Chuck Mangione has rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. Heaven has a new flugelhorn today. 84 years young. https://www.instagram.com/p/DMf2tIBxeag
Apart from that, I think the warmest memory of the guy is when he partnered with his AA sponsor Pat Boone to promote the latter's album of metal-to-lounge covers. The only one I really know is Crazy Train, which works at least as a novelty item.
Chuck Mangione has rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. Heaven has a new flugelhorn today. 84 years young. https://www.instagram.com/p/DMf2tIBxeag
AFF
Feels So Good is the Platonic form of Easy Listening. And I say that in a good way.
Terry Gene Bollea has died. Who is he? Otherwise known as Hulk Hogan of professional wrestling fame. Cardiac Arrest. Age 71 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hulk_Hogan
It has just been announced that Dame Cleo Laine, Lady Dankworth, celebrated UK singer and widow of John Dankworth, jazz musician and impresario, died yesterday. She was 97.
The last surviving cast member of the 1970s TV show, Hogan's Heroes, Kenneth Washington, has died.
I saw re-runs of it in the 1980s, and was highly amused. RIP.
Weird thing is, I found the show boring, and never watched a full episode, but I think I know who all the characters were and which "archetypes" they were supposed to represent.
And, of course, the theme song, probably the catchiest TV theme ever.
And, of course, the theme song, probably the catchiest TV theme ever.
Yes!
I loved, and still love, Hogan’s Heroes. (I’m old enough to have watched it when it was first on in prime time.) Part of that was that found it very funny, but part of it was that watched it with my father—a WWII vet who never talked about his war experience, who at the end of the war was stationed in an Allied POW camp in Germany, and who loved Hogan’s Heroes. That show, together with a few other random bits of German-related things, represents a connection with the part of my dad’s life he never really shared.
That's really sad, though he was 97. A great satirist. Back when I was school, some time ago now, his 'Irish ballad', 'About a maid I'll sing a song' was my sort of party piece.
I remember in the 1980s listening to an old album of Lehrer's songs from The Week That Was, and then some time later remembering where I knew the voice from...
A serious and seriously funny man, Tom Lehrer. So far as RIP is concerned, he did not expect to pass go or collect 200 dollars on his way to his own (believed non-existent) Valhalla but I think he would be good fun to have in Eternity!
RIP Tom. He was definitely in the "Wait - you mean he was still with us up to now?" category for me. I treasure a memory of one of his songs from many years ago - listening to it with my undiagnosed-but-pretty-definitely-neurodivergent elder brother (also RIP) with whom I occasionally shared a sense of humour. We both fell about laughing at his "dear old mammy - her cookin's lousy and her hands are clammy but what the hell, it's home."
None of you will be surprised to learn that I was particularly taken with The Periodic Table, set to the Major-General's Song from Pirates of Penzance.
That wasn't precisely a take on the RCC, but specifically a take on the musical reforms of Vatican II. Lehrer contextualizes it that way in his live intro to the song on The Week That Was.
Conservatives would probably be offended either way, though they more than anyone else would agree with Lehrer's bleak prognosis for liturgical music post-V2(*).
(*) Interestingly, given that Lehrer also satirized the folk revival in his song Folk Song Army, he didn't foresee that it would be the folk-mass, not ragtime, that gets most commonly mocked for its kitschiness.
Oh wait, that’s not right. It was “When I Was a Lad.” And he’d cue the rest of the rep class to sing the chorus bits. (“He polished up that handle so carefully that now he is the ruler of the Queen’s Navy.”)
I once saw a production of Tomfoolery, a musical based on some of Lehrer's songs. During the overture, parts of Vatican Rag were played, and the guy in front of me tried to impress his date by singing along "2, 4, 6, 8, time to transsubstantiate". Doing that sorta thing always strikes me as riding the artist's coattails.
Overall, neither the play nor the production was very good, since it consisted just of the songs being performed with brief explanatory intros, if that(*), and there was no unifying story at all. Plus, the characterizations were pretty uncreative, eg. The Elements was just some guy singing the song minus even the chart, and I remember thinking I woulda done it with a flirtatious, cutesy-voiced actress in a lab coat, or some such.
