for most of the 80's. Her look was mimicked by high school girls on a level higher than Cyndi, higher than Belinda, only exceeded by Madonna. The Brooklyn-born artist formerly known as Patricia Mae Andrzejewski is inducted with her bandmate, co-writer, and husband, Neil Geraldo. You want to read a random (cool) rise to fame?
Benatar trained as a coloratura with plans to attend the Juilliard School, but decided instead to pursue health education at Stony Brook University.
At 19, after one year at Stony Brook, she dropped out to marry her first husband, high school sweetheart Dennis Benatar, a U.S. Army draftee who was stationed at Fort Lee, Virginia, starting in 1973.
Pat Benatar worked as a bank teller near Richmond, Virginia. She quit her job to pursue a singing career after being inspired by a Liza Minnelli concert she saw in Richmond.
She had a gig at a Holiday Inn and got a job as a singing waitress at a nightclub named the Roaring Twenties. The band gained in popularity and was the subject of a never-aired PBS special. Her last significant gig in Richmond was a two-hour performance at Thomas Jefferson High School.
Dennis was discharged from the Army and the couple moved to New York in May 1975 so Pat could pursue a singing career. Benatar performed at an amateur night at the comedy club Catch a Rising Star in New York.
In late 1975 she landed the part of Zephyr in Harry Chapin's futuristic rock musical, The Zinger, which ran for a month in 1976 at the Performing Arts Foundation's Playhouse in Huntington Station, Long Island.
Halloween 1977 proved a pivotal night in Benatar's early, spandexed stage persona. She entered a Halloween contest at the Café Figaro in Greenwich Village dressed as a character from the film Cat-Women of the Moon. Later that evening, she went onstage at Catch a Rising Star still in costume.
Between appearances at Catch a Rising Star, she recorded commercial jingles for Pepsi-Cola and a number of regional brands. She headlined New York City's Tramps nightclub over four days in spring 1978, where her performance was heard by representatives from several record companies. She was signed to Chrysalis Records by co-founder Terry Ellis the following week.
Pat and Dennis Benatar divorced shortly after that, although she kept his surname.
And then she became a star. So awesome.
Listen: "Heartbreaker," "Fire and Ice," "Treat Me Right," "Hit Me with Your Best Shot," (all four of these songs have identical lyrical content... you're a bad dude, don't mess me up) and "Hell Is for Children." Oh, also, the answer to the trivia question I asked in the last post that nobody read and/or cares about: "I love Pat Benatar, and she's hit for hit with Mellencamp, who got in 15 years ago. Including what tune they both recorded for a hit???
"I Need a Lover." Come on.
Carly Simon. Ah, the anticipation. Carly Simon is cool, and the thought is that she completes sort of a triumvirate of Joni Mitchell and 2021 inductee Carole King. I like Carly Simon well enough. I like her song "Jesse" more than my younger self would allow. I do like that she and James Taylor were married as they were cranking out their biggest hits. I sort of like their Top 10 duet rendition of a particular American standard, though I love the version below with all my heart:
She also sang what I consider a Top 5 Bond theme songs, as paired with Marvin Hamlisch's killer music. I think it's up there with "Live and Let Die," "Goldfinger," "All Time High," and . . wait for it . . . "A View to a Kill" by Duran Duran! Two Bond themists in one class! Brilliant. (It edges out "For Your Eyes Only" and "Skyfall.") Anyway, there is only one way to hear "Nobody Does It Better": by watching this clip followed immediately by this clip. I looked and couldn't find one clip with the whole bit.
Anywho, what you most know Carly Simon for is her international chart-topping hit "You're So Vain." Much has been written about this tune, and it's a dandy of a song. The mystery behind the clever "who's it about?" embedded within the lyrics... unrivaled. (As was the album cover, paired with its title No Secrets. Clever girl.) Simon even took to revealing one letter in the subject's name per year for a while. And then the just gave up and divulged what most people had guessed. Hey there, Warren Beatty. Anyway, when this song pops on the hi-fi, I always ask folks a different trivia question: Who sang back-up in the chorus? Listen for it. Answer below.
