by Grania
Today is the birthday of Ringo Starr, sliced bread and the Ziegfeld Follies.
It’s also the day in 1980 that Sharia law was instituted in Iran, in 1981 Sandra Day O’Connor became the first woman on the Supreme Court, in 2003 Mars rover Opportunity was launched on its mission. Opportunity is still going strong and you can follow its doings on Twitter (it’s currently under siege from a Mars dust storm.) On a more somber note, it’s also the anniversary of the 2005 London bombings and the 2016 attack on Dallas police.
Steve Ditko, one of the creators of Spider-Man, has died.
Thank you, Steve Ditko. Thank you for creating some of the greatest characters the world has ever seen. Thank you for all you've done to contribute to the comics industry. You will be missed more than you know. <3 https://t.co/UDPyRfxeWz
— Heather Antos (@HeatherAntos) July 6, 2018
In honor of his birthday, here’s Ringo singing the lead on With a little help from my friends and Octopus’s Garden because he wrote that one.
In Poland Hili is pondering important things.
Hili: Who is stung by nettles except people?
A: Probably anybody who wants to eat them.
In Polish:
Hili: Kogo oprócz ludzi parzą pokrzywy?
Ja: Pewnie tych, którzy chcą je zjeść.
From biological Twitter today:
If I were a deer mouse, I am not sure I would count this as a win.
A single pile of bear scat contains enough seed calories to nourish 91 deer mice for a day. Bears are apex poopers. https://t.co/aOkBv4ToJB pic.twitter.com/d5dlskP9rC
— Jason Bittel (@bittelmethis) July 6, 2018
A mola or sunfish
Holy Mola! It’s always awesome to see these incredible fish while out conducting our shark research! pic.twitter.com/6AV1DpT6or
— Sulikowski Lab (@SulikowskiLab) July 5, 2018
Penguins are not particularly elegant.
https://twitter.com/attenboroughs_d/status/1014406952649142272?s=11
Not a fish
https://twitter.com/CameraTrapSue/status/1015227673402994688
Wasp egg-laying
The Ichneumon Wasp is one of the most alien-looking of insects out there, with a loooong ovipositor inserted into this rotting log to lay an egg inside of a wood boring grub.
Spotted this one a couple weeks ago in Yasuni, Ecuador. pic.twitter.com/tcOG4xZ9ji— Phil Torres (@phil_torres) July 6, 2018
Snakes!
Convergent #evolution in sea #snakes! New paper by @DrEmSherratt shows tiny heads are strongly associated with eating burrowing eel prey and has evolved independently multiple times in Hydrophis species! #seasnakes #herpetology DOI: 10.1098/rsos.172141 pic.twitter.com/uOBpuBGKNj
— Jenna (@jcroweriddell) March 29, 2018
I found god and she’s a turtle. pic.twitter.com/Qpdq16uMwv
— Human Person (@radiationmouth) July 6, 2018
Less biology, more cats
Dutch TV interviews Polish academic and former anti-communist activist Jerzy Targalski – but it's his cat that steals the show pic.twitter.com/PJLI1coj8x
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) July 6, 2018
https://twitter.com/AMAZlNGNATURE/status/1015245428114087937
ok my cat is RIDICULOUS pic.twitter.com/BGc4ROY4rM
— anna (@annapickard) July 7, 2018
Apparently it’s not just kids that do this
I don’t know why I bother pic.twitter.com/xfNLU58r03
— Philippa_Perry (@Philippa_Perry) July 5, 2018
I love these videos of animals shocked at people disappearing from behind blankets https://t.co/fV3XMC4cDd pic.twitter.com/CTLhVf8oEg
— Adam J Calhoun (@neuroecology) July 5, 2018
And some instructional videos (sound up)
https://twitter.com/JUSTAMAZlNG/status/1015027558096572416
Majestic mountains in Pakistan
https://twitter.com/planetepics/status/1015422794698493953
Aha ha
My mate has two tickets for the England vs Sweden game on Saturday. He didn't realise that it's going to be on the same day as his wedding, so he can't go. If you're interested and want to go instead of him, it's at St. Andrew's Church in Cambridge and her name is Sarah
— Billy ⚒ (@WHUFCBilly) July 5, 2018
And just because
https://twitter.com/BoringEnormous/status/1014993130213511168
Hat-tip: Barry, Matthew and Heather
I’d like to give a shout out to easily my favourite Ringo song, ‘Don’t Pass Me By’.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTKEiQHHsuk
From the white album, that ultra purple patch when every single member was producing their loveliest, most subtle and complex material. The fact that even Ringo wrote something as sweet and true as this is testament to the effect competition between creative minds can have.