(*) The musical spelling lesson mentioned a few posts above was done TOTALLY without explanation, which rendered it largely pointless to an uninformed audience.
Some of you may have seen it, but here is Tom Lehrer's Copenhagen recital (1967) - all 50 minutes of it, complete with subtitles of the introductions in Danish:
Oh wait, that’s not right. It was “When I Was a Lad.” And he’d cue the rest of the rep class to sing the chorus bits. (“He polished up that handle so carefully that now he is the ruler of the Queen’s Navy.”)
When we did a double-bill of Trial by Jury and HMS Pinafore in Orkney, David was playing the Judge in Trial, and at the dress rehearsal, after the introduction to the Judge's Song, he blithely started off into When I was a lad ..., said, "oops, sorry - wrong opera" and everybody fell about.
There is a not-unreasonable theory that most cadences in G&S can segue seamlessly into For he is an Englishman from Pinafore.
I went to a concert of The Golden Age of Melody last night (1920s and 30s), and the singer put in a little tribute to Cleo Laine (d. aged 97), adding that she thought that Cleo had already died!
I was sad to hear of the death of Cleo Laine as it reminded me of my childhood. My dad was a big fan. I’m even sadder to hear of the death of Alan Ahlberg his books for children were brilliant.
Very sad to read about Father Chris Riley @Sojourner and @Climacus may he rest peacefully.
@Sarasa very sad to hear of Alan Ahlberg, he and Janet did amazing work. I remember them being well borrowed from the Junior section when I worked in the local public library. My kids and I adored the Jolly Postman series
I used to work in a library near where the Ahlbergs lived. I don't think I ever met them, but the other staff were so pleased they were locals. I read off those books to our son and used them for story times in the library too.
Time to say your Te Deums when you see those ICBMs...
He was a genius - and prescient ["In German oder English I know how to count down,
Und I'm learning Chinese!" says Wernher von Braun.
My cousin (we grew up together) married a statistician of Russian descent and they now have a daughter. I played "The Great Lobachevsky" for them and it was a great hit.
Allan Ahlberg, author of over 150 timeless books for children over the course of an extraordinary career spanning nearly 50 years, has died at the age of 87.
Together with his late wife Janet, Allan created books that remain best-in-class for children of every age: from Each Peach Pear Plum and Peepo! to Funnybones and Starting School to the boundary-pushing Jolly Postman books, filled with pull-out letters, games, and miniature books. And Allan wrote funny, clever and poignant books for older readers too.
Even moreso than most TV stars, almost completely synonymous in her public identity with one character and one character only. I'm tempted to say she represented a progressive updating of certain creaky old Hollywood tropes, but part of me is also not so certain that "AU-extractor with a compassionate sense of morality" was neccessarily much of an improvement over anything.
There WAS that one episode in which Jennifer was fighting with her deceased elderly boyfriend's family over the man's will, and after winning, she announces she's gonna use her entire inheritance to throw a big parade for all the children in town, thus proving she wasn't motivated by personal greed. But, of course, that worked by playing off the original stereotype of the scheming vamp(*).
Apart from WKRP, I recall her on a contemporaneous episode of Candid Camera, where they had her impersonate a school employee of some sort, ask a bunch of questions to two teenaged boys, and then the camera records their reactions after she left. You can guess.
I also have a clear memory of one of those tabloid-TV shows accompanying her to a memorabilia-signing at a mall somewhere, and the story ended up being about how almost nobody showed up at the kiosk. The cameraman made a point of showing lotsa close-ups of her face so we could all study her attempts at retaining emotional dignity.
I'm sure she must've been in some movies, but nothing is coming to mind right now. She did have at least one pin-up poster.
(*) In fairness, she was portrayed as being well-read. I think in one episode she opined that Christian Existentialism had the best answers to life's questions.
I was sad to hear of the death of Cleo Laine as it reminded me of my childhood. My dad was a big fan. I’m even sadder to hear of the death of Alan Ahlberg his books for children were brilliant.
