I think "second-tier" is better than "minor", the same way that, for example, Boston was a second-tier rock group. No shortage of hits, but no long-term staying power.
The Funk Brothers didn't stay behind. They were left behind. They showed up to the studio to find a note on the door saying that Motown had moved to LA. This was after Gordy hired private detectives to find out if any of the Brothers were getting side work at other studios (they were).
Played it three or four times today on Spotify, your analysis is spot on Jack. I’m a bit embarrassed that I’ve never heard of the song previously, given my age.
Definitely remember the spinners. I don't know if that's because I grew up in NY, but they were on the radio and played at parties back when I was in school.
Some high school friends of mine found The Spinners at The Electric Fetus in Minneapolis. That was just about 30 years ago. Today I will listen to Sadie with a maturity and reflection that comes with middle age.
Speaking of spellbinding voices, I had some chores to do that involved sitting in one place so I unwrapped and watched No Direction Home, Martin Scorcese's documentary about Bob Dylan before the motorcycle accident. Joan Baez figures prominently. Her politics stink and she may be the definition of a progressive patrician (her father was an internationally known physicist, her mom's father was the pastor at the Edinburgh cathedral and she is literally descended from dukes) but she had the voice of an angel into her 70s. In the documentary there's a clip from when Dylan sang at the huge 1963 civil rights march on Washington that most people today know connected to MLK Jr's I Have A Dream speech. Dylan is introduced (by actor Ossie Davis) and starts to strum and sing When The Ship Comes in. Baez falls in next to him and before she joins in the chorus she hums beautiful, ethereal harmonies that could only be her.
"If you want to be a writer ... all that really matters is the craft and what you produce. ... Whether it is seen by seven people or seven billion people."
Man, I hope this is true. My first four novels were published by one of the NYC biggies. When I lost that ride, I self-published a couple of books. I suppose a hundred people read each one. Most recently, I took a decent (but not strong enough) book that I didn't feel like revising again and simply asked my Facebook friends if they wanted me to email them a Word file. More than seven people read it. But not a LOT more than seven.
Melville died broke and with his reputation as a serviceable writer of travel tales torn into tatters by an unlovable disappointment of a book about the whaling business.
Celebrate, brother. You are one of the extremely small number of people who not only wrote four books, but had them published. By definition, that puts you amongst the most successful writers of all time. Be proud. You've done something amazing. And yes, I'm being dead serious.
My first book has yet to be finished, let alone published. In my youth, I was told often that I was a great writer, as I skated and half assed my way through school and university by producing work that said nothing of any true value or offered any great insights, but said it well enough that I could earn myself a degree. I spent the last decades squandering my gifts on corporate BS where I again struggled mightily to say nothing at all, while giving all the appearance of saying something. Of late, as I've actually wanted to start writing something of value at least to me, it feels like my muse has abandoned me. All my thoughts seem to come out in email size pieces now. I've even considered taking journalism courses, if only to have someone to call me on my BS and get me back on the writing path again. But the state of modern journalism makes me wonder if I'd end up any better off.
So what kind of books do you write? Where should I start exploring your work?
You are a gentleman and a scholar! My books with Minotaur/St. Martin's were a mystery series; the first one, and the one that sold best, is titled Purgatory Chasm. Whatever you do, don't take journalism classes. Complete waste of time (says this longtime journo). Just set an achievable word goal for each day (suggestion: 350, because it's not intimidating but it's more than a page) and don't get out of the chair until you've hit the mark. Take weekends off. In eight or nine months, you'll have a draft.
I get what you are saying about Journalism schools. I'm still of the generation where we thought that there should be a teacher/mentor out there somewhere who would share their knowledge and experience, and help us hone our craft. However, it seems those days are mostly behind us.
Was shopping for your book, and just wanted to ask if a paper, kindle or audiobook version benefited you the most. I'd prefer to support you if I can, because as Luca Brazzi said, "After-all , we are not communists."
It seems that the paper copies are not easily available in Canaduh. Is there a better place to order from then Amazon?
