3 Generations of Imbeciles

When he was a high school junior, my dopey brother wrote an application to the Virginia state Governor's School about how Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. was his intellectual mentor.  It was a pretty clear declaration of his opposition to civil liberties given that Holmes authored the infamous Buck v. Bell decision that upheld the legality of Virginia's forced sterilization law, ostensibly intended for the intellectually and physically impaired but really used to cull those deemed socially and racially undesirable.

It was even more provocative because he was headed to the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, the place where Carrie Buck worked as a maid and was raped and impregnated by a male member of the family, only to be sent to a state farm for the mentally enfeebled and ordered to be sterilized.

And because the Governor's School was held in Staunton, site of the DeJarnette Sanitarium and Western State Hospital.  Joseph DeJarnette was the enthusiastic architect of the Virginia sterilization law and program who helped inspire the Nazi eugenics effort.  In 1934, he lobbied the state General Assembly to extend the sterilization law to match the Nazis saying, "The Germans are beating us at our own game and are more progressive than we are."   

The Security Apparatus Relentlessly Supports Genocide

From Alicia Puglionesi's In Whose Ruins: Power, Possession, and the Landscapes of American Empire - 

"Today's archaeologists see the Mound Builders' immense popularity as a case study in how genocide and dispossession overwrite Indigenous history.  Lost-race narratives furnished a usable past for proponents of Manifest Destiny, since if Indians overthrew the ancient Phoenician or Celtic kingdoms of the Ohio Valley, it was only fair play that Europeans, heirs to the mantle of civilization, would overthrow the Indians in turn.  These narratives proved so compelling for white Americans that critical archaeologists faced a long battle to debunk them and establish a pre-Colombian history based on their scientific standards.  That battle is by no means over today ...."

Three Generations of Imbeciles Apparently Isn't Sufficient for University of Virginia Medical School

Ewen Cameron - performed barbaric and idiotic experiments in torture that violated the Nuremberg Code (despite his having been at Nuremberg as a psychiatrist) for decades - History of Psychiatry article. So esteemed by his fellow psychiatrists that he was elected president of the American Psychiatric Association, Canadian Psychiatric Association, and inaugural president of the World Psychiatric Association. What a rigorous specialty! 

Wilford Spradlin - interned at McGill in the late 1950s when Cameron was the psychiatry department's most eminent, albeit idiotic, figure. Has co-authored a whole series of risible New Age books on "reverential phenomena." 

Randolph Canterbury - Spradlin Professor of Psychiatry, tells idiotic and offensive anecdotes to an auditorium full of medical school students while participating in the wholesale violation of medical ethics including the deliberate withholding of medical diagnosis (strabismus) and thus care. His actions constituted ritualistic reenactment of the abuses and overweening physician arrogance displayed in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. He thus flagrantly dishonors the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., himself the victim of egregious surveillance and mistreatment. 

Given the pace at which UVa and its medical school get around to acknowledging egregious violations of medical ethics, I would expect some form of token apology in about 70 years.

Wow, I was mistaken - physicians really are intellectually and ethically sophisticated!

Thomas F.X. Noble

I guess I shouldn't be too surprised at how thoroughly bigoted Tom Noble is, given how casually and needlessly he dropped the n-world in classroom conversation. Oh well, I'm sure he made a fine president of the American Church History Association and American Catholic Hisotry Assocation. He's not doing much to dispel stereotypes about anti-intellectualism among religious believers though.

AOC and Juan Peron

I like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and don't understand why the far-right is obsessed with demonizing her, but I was amused that she reasonably got in trouble with progressives for romanticizing Eva Peron. Donald Trump apparently compared her to Peron as portrayed in the musical, and she responded with two tweets quoting her. Progressives were reasonably appalled. Opinion is divided on her degree of complicity, but there is consensus that the Peron regime aided Nazis. As the Washington Post stated:

One thing is for sure, though: her husband, former Argentine president Juan Perón, most definitely aided and abetted Nazis, including Adolf Eichmann, the architect of the Holocaust, and Josef Mengele, who performed horrifying medical experiments on Jews in the camps.