Yes. I had two of Cleo Laine's LPs - Sometimes When We Touch and Best Friends
Even moreso than most TV stars, almost completely synonymous in her public identity with one character and one character only. I'm tempted to say she represented a progressive updating of certain creaky old Hollywood tropes, but part of me is also not so certain that "AU-extractor with a compassionate sense of morality" was neccessarily much of an improvement over anything.
There WAS that one episode in which Jennifer was fighting with her deceased elderly boyfriend's family over the man's will, and after winning, she announces she's gonna use her entire inheritance to throw a big parade for all the children in town, thus proving she wasn't motivated by personal greed. But, of course, that worked by playing off the original stereotype of the scheming vamp(*).
Apart from WKRP, I recall her on a contemporaneous episode of Candid Camera, where they had her impersonate a school employee of some sort, ask a bunch of questions to two teenaged boys, and then the camera records their reactions after she left. You can guess.
I also have a clear memory of one of those tabloid-TV shows accompanying her to a memorabilia-signing at a mall somewhere, and the story ended up being about how almost nobody showed up at the kiosk. The cameraman made a point of showing lotsa close-ups of her face so we could all study her attempts at retaining emotional dignity.
I'm sure she must've been in some movies, but nothing is coming to mind right now. She did have at least one pin-up poster.
(*) In fairness, she was portrayed as being well-read. I think in one episode she opined that Christian Existentialism had the best answers to life's questions.
… the full title of which is that her portrayal of Jennifer Marlowe *skewered* stereotypes. WKRP was sort before my time and I think I only caught the show from time to time in re-runs, so I really have no idea whether there is any truth in this seemingly contrarian take.
I can't access the Globe, but based on the headline, I'd say the guy is correctly describing what the writers were TRYING to do with the character, and that's probably how most TV critics and the more cerebral of the fans interpreted her. I was just kinda questioning whether the show really succeeded at that.
I will say that, unlike Suzanne Sommers' second iteration of Chrissy, Jennifer was NOT stupid. But in the few episodes where she was centre-stage in the plot, she played an oddly passive role in the whole proceedings.
In the one where she does the radio advice-show, she starts giving flippant, semi-joking advice to people with serious problems, resulting in tragedy when someone takes the advice seriously, and ultimately a heartbreaking moral epiphany for Jennifer. Carlson comes onto the scene, assures her that the victim had problems that went way beyond one radio show, and then Jennifer asks to be left alone so she can cry.
So, Jennifer screws up, learns her lesson, and cries.
Then there was the one where the sleazy photographer hired by Herb secretly got nude photos of Jennifer in the changing room on an advertising shoot. So, after Jennifer herself tries and fails to seduce the photographer into handing them back, her male co-workers in one way or another try to get the photos away from the guy's office, culminating with Johnny and Bailey impersonating a pair of eurotrash pornographers in a clever con-job(*).
(*) Not the only time the sexual chemistry between Johnny and Bailey was explored with pornography as a plot device. In the one where they all end up in a 3D porn theatre(Herb had taken refuge there to dodge a dreaded medical exam), Johnny earnestly demands that Bailey be exited from the premises, only to have Bailey snap back at his paternalism with some streetwise snark, until she puts the glasses on.
Stella Rimington, the first female head of MI5, has just died, aged 90.
I've never read her novels, but a friend of mine has, and I was opining to him a while back that she must have had to walk a tightrope between writing fiction about her own spy agency, and revealing stuff that her fellow spooks would prefer stay sub rosa.
FWIW, in the Christmas tribute one year, Jennifer Marlowe was the Jacob Marley character. I suspect this was mostly because the respective initials suggested a good pun, though in fairness, as far as the day to day activities portrayed at the station went, Jennifer probably was the closest Carlson had to a business partner.
Plus, the character in general had a tendency toward delivering common-sensical moralism in clear language(*).
(*) See the episode where Les endures a major crisis after certain allegations about his personal life go public.
Thinking about it, I can't recall why Carlson was supposed to be in need of the usual ghostly xmas cavalcade, since he was pretty much the least dickensian of any boss portrayed in a workplace comedy since, well, Dickens. With that being almost certainly an intentional quality on the part of the writers.