I must very humbly apologize to my fellow denizens of ACF. When I wrote Luca Brazzi above, that was in error. As any real man would know, of course I meant Emilio Barzini.
Knowing PRACTICALLY nothing about R&B, there are a couple of things you describe here that stick out in order of importance:
That ability to convey a set of emotions utterly convincingly (whether personally experienced by the artist or not) is real artistic TALENT. period, No matter the genre or medium.
That description of the audience during those times makes me wish that was the case with the broader ethnic community today.
I miss singing that's not processed into synth sounds, bands with four-strong horn sections, and precise execution in the studio or in live performance.
People would still eat up this sort of music today but the labels will never greenlight it because it's too difficult and expensive to make.
"but the labels will never greenlight it because it's too difficult and expensive to make."
I think they need better talent than we have today, and they would need a lot less "engineering and producing". I have seen many live performances from the so called classic rock era that most entertainers could not match today. Without Auto Tune and Pro Tools many of the current generation would go nowhere.
Part of the difficulty and expense is finding that talent. It's out there today. I've heard singers in local bars and even church gigs that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. But it takes a lot more effort to find those people than to look at someone's Instagram and see immediately that they'll look right in the video and on the album cover, secure in the knowledge that you can AutoTune and time-shift their voice into submission.
I completely agree. When I was a kid my grandmother, sometimes accompanied by my dad, would sing in church and it would always be a packed house. Looking back I am amazed at how good they were having no formal training. Much better than most of what we have today. The raw talent is still out there.
Another aspect to it: the days of selling three million CDs at a retail price of $12.99 in 1987 dollars, or cassettes for $8.99 in 1982 dollars, or vinyl for $7.99 in 1977 dollars. are long gone. Something I just read, that lines up well with what I've read elsewhere, based on mechanical performance royalties:
"Justin Bieber’s song, Love Yourself, was written by Ed Sheeran, Benjamin Levin, and Bieber. It was released by Def Jam record label. The song has been streamed 17.4 million times. With the $0.091 per stream mechanical royalty, it should generate about $1,583,400. The streaming platforms will pay the whole sum to Def Jam as the label. Def Jam will then distribute the whole sum to everyone involved in making the song according to their roles."
Now compare that to Britney Spears selling 10 million cassette and CD singles of "Baby One More Time", which put perhaps $12-15 million in the pockets of the label. In 1998. So thirty million bucks or more in today's money.
All the people who run the business still need to make outrageous sums so they have extracted the difference out of studio time, touring support, studio musicians and producers, and all the remaining apparatus of the biz.
Most of today's hits are done via ProTools in a small studio. The expense is a fraction of what you paid in the Steely Dan days. And if you use electronic instruments you can do the whole song with vocal tracks and a MIDI pad.
I get what you're saying Jack, but I think there are other aspects to it as well.
For one, in the past there were fewer "musical pyramids" and they were much larger. Meaning, the music was "grouped" into fewer "categories", and each category was huge. So, if you could get into any particular category, you could really clean up.
The other part is the *real* reason "why digital ruined everything." Before digital, *talented* people had to hone their skills before they would be heard by anyone who could make them part of the business. There was no way to fake the talent. You also had to have the presence, and in pre-social-media age, everything was in-person, so people learned how to put on a show (say, the Beatles' Munich years). And the people who run the business then got to skim off the top of that talent pool. Today, because anyone can produce a song, or an album, it is much more difficult to separate the signal from the noise, and there is A LOT of noise.
I like how Tim Rice put it when he was a guest on Top Gear: "In the past, if you got to make a record, a lot of people had to have heard AND liked your music. Today, if you make a CD, it means *you* like it."
Not only that, but how many of the "yuts" today even fully appreciate in-person experience? I mean, why bother, when you can watch someone else's brief social media video of the event? You know, the one that starts with the shot of the person making the video, maybe their outfit, their friends, the "craaazy" show setup (like, totally), a few seconds of the main act, and then closes with yet another shot of the person making the video.
