1996

Song Sunday: Natural One

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Folk Implosion YT Image One
Image Credit: YouTube

“Your world is falling down, you may as well crash with me…”

Returning to my Samsung playlist for this Sunday evening submission, I present Natural One by The Folk Implosion. Written by Lou Barlow and bassist Wally Gagel of Orbit, it was the seventh song on the soundtrack album from the 1995 movie Kids, though it wasn’t actually played in the film. It entered the Billboard Hot 100 at #54 on December 9, 1995 and peaked at #29 on February 3, 1996. It peaked at #4 on the Modern Rock Tracks chart on December 16, 1995 and peaked at #21 on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart on February 17, 1996. I hope you enjoy. ~Vic

How Lou Barlow Soundtracked 1995 (Vice/Cam Lindsey/03-21-2017)
Instagram Account
Bandcamp Account

Lyrics

Wayback Wednesday: World Series 1903

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1903 World Series Wikipedia Image
Image Credit: Wikipedia/Wikimedia

The 1903 World Series was the first modern World Series to be played in Major League Baseball. It matched the American League champion Boston [Americans] against the National League champion [Pittsburg Pirates] (spelled without an “H” from 1891 to 1911) in a best-of-nine series, with Boston prevailing five games to three, winning the last four. The first three games were played in Boston, the next four in Allegheny (home of the Pirates), and the eighth (last) game in Boston.

Pittsburgh pitcher Sam Leever injured his shoulder while trap-shooting, so his teammate Deacon Phillippe pitched five complete games. Phillippe won three of his games but, it was not enough to overcome the club from the new American League. Boston pitchers Bill Dinneen and Cy Young led Boston to victory. In Game #1, Phillippe struck out ten Boston batters. The next day, Dinneen bettered that mark, striking out 11 Pittsburgh batters in Game #2.

Honus Wagner [was] bothered by injuries […] and committed six errors. The shortstop was deeply distraught by his performance. The following spring, Wagner […] refused to send his portrait to a “Hall of Fame” for batting champion:

“I was too bum last year. I was a joke in that Boston-Pittsburgh Series. What does it profit a man to hammer along and make a few hits, when they are not needed, only to fall down when it comes to a pinch? I would be ashamed to have my picture up now.”

Due to overflow crowds at the Exposition Park games in Allegheny City, if a batted ball rolled under a rope in the outfield that held spectators back, a “ground-rule triple” would be scored. [Seventeen] ground-rule triples were hit in the four games played at the stadium.

In the series, Boston came back from a three-games-to-one deficit, winning the final four games (on October 13) to capture the title…(118 years ago). Such a large comeback would not happen again until the Pirates came back to defeat the Washington Senators in the 1925 World Series […]. […] Much was made of the influence of Boston’s Royal Rooters, who traveled to Exposition Park and sang their theme song Tessie to distract the opposing players […]. Boston wound up winning three out of four games in Allegheny City.

Pirates owner Barney Dreyfuss added his share of the gate receipts to the players’ share, so the losing team’s players actually finished with a larger individual share than the winning team’s.

The Series brought the new American League prestige and proved its best could beat the best of the National League, thus strengthening the demand for future World Series competitions.

Wikipedia Summary

Additional:
Baffling Baseball Trivia
(Dom Forker/Wayne Stewart/Michael J. Pellowski/2004/Sterling Publishing Company/Web Archive)
Baseball Almanac (World Series History/The Official Baseball History Site)
Honus Wagner: A Biography (Dennis DeValeria/Jeanne Burke DeValeria/1996/1998/GoodReads)
Retro Sheet (Pre-1984 Baseball Analysis)
The First World Series and the Baseball Fanatics of 1903 (Roger L. Abrams/2003/Northeastern University Press/Web Archive)

Hans 2021 Song Draft: Round Six-Pick 11-Fall On Me-R.E.M. (1986)

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Fall On Me REM Discogs Image One
Image Credit: Discogs

Hanspostcard has a song draft challenge. This is my Round Six pick.

