...Update, October 2015: Lyle Lovett knocks it out of the park! I found LL's recording of "Brown Eyed Handsome Man" on 2012's Release Me and he says, "3-2 the count"! You done good, son.
9. My favorite quote from any Rolling Stone issue of recent months is the one where they rated all of the past and present "Saturday Night Live" cast to commemorate the show's 40th anniversary, the issue that listed John Belushi first, Eddie Murphy second and Gilda Radner ninth (they might have blown it on that one). In rating Dennis Miller #34, their quip was, "The Eighties, man--Elton John married a woman and Dennis Miller was funny. It'll be tough explaining either fact to future generations."
8. I'm reading Holly George-Warren's biography of Alex Chilton, A Man Called Destruction: The Life and Music of Alex Chilton (Viking, 2014) but I'm not engrossed in it. She's a pleasant enough writer, but not a great one. Love reading about Chilton's '60s band the Box Tops and especially Big Star from the '70s, who should be on classic rock stations but are totally forgotten except at WFMU/New York and my little station KAOS. It's really impressive how the young people at KAOS are familiar with the band. Chilton's story itself is rather amazing; when the Box Tops hit #1 on the U.S. charts with "The Letter" in 1967, Chilton was not yet 17 years old. A year later, he had a wife and child.
7. How about rock lyrics that unknowingly predict the future? I don't recall the media playing Wilson Pickett's 1966 "Mustang Sally" (with its "Ride, Sally ride" refrain) when astronaut Sally Ride was the first woman in space in 1983, but they should have. Or how about Van Halen's 1979 "Beautiful Girls," where David Lee Roth says, "Sit yourself on down." Hearing it on the radio the other day, it sounded like, "set your cell phone down."
6. Despite the lack of a great paycheck, my library work continues to energize me. While some of the work is rather mundane--like cleaning the drool off the gun manuals--the crew I work with is almost completely fabulous, like Hana. Every once in awhile when we're on break, someone is relaxing in the break room, doing some knitting. While knitting, Hana mentioned that she can crochet, too, which she said makes her "bi-stitchual."
5. The most ironic or stupid thing I've heard at the library so far in July was this woman, covered in a mass of ugly tattoos, getting after her young children. What were the kids doing? They were sitting at a table with magic markers, writing on themselves.
4. Most of the time when I hear someone mention the Stones' "Honky Tonk Women," they refer to it as "Honky Tonk Woman," singular. But it's worse than that. I've noticed that there are plenty of people out there who can't even pronounce the word "women,"
or don't recognize it when it's on a printed page.
3. As mentioned before, the first volume of Mark Lewisohn's exhaustive three volume Beatles biography, All These Years, was first published in 2013 (Crown Archetype). At one point, I saw Lewisohn's website, which said that volume two will be out in 2020. What? The latest word is that it may be finished by next year--it's been researched but not completely written. Early on, I was reading that the third and final volume would be out in 2027. Twenty Twenty Seven! I hope my eyesight will hold up that long.
2. I grew up with two brothers named Dane and Jace--who lived close to the end of my very long street, Pineridge--way back in the '60s, and those are names I may not have heard since, especially that latter. It's funny that just in last few months, I've met two persons with those names--this is 40+ years after it happened the first time. Where does the time go?
1. Finally, the other Hannah (different spelling and pronunciation) I work with at the library is a hoot like several others. My backpack of many years finally fell apart and I'm using this old and huge thing to carry all my junk. It works but I look like a senior citizen lugging it around (I'm not quite to senior status yet). When we were all leaving the workplace recently, Hannah got in a good dig. "Hey, the '80s called," she said. "They want your tote bag back."