#billy joel biopic WHEN??

[nero-neptune]

just learned today that a young billy joel in 1969 tried being a psychedelic heavy metal rocker in a two-man band called Attila. but he was so bad at it, like he failed So Hard, that he became the Piano Man™, but not before running off with (and later marrying) the drummer's wife, which killed the band more than their flop music did.

somehow, that random factoid explains A Lot of his musical career creative choices. to me.

[thealmightyemprex]

Reading The Muppet Man part 2

1.I just wanna bring up the physical descriptions of Jerry Juhl and Richard Hunt are WEIRD ,describing them as a mad scientist and Billy Joel lookalike...They arent wrong but still

2."Jim Henson watchs a puppet show and that inspires him later" is cute but not how it happened .Hensons TV influence was Milton Berle ,he just fell into puppetry because that was job open at the local station

3.You know troublke of a biopic when you know the real story is you can tell when it is being manipulative .Theres a scene of Jims brother PAul Jr that just SCREAM "Pauls gonna die "

4......This script has moments.I'm not against a biopic playing with fantasy and time and reality but......I dunno something is just off

5....Its hard for me to imagine Jim frightened and here he is jumping at hallucinatory muppets

6.Oh so the Arsenio Hall performance will be an actual scene....Neat

7.Wait did they skip Jim getting his first puppet job and why he became a puppeteer

8.@ariel-seagull-wings you werent kidding when you said this wasnt accurrate .the way I understand it Jim and Janes romance started cause they geled well creatively this is playing them like a normal romance

9;This script feels like someon was reading Jim Hensosns wikipedia,with a Muppet movie on in the background,while on acid

10.I'm only 20 pages in .....There are 138 ....I think I hate this

@the-blue-fairie @filmcityworld1 @goodanswerfoxmonster @themousefromfantasyland @princesssarisa

[oakresin]

when they make the billy joel musical biopic with jesse plemons >>>>

[star-shard]

let it be known that when Billy Joel is casted as a girl boss hot boy for the biopic, I was there on the ground floor~

[thebreakfastgenie]

#and that's just the prologue of the cold spring harbor saga#coming up next: 'what if i turned my suicide note into my first single thus kick-starting my solo music career? haha...unless...?'#and even later: 'the album mixing got Fucked Up‚ so you can only imagine the distress young billy was in'#billy joel#suicide tw#i'll admit that i'm cracking jokes in these tags but you have to understand i was Spiraling while reading his biography#many moments had me like '...wait what?!'#billy joel biopic WHEN?? @nero-neptune

Honestly if I turned my suicide note into a song, recorded it, and then came out sounding ridiculous because the album was mastered wrong I would be on the news. Tomorrow Is Today was one side of the single (the single has two sides, no, really, it does) and he also used to perform it live, he even closed a couple concerts with it. A less appreciated part of this story is the friend who found him unconscious after the first suicide attempt describes listening to the sigma sound studios concert on the radio and sitting at home and crying because he wasn't there with him (there's a whole other saga about that) and thinking about this guy sitting at home and hearing Tomorrow Is Today on the radio is like......... okay.

Of course you're cracking jokes, what else are you supposed to do when he's literally cracking jokes in the gifset? But yeah the first time I encountered this story was a lot of "WHAT" moments. Can't recapture that feeling.

In conclusion, Billy Joel biopic when I can make it and not a moment before.

"And one time I drank furniture polish, right after that. I looked in the closet, I said 'I'm gonna kill myself.' And then there was bleach, and then there was... Pledge, I think. Furniture polish. I said 'well, which one's gonna taste better?' I was really thinking like this. I drank the Pledge... it kinda went right through me, I ended up just polishing my mother's furniture for a while."

[libertydevitto]

oh my GOD

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #558

Top Ten “Weird Al” Yankovic Songs

In retrospect, I should have done this last week and the Tarantino list this week. But really, what is more Al than just randomly getting something very, very slightly off? Because there’s a fillum out and I want to celebrate. Weird: The Al Yankovic Story stars Harry Potter as “Weird Al” Yankovic in a hard-bitten biopic of drugs and excess that is only available on a streaming service you’ve never heard of that isn’t even accessible in the UK, and is both the true story of Yankovic’s rise to success and also completely made up. And as someone who’s been a huge Al fan for over twenty years, this is incredibly exciting, hilarious, and rather frustrating in equal measure. Anyway: to celebrate, here’s a list.

Yankovic is an incredibly gifted musician and performer, something that I think is often hidden by the fact that he’s most famous as a parodist. But it’s one thing to just change the words of a song to make a joke; it’s another to spend forty years adapting multiple genres and styles of music, as well as expertly recreating famous videos, as well as making parodic references to everything from Star Wars to Santa Claus. The breadth of his talent and musicality, to say nothing of how funny and effective he is as an overall writer and performer, is frankly astonishing; in his career he’s turned is hand to everything, from gangsta rap to piano ballads and all sorts in between, to say nothing of his legendary polka medleys of popular songs.

All this brings us to the list itself, which at the end of the day is just my favourite of his songs. And I tell ya, it was hard! This was one of the hardest ones I’ve done, I think! Like with all kinds of music, really, you veer towards different songs at different times, so how does one compare American Pie to Pretty Fly for a White Guy, the works of Billy Joel to the works of Coolio? So we just come to my basic criteria, which is: how much do I enjoy the song? How funny is it? And, if it is a parody, how well is it doing with the parodying? Because one of the things I love about Al is that, as well as homaging different styles of music or plots of films, he often peppers his songs with lyrics that reference so much stuff. It’s a delight unpacking them from a comedic standpoint. Sometimes it’s not even a reference, sometimes it’s just hilarious wordplay. So that’s all factored into my complex algorithm. And this is the result!

