birthday Archives - Page 34 of 50

Basketball’s Phil Jackson is 70

Life in the Continental Basketball Association was tough, especially on the road.

You may have heard of Phil Jackson as the coach of the Chicago Bulls, who won six National Basketball championships in nine years, thanks in no small part to Michael Jordan. Then he led the Los Angeles Lakers, with Kobe Bryant and, for a time, Shaquille O’Neal, to five championships.

I was first aware of Jackson, now the president of the New York Knicks, as the bespectacled “sixth man” (first man off the bench) for the Knicks in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

But my greatest appreciation for him developed when he became the coach of the Albany Patroons in the minor-league Continental Basketball Association. The team played its home schedule in the tiny Washington Avenue Armory. The games were always standing room only, and the crowd helped make it more exciting. In those days, the Patroons led the league in attendance.

Jackson was hired to coach the Patroons because Jim Coyne, an Albany county executive and president of a new Continental Basketball Association franchise more than a quarter-century ago, had a thing for [Red] Holzman’s championship Knicks and especially for their role players. “He telephoned Jackson during the 1982-83 season to offer him the job that a former Knicks teammate, Dean Meminger, was about to lose.”

On the road

Life in the CBA was tough, especially on the road. Jackson described one doozy of a trip thusly: “Leave Oshkosh [Wisconsin] at 4:30 in the morning. Snowing like crazy. Drive to Milwaukee. Take a plane to Atlanta [Georgia]. Wait forever for a flight to Evansville [Indiana]. Fly to Evansville, sleep in a dive right along the highway for an hour, and play that night. Immediately get in a van and drive to Cincinnati [Ohio]. Get in at 5:30 in the morning.”

Jackson led the Patroons to a CBA title in 1984, his first full year as a head coach. “He then sent Coyne… a polite but firm list of contract demands. Among them: raising his annual salary from $25,000 to $30,000 and increasing his road per diem by $7. ‘I would never put a team in monetary stress for a few more bucks, but I do think you know that I am worth that much,’ Jackson wrote to Coyne, in a letter Coyne still keeps today. Jackson got his raise.”

The Washington Avenue Armory is half a block from 21 Central Avenue, where FantaCo, the now-defunct comic book store where I worked, used to be. So I got to see Jackson and the Patroons quite often during that first championship season.

Van Morrison is 70

Irish Heartbeat (1991) is an album of Van Morrison with the Chieftains.

George Ivan ‘Van’ Morrison is one of those artists who’s been around practically as long as I’ve been listening to music.

The Northern Irish singer/songwriter has released over three dozen albums. I have his second solo album, Astral Weeks, and his 2012 album, Born to Sing: No Plan B, but only about a half dozen in between, so there are definite gaps in my Van awareness.

Incidentally, Legacy Recordings has just acquired most of his catalog, and Rhino Remasters, Expands His “Astral Weeks,” “His Band and the Street Choir”.

I dare say if I listened to the entirety of his oeuvre, I’d likely find 25 more songs, but these are the ones that struck a chord with me today. And while the top 7 are probably my favorites, the order is fairly arbitrary.

25. When That Evening Sun Goes Down, from Tupelo Honey (1971) -TH
24. Cleaning Windows, from Beautiful Vision (1982)
23. I’ve Been Working, from His Band and The Street Choir (1970), noted as SC. This was the third solo album he put out, but the first one I owned, so it will be over-represented here.
22. Spanish Rose, from Blowin’ Your Mind! (1967) – BYM
21. Have I Told You Lately, from Avalon Sunset (1989)

20. Close Enough for Jazz, from in Too Long in Exile (1993). There’s also a version, with lyrics, on Born to Sing.
19. Gypsy Queen, from SC
18. Wonderful Remark, from the soundtrack album for The King of Comedy (1983) and The Best of Van Morrison (1990); I have the former, but not the latter
17. Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child, from Poetic Champions Compose (1987)
16. Tupelo Honey, from TH; single went to #47 in 1972

15. Bright Side of the Road, from Into the Music (1979)
14. Call Me Up in Dreamland, from SC; the single went to #95 in 1971
13. Wavelength, from Wavelength (1978); the single went to #42 in 1978
12. Here Comes the Night, from the eponymous first album by the group Them; the single went to #24 in 1965
11. Be Thou My Vision, from Hymns to the Silence (1991). This is actually from a double CD I have never owned, but have played, and there may be songs on here I like even better.

