dimland radio 3-24-18 show notes

Mom Had Surgery And Recovery Has Been Complicated

My mom had surgery on Monday, which went well. However, she's old, so very old, and not the most physically fit. That combination has made recovery slow going. She is in transitional care now. She is improving, so maybe she'll be back home soon.

Pedantic Moment: Long John Silver

It was 44 years ago on an episode of Match Game '74. One of the fill-in-the-blank statements was (something along the lines of), "Long John Silver and his parrot are so much alike the parrot even has a blank."

 

The contestant and all six of the celebrities answered either peg leg or wooden leg (both were considered the same). Only thing is...

 

 

Long John Silver did NOT have a peg leg!

It's Not True #1: Michelle Obama Said White People Are What's Wrong With America

Remember what Abraham Lincoln said about internet memes that show a photo of someone and have a quote alleged to be said by that person? Essentially he said there's a strong chance they are bullshit. This one about Michelle Obama is bullshit.

 

 

Snopes.com lists this as false and shows that the claim stems from a commencement speech the former First Lady made at Tuskegee University in 2015. She did talk about the obstacles African Americans faced through America's history, but if you hear her saying white people are what is wrong with America when she tells of that history, you have a problem.

 

Here's something she really did say about the people of America:

 

"The people of this country are universally good and kind and honest and decent. Don't be afraid of the country you live in. The folks here are good."

It's Not True #2: British Singers Try To Sound American While Singing To Make More Money

I used to believe this one, but I learned that the act of singing in English tends to make the singer sound as though they have a generic American accent. It's something that happens to British, Irish, and even Swedish singers. It even happens to singers with a strong New York or Southern accent. You can learn more about it here.

 

The Jam - Bruce Foxton, Rick Buckler, & Paul Weller

I talked about Paul Weller, who was the lead singer of The Jam and later The Style Council. His speaking voice has a strong Cockney accent. When he sang in The Style Council his British accent washes away. However, when he sand for The Jam, he would purposefully retain the British accent. That is something singers will do, but if they just sing as comes naturally to them, most the time they sound American.

 

The Style Council - Mick Talbot & Paul Weller

I gave examples of Weller singing British in The Jam on their song This Is The Modern World, his speaking voice, and his generic American accent while singing in The Style Council on their song Boy Who Cried Wolf.

 

Top Three Cool Things Of The Week

Here's Three Cool Things from this week.

3) I did some art from Nostalgia Zone, the comic book store I work for. The two pieces I did turned out OK and it was cool to do some comic book art again.

 

 

2) YouTube has a Columbo channel. It's an official channel put up in commemoration of Columbo turning 50 this year. And in the last three weeks now, they've posted three full episodes, two from season one and one from season 2. So far. It's looking like they'll post a full episode each week.

1) My mom and I spent an evening while she was in the hospital watching a really good movie (Open Range - It's an excellent Western). It brought back memories of when we would watch movies together on a regular basis. It was like the old days. Pretty cool.

Music heard on the show...

Dimland Radio opening theme song: 'Ram' by The Yoleus 
First ad break bumpers: 'White And Lazy' by The Replacements & 'Eye In The Sky' by Alan Parsons Project

Second ad break bumpers: 'Rough Boys' by Pete Townshend & 'Emotional Rescue' by The Rolling Stones

Closing song: 'Angler's Treble Hook' by $5 Fiddle

That's it! See you next Saturday night for Dimland Radio 11 Central, midnight Eastern on www.ztalkradio.com you can also download my show from the z talk show archives page. You can email your questions and comments to drdim@dimland.com

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concert memoirs pt. 24 - buzzcocks & paul weller

The Buzzcocks

11/20/93 First Avenue w/John Ticket Price: Unknown

Geez! Of the last five shows I attended at First Avenue (or anywhere else, I’m sure) three were is see The Buzzcocks. I guess I really liked these guys. You will also notice that the numbers of shows I went to per year had greatly reduced. One or two a year was my pace.