The Saga Begins (1999): whilst I was broadly familiar with his work, this is song that really made me a fan. I remember it being a news story on the Empire website, and trying to watch it on my flaky dial-up at the time – probably the first music video I ever watched online. And I still think it’s just hilarious. I think the funniest thing is that, unlike some other songs, it’s not really parodying Star Wars; it’s actually a fairly straight retelling of the events of The Phantom Menace, just sung to the tune of American Pie. But the lyrics are golden; “My, my, this here Anakin guy/Maybe Vader someday later now he’s just a small fry”. It’s so perfect that it’s not only damn funny, not only a beautiful love letter to Star Wars, but also it just works as a song. I’ve sung it so much I know all the words and it was actually a bedtime lullaby I sang to my kids. And however much I love some of his other songs, I can’t say that about The Night Santa Went Crazy.

Dare to Be Stupid (1985): is it possible that I love this one so much because it was the first Al song I heard? That it is, in fact, featured on the soundtrack to The Transformers: The Movie? Almost certainly yes, but I don’t care. I am not, in truth, very familiar with Devo, so the intricacies of its parody are mostly lost on me; I get that he’s doing a bit on their songs and the video is referencing them too, but for me it’s just a really catchy song full of terrific, hilarious lyrical gags and references. And it’s played when Hot Rod and Wreck-Gar are dancing on the planet of Junk.

Don’t Download This Song (2006): rather than lampooning a specific song, this is a satire on a genre, perfectly parodying the pretensions of those Band Aid-style charity singles by earnest celebrities. As well as skewering the style so succinctly, it also has a tremendous target for the early noughties – the downloading of “free” music from file-sharing sites. Whilst incredibly of its time, it’s full of on-point references, including Lars Ulrich’s famed disdain of downloaded music, as well as mocking celebrity excess. This is all incredibly hilarious for me as, after really getting into Al in 1999, it was finding more of his music via Napster when I was at university that really made me a huge fan of his back catalogue. And don’t worry – I’ve also bought it on CD, too.

Jurassic Park (1993): this song is probably unique in the annals of all parody songs by virtue of it being more sensible and making more sense than the song it’s a parody of. The genius realisation that “Jurassic Park” scans perfectly with “MacArthur Park” is just the start, as it runs through the events of the film in hilarious manner (“I admit it’s kinda eerie/But this proves my chaos theory”). Apparently the stop-motion video was approved by Spielberg himself! Nobody leaves a cake out in the rain, however.

White and Nerdy (2006): talk about your references, this is the motherlode; and, quite frankly, it speaks to me. A veritable spreadsheet full of nerdy ephemera, the hilarity obviously coming from the juxtaposition of edgy rap with, well, Al Yankovic, almost every geeky IP or pastime is namechecked: Star Trek, Wikipedia, D&D, bubble wrap… the exquisiteness of the lyrics and speed at which Al cycles through them means it requires multiple listens to catch all the gags. And it has perhaps my favourite of all his lyrics: “The only question I/Ever thought was hard/Was do I like Kirk/Or do I like Picard”.

Ode to a Superhero (2003): ah, now we’re back to the soft gentle ballads and another recounting of the events of a summer blockbuster. Somehow singing a song about Spider-Man to the tune of Piano Man is perfect; after all, both Peter Parker and Billy Joel are New York legends (one’s from Queens, the other’s from the Bronx). Like The Saga Begins, it’s funny not just because, well, singing about Spider-Man is funny, but also the specificity of the references; like Mary Jane preferring guys “who can kiss upside down in the rain” or Norman Osborn wearing a “dumb” mask but being “scarier without it on”.

It’s All About the Pentiums (1999): another fabulously fast-paced rap about something exquisitely geeky; except this time it’s honing in on millennium-era computing technology. It’s another example of playing spot-the-reference but one thing that I find increasingly delightful in this case is that it’s so fabulously outdated; references to Y2K, newsgroups, “a hundred gigabytes of RAM”, and even the very fact that it’s got “Pentium” in the name. I can’t help but feel that this one’s just gonna get funnier as it gets older.

Pretty Fly for a Rabbi (1999): again we see the comedy emerge from the collision between a fast-paced, hard-edged style of music (in this case, millennial American punk) and frankly ridiculous lyrics. It’s not just the silliness of something as benign as a rabbi being the focus of an edgy rock song; it’s also the incorporation of Yiddish and stereotypically Jewish turns of phrase into the lyrics. Partly responsible for my assumption that Yankovic himself was Jewish!

Amish Paradise (1996): an infamous Weird Al song in that, whereas usually the original songwriters are chuffed to have him parody them, this one actually pissed off Coolio (RIP). But it’s part of the genre of tough songs about silly shit, the gangsta rap ballad of inner-city life and crime transmogrified into the badassery of the Amish, raising barns and milking cows. Perhaps it’s a bit mean to the Amish, in retrospect; but “you know I’m a million times as humble as thou art” is still a cracking lyric.

Bedrock Anthem (1993): I don’t think I’ve really expressed enough just how on point his parodies are; how well he raps, how closely he mirrors the style of the homaged artists, even in videos. But this is exquisite; somehow Al even looks like a Red Hot Chilli Pepper. And it’s just bonkers; I mean, how on earth do you get The Flintstones from Under the Bridge? I’m guessing – and this is just a wild guess based on nowt – that it was doing the “Yabba-dabba-dabba-dabba-do now” to the chorus that spawned the rest of the song, but who really knows? And once again we have lyrics that give me such joy, especially the way he throws in – out of nowhere – references to Bedrock life, such as “got a baby elephant vacuum cleaner”. Joy!

Now whilst I am gutted I didn’t find room for Bob, Yoda, or Santa, I’m also a bit gutted that I never got round to one of his polkas. These are really impressive works, how he manages to translate such a wide variety of songs into a polka style, and then turn it into a big medley, bouncing from track to track and even from genre to genre within the same song. Seriously, the man’s a musical genius. Maybe that’s why only Daniel Radcliffe could play him; he’s used to playing wizards.

