The number one British album today in 1968 was the Beatles’ “White Album”:
The number one single today in 1974:
Today in 1983, Dennis Wilson dived under a friend’s boat for the third time moored in Marina Del Rey, Calif., to retrieve items he’d thrown overboard years earlier. Unlike the first two times, Wilson didn’t survive the third dive.
Today in 2005, the British radio station Planet Rock released the results of its poll of 58,000 listeners of the greatest rock acts of all time, counted down from 10 to one:
Birthdays begin with Roebuck “Pop” Staples, founder of the Staple Singers:
One should be used to stretching of the truth in political advertising. But we have sunken below even that low standard.
Or, more accurately, the Greater Wisconsin Committee, which has made the TV ad claim that the state’s $800 million in cuts to education have resulted in such outrages as …
“My daughter has not enough tables and chairs in her room and she has kids sitting on the floor,” a man says, sitting with a woman and two young girls in a restaurant. A citation flashes on the screen: the state budget bill.
Then a young man standing outside says: “Forty-seven in a room, they don’t get much attention.” An onscreen graphic reads, “Classes are overcrowded,” and cites the aforementioned report issued by the Department of Public Instruction — a widely publicized report summarizing a statewide survey of schools following the budget cuts.
Together, they essentially make the same point: Walker’s school-aid cuts were so devastating that students are without chairs and a government survey found 47 kids in a classroom.
The problem with the ads, according to PolitiFact, is that they are false:
The “not enough chairs” anecdote is presented as one family’s experience, but the “47 in a room” line is presented as a broad statement of fact, bolstered by the “classes are overcrowded” tagline and citation of a statewide survey as proof. …
When asked for backup, the group’s leader, Michelle McGrorty, cited the statewide survey published in November by the Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators in conjunction with the state DPI, which is independent of the governor’s office. …
What we don’t know — and what the GWC cannot establish from the report — is the size of the classes to bolster its “overcrowding” view.
The survey did not ask how many kids were in classrooms, or how many more students were added to classrooms. It simply asked whether any class sizes had increased. Nowhere in its analysis of the survey does DPI describe the resulting class sizes as “overcrowded.”
According to WASDA and DPI officials, the survey did not attempt to get at whether school officials viewed their classes as overcrowded — in part because it is a subjective term.
The survey does not document any shortage of desks or chairs in classrooms either.
Asked about the survey, McGrorty said the findings “definitely” mean there will be some overcrowding.
But we contacted DPI and WASDA and another trade association and found no one claiming overcrowding or any specific increase in class size averages.
WASDA has long tracked increased class sizes — and says they are not a new phenomenon. Twenty years of state limits on school taxation have driven up class sizes for years, said Miles Turner, executive director of the group. He and others noted particularly that “specials” classes such as art and music have been combined as districts have laid off some of those teachers.
Another statewide association, the Wisconsin Association of School Boards, said class size increase have not risen to “troublesome” levels.
Teacher layoffs occur in every school district every year because of fluctuations in enrollment in grades and in subject areas. Class sizes also fluctuate because of growth or shrinkage from one class year to the next, along with student interest in specific classes. Some school districts make up for increasing class sizes by hiring extra teacher aides instead of teachers. There are two classes where enrollments beyond 47 are commonplace — band and chorus. And excessively large class sizes, however that’s defined, is a matter to be taken up not with the state, but with the school board.
Nothing in the preceding paragraph matters, though, because of the following:
That leaves us with fact checking the specific anecdotes, but Greater Wisconsin — which is funded by labor, Democratic Party groups and wealthy individual donors — refuses to name the people or even cite the districts involved.
McGrorty told us the group is concerned about potential harassment or threats of violence against the speakers. …
In trying to show that Walker’s budget has caused school overcrowding, the Greater Wisconsin Committee misuses a survey of schools, cloaks its anecdotes in anonymity and provides no verification of its assertions.
In our view, the ad’s message is that school crowding is common and dramatic, assertions not backed up by key school officials or the research cited. Class sizes have increased, and Walker’s budget is partly responsible, but that trend began before Walker, and other factors play in.
In any case, that is not the same as “overcrowding” — a description not even school and union officials are using.
Of course, we already know that certain Democratic support groups have problems with the truth. It would seem that Greater Wisconsin Committee ads should be moved into the category of fiction.
CEOs will create jobs if 2 policies are enacted: Wham Bam DONE! Next Problem, please…
The Nicolet Bank Business Pulse is a quarterly study of CEOs & Business Owners up on the Frozen Tundra – around Green Bay, Wi. The Q4/2011 Study focused like a laser on JOBS!