On a mostly unrelated note: my neighbors occasionally enjoy 16-18 hour parties that go until 04:00. And to my aging ears, through the mostly concrete walls, it all sounds the same, almost as if they're playing the same tune the entire time. Are my ears deceiving me, or has the sound really become that homogenized?
This is a very interesting topic. I know virtually noting about the business of producing music but as a listener the product that the business is giving us is worse than it was before the internet, and the use of computers and software to construct music. Is there anyone doing it the "old way" these days?
Everything is cheaper, disposable, and less appreciated. For all the things we've been instructed to feel entitled to quality has been carefully left out.
I watched The Song Remains the Same the other day for the first time ever, and was totally blown away by their timing and execution while obviously on tremendous amounts of drugs and alcohol. I'm sure there was plenty of remastering and there are some obvious dubbing artifacts throughout, but today, that would involve basically a huge on stage production of prearranged music and lip synching. It was all about the music, not the personal lives of the bands, or the amazing production values or wardrobe or whatever (despite Jimmy's dragon suit)--all of that seemed to come later.
Many of the later Zep shows were absolutely shambolic, as were the studio sessions, because Pagey and Bonzo couldn't stay sober for ten minutes. Apparently "Presence" is dammed close to being a Plant/Jones duo record. They would work normal hours and leave tracks for Jimmy and Bonham to work with in the event either of them actually came into the studio.
Growing up in the 70's in the Phila "tri-state-area", Gamble and Huff's Philly International sound was the sound of my youth. Wonderful groups mixed by the recently deceased Joe Tarsia of Sigma Sound with one heck of a group of sessions players. The Spinners, O’Jays, the Stylistics, Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes, Teddy Prendergast, Delfonics, Billy Paul, the Intruders, Lou Rawls, MFSB. The best!
Surprising subject matter today and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I certainly had no idea of this backstory, even as someone who includes "Games People Play" pretty often in my karaoke selections. Now: time to go dial up that live performance....
Jack, are you trying to tell us something in that last paragraph? I can certainly see parallels between ACF being your art outlet against years of troubles. Whether or not it transcends time is something we may never know, but it certainly is enjoyed in the preset.
I remember a Black kid in grade school telling me during a deep discussion on cars and music that his favorite group was The Spinners (he pronounced it “The Speeners”) and I agreed they were worthy. Still think of him anytime I hear them. I probably shamelessly told him my favorite musician was John Denver.
Saw Luther Vandross with an ex and that was an interesting experience. The ladies running to the front yelling “Luther! Luther!” and fainting, etc, it was really something. Slow Jams, a whole other subject.
I was just reading about it. I was surprised to learn that he wasn't drunk when he crashed although he was not permitted to fly because the FAA revoked his medical certification due to his drinking. The plane was a Rutan Long EZ. It wasn't a design flaw, whoever built it put the tank switch lever in an awkward, almost inaccessible spot for some reason, it was supposed to go right between the pilot's legs. As always there were multiple contributing factors, for example Denver refused an offer to top up the fuel tanks, which would have made it unnecessary to switch between them.
I was going to chide Mr. Winks for implying that anything Rutan, blessed is he among aeronautical engineers and blessed is the fruit of his brains the Rutan Voyager, did was less than perfect but I figured he just didn't know what plane was involved. Pure speculation on my part but I wonder if Denver thought he could sidestep the revocation of his license by flying a homebuilt.
Just last night I heard what I think was a legitimate interview of Michael Jackson talking about how evil Joe was. In the entertainment industry at least it seems like child abuse is a major contributor to accomplishment.
Did any of the kids MJ went on to abuse make any contributions to music? Or did they just suffer in silence. That creep should be in the same category as Gary Glitter and Jimmy Saville.
I don't know what their parents were trying to achieve by putting them in that position. It may have been a long term plan of getting access to the music industry and the child sex trafficking was secondary, or they may have just been pimps looking for a payout. Either way they are at least as reprehensible as he is, they are just not famous. To your point, our host did an article about "small souls," the idea that if someone makes a really good movie like Chinatown, or have a good defensive line at a college powerhouse then their victims don't matter to a large portion of the public.
