I post a weekly diary of the historical notes, arts & science items, foreign news (often receiving little notice in the US) and whimsical pieces from the outside world that I featured this past week in "Cheers & Jeers". For example .....
If you enjoy hearing some Led Zeppelin along with your oatmeal ... well, have another look .....
DIRECT DESCENDANTS? - musician Jimmy Page and the Quaker Oats logo guy.
OK, you've been warned - here is this week's tomfoolery material that I posted.
PROGRAMMING ANNOUNCEMENT - as I mentioned in a recent Top Comments diary: I went from being unemployed, then to underemployed (and now) fully employed over the course of the past six weeks. But I have a major task in getting up-to-speed (with comparatively little training from my predecessor) at my new house of employment, and will have some business travel for the first time. So my posting will be a bit sporadic over the next few weeks; hope to resume normal output in the time before us.
ART NOTES - an exhibition of over sixty Tibetan Buddhist works entitled Seeking Shambhala is at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts to Oct. 21st.
MUSIC NOTES - many fans will be disappointed to learn that an expected 50th anniversary tour for the Rolling Stones will not take place until next year. But Keith Richards goes on to explain that the "real" golden jubilee won't be until next year, anyway: as 1963 was when drummer Charlie Watts joined the band.
FIFTY YEARS after its release, the debut album of Bob Dylan is being cited by critics as a landmark of popular culture.
WEDNESDAY's CHILD is Felix the Cat - an English kitteh went missing for two years - but who turned up at Battersea Dogs and Cats Home and was reunited with his family due to his microchip.
IN a PIECE of incredible timing: the Guardian newspaper published an "In Praise Of" editorial last week (wishing that the UK had something similar) for the public radio program This American Life - which had to issue a mea-culpa that same week over not fact-checking Apple critic Mike Daisey and his tale of visiting China, the basis for his one-man theater monologue.
ART NOTES - prints by James McNeill Whistler in an exhibition entitled Fleeting Impressions are at the Brigham Young Museum of Art in Provo, Utah to April 7.
HISTORY NOTES - the collaborationist government of Marshal Pétain established after the fall of France in WW-II - the notorious Vichy regime - fought against the West during 1941-42. But - unbeknownst to both General DeGaulle and Winston Churchill - senior British and French officers discussed a British plan to arm the Vichy troops (and link up with them in an Allied landing at Bordeaux and La Rochelle) in order to overthrow Petain. .... which obviously never came to pass.
PUNK ROCK is alive and kicking in a repressive state - i.e., Indonesia, Burma, Iraq and Russia - near you.
THURSDAY's CHILD is Mac the Cat - an 18-year-old English kitteh who jumped off a boat six years ago, but spent his time living wild in derelict buildings beside the waterway, reunited due to his microchip ... and bounded immediately into Stuart Emery's lap, greeting him with a headbutt.
AT THIS YEAR's Olivier Awards - Britain's theatre equivalent of Broadway's Tony Awards - a lifetime achievement award will be presented to Sir Tim Rice - the lyricist for Jesus Christ Superstar, plus Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Evita and (more recently) The Lion King.
THEATER NOTES - Jack Kerouac's only full-length play - The Beat Generation - is to premiere in his hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts, seven years after the script was discovered.
DIRECT DESCENDANTS? - the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg and the German-born physicist Albert Einstein.
BRAIN TEASER - try this week's Weekly World News Quiz from the BBC.
HISTORY NOTES - an undisclosed buyer purchased (for $26,000 at an auction) an original court indictment from the Salem Witch Trials of Margaret Scott, one of the last to be hanged (in September 1692) after she was found guilty of witchcraft.
FRIDAY's CHILD is Becca the Cat - an Illinois feral kitteh who was caught in a tree for a week (during which time she was named by a neighborhood child). But when this firefighter reached for Becca, she bailed out: fell to the ground through the arms of another firefighter and ran away, apparently none the worse for wear.