Maybe he was being a tightwad with the bonuses, since there was a slight aura of midwest flintiness about him.
Comments
AFF
Interesting that non-Ozzy cover is getting a significant amount of traffic in its comments-section in tribute to Osbourne's passing.
One of the comments mentions that that version was used as the opening to The Osbournes, which I did not know, being a total non-viewer of the show.
Feels So Good is the Platonic form of Easy Listening. And I say that in a good way.
I saw re-runs of it in the 1980s, and was highly amused. RIP.
Weird thing is, I found the show boring, and never watched a full episode, but I think I know who all the characters were and which "archetypes" they were supposed to represent.
And, of course, the theme song, probably the catchiest TV theme ever.
I loved, and still love, Hogan’s Heroes. (I’m old enough to have watched it when it was first on in prime time.) Part of that was that found it very funny, but part of it was that watched it with my father—a WWII vet who never talked about his war experience, who at the end of the war was stationed in an Allied POW camp in Germany, and who loved Hogan’s Heroes. That show, together with a few other random bits of German-related things, represents a connection with the part of my dad’s life he never really shared.
Time to say your Te Deums when you see those ICBMs...
He was a genius - and prescient
["In German oder English I know how to count down,
Und I'm learning Chinese!" says Wernher von Braun.
Who can turn a tap
Into a tape?
Who can turn a cap
Into a cape?
SPOILER
And a very good pianist too!
RIP Tom. He was definitely in the "Wait - you mean he was still with us up to now?" category for me. I treasure a memory of one of his songs from many years ago - listening to it with my undiagnosed-but-pretty-definitely-neurodivergent elder brother (also RIP) with whom I occasionally shared a sense of humour. We both fell about laughing at his "dear old mammy - her cookin's lousy and her hands are clammy but what the hell, it's home."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvhYqeGp_Do
I hope he won't be poisoning pigeons in the park, in whatever after-life he's gone to...
RIP Mr Lehrer.
That wasn't precisely a take on the RCC, but specifically a take on the musical reforms of Vatican II. Lehrer contextualizes it that way in his live intro to the song on The Week That Was.
Conservatives would probably be offended either way, though they more than anyone else would agree with Lehrer's bleak prognosis for liturgical music post-V2(*).
(*) Interestingly, given that Lehrer also satirized the folk revival in his song Folk Song Army, he didn't foresee that it would be the folk-mass, not ragtime, that gets most commonly mocked for its kitschiness.
(He also had me prepare “I Am the Monarch of the Sea” for rep class, @Piglet.)
Overall, neither the play nor the production was very good, since it consisted just of the songs being performed with brief explanatory intros, if that(*), and there was no unifying story at all. Plus, the characterizations were pretty uncreative, eg. The Elements was just some guy singing the song minus even the chart, and I remember thinking I woulda done it with a flirtatious, cutesy-voiced actress in a lab coat, or some such.
(*) The musical spelling lesson mentioned a few posts above was done TOTALLY without explanation, which rendered it largely pointless to an uninformed audience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHPmRJIoc2k
It was, shall we say, well-received.
When we did a double-bill of Trial by Jury and HMS Pinafore in Orkney, David was playing the Judge in Trial, and at the dress rehearsal, after the introduction to the Judge's Song, he blithely started off into When I was a lad ..., said, "oops, sorry - wrong opera" and everybody fell about.
There is a not-unreasonable theory that most cadences in G&S can segue seamlessly into For he is an Englishman from Pinafore.
I’m sure you know Anna Russell’s “How to Write Your Own Gilbert and Sullivan Opera.”
I remember seeing him first on an American TV show many years ago singing Poisoning the Pigeons in the Park and I was an instant fan.
@Sarasa very sad to hear of Alan Ahlberg, he and Janet did amazing work. I remember them being well borrowed from the Junior section when I worked in the local public library. My kids and I adored the Jolly Postman series
My cousin (we grew up together) married a statistician of Russian descent and they now have a daughter. I played "The Great Lobachevsky" for them and it was a great hit.