I didn't know about that one. As if I needed another reason to hate the fuckin' eagles. I love how the cops show up and arrest the girl, and he writes a song about it. Very classy.
shirley temple--another beverly hills hotel bungalow dweller--wanted me to be in a movie with her. our nextdoor neighbors, john loder and hedy lamarr, said they'd put in a good word for us. my mother took me aside and said no; there are people in the movie business who get away with doing really bad things to children. to me, mom's no meant no. 1939
I think "second-tier" is better than "minor", the same way that, for example, Boston was a second-tier rock group. No shortage of hits, but no long-term staying power.
No staying power because studio band?
And said everything he had to say on that first album to boot
Speaking of Nightshift, have you heard the hilarious Springsteen cover of that estimable tune? It’ll make you laugh out loud.
It’s horrible. Obviously no one told him it was a bad idea before or after.
The Funk Brothers didn't stay behind. They were left behind. They showed up to the studio to find a note on the door saying that Motown had moved to LA. This was after Gordy hired private detectives to find out if any of the Brothers were getting side work at other studios (they were).
The best "Philly Sound" band came from Detroit. Fight me. Rubberband Man is arguably the most infectious song ever recorded.
Totally agree, when I think about Black music from the seventies, my mind goes to this song
Maxine Nightingale: Get Right Back to Where You Started From.
Billy Ocean: Red Light Spells Danger.
Though Billy Ocean is almost unheard of over here.
I'M LISTENING TO THE FUCKIN' SONG!
They brought their fucking toys with ‘em!
SHE'S A LESBIAN! A LESBIAN!
I play Electric Six's cover of Rubberband Man all the time...my kids HATE it, which brings me even more joy.
The only Spinners song I could name is Rubberband Man. I will definitely give Sadie a listen today, thank you for this Jack.
Played it three or four times today on Spotify, your analysis is spot on Jack. I’m a bit embarrassed that I’ve never heard of the song previously, given my age.
Definitely remember the spinners. I don't know if that's because I grew up in NY, but they were on the radio and played at parties back when I was in school.
Some high school friends of mine found The Spinners at The Electric Fetus in Minneapolis. That was just about 30 years ago. Today I will listen to Sadie with a maturity and reflection that comes with middle age.
I still live in the 'Jodeci / Babyface era of R&B.'
I don't listen to much of this genre of music, but I really like Jodeci's cover of Stevie Wonder's Lately.
My man
You're far from alone!
Speaking of spellbinding voices, I had some chores to do that involved sitting in one place so I unwrapped and watched No Direction Home, Martin Scorcese's documentary about Bob Dylan before the motorcycle accident. Joan Baez figures prominently. Her politics stink and she may be the definition of a progressive patrician (her father was an internationally known physicist, her mom's father was the pastor at the Edinburgh cathedral and she is literally descended from dukes) but she had the voice of an angel into her 70s. In the documentary there's a clip from when Dylan sang at the huge 1963 civil rights march on Washington that most people today know connected to MLK Jr's I Have A Dream speech. Dylan is introduced (by actor Ossie Davis) and starts to strum and sing When The Ship Comes in. Baez falls in next to him and before she joins in the chorus she hums beautiful, ethereal harmonies that could only be her.
Her version of "Long Black Veil" is something else.
"If you want to be a writer ... all that really matters is the craft and what you produce. ... Whether it is seen by seven people or seven billion people."
Man, I hope this is true. My first four novels were published by one of the NYC biggies. When I lost that ride, I self-published a couple of books. I suppose a hundred people read each one. Most recently, I took a decent (but not strong enough) book that I didn't feel like revising again and simply asked my Facebook friends if they wanted me to email them a Word file. More than seven people read it. But not a LOT more than seven.
Melville died broke and with his reputation as a serviceable writer of travel tales torn into tatters by an unlovable disappointment of a book about the whaling business.