10. Street Choir, from SC
9. Marie’s Wedding, from Irish Heartbeat (1991). This is an album with the Chieftains.
8. Wild Night, from TH; the single went to #28 in 1971
7. Blue Money, from SC; the single went to #23 in 1971
6. Jackie Wilson Said (I’m in Heaven When You Smile), from Saint Dominic’s Preview (1972); the single went to #61 in 1972

5. Brown Eyed Girl, from BYM; the single went to #10 in 1967
4. If I Ever Needed Someone, from SC
3. Moondance, from Moondance (1970); the single went to #92 in 1977, but the song was a staple of FM radio
2. Gloria, from Them; the Them single went to #93 in 1965, and #71 upon reissue in 1966
1. Domino, from SC; the single went to #9 in 1971
***
Coverville 1090: That brown-eyed girl is gonna getcha good. Cover stories for Van Morrison and Shania Twain!

Helen Mirren is 70 (tomorrow)

Mirren’s paternal grandfather was in the Imperial Russian Army and fought in the 1904 Russo-Japanese War.

In June 2015, Dame Helen Lydia Mirren won the Tony Award for the Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play. Here is her acceptance speech.

I had forgotten that she had been nominated for Tonys twice before. In her win for The Audience, she portrayed Queen Elizabeth II. Playing the same personage, she won an Academy Award for Best Actress in 2006 in The Queen. Like much of her stage work, the role was developed in the West End, London’s equivalent to New York City’s Broadway.

She had won the first of her four Emmy Awards in 1996, Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Special, for Prime Suspect: The Scent of Darkness, making her a Grammy shy of an EGOT. I’ve watched her in much of her seven seasons of Prime Suspect.

She’s done a great deal of voice work. On TV, she was Becky’s Inner Voice on Glee and a caller on Frasier; in the movies, the dean in Monsters University (2013), and the queen, per usual, in The Prince of Egypt (1998).

I think of her primarily as a film actress, but I’ve not seen as many movies as I would have thought. On-screen, I’ve seen her in:
2014 The Hundred-Foot Journey
2006 The Queen
2003 Calendar Girls
2001 Gosford Park
1999 Teaching Mrs. Tingle
1994 The Madness of King George (playing Queen Charlotte)
1985 White Nights
1973 O Lucky Man! – here’s the O Lucky Man! trailer

From the Wikipedia:

“Mirren was born Helen Lydia Mironoff in … London. Her father, Vasily Petrovich Mironoff (1913–1980), was Russian…and her mother, Kitty (née Kathleen Alexandrina Eva Matilda Rogers; 1909–1996), was English.

“Mirren’s paternal grandfather, Colonel Pyotr Vasilievich Mironov, was in the Imperial Russian Army and fought in the 1904 Russo-Japanese War. He later became a diplomat and was negotiating an arms deal in Britain when he and his family were stranded during the Russian Revolution. The former diplomat became a London cab driver to support his family and eventually settled down in England.

“Helen’s father… anglicised the family name in the 1950s and changed his name to Basil Mirren. He played the viola with the London Philharmonic before World War II, and later drove a taxi cab… before becoming a civil servant with the Ministry of Transport.

“Mirren’s mother was a working-class Londoner… and was the 13th of 14 children born to a butcher whose own father had been the butcher to Queen Victoria… Mirren was the second of three children; she was born three years after her older sister Katherine (“Kate”; born 1942), and has a younger brother…named Peter Basil…

“Mirren married American director Taylor Hackford (her partner since 1986) on 31 December 1997, his 53rd birthday…. The couple had met on the set of White Nights. It is her first marriage, and his third (he has two children from his previous marriages). Mirren has no children and says she has “no maternal instinct whatsoever.”

“On 11 May 2010, Mirren attended the unveiling of her waxwork at Madame Tussauds London.”

Her Bio piece.
CBS Sunday Morning February 2015 (updated in June 2015).

Matt & Sweat, and derecho anniversary

The Wife went to college in the North Country, and taught school in the midst of the Adirondack mountains.

Once upon a time, I used to complained that The Wife did not follow the news enough, mostly because events I thought were commonly known, she was unaware of. She does pay more attention now, checking out 5 minutes of the NPR news each weekday morning, plus catching news at other times of the day.

There was one recent story for which she definitely took notice, which was two convicted murderers, Richard Matt and David Sweat, breaking out of prison, the Clinton Correctional Facility at Dannemora in (WAY) upstate New York on June 6. Truth is that it would have been very difficult to have avoided, with the local cable news station using special dramatic music frequently while the men were loose.