Eminem. A very different rise to fame than Pat Benatar's, but equally fascinating. I called this one a lock, and this time I was correct. If you had told me 20-some years ago that he'd be a lock? Slim Shady? This reverent institution? Hell, Run-D.M.C. wasn't even in the Hall then! (2009.) But now? Well.... the Hall would be so empty without him, right? Listen: You already know. And while the two LP albums are tip-top, I always think of Teej when I hear "Just Lose It," and how he commented in this space that Marshall Mathers had gone off the deep end. Um... also... and you can't make this shit up... he did a cover of "Mockingbird"... in his way. Wow.
Lionel Richie. Hello... it's this guy you were looking for. Look, I don't know how you can completely, thoroughly separate the man from his former band and their all-star output, but that's what the Hall was asked to do. Solo performer content only. Yeah, right, It's like asking for something to be stricken from the record. It's in my brain, man! And "Sail On" is probably among Top 10 f-u breakup songs of all time. ("You're So Vain" and "Hell Is for Children" might make the list as well.) Anyway, listen to the Commodores first, but then dig back into 80's chart-toppers from the man, the myth, the legendary Lionel. Listen: "Running with the Night," "You Are," "Truly," "Stuck On You," and of course, for old times' sake, "All Night Long." Tom bo li de say de moi ya. Yeah, jambo jumbo.
Judas Priest. Judas Fucking Priest. This would be fantastic except for one thing. They gave them the LL Cool J side door treatment. I repeat: The Award for Musical Excellence shall be given to artists, musicians, songwriters and producers whose originality and influence creating music have had a dramatic impact on music. Crap. I have told you this and told you this. Anyway, it's worth cranking some Priest and giving the Hall the finger. And the PMRC. And Beavis. And Butt-Head. Listen: "Living After Midnight," "The Hellion/Electric Eye," "The Sentinel," "Screaming for Vengeance," "Heading Out to the Highway," and the MTV classic "You've Got Another Thing Coming," and of course . . .
How'd I do this go-around?
So I got 4 of 8, except I'm giving myself Dolly Parton based on what I wrote and what ensued. And since Priest wasn't given the front door treatment, I'm calling that one an N/A. 5 of 7. So what, I'm an easy grader.
To close it out, here's the answer to the other trivia question, the one about who sings along with Carly in the chorus on "You're So Vain." Can you hear it?
Mick Jagger. The one and only. I can't listen to this song and not hear him any more.
Steve Cohen, getting things done and giving few craps about it.
The umptillionaire owner of the New York Mets cut veteran Robinson Canó today as rosters needed trimming from 28 to 26 players.
To review:
Canó came up in 2005 with the crosstown Yanks and was instantly very good. The second baseman finished 2nd in Rookie of the Year voting.
He remained solid throughout his 9 years in pinstripes, improving as time wore on. He won a pair of Gold Gloves and finished Top 10 in MVP votes four years in a row.
He became a free agent in 2013. The Mariners banked heavily on Canó, offering him $24 million a year for 10 years.
Two of his first three years in Seattle lived up to the bankroll. After that, his value faded (he was 34 then, after all) and he was suspended 80 games for Performance-Enhancing Drugs. In 2018, the Mariners were so desperate to dump this albatross contract that they were willing to eat $20 million of it.
The problem for Mets fans is that (a) that still left $100 million on the contract and that (b) the Mets were willing to bite. Interestingly, the Mets GM at the time was Brodie Van Wagenen, who had been Canó's agent who struck the megadeal. Sounds all wrong? It was.
Canó has had a handful of unimpressive seasons for the Mets and was suspended for all of last year with a another PED violation.
He began this year with a mission to rectify all of that with a brilliant Mets season.
In 43 plate appearances, Canó registered a .195/.233/.268 line, meaning a .501 OPS. Bleh. His defense was even worse, according to sabermetrics.
Today, he was designated for assignment.
This means that he is released from duty but will be paid the $40.5 million remaining on his contract through 2023. That's the difference between Steve Cohen and the Wilpon family. If you're overpaid dead weight, Cohen will pay you out and send you packing rather than grinning and bearing your sagging presence for even one more season.
The icing on the cake . . . Cohen sent Canó's agent an invoice for the remaining 40 mill. Because Canó's agent is once again, of course, Brodie Van Wagenen. (Worth mentioning is that Cohen had fired Van Wagenen hours after buying the team in 2020.)
Anyway, just to fuck with him and remind him of the rotten-in-Denmark deal that BVW saddled everyone in Queens with, Cohen dished out some douchery in the form of that invoice, and it made me smile.
Not as much as Canó can smile for being paid that dough to do nothing, but still. Not bad.
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