[local-femme-gentleman]

music biopics i’d love to see

1. Janis Joplin

“When I sing, I feel like when you're first in love. It's more than sex. It's that point two people can get to they call love, when you really touch someone for the first time, but it's gigantic, multiplied by the whole audience.”

2. Billie Joel

“As human beings, we need to know that we are not alone, that we are not crazy or completely out of our minds, that there are other people out there who feel as we do, live as we do, love as we do, who are like us."

3. Aretha Franklin

“Being the Queen is not all about singing, and being a diva is not all about singing. It has much to do with your service to people. And your social contributions to your community and your civic contributions as well.”

4. Amy Winehouse

“My justification is that most people my age spend a lot of time thinking about what they're going to do for the next five or ten years. The time they spend thinking about their life, I just spend drinking.”

5. Bob Marley

“The devil ain't got no power over me. The devil come, and me shake hands with the devil. Devil have his part to play. Devil's a good friend, too... because when you don't know him, that's the time he can mosh you down.”

[phoenixrisesoncemore]

I was tagged by @wangxianbunnydoodles (oh my, this is long and you might regret it; also I don’t follow instructions well 😉). I tend not to be very good at these things (sorry to anyone else who has tagged me in these kinds of things before—this is a rare event happening mostly because I wanna talk about Tolkien books and ships) but here goes:

Top 3 Ships

I don’t actively ship characters that often. I’m not sure why that is. I do enjoy reading fic with pairings either canon or not, but I don’t often go “all in” on ships in most narratives I consume. There are notable exceptions (more than three but these are the three most recent—I have no idea how to identify my top ships):

WangXian (CQL). This is surely obvious from the current state of my blog, right? I blame The Untamed and its impossibly tender, only-subtextual-by-a-hair’s-breadth romance. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a show express ultimate devotion, deep affection, true appreciation, complete understanding (eventually), and the sheer *necessity of the other* between two people quite like this one has. Hell, I don’t think I’ve ever seen two characters and desperately wanted them together and happy as much as I have these two, so bravo to the cast and crew for generating such second-hand devotion in me.

Silvergifting (Tolkien). This is all @thearrogantemu’s fault. I’d read some Silvergifting before I read These Gifts That You Have Given Me, mostly out of curiosity (some good stuff, too!), but I had never read any Tolkien fic that convinced me it was *true* (on many, many levels, though the ship level is the one pertinent to this post). In any canon-like universe this ship hurts, but in the Gifts universe it hurts the most; it hurts like Hell. It hurts in the way only razor-sharp, sorry-the-universe-works-this-way, oh-are-those-my-entrails-on-the-floor-I-didn’t-even-feel-the-knife tragedy can hurt. And it’s so convincing that it’s just...a fact now. Tolkien just forgot to tell us. So now I ship Silvergifting, but most deeply, specifically THAT Silvergifting. (Meanwhile, 14 year old me continues to look at *significantly* older me like I’m insane.)

ZeLink (Legend of Zelda). Deep down I’m still 12 years old and no amount of fine lines and wrinkles is going to change that. When is Breath of the Wild 2 coming out?

Last Song

I listen to soundtracks and bombastic and dramatic orchestral pieces much more often than I listen to what people mean when they say “songs,” and a significant chunk of the “songs” I listen to are from musicals/operas.

Earlier today it was Hanz Zimmer’s soundtrack to Dark Phoenix (don’t start me up on the continuing disappointment that Phoenix adaptations continue to be to me—you don’t want to hear it; even I don’t want to hear it).

Before that it was Barbra Streisand’s The Broadway Album. (I prefer her outer space cover of “Somewhere” to the actual thing. Fight me.)

Before that it was Carmina Burana (One of my favorite things ever was when we went to a live performance of Carmina Burana and a boy who couldn’t have been more than 7 years old sat in the aisle in front of us and head-banged enthusiastically through “O Fortuna.” It was so metal. You go, kid. You get it.).

Before that it was a splattering of Billy Joel hits with emphasis on “2000 Years”, “River of Dreams”, “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant”, “The Stranger”, and “Only the Good Die Young” (thanks to that outstanding WangXian interpretation!).

Of course the soundtracks to The Untamed/CQL have been on repeat for weeks around here, particularly every single iteration of “WuJi” and the flute-heavy instrumental pieces (man, those are good!).

Not long ago I had Sarah Brightman’s covers of “Figlio Perduto” from La Luna and “Glosoli” and “One Day Like This” from Dreamchaser burning through my iPhone battery (yes, I like popera).

Enya, and especially Shepherd Moons and The Track Which Shall Not Be Named has been on repeat a lot.

Last Movie

I don’t sit down to watch movies that often any more. It just takes too much stillness and undivided attention and more resistance to multi-tasking than I have. The actual last movie that I watched (in a “have it on on another screen while I work” kind of way) was Raiders of the Lost Ark, which, of course, I’ve seen umpteen times and which followed a similar rewatch of the Back to the Future trilogy. The last movie I watched completely without distraction was Book Smart; I don’t watch comedies very often, but I really enjoyed it in an “OMG, I can totally relate to this” kind of way (except for the class president thing—that would have required that I interact with other people my own age and also not be homeschooled). Before that I think it was the Tolkien biopic. Man, I still haven’t written anything about that.

Currently Reading (in order of when I started them)

Oh dear.