Oh well, I think David Byrne wrote a disco-pop musical about Imelda Marcos, so I guess some non-historians like to romanticize such repressive, authoritarian regimes.

"Eight is Enough" S2.E3 Triangles

Tom takes Nicholas to the local indoor pool to teach him how to swim. They of course remove all of their clothes (swimming indoors in the nude was common for men and boys in the early 20th century) only to run back to the locker room when they learn the pool is coed at that time. Wikipedia says that the practice of men swimming nude had ended by the early '70s with the rise of coed athletic activities, so people watching in 1977 would have gotten the joke even if it seems bizarre now. Never shy about recycling jokes, the show later had Tom taking Nicholas to a "Snow White" movie that turned out to be a porno and David and Nicholas touring an apartment complex that turned out to be for nudists ("I thought going natural meant they didn't allow any junk food!"). In every case, the two enter, followed by a reveal of a sign explaining the true situation, and the pair running back in shock.

"Eight Is Enough" Pilot Episode

- There's a good "Sonny Jurgensen knew when to retire" joke in the opening touch football scene. They later mention George Allen. 

- Mr. Bradford's secretary is played by a different actress than the usual Donna, but she says, "Goodbye, Mr. Bradford" in the same way. 

- David (Mark Hamill) says he dropped out of Cal. It's later mentioned various times that he dropped out of college, but I think this is the only time the particular school is mentioned.

The Security Apparatus Hates Analysis

We all know that the security apparatus, having authoritarian personalities, hates analysis, especially of them. And yet people reasonably assess them all of the time, perhaps in large part because they have so many stereotypical traits. Stephen Kinzer in his excellent "Poisoner in Chief" on the types who were recruited for technical positions at the CIA -

Rather than recruiting from Ivy League universities, he concentrated on technical schools and state colleges.... "Typically, these technical recruits had shown a childhood penchant for tinkering that eventually turned into engineering and hard-science degrees," one Technical Services officer later wrote. "They were often the first or only member of their family to attend college and many came from rural communities in the Midwest and Southwest. They arrived at the CIA seeking technical opportunities and adventure. It did not take long before these newly engineers began delighting in calling operations officers 'liberal arts majors.'"

My father grew up in a small town in Utah, was the first of his family to go to college (somewhat against his father's wishes), said he studied physics because they said it was the hardest discipline (and considered engineering to be dull), and spent his entire college and graduate school career at a conservative religious institution before working undercover for the agency on the Glomar Explorer project. He also believed that history professors worked part-time in the summer as rangers at National Park sites.

Journal Article Proves Cameron's Stupidity

History of Psychiatry recently published an interesting article on Ewen Cameron, a quack Canadian psychiatrist who liked to torture vulnerable people in experiments that obviously had no scientific or medical value. Of course, the CIA was interested so they funded his medical torture for years. Even though the article is actually as sympathetic as possible, he still comes off as a horrible asshole.

"Despite the claims that Cameron’s experiments were a legitimate medical treatment, these experiments had devastating impacts on patients and their families. In a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) podcast, Allan Tanny described how his father Charles Tanny, a hardworking man with trigeminal neuralgia, was admitted to the Allan Memorial Institute and was never the same after he returned (Shephard, 2020–21). In the following decades, numerous lawsuits were filed on behalf of Cameron’s former patients, including Tanny. In 2019, a class action lawsuit was filed in the Superior Court, District of Montreal: J. Tanny vs. Royal Victoria Hospital et al. (Consumer Law Group, 2019). Charles Tanny’s daughter Julie Tanny filed the lawsuit on behalf of her father and other victims of the Montreal experiments, seeking compensation for victims and their families. The legal proceeding described how Tanny was given over 50 days of insulin-induced ‘sleep therapy’, in which he was given multiple drugs: barbiturates (Seconal, Nembutal, Veronal, Amobarbital), antipsychotics (Sparine, Reserpine, Chlorpromazine) and glutethimide, a hypnotic sedative. He was also given frequent ECT treatments, many of which were Page-Russell, an intensive form of ECT where shocks continued during convulsions. After his treatments, Tanny experienced near total memory loss and disorientation, as well as incontinence, symptoms which never completely disappeared. Returning home from the hospital, Tanny had changed from being a loving and engaged father to emotionally distant and volatile, even physically abusive towards Julie Tanny, a young child at the time. This class action lawsuit entitled all of Cameron’s former patients to compensation for their injuries, and all family members and dependants to compensation for loss of support and emotional trauma as a result of their relationship with the patients.