......and finally, for a song of the week .................... having mentioned pioneering San Francisco DJ Tom Donahue in the past (whom I never got to hear on the radio) I should add his East Coast counterpart (who was an icon of my youth in the New York metro area).
Scott Muni had several things that made him distinctive: (a) un unmistakably deep, gravelly voice that led to one nickname "Scottso", (b) an almost encyclopedic knowledge of rock music, leading to his other nickname "The Professor" and (c) an ability to engender a trust in musicians that meant that whenever they were in New York, a telephone call to (or even an appearance on) his WNEW show was mandatory.
Donald Muñoz was born in Wichita, Kansas in 1930, coming of age in New Orleans. He joined the Marine Corps in 1950 and began his radio career reading "Dear John" letters over Radio Guam. After leaving the Corps, he replaced none other than Alan Freed at a station in Akron, Ohio and worked his way to New York in the late 1950's, at which time he adopted his on-air name. While still in a standard AM-radio DJ role: he first became associated with the Beatles when they first visited America, long featured their music and later became especially close to John Lennon after he and Yoko moved to New York. (After Lennon's murder, Muni pledged to begin each show with a Lennon or Beatles tune, a pledge which he kept).
Then a 1965 ruling by the FCC (forbidding FM stations from simulcasting a co-owned AM station) forced them to develop their own formats - which Tom Donahue began to do on the West Coast. It was Scott Muni's move to WNEW-FM in 1967 where he became program director and led the station into its no-playlist format that made it required listening in my youth. There were other standouts (Dennis Elsas, Vin Scelsa as well as Pete Fornatale, my favorite) but Scott Muni's afternoon slot left him perfectly placed at the center of it all. He specialized in playing obscure bands, whole albums and a weekly "Things from England" set.
His friendship with musicians included playing poker with the Grateful Dead, letting Emerson, Lake & Palmer rummage through the station's library and play what they wanted on-air, and when Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin collapsed of exhaustion during an interview: Muni simply put on a record and revived him.
Much more seriously: he had a 1972 on-air telephone conversation that was one of the inspirations for the film Dog Day Afternoon when a hostage-holding bank robber called Muni in a panic. WNEW did not interrupt the broadcast; allowing Muni to calm him, talking about Bob Dylan and playing his Grateful Dead requests - and eventually the man gave up.
In addition to his local broadcasts, he produced some nationally syndicated shows, such as "Scott Muni's World of Rock" and the Beatles-oriented "Ticket to Ride." Even if you never heard him as a DJ, you may have heard his deep voice unknowingly: he did commercials for Rolaids ("How do you spell relief?") as well as Monday Night Football and at this link are some audio samples. But gradually (with the changes in the radio business) Scott Muni lost the freedom to play a wide variety of music that he once had, and left WNEW in 1998 to work at a classic-rock station which permitted a legend like him to write his own ticket.
Scott Muni died in September, 2004 at the age of 74 of a stroke (which he had suffered earlier in the year). Among the many tributes was an entire webpage from Keith Emerson who recounted his astonishment at hearing Muni play the entire "Pictures at an Exhibition" album in 1971 and Emerson went on to say, "if there was one person that helped Emerson, Lake & Palmer break into America: it was the growly voice of Scott Muni".
Since his death, WAQX continues Scott Muni's "Twelve O'Clock Beatles Block" - and one of my favorite songs of theirs is John Lennon's Cry, Baby Cry - which he disdained later in life but dates back to a fairy tale from his youth.
And below you can hear this forty-two year-old song once again.
The king of Marigold was in the kitchen
Cooking breakfast for the queen
The queen was in the parlour
Playing piano for the children of the king.
The king was in the garden
Picking flowers for a friend who came to play
The queen was in the playroom
Painting pictures for the children's holiday.
Cry, baby cry
Make your mother sigh
She's old enough to know better
So cry, baby cry