56% of CEOs and Business Owners said, 1.) “Reducing government regulation would have a Major Impact on job creation.” 24% of the CEOs said it would have a Moderate Impact.
47% said, 2.) “Reducing corporate taxes to 25% – or less – would have a Major Impact on job creation.”
31% of CEOs said, aModerate Impact.
These are the TOP 2 policy changes CEOs said they would like to see if you would like to see more jobs. [DUH!]
Notice in the chart …
… the margin between the first two options and the other options. (Options three and four can be dealt with by modifying option two to reduce the corporate income tax by 100 percent.)
Based on the questions, this survey was mostly about what can be done for business at the federal level. But the state also assesses corporate income taxes. And every business owner knows that this state is a regulation hell in addition to a tax hell.
Business-friendly government policy is a foreign concept in Wisconsin, of course. That explains why Wisconsin’s business climate rankings are as bad as they traditionally are, and why the state trails in business health measures such as per capita personal income growth, business startups and incorporations, and venture capital investment. If you don’t like the current state job numbers, this survey should tell you that the Walker administration hasn’t done enough.
Today in 1963, the London Times’ music critics named John Lennon and Paul McCartney Outstanding Composers of 1963. Two days later, Sunday Times music critic Richard Buckle named Lennon and McCartney “the greatest composers since Beethoven.”
The number one album today in 1969 was “Led Zeppelin II” …
… the same day that the number one single was this group’s last:
The number one single today in 1975:
The number one British album today in 1975 was Queen’s “A Night at the Opera,” then the most expensive rock album ever produced:
The number one album today in 1975 for the third consecutive week was “Chicago IX,” which was actually “Chicago’s Greatest Hits”:
The number one album today in 1980 was John Lennon’s “Double Fantasy”:
And now for Today’s Ironic Moment in Rock History: Today in 1983, Walter Scott, lead singer of Bob Kuban and the In-Men, was seen alive for the last time.
Scott’s decomposed, tied-up body was found floating in a cistern in April 1987. Scott’s wife’s boyfriend was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. Scott’s wife was convicted of hindering prosecution and was sentenced to five years in prison.
Birthdays begin with Scotty Moore, Elvis Presley’s first guitarist and the man said to be the first lead guitarist of rock and roll:
Mike Pinder of the Moody Blues:
Mick Jones of Foreigner:
Larry Byrom of Steppenwolf:
One death of note today in 2008: Delaney Bramlett of Delaney and Bonnie and Friends:
Today in 1963, Capitol Records, which had previously rejected the U.S. rights to every Beatles single until then, finally released a double single, the first half of which had already reached number one in the United Kingdom:
One year later, guess which group had their sixth number one of the year.
Today in 1967, BBC TV broadcasted the Beatles’ “Magical Mystery Tour” movie:
The movie got terrible reviews, perhaps because it was shown in black and white instead of in color (or “colour” as the Brits spell it). As a result, plans to show it in the U.S. were shelved. It didn’t make U.S. theaters until 1974 and U.S. TV until the 1980s.
Also today in 1967, the Dave Brubeck Quartet decided to take five permanently:
Would you have spent $5 to see this concert in Denver today in 1968?
The number one single today in 1970:
The number one album today in 1979 was Pink Floyd’s “The Wall”:
The number one album today in 1981 was AC/DC’s “For Those About to Rock We Salute You”:
Who shares a birthday with my father, my brother-in-law and my late aunt? First, Steve Allen:
Starting shortly after my birth, my parents purchased Christmas albums for $1 from an unlikely place, tire stores.
(That’s as unusual as getting, for instance, glasses every time you filled up at your favorite gas station, but older readers might remember that too, back in the days when gas stations were usually part of a car repair place, not a convenience store.)
The albums featured contemporary artists from the ’60s, plus opera singers and other artists.
These albums were played on my parents’ wall-length Magnavox hi-fi player.
Playing these albums was as annual a ritual as watching “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas,” “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” or other holiday-season appointment TV.
Those albums began my, and then our, collection of Christmas music.
You may think some of these singers are unusual choices to sing Christmas music. (This list includes at least six Jewish singers.)
Of course, Christians know that Jesus Christ was Jewish.
And I defy any reader to find anyone who can sing “Silent Night” like Barbra Streisand did in the ’60s.
These albums are available for purchase online, but record players are now as outmoded as, well, getting glasses with your fill-up at the gas station.
But thanks to YouTube and other digital technology, other aficionados of this era of Christmas music now can have their music preserved for their current and future enjoyment.
The tire-store-Christmas-album list has been augmented by both earlier and later works.