The Familiar: part 1, Mark Z Danielewski. *sigh* For as much as I think Danielewski is brilliant and House of Leaves is one of my favorite books ever, I’ve just not been able to get into much of his other work. It’s universally a time and energy investment to penetrate and puzzle through, and I just don’t have as much of that as I used to. House of Leaves makes that investment worth it from early on and is absolutely a page-turner once you settle in, but other than The Fifty Year Sword I’ve just not been able to get into the rest of his work. The Familiar: part 1 is supposed to be the first in a 26 part series which is currently halted at part 4, I think. Without a guarantee of all parts ever being published, I don’t think I’m ready to invest more time into part 1 and may end up abandoning it, unfortunately.

History of The Hobbit, Douglas Anderson. Anderson did what Christopher didn’t and gave The Hobbit the HoMe treatment (if a bit less literal and opaque in format). It’s fascinating (I mean, there’s the Beren and Luthien name drop you were not expecting right there in the first draft), but reading essentially the same passages with only small changes over and over can be a slog, so reading it has been an ongoing project for over a year now.

Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien’s World, Verlyn Fleiger. This is Fleiger’s look at Tolkien’s Middle-earth in light of his association with Owen Barfield. Particularly, she is examining Tolkien’s work in conjunction with Barfield’s Poetic Diction and his thoughts on language and meaning. I have not read Poetic Diction, but I probably will now since it apparently addresses language formation as related to the origin of human consciousness which is SO up my alley.

New Seeds of Contemplation, Thomas Merton. My late sister-in-law had a masters in theology from Notre Dame and became a huge Merton fan. Meanwhile, my best friend actually spent a weekend retreat at The Abbey of Gethsemani. Between hearing about him from the two of them, I developed an interest in Merton. I happened to read “Moral Theology of the Devil” a couple of years ago. It was one of the most illuminating theological things I have read and deeply inspired my own Tolkien fic-writing (let’s just say the progress there is otherwise slow). This book is a collection of pieces which happens to contain that piece, and I’ve been skipping around through it for a while now.

The Lord of the Rings reread (Tolkien, obviously). I hate this, but I am so deep in so many critical Tolkien books that I’ve not had the chance to really sit down and relax into my reread for months and months and will likely just end up starting over. Plus I want to read it concurrently with the next entry in this list and the next entry is taking longer to get through because of its format. That entry being:

The Lord of the the Rings: A Reader’s Companion, Hammond and Scull. This is a treasure trove of data and insights for those really wanting to dig critically-historically into The Lord of the Rings on a chapter-by-chapter, passage-by-passage basis. The only issue with it is that jumping back and forth between the two (as you have to: this is a reference book) tends to kill the mood of The Lord of the Rings when read as it’s meant to be read: for enjoyment!

The Power of Limits: Proportional Harmonies in Nature, Art, and Architecture, Gyorgy Doczi. This has been an ongoing read here and there since Christmas, especially as I work on two personal projects.

The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, Lesslie Newbigin. To be honest I don’t think I am going to finish this one. I like a few of the things he says, things I think are truthful and which need to be confronted in American Christian culture in particular, but it’s just too much Calvin for my taste, too many assumptions I do not share being the heretic that I am, and I spend too much time anger-notating about theology to read it with grace.

In Full Measure I Return to You, thearrogantemu. This is a reread of the (relatively) happy AU fic for my most favoritest Tolkien fic (Gifts), but I’ve put my reread on hold while I finish one of the two projects, after which I am diving in and screw the rest of this list for the time being.

Food Craving

Sushi. My kingdom for some good sushi. I’ve only had sushi once since we got back from NY and while it was the best sushi I have had locally IT WAS NOT OMAKASE AT SUSHI NOZ. It also didn’t require a personal loan to pay for, but *shrug* I’m spoiled now and will forever crave what I can no longer have.

People I’d Like To Get To Know Better

I hate tagging people in these things because I’m awkward and shy and do them so rarely myself that it feels hypocritical for me to ask it of others. That being said: if you’re a follower of my blog and you want to do this, please do! And please tag me! I’d love to get to know more about you 😊.

[2-fast-2-curious]

We were at brunch and my friend was talking about how Elton John taught her that tomatillos are in the same fruit family as gooseberries before realizing that she meant Alton Brown from Good Eats

And then I proceeded to call Elton John the Piano Man when that’s Billy Joel’s nickname

And for some reason I was insistent that his biopic was called Piano Man and not Rocket Man

[icarusthelunarguard]

This Week’s Horrible-Scopes

Aries

What’s the difference between an Elephant and a Flea? The obvious answer, of course, is that “Elephants can have Fleas, but Fleas can’t have Elephants.” The less obvious answer is, “Elephants kill People, but Fleas kill Populations.” Which is just a nice way of saying, “don’t piss off sub-five-foot red-headed women. They WILL end you.”

Taurus

There are plans in the making of a BioPic movie about Billy Joel - but the company doesn’t have the rights to use his name, his likeness, or his music. So here’s your chance to help them out, and we won’t claim credit for this. Tell them they should name it, “Piano-Man” - a story about how a high school dropout was bitten by a radioactive piano, moved to California, and had his first big hit singing about all the gay guys drinking in a bar. SHEER BRILLIANCE!

Gemini

You want to do things your way, but that’s not always the way to go. Sure, you can argue that your system is easier for everyone to follow, but when confronted with entrenched modalities, tradition has a tendency to win out. So, you keep using Metric measurements if you want. Just remember that you’ll need to convert for everyone else around you.

Cancer Moon-Child

There are songs in your music collection now that used to be part of a Cassette Mix Tape from 1987. They were not all as good as you remember. “La Bamba” by Los Lobos… Good! "Heart and Soul" by T'Pau… STILL Good! “Songbird” by Kenny G? (*Pause*) Look around you, Cancer. See how many of your friends are nodding off just thinking about that song? Throw that one away.

Leo

Why do you want to fill a bathtub with Jell-o and float yourself in the middle of it? You know what? Fine. A standard tub is 42 gallons. That means you’re gunna need 336 boxes of Jell-o at about a buck -and-a-quarter each. And for what? TikTok clicks? Do you have any idea what colour your skin is gunna be after that? Just eat the stuff like a normal person!

