birthday Archives - Page 29 of 50

Tommy Lee Jones turns 70

The Fugitive (1993) – One of my favorite movie trailers ever.

On these Facebook ads I see often, one of the questions is which actor was former Vice-President Al Gore’s roommate in college. Yes, it’s the guy from Texas, Tommy Lee Jones.

In fact, “in 1970 he landed his first film role, coincidentally playing a Harvard student in Love Story (Erich Segal, the author of Love Story, said that he based the lead character of Oliver on the two undergraduate roommates he knew while attending Harvard, Jones, and Gore).”

“At the 2000 Democratic National Convention, he presented the nominating speech for…Gore, as the Democratic Party’s nominee for President of the United States.”

He was a guest star in a bunch of dramatic shows such as Barnaby Jones and Baretta that I used to watch. But it was before I knew who Tommy Lee Jones was. I did see him in these movies, and almost always like HIM, even when the movie is not great.

Lincoln (2012) – Thaddeus Stevens. I was rather fond of his portrayal. Jones received his fourth Oscar nomination, for Best Supporting Actor
Hope Springs (2012) – as a part of a couple aging.
Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)
A Prairie Home Companion (2006)
Space Cowboys (2000) – a bunch of aging astronauts

Men in Black (1997) – the movie that sealed Tommy Lee Jones as a bankable actor
Batman Forever (1995) – as Two-Face / Harvey Dent
The Fugitive (1993) – One of my favorite movie trailers ever. Richard Kimble (Harrison Ford): But I’m innocent! US Marshall Samuel Gerard (Jones): I don’t CARE!” No wonder he won Best Supporting Actor for his performance
JFK (1991) – as Clay Shaw. If I’m remembering right, he was sleazily great. He earned another Oscar nomination

Lonesome Dove (TV Mini-Series, 1989) – he earned another Emmy nomination for his portrayal of Texas Ranger lawman Woodrow F. Call in the acclaimed mini-series, based on the best-seller by Larry McMurtry
The Executioner’s Song (TV Movie, 1982) as Gary Mark Gilmore. Chilling. He received an Emmy for Best Actor for his performance as the murderer in an adaptation of Norman Mailer’s book
Coal Miner’s Daughter (1980) as Doolittle Lynn; for which he earned his first Golden Globe nomination for his portrayal of country singer Loretta Lynn’s husband

Freddie Mercury would have been 70

Various artists have sung with Queen since his death, but Freddie Mercury has never been replaced.

It’s almost certainly true that the band Queen, and its lead singer/ keyboardist/songwriter Freddie Mercury, are bigger now than they were at the time of Mercury’s death on the evening of 24 November 1991.

“In the UK, Queen has now spent more collective weeks on the UK Album Charts than any other musical act (including The Beatles), and Queen’s Greatest Hits is the highest-selling album of all time in the UK. Two of Mercury’s songs, We Are the Champions and Bohemian Rhapsody, have also each been voted as the greatest song of all time in major polls by Sony Ericsson and Guinness World Records, respectively.

There have been several stories about Donald Trump’s repeated unauthorized use of We Are The Champions. The outrage, not just from Queen’s guitarist Brian May, but from Queen’s fans, points out that Mercury was a bisexual man who died from AIDS, and that the Trump/Pence platform isn’t exactly gay-friendly.

Others note that Freddie Mercury, born Farrokh Bulsara, was also an immigrant, “a brown-skinned man born in Zanzibar who went to school in India, and whose family immigrated to England because of unrest in their country in 1964. He was brought up in the Zoroastrian faith. Freddie Mercury, in short, embodies just about everything Trump’s fakakta wall wants to keep out of our country.”

My own sense of Mercury’s impact has grown since his passing as well. He died the same year that a friend of mine also died of an AIDS-related illness. Reading Freddie and Me further enhanced my appreciation for the artist.

Freddie’s death triggered the remaining members of Queen to create The Mercury Phoenix Trust, funded in the beginning by the massively successful Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert for AIDS Awareness.

Various artists have sung with Queen since Mercury’s death, including Paul Rodgers and Adam Lambert, but Freddie Mercury has never been replaced.

Some Queen songs

– links to all

12. We Will Rock You (segued with We Are the Champions, 1978) – Anthemic. Hearing this too often at minor league baseball parks SHOULD have ruined this song for me forever, but it did not

11. Play the Game (#42 in 1980) – Spacey beginning, great guitar solo by Brian May

10. Keep Yourself Alive (1973) – Written by guitarist Brian May, it was one of the songs on their original demo for its record label. More fine guitar work.

9. You’re My Best Friend (#16 in 1976) – The Daughter was recently watching some show which was using his song in an ad. I realized its timeless quality.

