With Billie Holiday as an influence, Abbey Lincoln made a career performing standards, as well as her deeply personal original songs in jazz clubs through the country. She sang on her husband Max Roach‘s civil rights-themed album We Insist! in 1960. Her own lyrics were often connected to the civil rights movement. Abbey was cast …
This town is coming like a ghost town All the clubs have been closed down This place, is coming like a ghost town Bands won’t play no more Too much fighting on the dance floor
Terry Jones was the heart and soul of the British comedy troupe Monty Python. And he played some pretty funny characters. He passed away in January 2020 from advanced dementia. He was 77. As fellow Python John Cleese said: “Two down, four to go.”
DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Prepare yourself for the witness box. COURT CLERK: Take off your hat. JUDGE: Take off your hat. COURT CLERK: Raise your right hand. JUDGE: Please take off your hat. COURT CLERK: Raise your right hand. CURLY: Hmm COURT CLERK: Now put your left hand here. JUDGE: Will you please take off your hat!! …
I remember when Kobe Bryant was a phenom at Lower Merion High School, just outside of Philadelphia. There was a lot of controversy and second-guessing when he decided to forgo college and make himself available for the NBA Draft upon his graduation from high school. The rest, as they say, is history. Obviously, he made …
Chicago-born Bee Palmer was a popular dancer in the early part of the 20th century. She toured with some notable jazz musicians, always under the name “Bee Palmer’s New Orleans Rhythm Kings.” The Rhythm Kings, however, were more successful after they parted ways with Bee. In 1910, Bee introduced a new provocative dance, shaking her shoulders …
I have been participating — without fail — in the online illustration blog Illustration Friday since 2006. Most weeks, they present a word that is wide open to many interpretations. Except this week…. This week, the word is “red panda.” I didn’t know what a “red panda” was until I Googled it. It turns out …
Just after the conclusion of the Test for Echo tour, the nineteen-year-old daughter of Rush drummer Neil Peart was killed in a car accident. Ten months later, his common-law wife died of cancer. Distraught, Neil told his band mates to consider him retired, He set out on a long and extensive “trip to nowhere” that …
“Technology presumes there’s just one right way to do things and there never is.” — Robert M. Pirsig Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance After 126 rejections, Robert M. Pirsig finally got his 1974 fictionalized autobiographical novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance published. It went on to sell over five million copies worldwide, …
In 1968, seventeen year-old Barbara Hoyt ran away from her Seattle home with her sights set on Los Angeles. Alone in the big city, Barbara was befriended by a man who called himself “Karate Dave.” He took the teen to see some friends who were living at a place called Spahn Ranch, an abandoned movie …