Virgo

Time is an enemy: it robs you of life as it TICK, tick, TICK, TICKS AWAY! Keep that in mind when you take a Spring Break vacation in Arizona. Which county is on Daylight Savings Time? Which town inside that county ISN’T? You could have just stayed home and gotten drunk in the comfort of your own bathroom, you know.

Libra

Your parrot is dead. We’re sorry to have to break the news to you, but it’s true. She tried to attack another parrot she saw in a mirror and, well… Anyway, we have a taxidermist on call for just such an emergency. His name is “Terry”... he CLAIMS he’s from Minnesota, but speaks with a British Accent, and specializes with Dead Parrots.

Scorpio

A Flock of Seagulls will be performing at a club in your vicinity and tickets go on sale this week. You don’t have to worry about buying seats in the Nosebleed Section - it’s not that big a venue. It should only have a $10 cover charge at the door, though. Do not bring french fries to throw at them!

Sagittarius

Let’s take a shot in the dark at this one; you want things to go well for you, but are worried it’s not going to happen. Not to worry! The most problematic things are already in motion and beyond your ability to stop. So go get that clove of garlic that’s sprouting and plant it indoors now. You MIGHT get some bulbs by the end of summer!

Capricorn

Crows and Raven can be taught to like and trust humans, but seagulls will forever be little opportunistic shits. Don’t throw a small order of Burger King fries thinking it’ll distract them and leave you alone. That doesn’t work. That NEVER works. But if you see gulls flying well inland, there’s a storm coming. Get Ready!

Aquarius

After a couple months of us being upset with you, we’re going to cut you some slack and give you an actual Horrible-Scope this week. Just remember! This is us being nice to you. (*Ahem*) Life is like a box of chocolates for you this week. Think less “Ghirardelli” and more “Whitmans”. Be super careful if you have an allergy to “Deetz”, though.

Pisces

Get yourself a Friday Fish Fry. It’s been a long time since you’ve had one and Arthur Treacher’s Fish and Chips isn’t exactly common anymore. And if you can’t get one locally, make it yourself. Just be mindful of the oil this time. The term “Flashpoint” isn’t just for comic books.

[brn1029]

It happened on this date in music history…

February 21st

1961 - The Beatles

The Beatles played three gigs in one day. The first was a lunchtime show at The Cavern Club, then at night they appeared at the Cassanova Club, Liverpool and at Litherland Town Hall, Liverpool.

1964 - Billy Joel

New York band The Echoes recruited a new young unknown piano player, named Billy Joel.

1967 - Pink Floyd

Pink Floyd started their first sessions at the EMI Studios, St. John's Wood, London on their debut album The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, working on the song 'Matilda Mother'. While Pink Floyd were recording their album with former Beatles engineer Norman Smith, The Beatles themselves were working in the studio next door, recording 'Fixing A Hole' for their Sgt. Pepper album. Micky Dolenz from The Monkees attended the mixing session during the day.

1968 - Otis Redding

Otis Redding had his first entry on the UK singles chart when '(Sittin' On) The Dock Of The Bay' entered the chart, it went on to be a No.3 hit. The song became the first posthumous single to top the charts in the US.

1970 - Simon and Garfunkel

Simon and Garfunkel went to No.1 on the UK chart with Bridge Over Troubled Water. The album went on to stay on the chart for over 300 weeks, returning to the top of the charts on eight separate occasions and spending a total of 41 weeks at No.1.

1972 - Led Zeppelin

Led Zeppelin released 'Rock And Roll / Four Sticks' as a 7 inch single in the US, peaking at No.47 on the chart. The song was written as a spontaneous jam session, whilst the band were trying to finish 'Four Sticks'. Drummer John Bonham played the introduction to Little Richard's 'You Keep A-Knockin' and Page added a guitar riff; with the tapes rolling the basic song was finished fifteen minutes later.

1976 - The Four Seasons

The Four Seasons were at No.1 on the UK singles chart with 'December '63 (Oh What A Night). The group's only UK No.1.

1982 - Murry K

American DJ Murry The K died. Murray is thought to be the first person to play a Beatles record on radio in America. During the early days of Beatlemania, he frequently referred to himself as "the Fifth Beatle". Married six times, he died of cancer a week after his 60th birthday.

1986 - Metallica

Metallica released their third album, the highly influential album, Master of Puppets, considered by many in the metal community to be the best metal album of all time. This was the last Metallica album with bassist Cliff Burton who was killed when the group's tour bus over-turned in southern Sweden while touring to promote the album.

2002 - Elton John

Elton John accused the music industry of exploiting young singers and dumping talented artists for manufactured group's. He said 'There are too many average and mediocre acts; it damages real talent getting airplay. It's just fodder.'

2008 - Record Collection

A US music aficionado sold his collection of more than three million vinyl albums, singles and compact discs to an eBay buyer from Ireland for just over $3 million. An eBay spokeswoman said the sale was one of the highest ever for the online auction site.

2014 - Kurt Cobain

A statue of a weeping Kurt Cobain was unveiled in Aberdeen, Washington - the hometown of the late Nirvana frontman. The statue, which sees Cobain crying a single tear, is situated in the Aberdeen Museum of History. Kurt Cobain Day would now be celebrated annually in the city of Aberdeen. Of the day, Mayor Bill Simpson recently read a proclamation, which stated: "Aberdeen residents may justifiably take pride in the role our community played in the life of Kurt Cobain and the international recognition our community has gained from its connections with Kurt Cobain and his artistic achievements."

2014 - Gregg Allman

A crew member working on a biopic about Gregg Allman died after being hit by a train during filming. Police in south Georgia said the woman was struck after the crew for Midnight Rider placed a bed on the railway tracks in Doctortown. Wayne County Sheriff John Carter said several other people had been injured, two of them seriously.