However, Melville died broke.
Celebrate, brother. You are one of the extremely small number of people who not only wrote four books, but had them published. By definition, that puts you amongst the most successful writers of all time. Be proud. You've done something amazing. And yes, I'm being dead serious.
My first book has yet to be finished, let alone published. In my youth, I was told often that I was a great writer, as I skated and half assed my way through school and university by producing work that said nothing of any true value or offered any great insights, but said it well enough that I could earn myself a degree. I spent the last decades squandering my gifts on corporate BS where I again struggled mightily to say nothing at all, while giving all the appearance of saying something. Of late, as I've actually wanted to start writing something of value at least to me, it feels like my muse has abandoned me. All my thoughts seem to come out in email size pieces now. I've even considered taking journalism courses, if only to have someone to call me on my BS and get me back on the writing path again. But the state of modern journalism makes me wonder if I'd end up any better off.
So what kind of books do you write? Where should I start exploring your work?
You are a gentleman and a scholar! My books with Minotaur/St. Martin's were a mystery series; the first one, and the one that sold best, is titled Purgatory Chasm. Whatever you do, don't take journalism classes. Complete waste of time (says this longtime journo). Just set an achievable word goal for each day (suggestion: 350, because it's not intimidating but it's more than a page) and don't get out of the chair until you've hit the mark. Take weekends off. In eight or nine months, you'll have a draft.
Thanks Steve.
I get what you are saying about Journalism schools. I'm still of the generation where we thought that there should be a teacher/mentor out there somewhere who would share their knowledge and experience, and help us hone our craft. However, it seems those days are mostly behind us.
Was shopping for your book, and just wanted to ask if a paper, kindle or audiobook version benefited you the most. I'd prefer to support you if I can, because as Luca Brazzi said, "After-all , we are not communists."
It seems that the paper copies are not easily available in Canaduh. Is there a better place to order from then Amazon?
I must very humbly apologize to my fellow denizens of ACF. When I wrote Luca Brazzi above, that was in error. As any real man would know, of course I meant Emilio Barzini.
Don't be hating on the Casio keyboard!!!
Knowing PRACTICALLY nothing about R&B, there are a couple of things you describe here that stick out in order of importance:
That ability to convey a set of emotions utterly convincingly (whether personally experienced by the artist or not) is real artistic TALENT. period, No matter the genre or medium.
That description of the audience during those times makes me wish that was the case with the broader ethnic community today.
Come for the spicy insider accounts of the automotive industry, stay for some cultural enlightenment.
I miss singing that's not processed into synth sounds, bands with four-strong horn sections, and precise execution in the studio or in live performance.
People would still eat up this sort of music today but the labels will never greenlight it because it's too difficult and expensive to make.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
"but the labels will never greenlight it because it's too difficult and expensive to make."
I think they need better talent than we have today, and they would need a lot less "engineering and producing". I have seen many live performances from the so called classic rock era that most entertainers could not match today. Without Auto Tune and Pro Tools many of the current generation would go nowhere.
Part of the difficulty and expense is finding that talent. It's out there today. I've heard singers in local bars and even church gigs that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. But it takes a lot more effort to find those people than to look at someone's Instagram and see immediately that they'll look right in the video and on the album cover, secure in the knowledge that you can AutoTune and time-shift their voice into submission.
I completely agree. When I was a kid my grandmother, sometimes accompanied by my dad, would sing in church and it would always be a packed house. Looking back I am amazed at how good they were having no formal training. Much better than most of what we have today. The raw talent is still out there.
Another aspect to it: the days of selling three million CDs at a retail price of $12.99 in 1987 dollars, or cassettes for $8.99 in 1982 dollars, or vinyl for $7.99 in 1977 dollars. are long gone. Something I just read, that lines up well with what I've read elsewhere, based on mechanical performance royalties:
"Justin Bieber’s song, Love Yourself, was written by Ed Sheeran, Benjamin Levin, and Bieber. It was released by Def Jam record label. The song has been streamed 17.4 million times. With the $0.091 per stream mechanical royalty, it should generate about $1,583,400. The streaming platforms will pay the whole sum to Def Jam as the label. Def Jam will then distribute the whole sum to everyone involved in making the song according to their roles."