Moving into 1986… My first introduction to R.E.M. wasn’t the radio or MTV. It was an odd video channel on Cablevision in the early 80s in my NC hometown (my mom only had basic cable…no MTV). I’ve talked at great length with Max (Powerpop Blogger) about this obscure video channel. I remember two VJs, one named “Dr. John” (not the musician) that wore blue scrubs and one named “Carrot Top” (not the comedian), that, of course, was a red-headed dude. I have no idea where this channel broadcast from but, it was a seriously stripped down operation. It was just rotating VJs, sitting at a desk, talking into a camera…and playing music videos. The first video I recall seeing was Radio Free Europe, the Murmur version, not the Hib-Tone single (I later found out). I was immediately hooked but, totally missed who the band was. (Interestingly, the Hib-Tone version was recorded at Drive-In Studios in Winston-Salem, NC and the Murmur version was recorded at Reflection Studios in Charlotte, NC.) Fast forward to the end of my senior year of high school and I see some of So. Central Rain (I’m Sorry) on MTV. I had no idea that this was the same band. It wasn’t until my sophomore year of college, when Driver 8 came out (another one I like), that a buddy of mine told me who R.E.M. was…a college band out of the University of Georgia (Bulldogs). Every piece of music of theirs that I was lucky enough to catch, I loved. Finally, in 1987, The One I Love broke thru to #9 on Billboard’s Hot 100 and they seemed to be everywhere. Their highest charting hit was Losing My Religion, getting to #4 in 1991. Out of their entire catalog, which is gi-hugic, Fall On Me wound up being my favorite, with my introductory piece, Radio Free Europe, coming in second. I wish I had seen them live.

Bit of odd trivia…five strange degrees of separation. R.E.M. had a manager by the name of Jefferson Holt. He was with them until 1996 when they got rid of him for sexual harassment. Jefferson Holt is from Chapel Hill and his mother is named Bertha “B” Holt. She was an NC State Rep. from 1975 to 1994, representing my home county (and another one). She was quite the pioneer, advocating for the ERA and married rape victims (which is ironic as hell considering her son’s behavior). My paternal grandmother was in Democratic politics in the 60s, 70s & 80s, running for local office, herself (and on first-names basis with several governors). She campaigned heavily for her favorites and “Bee” Holt was one of them. I met Bee Holt several times as a kid and remember all of her “Bee” 🐝 paraphernalia all over my grandmother’s house.

I guess this makes me closer to R.E.M. than Kevin Bacon! 😉 😊 ~Vic

RIAA Gold Album Image Two
Their first Gold album.
Image Credit: RIAA

Released 0n August 11, 1986, it was the third track from the album Lifes Rich Pageant. It debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 at #96 the weekend of October 4, peaking at #94 on October 11 before finally disappearing from the chart on October 25. It did better on the Album Rock Tracks, making it to #5 for one week on September 6.

“Of the genuinely new songs, Peter Buck’s basic music track for Fall On Me dated back to July of 1985, when Stipe had written a lyric about acid rain [but], the song had been virtually re-written, melody and lyrics, by the time it came to be recorded. Stipe, who declared in 1991 that “…this may be my favourite song in the R.E.M. catalogue…”, has described the final version as “…pretty much a song about oppression.” Trainspotters might like to know that the counter-melody used in the second verse is actually the song’s original tune.

Johnny Black (2004)
Reveal: The Story of R.E.M.
Page 123

Additional:
R.E.M. Fiction: An Alternative Biography (David Buckley/2012/Google Books)
R.E.M. HQ (Official Site)
The Complete R.E.M. (R.E.M. Timeline)

Lyrics

His Favorite Song

Song Sunday: Machinehead

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Bush Machinehead Image
Image Credit: eil.com

“Leaning on my conscience wall…”

This Sunday’s song submission, from my Samsung playlist, is Machinehead by the British alternative grunge rock band Bush, formed in London, England, in 1992. The seventh track from the album Sixteen Stone, it was the fifth and final single from their 1994 debut. Released April 9, 1996, it was written by lead singer Gavin Rossdale. It reached #1 on the Canada Rock/Alternative chart, #3 on the UK’s Rock & Metal chart and, #4 on Billboard’s Alternative Airplay & Mainstream Rock charts.

The song won the MTV Movie Award for Best Song from a Movie (1997) and was nominated for the MTV Music Video Awards Best Video from a Film (Fear 1996).

Rossdale’s dog, Wilson, makes an appearance in the video.

Media Appearances
Bush Official (Website)

Lyrics

Song Sunday: Early Warning

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EIL Image
Image Credit: eil.com

“Too young to know, too old to listen…”

Sunday evening’s playlist submission is Early Warning by Australian band Baby Animals. The second track from their debut album Baby Animals, it was released on April 21, 1991, as their debut single. Written by Suze DeMarchi, Dave Leslie and Eddie Parise, the song was nominated for Single of the Year and Song of the Year in 1992 by the Australian Recording Industry Association. The album was awarded Album of the Year at The Arias Awards.