Cameron’s experiments had devastating consequences for patients and their families. What began as hopeful treatment for severe mental illness strayed from legitimate medical treatment and became a form of medical torture likened to the Nuremberg Trials.... We must be aware that we are all capable of such atrocities if we allow our desire for answers to come before our first duty: to do no harm."

Man, the Security Apparatus Is Stupid

When I was at UVa, I was in a distinguished history majors seminar and we had to read a dopey anthropology book on Eva Peron for Brian Owensby.  In the discussion, I reasonably asked why the book never even mentioned Juan Peron's ties to the Nazi regime.  Owensby was really dismissive and said that there was absolutely no connection between Peron and the Nazis.  The next week, Thomas F.X. Noble, the faculty coordinator, played some silly game where people supposedly got upset by some comment or something.

Of course, they were utterly wrong.

Peron's autobiography Yo, Juan Domingo Peron states -

"En Nuremberg se estaba realizando entonces algo que yo, a titulo personal juzgaba coma una infamia y como una funesta leccion para el futuro de la Humanidad. Y no solo yo, sino el pueblo argentino. Adquiri la certeza de que los argentinos tambien consideraban el proceso de Nuremberg como una infamia, indigna de los vencedores, que se comportaban como si no lo fueran. Ahora entonces dandonos cuenta de que merecian haber perdido la guerra. Cuantas veces durante mi gobierno pronuncie discursos a cargo de Nuremberg, que es la enormidad mas grande que no perdonara la historia!"

My Spanish may be a little rusty but condemning the Nuremberg War Trials, stating that the Allies deserved to lose the war, and repeatedly telling his nation that the war crimes trials themselves were the great misdeed that would not be forgiven by history seems to show Nazi sympathies.

Of course, systematically rescuing and harboring Nazi war criminals would tend to confirm it.

In 1984, Argentine journalist and author Tomas Eloy Martinez published a study of Peron and Nazi war criminals at the Wilson Center -

"Perón’s motivation for harboring Nazis is somewhat less clear, but was likely the result of a combination of factors. Perón’s early military training at the Superior War College had instilled in him an appreciation for German military doctrine and his own authoritarian conception of politics made him sympathetic to the Axis. The influx of Germans into Argentina also served a utilitarian purpose. In 1944, Perón introduced an industrialization policy that he envisioned would free Argentina from its history of economic dependence, first on Great Britain, and more recently on the United States. He believed that “useful Germans” would provide crucial technical support for this process. In reality, few scientists were among the Nazis that entered Argentina, but the accomplishments of these few were widely publicized and celebrated by Perón. While German and Croat war criminals may not have made significant contributions to Argentina’s scientific fields, Eloy Martínez concludes that their presence, nonetheless, impacted Argentine history; “No country can open its doors to this class of criminal and sleep soundly. No nation crosses these dark boundaries of history with impunity.”"

https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/144-peron-and-the-nazi-war-criminals

In 1995, the year of our class discussion, Martinez, then director of Latin American studies at Rutgers, published "Santa Evita."  It would go on to be the most successful novel in Argentine history.  In an interview from the time, he was skeptical of more provocative claims about Eva Peron's own actions that lacked direct historical evidence but said that she possessed "many of the qualities I detest in any human being: authoritarianism, intolerance, fanaticism."