Now compare that to Britney Spears selling 10 million cassette and CD singles of "Baby One More Time", which put perhaps $12-15 million in the pockets of the label. In 1998. So thirty million bucks or more in today's money.
All the people who run the business still need to make outrageous sums so they have extracted the difference out of studio time, touring support, studio musicians and producers, and all the remaining apparatus of the biz.
Most of today's hits are done via ProTools in a small studio. The expense is a fraction of what you paid in the Steely Dan days. And if you use electronic instruments you can do the whole song with vocal tracks and a MIDI pad.
I get what you're saying Jack, but I think there are other aspects to it as well.
For one, in the past there were fewer "musical pyramids" and they were much larger. Meaning, the music was "grouped" into fewer "categories", and each category was huge. So, if you could get into any particular category, you could really clean up.
The other part is the *real* reason "why digital ruined everything." Before digital, *talented* people had to hone their skills before they would be heard by anyone who could make them part of the business. There was no way to fake the talent. You also had to have the presence, and in pre-social-media age, everything was in-person, so people learned how to put on a show (say, the Beatles' Munich years). And the people who run the business then got to skim off the top of that talent pool. Today, because anyone can produce a song, or an album, it is much more difficult to separate the signal from the noise, and there is A LOT of noise.
I like how Tim Rice put it when he was a guest on Top Gear: "In the past, if you got to make a record, a lot of people had to have heard AND liked your music. Today, if you make a CD, it means *you* like it."
The live music scene is dead as a doornail, killed by people who would rather have their headphones on. So where are you gonna learn the craft?
Not only that, but how many of the "yuts" today even fully appreciate in-person experience? I mean, why bother, when you can watch someone else's brief social media video of the event? You know, the one that starts with the shot of the person making the video, maybe their outfit, their friends, the "craaazy" show setup (like, totally), a few seconds of the main act, and then closes with yet another shot of the person making the video.
On a mostly unrelated note: my neighbors occasionally enjoy 16-18 hour parties that go until 04:00. And to my aging ears, through the mostly concrete walls, it all sounds the same, almost as if they're playing the same tune the entire time. Are my ears deceiving me, or has the sound really become that homogenized?
This is a very interesting topic. I know virtually noting about the business of producing music but as a listener the product that the business is giving us is worse than it was before the internet, and the use of computers and software to construct music. Is there anyone doing it the "old way" these days?
Just wait until "AI" starts generating music. Then again, judging by the sound of it, maybe that's what's been going on for years already ...
Everything is cheaper, disposable, and less appreciated. For all the things we've been instructed to feel entitled to quality has been carefully left out.
Why bother with quality, if you are "entitled to" replacing things every couple of years?
I watched The Song Remains the Same the other day for the first time ever, and was totally blown away by their timing and execution while obviously on tremendous amounts of drugs and alcohol. I'm sure there was plenty of remastering and there are some obvious dubbing artifacts throughout, but today, that would involve basically a huge on stage production of prearranged music and lip synching. It was all about the music, not the personal lives of the bands, or the amazing production values or wardrobe or whatever (despite Jimmy's dragon suit)--all of that seemed to come later.
Many of the later Zep shows were absolutely shambolic, as were the studio sessions, because Pagey and Bonzo couldn't stay sober for ten minutes. Apparently "Presence" is dammed close to being a Plant/Jones duo record. They would work normal hours and leave tracks for Jimmy and Bonham to work with in the event either of them actually came into the studio.
In Through the Out Door, it was.
No other famous rock guitarist so brutally lost their chops the way Jimmy did/has.