Apologies for the embedding…happens every time I don’t know why.
If, when posting your comment, you copy the URL but strip off the leading ‘http://’ then WP will reinstate it in the link but won’t imbed the video.
If you leave the ‘http://’ in place then WP will imbed the video.
cr
Cheers Infinite, that’s a lot simpler than I thought.
My favorite Beatles album. And my favorite band, Phish, played the entire album for their second of three sets for their 1994 Halloween show, which marked the beginning of their Halloween tradition. Phish has a tradition of playing three sets for every Halloween show, the second set being an entire album by another band, AKA their “costume” for the night.
Other albums they’ve played:
1995 — Quadrophenia, The Who
1996 — Remain in Light, The Talking Heads
1998 — Loaded, The Velvet Underground
Two nights after Halloween 1998, the play the entirety of Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. The show was far out of the way when it came to their tour route, and the show ended up being sparsely attended, so they basically rewarded the people who showed up and punished the ones who didn’t by playing an epic and unexpected show.
2009 — Exile On Main Street, The Rolling Stones
2010 — Waiting for Columbus, Little Feat
2014 — The Chilling, Thrilling Sounds Of The Haunted House, Walt Disney Records (it’s hard to explain)
2016 — The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars, David Bowie
Oh boy, I made this all about Phish. I do that sometimes.
Love Phish.
Never heard of Phish. Will give them a listen.
Be careful what you listen to. With over 1600 shows and nearly 1,000 different songs (including covers) played, there are plenty of stinkers.
But here’s the entire second set from Halloween ’94, AKA the White Album:
Be careful what you listen to. With over 1600 shows and nearly 1,000 different songs (including covers) played, there are plenty of stinkers.
But here’s the entire second set from Halloween ’94, AKA the White Album:
If you ever want me to point you in the direction of some beautiful original stuff, from complex compositions to great jams, just let me know.
Here’s where I would start with an introduction, rather than the White Album clip I posted above:
Reba, one of their best compositions, played live and flawlessly, and then with a brilliant jam. Notice how the section beginning at 4:53 starts with the piano and guitar in sync, but then is played again at 5:26 exactly the same, but with the guitar a step behind the piano.
sweetness
Sorry for embedding the previous videos.
Here’s a wild reimagining of the theme song to NPR’s All Things Considered:
instrumental bliss
Of course, many of their songs are just straight out hard rockin’:
Rockin’ hard
Oh yeah
And sometimes, it’s just awe-inspiring beauty:
Bliss
Makes you think – how bad a drummer was Pete Best if Ringo was considered an improvement.
Damn, dude, on his birthday? That’s coldblooded.
It’s true, though. I always call Ringo “the world’s luckiest man.”
Though I made a joke about Octopus’s Garden the other day, I’ve never thought it was the terrible song many other people make it out to be. I find it rather delightful, if a bit cloying.
Best thing Ringo ever did was “Cave Man’, the movie that resembles the current US government.
Pete Best was never “in” the Beatles – he wasn’t connected to the other lads socially etc. He turned up for gigs [missed a few in Hamburg], but didn’t ‘hang’ with them, didn’t do the drugs they needed to keep awake & energised, he didn’t adopt the Astrid/Voorman moptop [maybe because he had curly hair], when the lads in Hamburg dumped the suits & moved to leather jackets & jeans Best didn’t fall in line immediately, he was too popular with the girlies – more girl fans than the other three in the 60, 61, 62 era. Regarded by many as the best looking Beatle [not counting Stuart Sutcliffe].