If memory serves, this was the show at which the band had television sets dressing the stage. They were promoting their first new album in quite a while, Trade Test Transmission. I may be mistaken but I think the album title refers the test screen that used to be seen on the TV at the end of the broadcast day. I could be wrong. Anyway, I think that’s why they had the TV’s.

The televisions were plugged in and the screens were just showing snow. And, at the very end of their show, Pete Shelley and Steve Diggle each grabbed a microphone stand and smashed out the TV screens. It was a cool effect, however I don’t think the First Avenue staff appreciated the stunt. I saw the staff fellows sweeping up the mess rolling their eyes and shaking their heads. Anything to stay in show business, eh, boys?

So, the next day the band was at the downtown Minneapolis record store, Northern Lights, (No, it’s not there anymore.) doing an instore record signing appearance. I got my copy of their new album signed by the band. I forgot to ask them if the First Avenue people knew they’d be smashing televisions, but I did remember to gush all over Pete Shelley about seeing his fantastic solo show (First Avenue, 8/20/86) and going on about how great it was.

What a fanboy I am!

Paul Weller
5/16/94 First Avenue w/John Ticket Price: Comp. Tickets

It had been more than six months since John and I had gone to a show at First Avenue, but we would still head down there fairly frequently for the Tuesday and/or Saturday dance nights. First Avenue’s usual practice in those days was to hand patrons as they walked in a few complimentary tickets for upcoming concerts and a couple dance nights. Usually, the concerts didn’t interest us much. So we didn’t make much use of them.

You might also get some comp tickets from the bartenders. John and I had gotten to know one bartender, Pete, pretty well. Ok, we didn’t hang out with him or anything, but he knew us and what we drank and thought we were pretty ok. Now and again he would flip us a couple comps. I’m certain we weren’t the only ones he’d do that for.

One Saturday night at the Disco (that’s what we called First Avenue), Pete grabbed a couple comp tickets for us. As he was picking them out, I said to John that it would be so cool if he gave us tickets to the upcoming Paul Weller show. We were planning on buying tickets, but we hadn’t yet. Well, Pete slapped two tickets to the Weller show in front of us. Thanks, Pete!

John and I were both big fans of The Jam and The Style Council, so we were pretty geared up to see Paul in concert. We had never seen him before.

He was promoting his self-titled solo album, which I had and knew very well. John wasn’t as familiar with his solo material and that was all that Paul played. No Jam tunes, no Style Council tunes. Paul had moved on.

I really enjoyed the show. John had a harder time with it not knowing any of the material. But he did perk up at the end of one of Paul’s tunes (Bull-Rush, I think) when he kicked into a few bars of The Who’s Magic Bus. He told me that he wished they had played more of it than they did.

This brings to mind the story about our discovery of The Jam, so I may as well relate it here. It was 1984, I was in art school and John was going to the University of Minnesota, poli/sci major. We were both getting into new music. The underground stuff. Stuff we weren’t hearing on the radio. We were looking for anything that was cool.

On one of my visits to the local record store one of the fellows working there asked if I’d ever heard of The Jam. The record store guys knew me to be a huge Who fan and figured that I might be interested, so Marty (one of the guys) put the band's first album, In The City, on for me to hear. I liked what I heard, but I didn’t want to spend money on them just yet.

John had bought the second album by The Vapors - Magnets. (Yes, they had a second album. They put out two and they are both very good. Too bad they only had the one hit. The name escapes me... Turning... hmmm... Turning Burmese. Something like that.) Anyway. John had heard good things about a band called The Jam and wrote the name on the inside of the cassette cover of his copy of Magnets. By that time, The Jam had broken up and Weller was doing The Style Council thing, but John was intrigued by what he had heard.

He picked up the cassette of The Jam - Snap, a collection of their singles. He popped it in his car stereo and drove around listening to it. This was John’s favorite way to listen to new music. I was working at Wendy’s back then and John came through the drive-up. He pulled around and I leaned out the drive-up window to chat. He held up the cassette case and exclaimed, “These guys are great!”

He was plenty excited about them. John isn’t one to go into major displays of excitement, but he was pretty jazzed about The Jam.

And through John, I got jazzed about them, too.