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Archive for July, 2009

R.I.P. – Gordon Waller (1945-2009)

Posted in Counter Culture, Obituaries, Popular Culture, Popular Music, Rock 'n' Roll on July 21, 2009| 1 Comment »

Peter & Gordon“Gordon Waller, who formed half of Peter and Gordon, a successful pop duo that followed the Beatles to America as part of the British Invasion of the 1960s and that scored a No. 1 hit with ‘A World Without Love,’ died on Friday in Norwich, Conn. He was 64 and lived in Ledyard, Conn. . . .

“The song, a lilting, plaintive ballad, opens with the lyrics, ‘Please lock me away/And don’t allow the day/Here inside, where I hide with my loneliness/I don’t care what they say, I won’t stay/In a world without love.’

“Peter and Gordon toured the United States and appeared on ‘The Ed Sullivan Show‘ and other network variety shows — part of a wave of British groups that swept the United States, among them Chad and Jeremy, the Dave Clark Five and Herman’s Hermits.” (more @ NY Times)

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Rocking the Boat: Giorgia Boscolo Becomes Venice’s First Female Gondolier

Posted in Europe, Foreign Travel, Sex & Gender on July 21, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Venice Gondola“With the splash of her oar, nine centuries of taboos in this romantic canal city shattered as [Giorgia] Boscolo passed a rigorous exam of brains and brawn to become Venice’s first official female gondolier — or gondoliera in Italian, a term that didn’t even exist until her achievement made it necessary. . . .

“Boscolo’s breakthrough propelled her into the ranks of what can no longer be described with complete accuracy as an elite fraternity, made up of bluff and hearty boatmen whose presence along Venice’s winding waterways seems as timeless as the city itself.

“Fewer than 500 gondoliers are licensed to navigate Venice’s network of 150 canals. They’re a fairly macho bunch, instantly recognizable in their jaunty black-and-white-striped shirts, lounging lazily against the bank-side walls waiting for tourists to hire them or letting loose the occasional low whistle at women who walk by.

“They are heirs to a tradition stretching back nearly a millennium, when the signature banana-shaped boats first began plying the waters as a quick and easy means of transport. The men who captained them became indispensable fixtures around the Venetian lagoon, proud of their skill and bonded by shared experience.

“As is inevitable when such a testosterone-laden citadel is breached, not all of Boscolo’s new colleagues have been thrilled about her entry into their midst. Some grumble sotto voce that she’s become too big for her britches, upending the old order and hogging all the attention.” (more @ LA Times)

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Oh Julia, Where Art Thou? or, The End of French Food?

Posted in Books, Europe, Food & Wine, Foreign Travel on July 18, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Au Revoir“On Bastille Day, as chefs from the Flatiron District were holding a benefit in Madison Square Park inspired by food from around the world, a couple of blocks away Michael Steinberger was sounding the death knell for the most legendary cuisine of all. The occasion was the launch, at Idlewild Books, of his book ‘Au Revoir to All That: Food, Wine, and the End of France.’ . . .

“Steinberger, an ardent Francophile, sat on a stool on a low dais in the front window, next to a giant illuminated globe of the world. ‘For the first time in the annals of modern cuisine, the most influential chefs in the world are not French,’ he declared. ‘If you wanted to come up with the top three, you would say Thomas Keller, American; Heston Blumenthal, British; and Ferran Adrià, Spanish.’ He spoke of France’s thirty years of economic stagnation and crippling regulation and high taxes, which have translated every year into the loss of thousands of bistros, cafés, and brasseries, along with thirty thousand farms, all of which, together with a certain gastronomic indifference, he feels has led to the decline of French cuisine. Only ten per cent of cheeses in France are now made from raw milk (there’s just a single artisanal producer of traditional lait cru Camembert left in Normandy), and the consumption of wine—wine!—has dropped fifty per cent, to the point where thousands of small producers are effectively destitute.” (more @ The New Yorker)

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R.I.P. – Tom Wilkes (1939-2009)

Posted in Counter Culture, Design, Obituaries, Popular Culture, Popular Music, Rock 'n' Roll on July 18, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Tom Wilkes“Tom Wilkes, an art director, photographer and designer whose posters for the Monterey Pop Festival and album covers for the Rolling Stones, Janis Joplin, Joe Cocker, George Harrison and others helped illustrate the age of rock ’n’ roll, died on June 28 in Pioneertown, Calif., in the high desert east of Los Angeles. He was 69. . . .

“For the Rolling Stones, he created a controversial cover for the album ‘Beggars Banquet,’ using a photograph of a toilet stall with the name of the band prominent on a wall filled with graffiti. The record label initially refused to release the cover, and replaced it with a fake invitation to a dinner. Mr. Wilkes’s version was released later.