Subsequent historical research in Argentina archives has only strengthened the case against the Peron regime.  In 2003, Uki Goni published his critically acclaimed "The Real Odessa:  How Peron Brought the Nazi War Criminals to Argentina" -

"It has long been known that Adolf Eichmann, Josef Mengele, Erich Priebke and many other Nazi war criminals found refuge in Argentina. In this book, a courageous Argentinian writer shows exactly how it was done, and reveals that the escapes were organized with the enthusiastic support of President Juan Peron. Even at this late date, when so much is known about the complicity of the Catholic Church and Allied intelligence agencies in the flight of the Nazis, Goni's material still has the power to shock. The paperback edition of The Real Odessa includes a revised introduction and conclusion, with a new afterword containing material that Uki Goni has recently researched and which focuses on Vatican complicity in providing sanctuary for war criminals."

https://www.amazon.com/Real-Odessa-Brought-Criminals-Argentina/dp/1862075522

So Brian Owensby said some really dumb things.  Oh well, he's probably better suited for such intellectual pursuits as Semester at Sea cruises or whatever global studies thing he's doing.  As for Tom Noble, one would have thought he wouldn't have acted in a way that kind of concealed the Vatican's involvement in helping Nazi war criminals escape before he went to Notre Dame.  Then again I always had to listen to this Jesuit priest on the faculty at UVa, Gerald Fogarty, take extreme umbrage at people pointing out ties between the Vatican under Pius XII and the Nazis.

Believe It Or Not!

The two most astounding claims in sports media -

1.  Al Michaels says he has never knowingly eaten a vegetable.

2.  Mike Tirico used to not think he was Black.

The Ol' Lefthander

As a fan of '80s ACC basketball, I note the recent passing of Davidson/Maryland/JMU/Georgia State coach Lefty Driesell.  Although to be honest, I always thought that his induction into the Basketball Hall of Fame showed that the easiest way to make a major sports hall was to be a decent Division I basketball coach for a long, long time.  I mean, are we even sure that he was a good coach?  Two things -

First, even though he coached a bunch of first-round draft picks like Tom McMillen (#9 overall pick), Len Elmore (#13), John Lucas (#1), Brad Davis (#15), Buck Williams (#3), and Len Bias (#2), he never had a team win more than two games in the NCAA tournament.  After the tournament expanded beyond 32 teams, he never had a team get beyond the Sweet 16.

Second, in ranking ACC coaches from the first half of the '80s, Coach K, Dean Smith, and Jim Valvano have to be the top 3.  But are we sure that Lefty was better than either Bobby Cremins or his former Davidson player Terry Holland?  Plausibly being the sixth best coach in an eight team league doesn't scream Hall of Famer to me.

I know people will point out that perhaps his best team in '74 didn't make the tournament because eventual champion NC State won their legendary ACC tournament final in overtime and only one team per conference could make the tourney then.  But Maryland got to go the previous year when NC State was 27-0 because some assistant coach gave David "Skywalker" Thompson a sports coat to attend an athletics banquet or played in a meaningless pickup game with him.  And Terry Holland's '84 team took Houston with Hakeem to overtime in the Final Four with freshman Olden Polynice or Othell Wilson as its best player.  

He's No Alan Cranston

I remember that Bill James' New Historical Baseball Abstract had a comment wondering if developments such as Bill Clinton's relationship with Monica Lewinsky suggested that Steve Garvey might one day be able to resume his political career despite having been a late night talk show punchline for his multiple affairs and children borne out of wedlock.  Now of course Garvey's indiscretions appear fairly quaint for a candidate of his party.  The truly amusing thing is that when I was a little kid everyone just assumed that Garvey would pretty much be a first ballot Hall of Famer.  I think in addition to his playing in LA and appearing in multiple World Series it really had to do with his starting in the All Star Game in a National League infield with Johnny Bench (and later Gary Coleman), Joe Morgan, and Mike Schmidt pretty much every year.  Unfortunately for Garvey, people realized by the time that he was eligible for the hall that a line drive-hitting first baseman who didn't walk much wasn't particularly valuable even if he had appeared on the Johnny Carson show various times and had forearms like Popeye.