Drumming wise, he was fine for most bands of the era ie not that accurate on the beat & relied heavily on simplistic “4s”, but he wasn’t good enough for the Fab three
Ringo Starr was great! Utterly reliable on & off the drums – some other Beatle said he was grown up at three & an anchor for the other three. Also not afraid of Lennon in bully mode. Not too ego driven. Hated doing drum solos. David Grohl – who should know – rates him as a great feel player + flair when needed. The Beatles would not have worked with a Ginger Baker, a Bonzo or a Keith!
Also loved by octopuses everywhere – not just in the garden
I agree with all of that penultimate paragraph. He may not have been terribly talented, but he is exactly what the band needed. Ringo just sat in the background and kept the beat so the rest of the band could be the standouts. He was the black curtain behind the shining stars.
I’d like to know from Ringo detractors:
1) Where is Ringo’s drumming bad or sub-standard.
2) Isn’t the drumming on “A Day in the Life” quite brilliant?
Saw an interview once with Ringo where he said he thought his best drumming was on “Rain”.
I LOVE that song, and Ringo on it. I agree that people who simply think Ringo sucks don’t understand his style or how he fit into the band, but I don’t think it’s in dispute that he’s not a great drummer, and I guess people assume that someone from perhaps the greatest band ever would be among the best drummers of all time.
Phish plays that song as an encore regularly. Always fun to end a show with it.
So, even if Ringo isn’t the world’s greatest drummer or singer or composer, he deserves a place in the pantheon for his touring with the All-Starr Band. That edition with Joe Walsh, Todd Rundgren, Burton Cummings, Nils Lofgren, Dave Edmunds & Timothy B. Schmitt was beyond amazing.
Is that the Dave Edmunds of ‘Take Me For A Little While’? That’s the only song of his I know, as it was on The Sopranos. It’s beautiful.
Incidentally, Nils Lofgren had a lovely song on The Sopranos too. The Sopranos introduced me to a lot of new artists.
Ringo wasn’t the virtuoso some of his contemporaries were — Ginger Baker, Charlie Watts, Keith Moon, for instance — but unlike them, he wasn’t a converted jazz drummer either. I’ve heard the case made Ring was the first pure rock’n’roll drummer. Nobody kept a steadier backbeat, and he’s justly influential for some of his fills and rolls. Plus, dude was a lefthander playin’ a righthanded drum set.
I’d agree.
Just listen to his drumming on ‘A Day in the Life’, for example. Or ‘Hey Jude’. Rock steady when it needs to be, and precisely on the beat (or the half-beat, or whatever the term is).
I’ll admit to a personal preference for drumming that keeps the beat and flows along with the pace of the song – quite often flashy demonstrations of drumming proficiency just interrupt the rhythm of the track. What is most showy as an exhibition of virtuoso drumming may not be the best for the song as a whole.
cr
“I’ll admit to a personal preference for drumming that keeps the beat and flows along with the pace of the song – quite often flashy demonstrations of drumming proficiency just interrupt the rhythm of the track.”
This is why Neil Peart is the greatest drummer of all time. He kept a perfect beat at all times and a different but flawless flow tailored to each song, while still creating many of the most remarkable fills and techniques in rock n’ roll history. The combination of proficiency, reliability, and dumbfounding innovation is unrivaled.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8CIjrGhfmc
Especially if you meant to include jazz drummers like Max Roach and Kenny Clarke and Philly Jo Jones and Art Blakey.
Hell, even if you meant to limit it to rock drummers, that’s still a pretty bold statement.
I did mean to limit it to rock drummers, and it might be bold, but I believe it.
Peart uses an extreme number of percussion surfaces – nearly 50 I counted in one video. Why that? It looks like a security blanket – surrounded by skins & metal.
Sheila E is worth a look – a princeling who crosses genres & doesn’t need much kit to do her thing [heavy on the 80s perm my only criticism].
Here is Billy Cobham driving the Stratus vehicle around the bends with killer precision & feelies.
Also good with a side of Miles or the McLaughlin Yorkshire sauce.
“Peart uses an extreme number of percussion surfaces – nearly 50 I counted in one video. Why that? It looks like a security blanket – surrounded by skins & metal.”
Because they’re only three people in the band, and their songs often have synths and weird sounds. He keeps a bunch of pads around to put in the various sounds so nobody else ever has to be on stage but the three of them. For example, in the song YYZ, there is a moment where a breaking glass sound is used, so he has a pad that initiates the sound when struck. He also has many bells, which are used as the beginnings of some songs.