I discovered this band when their third track Painless was released in the US in November 1991. Suze’s voice is stunning and powerful and, her band is as hard rocking as any from Downunder. I bought the CD and there’s not a bad song on it. It deserved Album of the Year. They broke up in 1996 but, reformed in 2007. They continue to perform and record.

Lyrics

Baby Animals Channel From 1992

MTV’s Video From 1991

Throwback Thursday: Hurricane Fran 1996

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Hurricane Fran Image One
Image Credit: noaa.gov

While many folks are suffering from the damage brought about by Hurricane Dorian, including my own state, twenty-three years ago, today, another hurricane made landfall between 7:17 & 9:03pm EDT…Hurricane Fran. The eye passed over Bald Head Island and Southport.

From NOAA:

Fran was the second hurricane to slam into the North Carolina coast in the same season. Bertha was a Category 2 hurricane when she hit just two months earlier. There wasn’t much time to recover from the first disaster before the second hit.

Due to a low pressure centered over Tennessee and the western extension of the subtropical ridge over the northwest Atlantic, Fran was steered onto a north-northwesterly track and gained speed. Moving around 17 mph, the center of Fran made landfall over the Cape Fear area on September 5th around 8:30 p.m., just southwest of Wilmington. At landfall, sustained winds were 115 mph […].

Hurricane Fran Image Two
Image Credit: noaa.gov

Fran caused major flooding from North Carolina to Maryland [to] West Virginia. The damage from Fran was so extensive that the name “Fran” was removed from the hurricane name list and replaced by Fay. North Carolina got the worst of the storm […]. The North Topsail Beach police station was washed away by a 12 foot storm surge. The police station was being temporarily housed in a double wide since Bertha wiped out the original building just a few months prior. Kure Beach Pier was destroyed along with the Emerald Isle fishing pier, while Bogue Inlet Pier lost 150 feet. Storm surge in North Topsail Beach created a 100-foot wide inlet. Topsail Island lost 40 feet of beach due to erosion. Swansboro and New Bern experienced 10 feet of storm surge […].

Hurricane force wind gusts were experienced as far inland as Raleigh. High winds damaged historical buildings. Classes at the University of North Carolina were canceled for a day and it was almost a week before the water was drinkable again. Strong winds and a saturated ground led to many trees being uprooted inland. This led to numerous houses being destroyed by trees falling on them. Over a million people were left without power. Almost two weeks after the storm, 150 secondary roads were still closed due to flooding and downed trees.

In the same way that residents of Columbia and Charlotte remember Hurricane Hugo‘s devastating inland winds, residents of Raleigh and most of the North Carolina inland coastal plain think back to Fran when discussing the strong wind a hurricane can bring well away from the coast. Fran was the worst storm to strike southeastern North Carolina since Hurricane Hazel in 1954.

My dad was nine years old when Hazel hit. He remembered being underneath his desk in elementary school. I was living in Durham when Fran hit. I thought the roof of the house was going to come off (I was living in an attic studio apartment on the west side of town, close to Duke Hospital and Duke University). That hurricane came straight up thru the middle of NC. Working in Law Enforcement, I was considered “necessary personnel” and when I got up to head in, Durham looked like a war zone. Interstate 85 was completely shut down and I wound my way thru town, west to east. Oh, the devastation. The Trooper Station I worked in had power but, my apartment went without for a week. I need to dig up the pictures of the damage and post them. They are in a box…somewhere. ~Vic

Chris Thomas: A Progress Report 2013

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A Blog Post From: The Chris Thomas Files

Progress Report Image One
Image Credit: astrobioloblog.wordpress.com

Introduction

The Galaxy Song [1]
Whenever life gets you down, Mrs. Brown
And, things seem hard or tough
And, people are stupid, obnoxious or daft
And, feel that you’ve had quite enough

Just remember that you’re standing on a planet
That’s evolving and revolving at nine hundred miles an hour
It’s orbiting at ninety miles a second, so it’s reckoned
A sun that is the source of all our power

The sun, and you and me, and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm at forty thousand miles an hour
Of the galaxy we call the Milky Way

Our galaxy, itself, contains a hundred billion stars
It’s a hundred thousand light years side to side
It bulges in the middle to sixteen light years thick
But, out by us it’s just three thousand light years wide

We’re thirty thousand light years from galactic central point
We go ’round every two hundred million years
And, our galaxy is only one of millions and billions
In this amazing and expanding universe