Karla, Danny, and Liberty

I saw a singer in an early '80s video on Vevo who kind of looked like Kate Bush.  It turns out she's Karla Devito, who sang the Ellen Foley parts on Meat Loaf's Bat out of Hell Tour.  I guess I'm not alone in noticing a resemblance because online people say she looks like a cross between Bush and either Linda Ronstadt or Cyndi Lauper.  Even better, she references the recruiting saga of Petersburg High's own Moses Malone.  Oh, and she's been married to Robby Benson for over forty years!

            "I want some French sunglasses /

            Call waiting on my phone / (note: was that a thing yet in 1981?)

            I want a house for my mother, just like Moses Malone."

Perhaps They'll Get In Over Jann Wenner's Dead Body

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has, perhaps justifiably, not been particularly receptive to certain genres.  Most of these musical styles have uncoincidentally usually not been critical favorites.  I think at one time this statement would have been true for prog rock, although I think a couple of these acts have been inducted in recent years.  It's also probably kind of true for metal, although I think that's probably more of a function of a lot of rock critics not being able to distinguish between the music and musical worth of most metal acts once you get past the obvious inductees like Metallica and Black Sabbath.  Anyway, here are some less than well-represented genres -

Arena rock (aka AOR/corporate rock) - This one seems most obvious.  Foreigner, REO Speedwagon, Toto, Asia, Kansas, Boston, Styx, etc. sold millions and millions of albums, had lots of hit songs, and sold out lots of basketball and hockey arenas.  They also tended to be fairly faceless acts, didn't ooze charisma, and weren't particularly hip.  The one inductee from this genre, Journey, had truly iconic songs that people remember after decades and a frontman whose name they can identify.  Foreigner was nominated this year, and may eventually get in.  I'm actually kind of surprised that Styx hasn't been inducted, if only for having the funniest "Behind the Music" episode, with Tommy Shaw recalling how his response to having to sing Broadway musical songs about robots on tour was to self-medicate.

Mainstream '80s pop rock - The classic example is Huey Lewis and the News.  Another one would be Bryan Adams.  There's nothing wrong with these acts, and they sold millions of albums and had lots of hit songs.  If they had had equivalent careers in the '60s and maybe even the '70s, then they would have been inducted a long time ago.  It's just that there wasn't anything really innovative about these artists.  And given that music went in the direction of genres such as hip hop, there aren't a lot of younger musicians acknowledging them as influences, at least unironically.  Oh well, perhaps Huey Lewis et al. will get some credit for members of the News backing up Hall fave Elvis Costello on his first album.

'80s solo stars already inducted as part of better groups - Phil Collins is the obvious example here (and also kind of part of the second group), but Sting and Don Henley are others.  Phil Collins was massively successful in the '80s and incredibly ubiquitous, but I don't see anyone too excited to work to get him elected.  Perhaps Sting has a better chance because he was cooler and a better songwriter.  Then again, Diana Ross, who was legitimately one of the biggest stars of the '70s, hasn't been inducted as a solo performer, so it may take a while.

  

The Last Great Stones Song?

WXRT in Chicago had 1986 for its flashback year on Saturday morning and played "One Hit (To the Body)" by the Rolling Stones.  I'm sure "Dirty Work" is properly disdained (the band's Miami Vice-esque wardrobe on the cover photo is probably a dead giveaway), but I've always kind of liked the song.  Perhaps it has something to do with the otherwise engaged Jagger having little input - Ron Wood came up with the song and opening acoustic intro (and even got songwriting co-credit unlike Mick Taylor), Jimmy Page provided the guitar solo, Kirsty MacColl and Bobby Womack are on backing vocals, and Russell Mulcahy directed the video.  I know it didn't chart highly, but someone must have liked it because I think it made the top 10 of DC 101's year-end countdown.