For songs with synths, the bassist generally plays them with his feet while playing the bass at the same time.
Ummm … I’ll just leave these here:
John Bonham
Bill Bruford*
*Anyone who can work with Fripp deserves some sort of recognition.
Barn Owl: Sorry, but John Bonham ain’t nothin’ compared to Peart. Bonham could bang, but Peart and many others (like Bruford) had more creativity and technique in their pinky fingers than Bonham had in his entire repertoire.
Bruford, on the other had, is in my top five, but he’s more jazz-infused than straight rock. I have no doubt that Peart could have done what he did if that’s the kind of drummer he ended up being, but Bruford with Crimson and Yes, HOOOO BOY. Love it. And definitely on the same level in a different category.
BJ,
I don’t think the type of drumming Peart did is anything like the type infiniteimprobabilit was indicating as a preference. Peart was just the opposite.
Peart was the ultimate “never play a bar the same as the last one” drummer and the pinnacle of flashy drumming in rock.
That’s not a critique of Peart – I’m a long time Rush fanatic and have got back in to them heavily recently (with all the new vinyl remasters – can’t resist!).
It’s just to say I think Peart is the last example I’d think makes sense as linked to what infiniteimprobabilit was saying.
Anyway, in terms of sheer technical proficiency, Peart has been well surpassed by many drummers. Hell, you can find some very young prodigy drummers on youtube who have insane technique.
But IMO what Peart had was, beyond a great technical proficiency for his time, a truly unique style. A combination of thunderous drum power, machine-like technique, and astounding creativity. It’s not just that he could come up with wild beats and fast fills – any number of drummers can do that. It’s that his choices were so hooky, interesting and memorable. It reminds of of when I used to hang out with jazz guys who poo-poo’d Madonna or other pop artists because “that stuff is easy, it’s like 4 chords.” All you had to do is listen to when these guys even tried to write a good pop song and the utter failure showed what talent it actually took to come up with hooks, not just chord movement.
It’s the same with Peart. No drummer ever has come close to the sheer amount of “drum hooks” because you listen and think “damn, that was interesting and awesome.” As he’s said, for much of his life he was a “compositional drummer.” It’s why every Rush fan has virtually every Peart drum part memorized.
When Rush was new to me as a teenager in the 70’s/80’s I thought Peart was a God in terms of technical proficiency. I then went on to more Jazz and Jazz fusion where the skill level was generally quite a bit higher than in Rock, and Peart no longer seemed like a technical God to me. But now looking back, yes he is incredible technically, but for me it’s more about his feel and creativity. Nobody sounds like Peart. It’s intellectual drumming, with power, the musical equivalent of a philosopher writing with sledgehammers. He’s the drummer version of Spock.
Them’s my thoughts on the subject, anyway…
“Nobody sounds like Peart. It’s intellectual drumming, with power, the musical equivalent of a philosopher writing with sledgehammers. He’s the drummer version of Spock.”
Well said. That’s why they call him a “Vulcan.”
Is this right? The pre-revolution legal system was mostly replaced by an Islamic legal system – the Shi’ite version of Sharia law. That was the early 1980s in bits & pieces – can’t find anything significant for today though.
Also, it’s World Chocolate Day
Really? Here in Switzerland nobody knows about it.
What those penguins lack in elegance, they make up for in padding and persistence!
Penguins – have obviously evolved layers of shock-absorbing fat for precisely the reason shown in the video. Impact resistance.
🙂
cr
Plenty of animal species, including humans, lack elegance.
Wow. Had Francis Collins seen that turtle on his hike, he’d have converted on the spot.
Ringo’s greatest trick. getting better looking as he got older.
Every girl is in love with Ringo!
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Sorry, meant to post this one:
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Sir Richard Starkey’s best self penned song, co-written with George Harrison, “Photograph”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6CMSuT98-E
Hilarious video: Rigno writes a song!
hooray!
That turtle would make a great illustration for Terry Pratchett’s “Small Gods”, where one of the two protagonists is a monotheistic god currently locked in the body of a turtle.