san francisco
Song Saturday: Gates of the Country
June 1998
Wikipedia
“Somehow I see, there are ships in her eyes…”
This Saturday’s playlist submission was never released as a single and it never charted…anywhere. It’s the last track, number 12, on the original 1997 debut release of Your Body Above Me by Black Lab. An alternative rock band founded in San Franciso, CA, in 1995 by Paul Durham, the band’s name is an amalgam of band names Black Sabbath and Stereolab. The album did have two hits, one of which peaked at #6 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart.
There is not a bad song on this album and I nearly wore out my CD. I took notice of them when an alternative rock station showcased their first track (the #6 hit). I love Paul Durham‘s voice and, the band has had many songs used in movies and television, most notably Spider-Man (2002), Blade: Trinity and Transformers.
Black Lab World (Official Site)
Paul Durham (Official Site)
Scoop Saturday: Iowa Man Receives 33 Year Old Postcard
An Iowa man, who received a postcard from his sister, said he was surprised to note the card had been mailed in 1987. Paul Willis, a hog farmer in Thornton, said a postcard appeared in his mailbox, recently, from his sister, Annie Lovell […]. [H]e soon noticed the card bore a picture of Lovell on a Grand Canyon hike in 1987 and a San Francisco postmark from December of that same year.
Willis said the postcard bore a second postmark from April 29 of this year in Des Moines so, he called the post office to see if they had any explanation for the postcard’s tardiness. [An] employee said the postcard may have been discovered while furniture and machines were being moved for cleaning. “She said, ‘Well, the post offices are all going through deep cleaning because of COVID-19…'” Willis [recounted to] the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat.
An Illinois woman experienced a similar incident in July 2019, when a postcard showed up at her home that had been mailed 26 years earlier. Kim Draper said the card was addressed to the previous residents of her Springfield home and, [it] recounted the residents’ father’s travels in Hong Kong.
Ben Hooper
United Press International
May 7, 2020
No Video Clip
Short Piece on Kim Draper
Wayback Wednesday: Apple iTunes & iPhones
January 9 has been a very special day to Apple, Inc. On this day in 2001, Apple announced iTunes at MacWorld San Francisco, an application for Internet radio, music playing, ripping music from CDs and maintaining a library. The software ran on MacOS and Windows and, in 2003, you could download media from the iTunes Store. In 2005, Apple extended functionality for video and podcasts…University lectures in 2007 and, books in 2010. iTunes Radio, free music streaming, came in 2013 followed by Apple Music, paid music streaming, in 2015.
Apple has come under criticism for its digital rights management (DRM) encryption FairPlay. The protection of the music greatly limited what devices could play the files and brought about a movement to remove the restrictions. Steve Jobs penned an open letter to the music industry in February 2007. By April, non-DRM music appeared for download and the entire music catalog was DRM-free in January 2009.
On this day in 2007, Apple announced their first smartphone…again, at the MacWorld Conference & Expo in San Francisco. Quote from Steve Jobs:
“This is a day that I have been looking forward to for two and a half years. Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone.”
From Wikipedia:
Apple created the device during a secretive and unprecedented collaboration with AT&T, formerly Cingular Wireless. The development cost of the collaboration was estimated to have been $150 million over a thirty-month period. Apple rejected the “design by committee” approach that had yielded the Motorola ROKR E1, a largely unsuccessful collaboration with Motorola. Instead, Cingular Wireless gave Apple the liberty to develop the iPhone’s hardware and software in-house. The whole effort was called Project Purple 2 and began in 2005. Six weeks before the iPhone was to be released, the plastic screen was replaced with a glass one, after Jobs was upset that the screen of the prototype he was carrying in his pocket had been scratched by his keys.
With the iPhone X costing $1,000 dollars, Apple rules the world.
Wayback Wednesday: Loma Prieta Earthquake 1989
Photo Credit: heavy.com
In 1989, at 5:04pm local time in California, a 6.9-7.1 magnitude earthquake struck an area nearly 10 miles northeast of Santa Cruz on the Loma Prieta segment of the San Andreas Fault. The epicenter was in The Forest of Nisene Marks State Park. Named for the Loma Prieta Peak in the Santa Cruz Mountains, the effects and damage covered Santa Cruz County, Monterey County, the San Francisco Peninsula, the ‘Frisco Bay and across the bay in Oakland. There were 3,700+ injuries and 63-67 deaths (depending upon what article you read) and $5-$6 billion dollars in damage. The earthquake disrupted Game 3 of the 1989 World Series.
Photo Credit: huffingtonpost.com
Other October 17 history:
1814…..The London Beer Flood kills eight people. (Yes, this actually happened.)
1931…..Al Capone goes to prison for tax evasion. (Addendum: There seems to be confusion on the specific date of his conviction. Time Magazine, The NYTimes and the History Channel say the 17th. The FBI says the 18th. Pick one…)
1973…..OPEC imposes the oil embargo as punishment for assisting Israel during the Yom Kippur War. (Remember those gas lines, anyone?)
1979…..President Jimmy Carter signs into law the Department of Education Organization Act, creating the U.S. Department of Education and renaming the Department of Health, Education & Welfare to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. (Because the government wasn’t big enough, already…)
2018…..Canada just legalized cannabis for recreational use…today!