The Most Obscure Rock and Roll Hall of Famers

The Paul Butterfield Blues Band.  I honestly know absolutely nothing about them.  Then again, I'm probably not alone because none of their albums cracked the Top 50.

Rock Hall 2024

In looking at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominees for 2024, I think all of them probably should eventually be inducted.  Well, except for Peter Frampton.  Here's how I would order them:

1.  Mariah Carey - I have no idea why the hall makes pop/r&b megastars like Janet Jackson and Whitney Houston wait a decade or so to be inducted, but I guess it ultimately doesn't matter much.

2.  Kool and the Gang - 9 #1 hits on the r&b chart from '74 to '85 including "Ladies Night," "Celebration," and "Cherish."

3.  Mary J. Blige - even though I have to admit I can't name any of her songs.

4.  Cher - hurt I think because her singing career had such distinct phases often years apart - Sonny and Cher in the '60s, extremely successful solo singer in the early '70s with songs like "Half Breed" and "Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves" that went to #1 and haven't been heard on radio since then, late '80s comeback where she cavorted on a battleship for "Turn Back to Time," and then that "Believe" song.  I think that's a solid resume even if her acting career and then being a diva overshadowed it.

5.  Oasis - Perhaps they'll kind of be the equivalent of Depeche Mode in being the one inductee to represent all of '90s Britpop.

6.  Sade - the quintessential VH1 act.  I'm amused that in the '80s we were told the name was pronounced with an r as SHAR day, which we eventually realized was a hypercorrection, and not told that the group was also called Sade.  Like Alice Cooper.  Or Winger.

7.  Sinead O'Connor - it kind of sucks that she did the only truly courageous thing in the history of SNL and then Lorne Michaels allowed Joe Pesci and Madonna to do incredibly unfunny bits about it.  Although Sinbad O'Connor was pretty funny.

8.  A Tribe Called Quest

9.  Eric B and Rakim - the order of these last two could obviously be flipped.

10.  Dave Matthews Band - I mean, they have to get in eventually, right?  Having gone to UVa in Charlottesville in the early '90s, I walked/drove by two of their concerts.  If they get inducted, I'm counting that as attending in addition to Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis (triple bill at Wolf Trap in the late '90s), Willie Nelson (2x, the first when he played in the outfield of Richmond's Triple A baseball stadium while we sat behind home plate), Bo Diddley (Alameda County Fair), and Prince.

11.  Foreigner - arena/corporate rock has to be the most disdained genre among hall voters, even more than metal.  Foreigner's first four albums each sold at least 5 million copies in the US and the next one had "I Want to Know What Love Is."

12.  Ozzy Osbourne - I also worked security at Ozzfest at Nissan Pavilion back in the day.  The crowd ripped up the grass on the lawn.  Not that I care but is he more deserving of induction as a solo performer than Phil Collins, Sting, or even Don Henley?

13.  Jane's Addiction

14.  Lenny Kravitz - obviously not very innovative but seems kind of like Sheryl Crow in that he'll probably eventually get in because people like him and he'll show up to help out at these kind of things.

15.  Peter Frampton - apart from the big live album, why is he nominated?

"Patty Hearst Heard the Burst"

It's the 50th anniversary of the kidnapping of Patty Hearst, just south of campus on Benvenue Avenue.  Perhaps it could have been prevented (if she wasn't in on it) had she lived in my more open West Berkeley flats neighborhood.  At the very least, my apartment complex was right off Hearst Avenue.

 

It Makes "The Ballad of the Green Berets" Look Like Great Art

"CBS Sunday Morning" devoted today's program to a memorial for recently-deceased former host Charles Osgood.  In a segment on his love of music, they mentioned that he served as Eisenhower's personal disc jockey as Ike recovered from a heart attack and that he helped compose the music for Senator Everett M. Dirksen's Top 40 hit and Grammy Award winner "Gallant Men."  He was credited as Charles Wood (Osgood was his middle name), but I don't know if he was trying to hide his identity.

