At work today, one of my early emails was from our esteemed national trade association, who send a daily email which is basically a digest of the day’s mainstream news stories covering our industry.
There’s a bit of a preamble every day, which among other things normally covers celebrity birthdays.
I quote from today’s email…
“Finally, happy birthday to Tippi Hedren, Dolly Parton, Michael Crawford CBE, Janis Joplin, Richard Lester, and Katey Sagal. “
I wonder if the author even knew who Janis Joplin was, or if he did, wondered why she’d been a bit quiet lately…
I’m sure the Massive will have other stories to tell.
Is Gerry Rafferty’s birthday coming up?
Edgar Allan Poe is 208 today. Many happy returns, big guy!
Oh, stop kicking him.
I hate those tweets/fb statuses that say something like “so-and-so would’ve been 72 today, Happy Birthday so-and-so!”. There were lots of Bowie ones the other week. I wanted to scream “How CAN he, he’s dead, you fuckers!”, but thought this might be overstating the obvious.
Happy birthday, Bill Deedes!
Happy birthday, Methuselah!
Happy birthday, the wheel!
Are you sure this isn’t a Van Morrison lyric?
‘Down by the Garden of Eden with Cain an’ Abel, Cain an’ Abel, inventin’ the wheel, cleanin’ windows, eatin’ apples off the tree…’
“Happy birthday, Krishnamurti
Merry Christmas, Christmas Humphreys”
Prometheus came down the road with the gift of fire
While I played with my band and a street choir
I said “get ta f**k, ya copycat
I already invented that
On my lunch break…”
…inventin’ lots of stuff, inventin’ lots of stuff…’
‘Er, hang on a minute,’ says Donovan, ‘I think you’ll find…’
*sadly hides annual ‘God Bless Kirsty MacColl’ tweet on her birthday from @minibreakfast *
One day you’ll be waiting there
No empty bench in Soho Square….
I didn’t mean the ‘God bless’ type ones, but those that are actually wishing the dead person a happy birthday!
Pete Townshend had to admit a similar error (in reverse) on The Who’s ‘Endless Wire’, which included a litany of deceased celebrities – and (by mistake) Doris Day, who wasn’t.
Isn’t there a Neil Young lyric along the lines of
“Who remembers Johnny Rotten?
Now he’s gone but not forgotten”
which can be defended by the retirement of the “Rotten” moniker, but I was never sure this was what NY was getting at..
He said that because, er, forgotten is the only word that rhymes with Rotten. Unless…
“Who remembers Johnny Rotten?
Now he’s gone, unlike Alain de Botton”
This posting is misbegotten.
Nyah. I’m going back to pickin’ cotton.
Hey, that’s rhyme’s entirely spot on.
Well, the lyrics (to my ears) are actually…
The king is gone
But he’s not forgotten
This is the story
of Johnny Rotten
Which I’ve always taken, within the context of the song, to mean than there’s always a new kid on the block in the old rock n roll game. The King (Elvis, one assumes) lives on in our memories but now old Johnny Rotten is in town and he’s the new leader of the pack.
Probably a misreading of the lyric but I thought I’d chip in as I can’t bear to go back to my tax return.
If Sewer Robot is referring to Hey Hey My My, then he hasn’t got the gist of the song. I think it was written not long after Elvis died. Neil tells us that rock and roll will never die, even though the king is dead. And to prove it, here’s Johnny Rotten. The lyric goes something like
The king is gone but not forgotten
This is the story of Johnny Rotten
Better to burn out than it is to rust
King is gone but not forgotten
Later in the song, he tells us there’s more to the picture than meets the eye, rock and roll will never die.
Something along those lines anyway.
Aha! Cheers. I only ever heard the song in passing, so thought maybe NY had perhaps confused Rotten, who he didn’t hear much from anymore, with Sidney Vicious who had died..
Great minds…
The backing vocal refrain ‘Rotten Johnny, Rotten Johnny’ might hint how Neil felt about Lydon at the time
I keep being asked by the gremlins at LinkedIn to connect up with a colleague whose funeral I attended last February. Not funny, but true.
Not quite a life & death error, but I have a Terry Hall Best-Of compilation (“Through The Years”) which includes Nelson Mandela, a track which he had nothing to do with whatsoever…
Ha! That’s a perfect example of “The Mandela Effect”
8 errors from Moose Radio*:
http://mooseradio.com/8-song-lyrics-that-got-their-facts-wrong/
My favorite is Bobby Gillespie not bothering to check if Rosa Parks was still alive before announcing that her body may be gone in Star.
*Yes, Moose Radio.
Moose Radio – coming right in your ear.
Well I’ve been fiddling with my knob for the past twenty minutes but nothing’s coming out at all.
Moose Radio has a very powerful mast, so I don’t usually have a problem covering a large area with my output.
Perhaps your equipment needs servicing.
Recently I heard a piece on the radio about Christmas card protocol, specifically when the family involved has lost a child.
I was surprised at the consensus, which was that you should still include the dead child in your card. It appears that leaving them out is rude and insensitive, even though personally I’d have thought the opposite was true.
One caller said that any Christmas card omitting her late son goes straight in the bin, which seemed awfully harsh.
Completely with you there, LB. If I had lost a child, the last thing I would want is their name on a Xmas card to the family. In fact I would be extremely upset.
Unless I believed that the person in question did not know what had happened.
Isn’t the solution to this one to simply go with “Dear Family [surname]” or “Dear [surname]s”?
Why get into listing individuals at all?
The solution is not to bother with Christmas cards at all. Saves a lot of bother (and embarrassment). Bah, and indeed humbug.
I’m with you, mikethep. Christmas cards are terrible for the environment, bring scant little joy in most pieces and are basically a tax on time poor people. I consider them an act of passive-aggression.
That’s a good idea. It would also prevent people misspelling our children’s names. Ulysses, Xanthia and Lafayette get most upset.
We had an email last year that was intended to get us all behind a new “high performance culture” type thing with an inspiring story about JFK talking to a Janitor, mop in hand, at the NASA bogs:
JFK – What is your job here?
Janitor – Sir, I’m helping to put a man on the moon!
According to the intro blurb, this conversation took place in 1969.