8. We Are the Champions -oft-covered, usually off-key, by winning sports teams. “In 2011, a team of scientific researchers concluded that the song was the catchiest in the history of popular music.” Who am I to argue with science?

7. Somebody to Love (#13 in 1977) – I did not know that they “multi-tracked their voices to create a 100-voice gospel choir”, but surely love the effect

6. Bicycle Race (#24 in 1979) – it starts with a cappella chorus (unaccompanied by instruments). And it’s about bicycles, with a video of naked women riding that got banned in several countries.

5. Killer Queen (#12 in 1975) – their first American hit, I loved the tight harmony vocals and its theatrical style

4. Crazy Little Thing Called Love (#1 for four weeks in 1980) – a rockabilly hit that sounds like Elvis. “Mercury played rhythm guitar while performing the song live, which was the first time he played guitar in concert with Queen.”

3. Another One Bites the Dust (#1 for three weeks in 1980) – this lives on the bass line. It also was #2 in the rhythm & blues charts for three weeks. Also, check out Another One Drives a Duster.

2. Bohemian Rhapsody (#9 in 1976, #2 in #1992) – In the UK, it was #1 for NINE weeks in its original release, and five more weeks a decade and a half later. Its inclusion in the movie Wayne’s World in 1992 brought it new life. It is often covered. Here’s the Muppets and a whole bunch Mark Evanier linked to. Plus Kids react to Bohemian Rhapsody.

1. Under Pressure, with David Bowie (#29 in 1982) – this was #1 in the UK, and I thought it would have fared better in the US. In any case, my affection for Bowie, even before his sudden death, propelled this to be my favorite Queen song. And they were right to sue Vanilla Ice for copyright infringement.

Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees turns 70

“At one point in 1978, the Gibb brothers were responsible for writing and/or performing nine of the songs in the Billboard Hot 100.”

It must be strange being the oldest brother of a musical powerhouse family and be the only one of the men still alive. So is the case with Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees.

Barry, his older sister Lesley (later Evans, b. 12 January 1945), his twin brothers Maurice and Robin (b. 22 December 1949) and baby brother Andrew (b. 5 March 1958) were born in the UK. Their father, Hugh Gibb was a drummer and bandleader who married Barbara (Pass); the parents were English.

In the late 1950s, the three older boys formed a band, the Rattlesnakes, just before the family emigrated to Australia, where the boys continued to perform, as Barry was writing songs.

The act continued to develop until they finally had a big hit with their 12th single, Spicks and Specks. They returned to the UK in January 1967, where producer Robert Stigwood began successfully promoting them to a worldwide audience. They had a string of hits.

Success and immaturity broke up the group for a time, but they had another brief spurt of success with Lonely Days.

By 1975, the trio started developing a new sound. With their participation on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, they began to reach their highest commercial impact. “In 1977, they became the first and only songwriters to place five songs in the Top Ten at the same time.”

They wrote not only their own music but songs of many others, including massive hits for little brother Andy. “At one point in 1978, the Gibb brothers were responsible for writing and/or performing nine of the songs in the Billboard Hot 100. In all, the Gibbs [had] 12 [songs] making the Top 40… At least 2,500 artists have recorded their songs.”

The Bee Gees worked through the 1980s, together and apart, with some hits. Singer-songwriter Gavin DeGraw: “Even long after the Bee Gees’ success on the pop charts, they were still writing songs for other people, huge hit songs. Their talent went far beyond their moment of normal pop success.”

But they were devastated by the death of little brother Andy (10 March 1988). The band continued working into the 1990s, despite Barry’s severe arthritis, and they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997.

Maurice died suddenly, from an abdominal blockage, on 12 January 2003. Barry and Robin played sporadically together, until Robin died of pneumonia, triggered from liver cancer, on 20 May 2012, leaving Barry Gibb to keep the Bee Gees flame alive.

And sad news: Barbara Gibb, his mom, died in August 2016.

My 10 favorite Bee Gees songs (maybe)

12. Spicks and Specks (#5 in Australia in 1966) – this shows up on their first Greatest Hits LP, but NOT the CD version. The song was used as the title of an Australian TV show last decade
11. Words (#15 US in 1968)- writer likes words
10. You Should Be Dancing (#1 US in 1976)- yes, I had this lime green leisure suit…
9. How Can You Mend a Broken Heart (#1 US for four weeks in 1971) – how indeed?
8. I Can’t See Nobody (B-side of Mining Disaster, #128 in US) – nice harmonies, bad grammar and all
7. New York Mining Disaster 1941 (#14 US in 1967 – the first international hit, and I’m fond of the story-song

