Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Today In History: Important Safety Tip...

Never fly with musicians. Their planes are all the time crashing, and then we have to listen to Don McLean's Greatest Hit over and over and over again.

If I never hear another stoned teenager trying to puzzle out a fuzzy-headed analysis of that interminable bit of doggerel, it'll be too soon.

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

You know what Buddy Holly would say to that.

"I'm fuckin' Buddy Holly! Let the monkey fly the plane!"

Turk Turon said...

The Walrus was Paul, right?

staghounds said...

Glad our journos are ferreting out serious, fresh information.

$%^&* boomers.

Maybe someone could start a new section of the papers and irritainment outlets, call it "The Olds".

Meanwhile, I just found out that Alex died.

A true artist, who could ever forget "Soft Corn", "Color", and "Want a Nut".

JD said...

you would think with all the pot smoke they could fly on their own. . .

JD said...

oh ya, and thanks Egon for the safety tip. . .

= )

Anonymous said...

You're starting to talk like an older Jew. Or, rather, to type like one. Nothing wrong with that, just wondering who you've been hanging out with recently that you've not shared with us. :P

Jim said...

I rarely criticize the well-armed, Tamara, but you go too far, especially on this anniversary of the Great Musical Sadness.

Retaliation looms -- when I get around to blogging a tidbit on the mystery of the Holly/Valens/Bopper .38 Special aborad the plane on the night the music died. In it I will also demonstrate that "Chantilly Lace" deserves a place in music's classical pantheon, right up there with "Grand Canyon Suite" and "Flying Purple People Eater."

Perhaps it is your mere youth which blinds you.

Anonymous said...

@JD,
IIRC, pot didn't become the intoxicant of choice (at least for white musicians) until the mid 60s.

For musicians of this vintage (heh), think PBR, Old Grand Dad, and maybe some Boone's Farm.

@anon,
Yiddish sentence formation can be a great rhetorical device, already. ;)

NotClauswitz said...

I hate Don McLean, he ruined Junior High School and began the great sacchrine-sticky wave of Boomer sentimentailty and gushing self-pity.

Anonymous said...

It's Valens' fault. Pot may have not been popular among whites until the 60s, but remember he was mexican and brought along the custom. It was HIS smoke that filled the cockpit and caused uncontrollable laughter among the crew which in turn provoked the accident. I'm telling you, it's true...

Anonymous said...

Although that's one of my favorite songs I certainly won't argue about you feel about it. Well I can't actually it's your opinion. :)

However when I saw Don McClean in concert a few years back he gave a definitive statement about the meaning of "American Pie".

"It means I'll never have to work again"

Anonymous said...

Marihuana was "discovered" in the 60's only by the clueless Readers' Digest generation. Yep, that'd be yer boomers.

('Boomers' is a crime against demography anyway: it was coined to describe those born immediately after WWII, and then, as we are wont to do, stretched to cover a birthspan of over 18 years--some 'generation'!)

Robert Mitchum--who knew about these things--said he first tried marihuana in 1941.

In Toledo.

TOTWTYTR said...

Patsy Cline, Jim Reeves, Ricky Nelson, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Jim Croce, and of course, John Denver.

Yep, the track record is none to good here.

staghounds said...

Yes, the actual $%^&*( boomers stretched the numbers to include more people.

Without asking the annexees of course.

Anonymous said...

Hey. *I* didn't want to stretch the date range. Any further and my kids would've been boomers too. I was quite happy being at the outer edge.

brbiswrite said...

This boomer (1946) would like to remind y'all that today marks the birth of Felix Mendelssohn, musical genius and and all-around cool guy.

Don McLean should write so well.

BRB

Anonymous said...

stag.
"What is your major malfunction? Private Pyle? Did mommy & daddy not love you enough?"
Please remember if you open parentheses, be sure to close parenthese. But, I do not think you understand what I just wrote.

arclight