Together with his late wife Janet, Allan created books that remain best-in-class for children of every age: from Each Peach Pear Plum and Peepo! to Funnybones and Starting School to the boundary-pushing Jolly Postman books, filled with pull-out letters, games, and miniature books. And Allan wrote funny, clever and poignant books for older readers too.
I remember reading them all to my boys.
Edited to add: ooops, sorry, just read upthread!
Even moreso than most TV stars, almost completely synonymous in her public identity with one character and one character only. I'm tempted to say she represented a progressive updating of certain creaky old Hollywood tropes, but part of me is also not so certain that "AU-extractor with a compassionate sense of morality" was neccessarily much of an improvement over anything.
There WAS that one episode in which Jennifer was fighting with her deceased elderly boyfriend's family over the man's will, and after winning, she announces she's gonna use her entire inheritance to throw a big parade for all the children in town, thus proving she wasn't motivated by personal greed. But, of course, that worked by playing off the original stereotype of the scheming vamp(*).
Apart from WKRP, I recall her on a contemporaneous episode of Candid Camera, where they had her impersonate a school employee of some sort, ask a bunch of questions to two teenaged boys, and then the camera records their reactions after she left. You can guess.
I also have a clear memory of one of those tabloid-TV shows accompanying her to a memorabilia-signing at a mall somewhere, and the story ended up being about how almost nobody showed up at the kiosk. The cameraman made a point of showing lotsa close-ups of her face so we could all study her attempts at retaining emotional dignity.
I'm sure she must've been in some movies, but nothing is coming to mind right now. She did have at least one pin-up poster.
(*) In fairness, she was portrayed as being well-read. I think in one episode she opined that Christian Existentialism had the best answers to life's questions.
Yes. I had two of Cleo Laine's LPs - Sometimes When We Touch and Best Friends
There’s a curious obit of Anderson in the Globe:
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/television/article-loni-anderson-jennifer-marlowe-wkrp-in-cincinnati-stereotypes/
… the full title of which is that her portrayal of Jennifer Marlowe *skewered* stereotypes. WKRP was sort before my time and I think I only caught the show from time to time in re-runs, so I really have no idea whether there is any truth in this seemingly contrarian take.
I can't access the Globe, but based on the headline, I'd say the guy is correctly describing what the writers were TRYING to do with the character, and that's probably how most TV critics and the more cerebral of the fans interpreted her. I was just kinda questioning whether the show really succeeded at that.
I will say that, unlike Suzanne Sommers' second iteration of Chrissy, Jennifer was NOT stupid. But in the few episodes where she was centre-stage in the plot, she played an oddly passive role in the whole proceedings.
In the one where she does the radio advice-show, she starts giving flippant, semi-joking advice to people with serious problems, resulting in tragedy when someone takes the advice seriously, and ultimately a heartbreaking moral epiphany for Jennifer. Carlson comes onto the scene, assures her that the victim had problems that went way beyond one radio show, and then Jennifer asks to be left alone so she can cry.
So, Jennifer screws up, learns her lesson, and cries.
Then there was the one where the sleazy photographer hired by Herb secretly got nude photos of Jennifer in the changing room on an advertising shoot. So, after Jennifer herself tries and fails to seduce the photographer into handing them back, her male co-workers in one way or another try to get the photos away from the guy's office, culminating with Johnny and Bailey impersonating a pair of eurotrash pornographers in a clever con-job(*).
(*) Not the only time the sexual chemistry between Johnny and Bailey was explored with pornography as a plot device. In the one where they all end up in a 3D porn theatre(Herb had taken refuge there to dodge a dreaded medical exam), Johnny earnestly demands that Bailey be exited from the premises, only to have Bailey snap back at his paternalism with some streetwise snark, until she puts the glasses on.
I've never read her novels, but a friend of mine has, and I was opining to him a while back that she must have had to walk a tightrope between writing fiction about her own spy agency, and revealing stuff that her fellow spooks would prefer stay sub rosa.
Plus, the character in general had a tendency toward delivering common-sensical moralism in clear language(*).
(*) See the episode where Les endures a major crisis after certain allegations about his personal life go public.
Maybe he was being a tightwad with the bonuses, since there was a slight aura of midwest flintiness about him.