(Roughly) Daily

Your correspondent is headed (way) west again– this time to the tundra-like steppes of Mongolia– where it’s so cold that electrons just sit around shivering in copper and photons don’t even try to traverse fiber…  Consequently, regular service will be interrupted until on or about February 11.  Meantime, a blast from the past…

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From 1978, a full hour of cable access staple Efrom Allen’s Underground TV– featuring the Ramones.

[TotH to Pop Loser]

As we wanna be sedated, we might whistle jaunty birthday ditties to Stephane Grappelli; he was born on this date in 1908.  In 1934, Grappelli founded the Quintette du Hot Club de France, one of the first all-string jazz bands (and probably the best), with guitarist Django Reinhardt; they disbanded in 1939, as World War overtook the continent.  After the war, Grappelli did session work with Jazz greats like Dizzy Gillespie and Oscar Peterson, with pop artists like Paul Simon and Pink Floyd, with classical musicians including Andre Previn and Yo Yo Ma, and with Indian classical violinist L. Subramaniam.  He received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997, and was inducted into the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame.

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The late Seventies re-imagined: from artist Dave Perillo (AKA montygog), a look at what might have happened if two paragons of Punk had instead gone the Hanna Barbera route…

[TotH to the always-amazing Dangerous Minds and to the ever-bodacious Boing Boing]

As we contemplate the consolations of a cel out, we might send trenchant birthday wishes to two of history’s most acute observers of the human condition:  Jonathan Swift, the satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer, poet, and cleric who’s probably best remembered for Gulliver’s Travels and A Modest Proposal, was born on this date in 1667.

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And Samuel Langhorne Clemens– Mark Twain– the author of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and its sequel, “The Great American Novel” Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, was born on this date in 1835.

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Swift ultimately rose to high church office, serving as Dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin.  Clemens did not.

More of the corrective wisdom of Dunder-Mifflin’s self-appointed second-in-command at Runt of the Web’s “Dwight Schrute Knows Best.”  (So this is what became of the humor of Stephen Wright…)

[Thanks, EWW]

As we get literal, we might recall that it was on this date in 1974 that the Ramones played their first gig at CBGB… and Punk was born.  The band became a fixture at the club– with sets that averaged 17 minutes– and soon landed a recording deal.  While only one of their albums went Gold (the compilation Ramones Mania), the group was hugely influential.  As the years have passed they’ve been recognized as one of Rolling Stone‘s 50 Greatest Artists of All Time, ranked the second-greatest band of all time by Spin (trailing only The Beatles), and this year received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

Legs McNeil (who was sufficiently moved that he co-founded Punk magazine the following year) recalled that CBGB premiere: “They were all wearing these black leather jackets. And they counted off this song…and it was just this wall of noise…. They looked so striking. These guys were not hippies. This was something completely new.”

Indeed.

The Ramones at the scene of the crime (source)

“Judy is a Punk,” from the first CBGB appearance, 1974