And He Co-Wrote Three Posthumous "Hits" for Michael Jackson

Speaking of late '50s teen idols, the one who doesn't seem to get his due is that Canadian heartthrob Paul Anka.  Here are some of his accomplishments according to impeccable source Wikipedia:

• His parents immigrated to Canada from Syria and Lebanon, thus making him one of our biggest Arab-Canadian-American superstars.
• Toured Australia with Buddy Holly and wrote one of Holly's last recorded songs, "It Doesn't Matter Anymore."
• Wrote the theme song for "The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson" in 1962.
• Wrote English-language lyrics for "My Way."
• Had #1 hits with "Diana" in 1957 and "Lonely Boy" in 1959.  "Put Your Head on My Shoulder" and "Puppy Love" went to #2.
• Had a a comeback in the mid-70s with a string of duets with Odia Coates including the cringeworthy #1 "(You're) Having My Baby."
• Co-founded a holographic tech startup company and sits on its board with fellow Canucks Brian Mulroney and Kevin O'Leary.

To be honest, that sounds a lot more impressive than Dion's resume.

The Very, Very Rare UK Version

 Another thing about the Vevo 80s music video channel is that they seem to deliberately play some of the era's best ("Beat It," "Hungry Like the Wolf") and worst (Journey's "Separate Ways") videos.  They also play alternative versions of popular videos that MTV probably never played.  For example, I just saw "Version 2" of U2's "With or Without You," which looks a lot like Version 1 but not as good.  They've also played the original version of Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar On Me," which isn't good at all.  It's supposedly directed by Russell Mulcahey, who did the classic Duran Duran videos among many others, but I guess metal videos weren't his thing.  Or maybe he just hadn't seen one since '83 or so because it has that feel of an early Quiet Riot or Twisted Sister video where the whole concept is that the room is shaking while the band plays there.  Anyway, the band at least recognized it wasn't good, so they got Wayne Isham of Motley Crue and Bon Jovi video fame to edit some footage for a concert film of the band's tour that he was shooting to make a new video.  According to Isham, that video's concept was "just get the 12 hottest chicks in Denver and stick them in the crowd and film the hell out of the performance."  Thus, perhaps sparing Leppard the indignity of becoming the next Billy Squier.   

 

Happy Birthday, Swing Your Arms!

I've been watching the VEVO 80s video channel, and it's true what they say - watch early '80s videos for any length of time and you'll discover a quirky British group that you had never heard of.  I've now seen two videos from Altered Images, a Scottish New Wave/pure pop group.  Their lead singer was cute, and there's kind of a Montgomery Clift "Raintree County" thing going on where you try to spot her facial scar.

Jive Talkin'

The Kennedy Center Honors were last month, and there's one thing about them that always bugs me.  It's that the awards are pretty clearly for US artists (however that's understood - I'm sure plenty of honorees have been immigrants at least as young people), but there's also pretty clearly an exemption for global rock stars.  One of this year's recipients was Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees.  I don't think he's the strongest candidate regardless - I mean, his peak was 45 years ago in a musical genre that flamed out pretty quickly.  But regardless of the merit of his selection, I don't think anyone thinks of him as an American.  I think most think people think of him and his brothers as Australian, albeit via the Isle of Man or somewhere in the British Isles.  And he's obviously not the only person this applies to.  Previous honorees include Sting (English), members of Led Zeppelin and the Who (also English), and U2 (super-Irish).  I guess you could make an argument that Paul McCartney is kind of American because he's Paul McCartney and married a couple of Americans, and I suppose Elton John lives most of the time in Atlanta or somewhere.  But the whole thing doesn't seem really necessary unless the Kennedy Center Honors wants the attention or ratings that these Boomer rock stars bring, especially when you consider that the Kennedy Center never deigned to honor actual Americans and more important rock and roll legends like Little Richard.  Or Jerry Lee Lewis.  Or Bo Diddley.  All of which just confirm Richard's shtick that he never really received his due or the awards that he should won.