2019 - Peter Tork

American musician Peter Tork died age 77. He was diagnosed with a rare form of tongue cancer in 2009. The Monkees were brought together for an American sitcom TV series in 1966. Best known as the keyboardist and bass guitarist, they had the 1967 UK & US No.1 single 'I'm A Believer' plus other hits including 'Last Train to Clarksville', 'Pleasant Valley Sunday', and 'Daydream Believer'.

[toldnews-blog]

New Post has been published on https://toldnews.com/technology/entertainment/drummer-hal-blaine-played-on-hits-of-sinatra-elvis-dies/

Drummer Hal Blaine, played on hits of Sinatra, Elvis, dies

Hal Blaine, the Hall of Fame session drummer and virtual one-man soundtrack of the 1960s and ’70s who played on the songs of Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley and the Beach Boys and laid down one of music’s most memorable opening riffs on the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby,” died Monday.

Blaine died of natural causes at his home in Palm Desert, California, his son-in-law, Andy Johnson, told The Associated Press. He was 90.

On hearing of his death, the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson called him “the greatest drummer ever.”

The winner of a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award last year, Blaine’s name was known by few outside the music industry, even in his prime.

But just about anyone with a turntable, radio or TV heard his drumming on songs that included Presley’s “Return to Sender,” the Byrds’ “Mr. Tambourine Man,” Barbra Streisand’s “The Way We Were,” the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations,” dozens of hits produced by Phil Spector, and the theme songs to “Batman,” ”The Partridge Family” and dozens of other shows.”

“Hal Blaine was such a great musician and friend that I can’t put it into words,” Wilson said in a tweet that included an old photo of him and Blaine sitting at the piano. “Hal taught me a lot, and he had so much to do with our success — he was the greatest drummer ever.”

As a member of the Los Angeles-based studio band “The Wrecking Crew,” which also featured keyboard player Leon Russell, bassist Carol Kaye and guitarist Tommy Tedesco, Blaine forged a hard-earned virtuosity and versatility that enabled him to adapt quickly to a wide range of popular music. According to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, he played on 40 No. 1 hits, 150 top 10 songs and eight songs that won Grammys for record of the year, including Sinatra’s “Strangers In the Night” and Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” He may be the only drummer to back Presley, Sinatra and John Lennon.

“Hal Blaine was a legendary session drummer whose contributions as a member of the Wrecking Crew helped propel countless hits to the top of the Billboard charts in the ’60s and ’70s,” the Recording Academy said in a statement Monday. “We extend our deepest condolences to his family, friends, and fellow music creators.”

Some accounts have Blaine playing on 35,000 songs, but he believed that around 6,000 was more accurate, still making him a strong contender for the most recorded drummer in history. In 2000, he was part of the first group of session players to be inducted into the Rock Hall of Fame.

Out of so many notable sessions, his signature moment was the attention-grabbing “on the four” solo — Bum-ba-bum-BOOM — that launched the classic “Be My Baby,” a hit for the Ronettes in 1963 that helped define Spector’s overpowering “Wall of Sound” productions.

The song remained a radio staple for decades and got new life in the ’70s when it was used to open Martin Scorcese’s “Mean Streets” and again in the ’80s when it was featured in “Dirty Dancing.”

Few drum parts have been so widely imitated, from Billy Joel’s “Say Goodbye to Hollywood” to The Jesus and Mary Chain’s “Just Like Honey.”

In a 2005 interview with Modern Drummer magazine, Blaine said that he wasn’t quite sure how he came up with the solo. To the best of his memory, he accidentally missed a beat while the song was being recorded and improvised by only playing the beat on the fourth note.

“And I continued to do that,” he recalled. “Phil might have said, ‘Do that again.’ Somebody loved it, in any event. It’s just one of those things that sometimes happens.”

Blaine nicknamed himself and his peers “The Wrecking Crew,” because they were seen by their more buttoned-down elders as destructive to the industry — an assertion that Kaye and others disputed. Many members of The Wrecking Crew worked nonstop for 20 years, sometimes as many as eight sessions a day, a pace that led to several marriages and divorces for Blaine.

As more bands began playing on their own records, and with the rise of synthesizers and drum machines, business dropped off in the 1980s even as younger musicians, such as Max Weinberg of the E Street Band, cited his influence.

His memoir, “Hal Blaine & The Wrecking Crew,” came out in 1990 and he continued to appear at symposiums and workshops into his 80s. Blaine also was seen in the 2008 documentary “The Wrecking Crew” and was played by Johnny Sneed in the Wilson biopic “Love & Mercy.”

The son of Jewish immigrants, Blaine was born Harold Simon Belsky in Holyoke, Massachusetts.

By age 8, he was already drumming, using a pair of dowels he removed from a seat in the living room.

He was a professional by age 20 and within a few years switched from jazz to rock after being approached during a gig at the Garden Of Allah hotel in Hollywood.

The use of session musicians became a scandal in the late 1960s when it was discovered that the Monkees, the million-selling TV foursome, did not play on their songs. Blaine, who, of course, drummed for the Monkees, knew that many top groups depended on him and his peers. He even became friendly with some of the drummers he sat in for, including Wilson’s brother Dennis Wilson.

“He was thrilled that I was making their records because while I was making Beach Boy records, he was out surfing or riding his motorcycle,” Blaine told Modern Drummer.

Blaine told the magazine that Bruce Gary, who played drums in the Knack, was once asked who his favorite drummer was.

“He was never so disappointed in his life to find out that a dozen of his favorite drummers were me.”

Blaine is survived by his daughter Michelle Blaine, and seven grandchildren.

———

Italie reported from New York.