The prison break ended with Matt being shot and killed, and a few days later, on June 28, Sweat being shot but captured alive. It was such a great soap opera that people were casting characters for what seems to be an inevitable TV movie. Some folks were sad that the situation ended. The Wife was NOT one of those people, and she was a bit bummed that Sweat was brought to Albany Medical Center, only a couple miles from our home, for treatment.

She seemed to relate to the vastness of northern New York. She went to college in the North Country and taught school in the midst of the Adirondack mountains. Part of her interest was her concern for those isolated folks in their homes and summer cabins, some of the latter of which Matt and Sweat did break into.

That said, she was bemused by the saga, which involved one prison employee, Joyce Mitchell, who was apparently romantically involved with one or both of the prisoners, procuring tools for the breakout. Mitchell put them in some ground beef, froze it, and then gave the meat to another prison worker to give to the felons. Both employees have been indicted.

True: the Daughter knows more about this case than either my wife OR myself.
***
I should also note that this is the 20th anniversary of a derecho that started in the Midwest and eventually struck the Adirondacks and Albany. A derecho is “a line of intense, widespread, and fast-moving windstorms and sometimes thunderstorms that moves across a great distance and is characterized by damaging winds.” Those 70+ mph winds rattled the windows and woke us both from a sound sleep a little before 7 a.m.

It tore up some trees in nearby Washington Park. But a member of our church had dozens of broken bones when a tree fell on her up in the aforementioned Adirondacks.
***
Happy birthday to my bride. I love you.

Carly Simon is 70

Mockingbird also charted in Canada , New Zealand, the UK.

Long before I knew the name Carly Simon, I was listening to the folk music of the Simon Sisters, especially Winkin’, Blinkin’, And Nod, which managed to get to #73 on the pop charts back in 1964. Here’s Winkin’, live, from 1968, with middle sister Lucy; Carly was the youngest girl. Listen to The Simon Sisters sing for Children.

The three Simon sisters, including opera singer Joanna, the oldest, are all accomplished singers, influenced heavily by their parents. Their father was the co-founder of the book publishing house Simon & Schuster. Watch this piece about the sisters from the early 1980s.

From Wikipedia: “For her 1988 hit ‘Let the River Run’, from the film Working Girl, Simon became the first artist in history to win a Grammy Award, an Academy Award, and a Golden Globe Award for a song both written and performed entirely by a single artist. She was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1994, inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame for ‘You’re So Vain’ in 2004, and awarded the ASCAP Founders Award in 2012.”

The folks at the Grammys named her best new artist of 1972, a choice that has proved sage over time. She beat out Bill Withers; Chase; Emerson, Lake & Palmer; and Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds.

10. Better Not Tell Her. My favorite Carly Simon album is Have You Seen Me Lately?, which only got to #60 on the Billboard charts in 1990. This song, despite the video, did not chart at all.

9. Nobody Does It Better (#2 for three weeks in 1977). One of the two or three best James Bond songs, this from The Spy Who Loved Me. It was kept out of the top slot by You Light Up My Life, which was #1 for TEN weeks.

8. Legend in Your Own Time (#50 in 1972). Reportedly about Cat Stevens, who she dated for a time, I always it took as a sarcastic dig of a “legend in your own mind.” Yet it seems sweetly delivered.

7. Mockingbird (#5 in 1974). A duet with then-husband James Taylor, I like how they switch off harmony and lead vocals. From here: “It also charted in Canada (#3), New Zealand (#6), the UK (#34)… In recent years Taylor has performed ‘Mockingbird’ live with his daughter (by Simon) Sally Taylor and Simon has performed the song live with her and Taylor’s son Ben Taylor.” I could find only this live version.

6. You’re So Vain (#1 for three weeks in 1973). I actually never much cared WHO the song was about. It evidently is NOT about Mick Jagger (who sings on the song), Warren Beatty, James Taylor, Kris Kristofferson, Cat Stevens, or David Geffen, though she once said it was about Geffen. Here’s a strange 2011 video.

5. Haven’t Got Time for the Pain (#14 in 1974). At the end of this song is one of my favorite uses of strings.

4. Fisherman’s Song. This shows up on a recording for children and with Judy Collins and Lucy Simon on her 1990 album. Here’s Carly Simon talking with Joan Lunden, before singing it.

3. It’s Not Like Him. ALSO from Better Not Tell Her. Song of marital betrayal.

2. Anticipation (#13 in 1972). Almost ruined by its association with a Heinz catsup commercial, it still ends with the most hopeful line, “These are the good old days.”

1. That’s The Way I Always Heard It Should Be (#10 in 1971). I find this song unrelentingly sad, with ***
Carly Simon’s feet.