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, the speed of light you know
Twelve million miles a minute
And, that’s the fastest speed there is

So remember, when you’re feeling very small and insecure
How amazingly unlikely is your birth
And, pray that there is intelligent life somewhere out in space
Because, there’s bugger all down here on Earth

I have included Eric Idle’s Galaxy Song for the same reasons that I used it as the frontispiece for The Human Soul, published back in 2007. The reason is to show, in a non-serious way, how little we really understand about our Universe, our solar system, the Earth and ourselves. Humans have become so focused down onto the minutiae of our day-to-day lives that we forget that we have a greater purpose beyond being a “wage slave”. The other main problem we seem to have developed over the past few years is that we only see the world around us in very small “bites”…if it isn’t immediately in front of us on our computer screen, we don’t consider it and, as soon as we change the website, we have forgotten what we read on the last web page. We seem to have forgotten all about context and history.

A Progress Report Image Two
Image Credit: rsc.org

Mr. Idle’s little ditty also highlights another problem we have. We see ourselves as being very small and this makes us insecure. Added to which are the determined efforts by the “Elite” to keep us in a permanent state of fear so that we only think about our lives in reference to whatever is currently making us afraid. Given that we do not understand who, and what, we actually are, how we are deliberately kept in a state of fear and, we do not remember what our true place is within this Universe, is it any wonder that people have begun to look for help from beings, and places, beyond our solar system?

The line in the song: “And pray that there is intelligent life somewhere out in space…” seems to have caught a great many people’s interest and, they are looking to other races to come in and save them from themselves. However, the Velon, and all of their misleading disguises, should not be seen as being “intelligent life”. If we properly understood ourselves, and our place in current Universal history, we would know, absolutely, that we have all of the information and the tools we need already with us here on Earth. We already have everything we need to solve our problems as part of our fundamental make up. We have just forgotten that we are so much more than we have been propagandised into believing.

The Situation Since 1996

December 21st 2012 was a critical day in a series of recent critical days that began in 1996. To try and re-tell our history, as recorded in the Akashic, at this point, would be pointless. This is fully covered in my books. But, some historic connections need to be made in order to explain the significance of 1996 and the critical days that followed up to the present. To understand the present, you have to place it into its historical context, otherwise, what is happening now cannot be understood properly.

The Earth revolves on its own axis. The Earth orbits around the Sun. The Sun travels around its own orbit, travelling at 200 Km/hr. On its orbit, the Sun travels through many regions of our galaxy and, every 26,250 years, the Sun aligns with the center of the galaxy. With this galactic alignment comes a new burst of energy that can be used to rejuvenate the energies within our solar system, if the planetary consciousnesses choose to so do. This 26,250 year cycle is the one referred to in the ancient calendar systems, the most well known of which is the Mayan Calendar.

We began to enter the central galactic energy stream a few years ago but, the energies, as far as their potential influence is concerned, reached its peak between the 29th of October 2011 and the 21st of December 2012. This is why these dates have significance. This is why human plans (The Human Plan) were timed to reach their conclusions at this time…to take maximum advantage of the fresh energies arriving from the galaxy center. This is the Mayan 6th Sun.

To continue reading (it’s eight pages), download the PDF version HERE.

[Note: This PDF was originally posted on the One-Vibration Forum Blog on July 6, 2013.]

Footnote
[1] The Galaxy Song was written by Eric Idle. Music by Eric Idle and John Du Prez. Taken from Monty Python’s film The Meaning of Life, I did attempt to contact Eric Idle, or his agents, to obtain copyright approval to reproduce the lyrics here but, unfortunately, I could not find any way of contacting him. The lyrics are available on many websites. You can also watch Eric Idle and the Monty Python team perform the song on YouTube.

30-Day Song Challenge: Day 21

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Music Challenge Image
Photo Credit: goodreads.com

A song you like with a person’s name in the title…

I’m with fellow blogger, Britchy, on this one. She lists several that I like plus, I add Alyson, Amie, Barbara Ann, Eleanor Rigby, Rhonda, Carrie Ann, Maggie May, Lucy, Sharona, Beth, Sara, Sarah, Shannon, Angie, Layla, Mandy, Rhiannon, Lola, Ruby, Lucille…the list is endless and most of them women.

These are my three favorites since I seem to post in threes, mostly and, one is a guy’s name.

This one is my middle name…


 

Lead singer and drummer Fred LeBlanc is a trip.


 

The original video is pretty raunchy, so I will go with this one.