[onejazztrackaday]

Georgia on My Mind – Ray Charles

Ray Charles Robinson was born in Albany, Georgia, USA in 1930. On Ray’s death in 2004, Billy Joel said, "This may sound like sacrilege, but I think Ray Charles was more important than Elvis Presley".

Frank Sinatra once called him "the only true genius in show business". Although Charles downplayed this notion, he was often referred to as “The Genius”. His preferred address among friends and musicians was simply “brother Ray”. His record company certainly didn’t shy away from the epithet, as the title of the 1960 album from which today’s track comes demonstrates. 

Charles lost his sight to glaucoma during childhood, and learned to play piano when he was already blind. Learning to play entirely by ear and touch, perhaps contributed to his uncanny ability as a musical chameleon. He could imitate just about any style. He pioneered soul music in the fifties combining blues, jazz, rhythm and blues, and gospel. In the sixties he contributed to the integration of country music, rhythm and blues, and pop music. 

Today’s track is brother Ray’s version of of the Hoagy Carmichael tune Georgia on My Mind, written the year Charles was born. Showing that The Genius is no prisoner to genre labels, it features a string orchestra, backing Ray’s jazz piano, 1940s vocal harmonies, and a grand country ballad feel.

Just six months after the release of this hit song, Charles was scheduled to perform at a dance at Bell Auditorium in Augusta, Georgia, but cancelled the show after learning from students of Paine College that the larger auditorium dance floor would be restricted to whites, while blacks would be obligated to sit in the Music Hall balcony. Charles left town immediately after letting the public know why he wouldn't be performing, but the promoter sued Charles for breach of contract, resulting in a $757 fine.

In 1979, Charles was vindicated by receiving a formal apology from the state of Georgia and his version of Georgia on My Mind was made the official state song.

If you haven’t seen it, I thoroughly recommend the biopic Ray portraying Ray Charles’ life and career between the mid-1930s and 1979. It was released in October 2004, starring Jamie Foxx as Charles. Foxx won the 2005 Academy Award for Best Actor for the role.

–Bozzie 🎷

[biofunmy]

‘Richard Jewell’ Review: The Wrong Man

On July 27, 1996, a homemade bomb exploded at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, the host city for that year’s Summer Olympics. Two people died and 100 were hurt in the attack. It was carried out by an anti-abortion militant named Eric Rudolph, though he was not arrested until 2003, after he had bombed two women’s health clinics and a gay bar and spent five years as a fugitive in the woods of Appalachia.

Rudolph’s name is mentioned near the end of “Richard Jewell,” Clint Eastwood’s new film about the aftermath of the Atlanta bombing. The movie, based on a Vanity Fair article by Marie Brenner, isn’t about the bomber, but rather about the security guard who found a backpack full of explosives and shrapnel under a bench and sounded the alarm. Nonetheless, the specter of domestic right-wing terrorism haunts the movie, an unseen and unnamed evil tearing at the bright fabric of American optimism.

Eastwood, in nearly half a century as a major filmmaker and even longer as an axiom of popular culture, has chronicled the fraying of that cloth, and also plucked at a thread or two. “Richard Jewell,” with a screenplay by Billy Ray, is one of his more obviously political films, though not always in obvious ways. In spite of some efforts to interpret it as a veiled pro-Trump polemic, the film doesn’t track neatly with our current ideological agitations. The political fractures Eastwood exposes are more elemental than even the most ferocious partisanship. This is a morality tale — in a good way, mostly — about the vulnerability of the individual citizen in the face of state power and about the fate of a private person menaced by the machinery of publicity.

Though he acts bravely and responsibly at a moment of crisis, Jewell (Paul Walter Hauser) isn’t entirely a hero, and “Richard Jewell” doesn’t quite belong in the gallery with “Sully” and “American Sniper,” Eastwood’s other recent portraits of exceptional Americans in trying circumstances. As in “15:17 to Paris” and “The Mule,” he’s more interested here in exploring what happens to an ordinary man under extreme pressure. He also wants to show how a regular guy’s idiosyncrasies can seem like either warning signs or virtues, depending on who’s looking.

We first meet Jewell about 10 years before the bombing, in a local office of the Small Business Administration, pushing a cart full of office supplies. That’s where he meets Watson Bryant (Sam Rockwell), an irascible lawyer who will become his champion later on. Jewell is polite, hard-working and prone to surprising, unsolicited acts of generosity. He keeps Bryant’s desk drawer stocked with Snickers bars. At Centennial Olympic Park in 1996, he hands out soft drinks to co-workers, police officers and other thirsty people.

There might be something a little peculiar about him. Eastwood, Ray and Hauser (who is nothing short of brilliant) cleverly invite the audience to judge Jewell the way his tormentors eventually will: on the basis of prejudices we might not even admit to ourselves. He’s overweight. He lives with his mother, Bobi (Kathy Bates). He has a habit of taking things too seriously — like his job as a campus police officer at a small liberal-arts college — and of trying a little too hard to fit in. He treats members of the Atlanta Police Department and the F.B.I. like his professional peers, and seems blind to their condescension. “I’m law enforcement too” he says to the agents who are investigating him as a potential terrorist, with an earnestness that is both comical and pathetic.

Most movies, if they bothered with someone like Jewell at all, would make fun of him or relegate him to a sidekick role. Eastwood, instead, makes the radical decision to respect him as he is, and to show how easily both his everyday shortcomings and his honesty and decency are distorted and exploited by the predators who descend on him at what should be his moment of glory.

The main heavies are Tom Shaw, a stone-faced F.B.I. man played by Jon Hamm, and Kathy Scruggs, a reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. It’s her reporting that sets off a feeding frenzy in the newspapers and on the airwaves, including a painful moment when Bobi sees her beloved Tom Brokaw saying terrible things about her son.