6. I’ve Got To Get A Message To You (#8 US in 1968) terribly overdramatic, in a good way
5. To Love Somebody (#17 in 1967) – and the source material for some tremendous covers
4. World (UK, but not US, single, 1967) – I love how it’s soft, then becomes really raucous
3. Stayin’ Alive (#1 US for four weeks)- I went to the Tulip Festival this year, in Washington Park, Albany, and the woman at one of the booths asked what song one should be doing CPR to, and, of course, I knew. But obviously, I had failed The Daughter, who had never heard of the song.
2. Lonely Days (#3 US in 1971) – I always liked this because it keeps changing tempo; very Beatlesque. And there was this rumor that John Lennon sang on it, which proved to be untrue
1. Jive Talkin’ (#1 US for two weeks in 1975) – I LOVE the bass line of this song and the fact that it was the song that signaled the group’s resurgence

And for good measure:
If I Can’t Have You by Yvonne Elliman, #1 in 1978

Hi-yo, Silver!

She got very good at keeping her mouth closed around these miscreants.

Most of the time, the middle child and I got along famously well. But occasionally, she’d bug me unrelentingly when I just wanted to be left alone. Usually, catastrophe ensued.

One time, we were about 10 and 11, give or take a year. We were still in our pajamas. I was reading in our house, probably in the living room, and she was harassing me somehow, teasing and/or poking. After ignoring her several times, and giving my Marlene Dietrich plea, I finally gave chase.

At some point, I stepped onto the back of her bathrobe, and she fell straight down. I don’t recall that she hurt her arms or legs, but she chipped one of her front teeth.

She went to the dentist, and she had some sort of cap on the tooth that was quite noticeable because it was silver in color. And she had it for a couple of years, if I recall correctly.

Some of her classmates teased her mercilessly. “Hi-yo, Silver,” a few of the kids would say, which is what the Lone Ranger said to his horse when we watched it on TV. She got very good at keeping her mouth closed around these miscreants.

Eventually, the situation was remedied, and her tooth was back to its normal shade.

As I recall, I never got into trouble for this. I got spanked for stuff I ought not to have, as a child. But her well-known harassment of me, and my slowness to anger served me well in this situation.

What she did not recall, until I mentioned it only within the past two years, was that I was responsible for her chipped tooth. She had misremembered the incident and had attributed it to our baby sister, who was not involved.

My wife has admitted that she too harassed her late brother John when they were kids, and like me, he was not allowed to “hit a girl.”

Happy birthday to the middle child. No more Hi-yo, Silver! I shall NOT conclude this post with the last section of the William Tell Overture by Rossini.

Clarinet

I ordered a CD from Amazon that had two Mozart pieces.

Benny Goodman, 400 Restaurant, New York, NY., ca. July 1946

The Daughter played the clarinet for about two years. The added benefit was that The Wife took HER clarinet out of retirement – she had played in high school – and started practicing. They even played a brief duet at one of the family reunions.

Unfortunately, when the Daughter quit, her mother did as well. Still, she loves the instrument.

The Wife is a notoriously difficult person to buy presents for. There have been a few things that had been reliable choices for a time. A few Glee TV soundtracks early on. Her “K girls, Diana Krall and Alison Krauss, when they’d put out a new album. The six
seasons of Downton Abbey on DVD.

This year, uncharacteristically, she actually asked for a classical album featuring clarinetist Benny Goodman. I was unaware that he even played in a classical setting, hearing him entirely in the jazz genre.

Nevertheless, I ordered a CD from Amazon that had two Mozart pieces, Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra in A major, K. 622 and Quintet for Clarinet and String Quartet in A major, K. 581, the former with the Boston Symphony, conducted by Charles Munch, the latter with its String Quartet.

It arrived at work the Friday before Mother’s Day. At church that evening, it was First Friday, and the Capital City String Quartet was playing pieces by Mozart and Brahms with a clarinetist. You can guess that the Mozart piece was the very same K. 581 that had just been delivered to me!

And the K. 622 The Wife had played in a performance in high school, which seems to have been her greatest musical accomplishment.

Happy birthday to my bride, who is turning…some age younger than mine. Hope I have figured what to get you THIS time. In honor of her natal day, listen to Mozart, Quintet for Clarinet and Strings in A major K. 581.

VALTER VÍTEK: Clarinet, KUBIN QUARTET : L.CAP, J.NIEDERLE, P.VÍTEK, J.ZEDNÍČEK, Ostrava 1989

Nairi-Quartet: Soo-Young Lee (Clarinet), Narine Nanayan (1st violin), Zhanna Harutyunyan (2nd violin), Gohar Mkhitaryan (viola), Vladislav Kozin (cello)

Mozart Clarinet Concerto in A major K 622

Cleveland Orchestra. Clarinet: Robert Marcellus Conductor: George Szell