 

Most Questionable Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductees

 I think all of these people were inducted in the main "Performers" category as opposed to, say, through the "Award for Award Excellence" (ne the Sideman category, aka the back door to get people into the Hall if they can't actually get elected).

1. Donovan - I can only name one of his songs - "Mellow Yellow," which now sounds like a novelty song, although "Sunshine Superman" apparently went to #1 in the US.  Best known for hanging out with more accomplished people like John Lennon.  Also, every profile of Ione Skye in the late '80s was legally required to mention that he was her father.  2012 inductee because apparently there still weren't enough Baby Boomer nostalgia acts in the Hall.

2.  Dion - I'm no expert on late '50s/early '60s pop idols, but Dion (and the Belmonts) only had two Top 10 hits and one other Top 20 song.  The only one I've familiar with is "A Teenager in Love."  Even Fabian, who isn't in the Hall, had three Top 10 songs.  Perhaps Hall organizers kind of regretted the choice because later when they inducted a lot of backing groups one year like Bill Haley's Comets and Buddy Holly's Crickets, they didn't bother to induct Dion's Belmonts.  Inducted in 1989 when presumably people still remembererd him.

3.  Ritchie Valens - I get why he was inducted, but I can really only name two of his songs - "Donna" along with "La Bamba."  Couldn't the Hall have put up a memorial plaque for the Day the Music Died to honor him and the Big Bopper?  If anything, Los Lobos is actually probably more deserving of induction.  Inducted in 2001 by Ricky Martin.

4.  Bobby Darin - huge popular music star, but "Splish Splash" is the only one of his songs that I identify as rock and roll and that really was a novelty song.  Doesn't help that he's now identified with Kevin Spacey.  Inducted in 1990, the Hall website calls him "Teen Idol.  Adult Crooner.  Vegas Lounge Singer.  Rock and Roll Star.", so maybe they don't know what to make of him either.

5.  The Zombies - had essentially two big hits in the US - "She's Not There" and "Time of the Season" - and none in the UK, but those two songs were on every Time-Life music anthology of the '60s ever made, so they're in the Rock Hall along with the Animals, Moody Blues, and Dave Clark Five.  Inducted in 2019 and weren't even nominated in their first 25 years or so of being eligible.    

The Security Apparatus Loves Anti-Intellectualism

 The security apparatus, being proudly and defiantly anti-intellectual, always hated the fact that I liked learning, even though I could barely read.  They especially despised the fact that I took AP classes, did well on standardized tests, and learned on my own despite the mediocre schools in our area.  Here's the social studies curriculum I took in high school -

9th grade:  World Studies - the teacher was nice and probably knowledgeable (UVa history grad) but the topics were so diffuse that literally the only thing I remember is all of the students doing presentations for the entire month of February for Black History Month.  I did W.E.B. Du Bois, and she seemed impressed that I would pick him.

10th grade:  Nothing - literally nothing.  And it's not like there were options that I could have taken because there weren't.  I did however spend an entire year in Typing as well as a year of Algebra II in which we reviewed Algebra I and a year of Spanish III in which we reviewed what I had learned in Spanish I.

11th grade:  AP US History - fine but I had taught myself all of the material in 3rd or 4th grade.

12th grade:  AP US Government - learned literally nothing.  The teacher was a nice guy who had essentially been retired in place for decades.  It actually turned out to be his last year because the school system offered buyouts.  The class was always oversubscribed because it had been known as an easy A for decades.

That's it - no AP European History, no AP World History, no ancient Greek and Roman history, or contemporary world history.  And people were also annoyed when I properly viewed the every other week two period "Gifted and Talented" program as a joke because the school system hadn't bother to teach any substantive content in the first place.  The "teachers" in that program were the absolute worst - so-called Doctors of Education who liked to bloviate about things like the concepts of "form follows function" for an entire year.  At least the better classroom teachers actually tried to teach something or at least acknowledged the mediocrity of the experience.