That is real footage. Scruggs, played by Olivia Wilde, was a real person (she died in 2001). Tom Shaw was not — the F.B.I. agents have been renamed in the movie — and the implication that Scruggs had sex with him in exchange for information about the bombing case has no apparent basis in reality. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has threatened legal action against Warner Bros. for the way its journalists, Scruggs in particular, are portrayed in the film, and the studio has pushed back. On strictly dramatic grounds, the character is, at best, a collection of lazy, sexist screenwriting clichés.

That isn’t so unusual in Hollywood, but what’s worse is that Eastwood and Ray subject Scruggs — depicted as a newsroom mean girl with nothing but scorn for her female colleagues — to a type of profiling analogous to what Jewel endured. Assuming that an ambitious woman journalist must be sleeping with her sources isn’t all that different from assuming that a fat man who lives with his mother must have planted a bomb.

In that respect, then, “Richard Jewell” undermines its own argument. But it happens to be a pretty strong argument, and one that takes Eastwood in some surprising directions. I would not have expected to see a heartfelt defense of Miranda rights in a movie directed by the former Dirty Harry, or a critique of F.B.I. overreach from the maker of a sympathetic J. Edgar Hoover biopic. I don’t think this is simply a matter of adapting to the political winds of the moment, now that distrust of the F.B.I., long a staple of the left, seems to have shifted rightward. Eastwood has always had a stubborn libertarian streak, and a fascination with law enforcement that, like Jewell’s, is shadowed by ambivalence and outright disillusionment.

The shadows are what linger from this flawed, fascinating movie. As usual with Eastwood, it is shot (by Yves Bélanger) and edited (by Joel Cox) in a clean, blunt, matter-of-fact style. The story moves in a straight line, gathering momentum and suspense even as it lingers over odd, everyday moments. It doesn’t feel especially complicated or textured until it’s almost finished: Like Jewell himself, you may struggle to comprehend the implications of what is happening, and to grasp the stakes.

“Richard Jewell” is a rebuke to institutional arrogance and a defense of individual dignity, sometimes clumsy in its finger-pointing but mostly shrewd and sensitive in its effort to understand its protagonist and what happened to him. The political implications of his ordeal are interesting to contemplate, but its essential nature is clear enough. He was bullied.

Richard Jewell

Rated R. Terrorist violence and state power. Running time: 2 hours 9 minutes.

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[topbeautifulwomens]

#Gabriel #Macht #fashionblog #fashionstyle #friday #fun #makeupoftheday #model #pink #positivevibes #sunsets #views

Son of actor Stephen Macht, Gabriel Macht followed in his dadâ€s footsteps early, when at age eight he made his film debut in the Larry Peerce-directed Why Would I Lie?, starring Treat Williams. He was nominated for a Young Artist for Best Young Motion Envision Actor, for his performance in the comedy/drama film. After this auspicious debut, however, young Macht put acting on the backburner until after graduating from high school. In 1991, he tried to rerefreshing his career by taking on a supporting role in the ABC television film Guilty Until Proven Innocent. He too appeared the play “What the Butler Saw” at the Arena Stage in Washington, DC in 1994.

After earning his BA degree, Machtâ€s career picked up steam when he landed the roles of Johnny Draper on the ABC period Western film Follow the River (1995) and “The Visitor” (aka. Elvis) on the Steve Martin applauded Off-Broadway play “Picasso at the Lapin Agile (also 1995). He continued to incorporate supporting roles in such movies as the Paul Rudd-Jennifer Aniston vehicle The Object of My Affection (1998), Tod Williams†comedy The Adventures of Sebastian Cole (1998) and Simply Irresistible (1999), which starred Sarah Michelle Gellar and Sean Patrick Flanery. He also guest starred in popular television series like “Spin City” (1997) and “Sex and the City” (1998).

Adding to his acting resume, Macht began generating with the independent films Not for Nothin (1999) and The Bookieâ€s Lament (2000), in which he also had a leading role. As the new millennium sunup, the actorâ€s profile grew increased, thanks to his typical role on the NBC supernatural series “The Others” (2000), portraying the sympathetic medical intern Mark Gabriel, and his supporting role opposite Jennifer Love Hewitt in the ABC biopic The Audrey Hepburn Story (2000), as actor William Holden. The same year, he also appeared in the comedy film 101 Ways (The Things a Girl Will Do to Keep Her Volvo).

It was in 2001 that Macht finally gained his wide screen breakthrough when director Les Mayfield cast him in the role of the knowledgeable and tranquil Frank James to Colin Farrellâ€s much more hot-blooded Jesse James in the revisionist American Outlaws. Though the movie was dismissed for its out of date screenplay, Macht charmed several critics with his compelling screen presence. The mounting star then teamed up with Owen Wilson and Gene Hackman in the war/drama film Behind Enemy Lines (2001), supported Sir Anthony Hopkins and Chris Rock for Bad Company (2002), an phase/thriller by Joel Schumacher, before reuniting with Colin Farrell in The Recruit (2003), also starring Al Pacino.

After appearing in the low-budget black comedy Grand Theft Parsons (2003), along side Robert Forster and Johnny Knoxville, Macht starred opposite John Travolta and Scarlett Johansson in the drama film A Love Song for Bobby Long (2004). He landed a supporting role in the made-for-television film Archangel in 2005, which starred Daniel Craig, and joined the all-star cast of The Good Shepherd including Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, Alec Baldwin, Billy Crudup and Robert De Niro, the next year.

Recently costarring with Diane Keaton and Mandy Moore in the comedy romantic Because I Said So (2007), Macht will be cast as in the starring role of Bo Durant, a hot-tempered, working-class gearhead, on the upcoming drama film One Way to Valhalla, written and directed by Karen Goodman.

Name Gabriel Macht Height 6' 0½" Naionality American Date of Birth 22 January 1972 Place of Birth The Bronx, New York, USA Famous for

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