Growing up in the 70's in the Phila "tri-state-area", Gamble and Huff's Philly International sound was the sound of my youth. Wonderful groups mixed by the recently deceased Joe Tarsia of Sigma Sound with one heck of a group of sessions players. The Spinners, O’Jays, the Stylistics, Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes, Teddy Prendergast, Delfonics, Billy Paul, the Intruders, Lou Rawls, MFSB. The best!
WDAS - FM ;-)
Man, what a movie.
The Spinners were all over WFIL too ! I didn’t have one of those fancy FM radios until 79 or so.
Surprising subject matter today and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I certainly had no idea of this backstory, even as someone who includes "Games People Play" pretty often in my karaoke selections. Now: time to go dial up that live performance....
Jack, are you trying to tell us something in that last paragraph? I can certainly see parallels between ACF being your art outlet against years of troubles. Whether or not it transcends time is something we may never know, but it certainly is enjoyed in the preset.
No secret or hint to it: writing for ACF readers is a true joy and I haven't enjoyed putting index finger to keyboard this much in a long time!
I remember a Black kid in grade school telling me during a deep discussion on cars and music that his favorite group was The Spinners (he pronounced it “The Speeners”) and I agreed they were worthy. Still think of him anytime I hear them. I probably shamelessly told him my favorite musician was John Denver.
Saw Luther Vandross with an ex and that was an interesting experience. The ladies running to the front yelling “Luther! Luther!” and fainting, etc, it was really something. Slow Jams, a whole other subject.
Denver was a better musician than pilot.
My understanding is his plane had an unfortunate design flaw being that he couldn’t reach the fuel reserve lever.
I was just reading about it. I was surprised to learn that he wasn't drunk when he crashed although he was not permitted to fly because the FAA revoked his medical certification due to his drinking. The plane was a Rutan Long EZ. It wasn't a design flaw, whoever built it put the tank switch lever in an awkward, almost inaccessible spot for some reason, it was supposed to go right between the pilot's legs. As always there were multiple contributing factors, for example Denver refused an offer to top up the fuel tanks, which would have made it unnecessary to switch between them.
Flying a Rutan is how I'd like to die anyway.
I’m hoping to die in a huge pile of hot brass.
I figure I'll die on my front porch while my family retreats into the woods, where anyone would be foolish to follow my son.
I was going to chide Mr. Winks for implying that anything Rutan, blessed is he among aeronautical engineers and blessed is the fruit of his brains the Rutan Voyager, did was less than perfect but I figured he just didn't know what plane was involved. Pure speculation on my part but I wonder if Denver thought he could sidestep the revocation of his license by flying a homebuilt.
No certificated pilot would think that. If they actually pulled his ticket rather than suspending it, he must have had lots of issues.
I agree on Rutan, a heck of a guy.
I don't know about fainting girls but Luther could SING.
Just last night I heard what I think was a legitimate interview of Michael Jackson talking about how evil Joe was. In the entertainment industry at least it seems like child abuse is a major contributor to accomplishment.
Did any of the kids MJ went on to abuse make any contributions to music? Or did they just suffer in silence. That creep should be in the same category as Gary Glitter and Jimmy Saville.
I don't know what their parents were trying to achieve by putting them in that position. It may have been a long term plan of getting access to the music industry and the child sex trafficking was secondary, or they may have just been pimps looking for a payout. Either way they are at least as reprehensible as he is, they are just not famous. To your point, our host did an article about "small souls," the idea that if someone makes a really good movie like Chinatown, or have a good defensive line at a college powerhouse then their victims don't matter to a large portion of the public.
I should have included Don Henley in that gallery of the despicable.
I didn't know about that one. As if I needed another reason to hate the fuckin' eagles. I love how the cops show up and arrest the girl, and he writes a song about it. Very classy.
shirley temple--another beverly hills hotel bungalow dweller--wanted me to be in a movie with her. our nextdoor neighbors, john loder and hedy lamarr, said they'd put in a good word for us. my mother took me aside and said no; there are people in the movie business who get away with doing really bad things to children. to me, mom's no meant no. 1939
You need to start your own substack.
God almighty- in 1939?