“For Dave Mason’s ‘Alone Together,’ Mr. Wilkes photographed Mr. Mason wearing a top hat and a long-tailed coat against a backdrop of canyon rocks. For Joe Cocker’s ‘Mad Dogs & Englishmen,’ he placed a photograph of the long-haired Mr. Cocker flexing his right bicep within an illustration of a mirror frame. For George Harrison’s ‘All Things Must Pass,’ he depicted the former Beatle as if he were a woodsman in a fairy tale, surrounded by reclining trolls.

“Only hours before Janis Joplin’s fatal drug overdose in 1970, Mr. Wilkes photographed her for the album ‘Pearl,’ colorfully dressed and coiffed and looking remarkably relaxed and happy. He photographed Eric Clapton, sitting in a chair in a white suit, for his first solo album, and for Neil Young’s ‘Harvest,’ he created the typescript title over a red sun set against a wheat-colored background.” (more @ NY Times)

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Today’s Sign of the Apocalypse: Candy Maker PEZ Sues PEZ Museum Over Giant Snowman Dispenser

Posted in Collectors & Collecting, Crimes & Misdemeanors, Museums & Exhibitions, Popular Culture, Sign of the Apocalypse on July 16, 2009| 1 Comment »

Giant Pez“It took more than 30 years for the creators of Pez candy dispensers to give the little plastic figurines feet, and they never did get hands. But now the long arm of the Pez Candy Co. has reached all the way from Linz, Austria, into U.S. District Court, where it has slapped the tiny faces that fill Burlingame’s Museum of Pez Memorabilia with a lawsuit.

“The legal broadside, which was filed in San Francisco last month, singles out a 7-foot-10 snowman, built especially for the museum, that has been recognized by the Guinness record keepers as the world’s largest Pez dispenser. Pez seeks to have the snowman melted down.” (cont’d @ San Jose Mercury News)

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Collecting Blues: Collecting Fragile 78 R.P.M. Records in a Fragile Economy

Posted in Antiques & Folk Art, Blues & Jazz, Collectors & Collecting, Popular Culture, Popular Music on July 16, 2009| 2 Comments »

12petr600.1“John Heneghan tugged a large shellac disc from its brown paper sleeve, placed it on a turntable and gently nudged a needle into place. Behind him, in the corner of his East Village apartment, sat 16 wooden crates, each filled with meticulously cataloged 78-r.p.m. records. The coarse, crackling voice of the blues singer Charley Patton, performing ‘High Water Everywhere Part 1,’ his startling account of the 1927 Mississippi River flood, rose from the speakers, raw and unruly. The record is worth about $8,000.

“Mr. Heneghan, 41, is part of a small but fervent community of record collectors who for decades have hunted, compulsively and competitively, for 78s: the extraordinarily fragile 10-inch discs, introduced near the turn of the 20th century and made predominantly of shellac, that contain one two- to three-minute performance per side. At a time when music fans expect songs to be delivered instantaneously (and often at zero cost) online, scouring the globe for a rare record — and paying thousands of dollars for it — might seem ludicrous.” (cont’d @ NY Times)

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Baseball Pioneer Harry Wright’s Letters Pulled from Hunt Auction

Posted in Antiques & Folk Art, Baseball, Collectors & Collecting, Crimes & Misdemeanors, Sports on July 3, 2009| 2 Comments »

Harry_Wright_Seated“Harry Wright, a Hall of Fame manager and pioneer during professional baseball’s gestation period in the 19th century, kept his letters in scrapbooks along with pictures and ledgers from his distinguished career. These faded pieces of paper are fragile evidence of some of the earliest business practices in baseball.

“Hunt Auctions was scheduled to sell some of the items on July 14 at the Major League Baseball All-Star Game FanFest in St. Louis. But the letters have been temporarily pulled from the auction after drawing the attention of the F.B.I. because of the possibility that they were taken years ago from the New York Public Library.

“The letters were written to Wright, who was the manager, the general manager and a center fielder for the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings, considered the first team of all paid players. A year before his death in 1895, Wright willed his archives to professional baseball’s two major leagues. The materials were donated to the library in 1921, and some of them vanished more than 20 years ago.

“The library lists as missing three scrapbooks of letters written to Wright during the 1870s, ’80s and ’90s. Of the 25 lots linked to Wright in the auction, at least 23 are from the same period as the missing scrapbooks. Only one other scrapbook remains at the library.” (cont’d @ NY Times)

Update: (7/5/09) Another Clue That Baseball Auction Has Stolen Items

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