In the same way I think no one can sing “Silent Night” like Barbra Streisand, I think no one can sing “Do You Hear What I Hear” like Whitney Houston:
This list contains another irony — an entry from “A Christmas Gift for You,” Phil Spector’s Christmas album. (Spector’s birthday is Christmas.)
The album should have been a bazillion-seller, and perhaps would have been had it not been for the date of its initial release: Nov. 22, 1963.
Finally, here’s a previous iteration of one of the currently coolest TV traditions — “The Late Show with David Letterman” and its annual appearance of Darlene Love (from the aforementioned Phil Spector album):
Today in 1954, R&B singer Johnny Ace had a concert at the City Auditorium in Houston. Between sets, Ace was playing with a revolver. When someone in the room said, “Be careful with that thing,” Ace replied, “It’s OK, the gun’s not loaded. See?” And pointed the gun at his head, and pulled the trigger. And found out he was wrong.
The number one album today in 1965 was the Beatles’ “Rubber Soul”:
If you think accidentally blowing your brains out is a strange way to celebrate Christmas, this isn’t much better: Today in 1973, Tom Johnson of the Doobie Brothers was arrested in Visalia, Calif., for (irony alert) possession of marijuana. Johnson’s court date was set for Jan. 10, the scheduled release for his group’s next album (irony alert II), “What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits”:
The number one album today in 1976 was the Eagles’ “Hotel California”:
The number one single today in 1988:
The short list of birthdays begin with Lee Dorsey, who was …
Jan Akkerman of Focus:
Ricky Martin:
Two other deaths of note today: Zeke Carey of the Flamingos in 1999 …
… and Nick Massi of the Four Seasons today in 2000:
Seasonally appropriate music (in contrast to what was here) next hour.
For those who didn’t notice (or are engaged in being contrarian), Christmas is Sunday.
I can’t believe you didn’t notice, because the media has inundated us with reminders of Christmas for months — literally, in the case of radio stations that started playing all-Christmas music around Halloween. During that time, those radio stations lose my listenership, because all-Christmas music is appropriately starting around today and lasting through Christmas.
Part of the reason for my assertion is that there really isn’t that much good Christmas music. In fact, the subset of good Christmas music, whether religious or secular, is a very small part of the total amount of Christmas music. (Examples of that very small subset can be seen in this space tomorrow.)
Back in 2002, the Music Choice channel analyzed every British number one Christmas song from the previous three decades to identify reasons for their success. The common criteria included sleigh bells, singing children, church bells and references to love. The “perfect” Christmas hit, they concluded, was …
That would be Britain’s idea of a “perfect” Christmas hit, because it did not make Mediaguide’s list of this country’s top 100 Christmas songs of all time. That’s OK, though, because only 20 of those songs on Mediaguide’s list would make my list of top Christmas songs or performances.
My definition of bad Christmas music is unfortunately like Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s famous definition of pornography: he knows it when he sees it, and I know it when I hear it. (Unlike my definition of bad music, which is at least partly objective.) This abomination will make a Scrooge or a Grinch out of anyone:
Part of my disdain for most Christmas music is a disconnect between song and performer. Gloria Estefan is a great talent, but she’s Cuban and from Miami, so having her sing “Let It Snow” is a non sequitur. And if you don’t like the act when it performs anything else (say, Celine Dion), why listen to its Christmas work (say, Dion’s “The Christmas Song”) I am not a fan of “The Little Drummer Boy,” so when Bob Seger gravels his way through it, it’s time to select something else.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Duane Dudek believes the aforementioned advent (get it?) of all-Christmas radio programming has actually hurt the cause of Christmas music:
In 1994 Bill Clinton was president, the Dow Jones average reached a record 3,900 points and Mariah Carey was 24 and released the album “Merry Christmas,” which has since sold more than 15 million copies and is believed to be the bestselling Christmas album in the world.
Today the single from that album, “All I Want for Christmas,” is radio’s 12th-most played holiday song, according to data collected between Oct. 1 and Dec. 12 by Mediaguide, which measures song and advertising radio airplay.
It is the last new song to enter the list, behind 11th-ranked “Blue Christmas” by Elvis Presley. …
Carey’s song originally was released “just as the all-holiday format started to take hold” on radio, and is “the newest of the now (holiday) standards,” Sean Ross, executive editor for Radio-Info.com, wrote in an email.
It signaled an “end of the era” when radio was used to introduce new holiday songs, he said.
Ross said holiday songs “used to be between-the-albums knockoffs for major artists.”
Today they are intended to keep “a ‘no longer on the radio’ or ‘never on the radio’ artist on the radar. The goal is to sell albums, not singles, and to maximize your chances with radio, which won’t play many new holiday songs but might play a new version of a standard.”
The media goes far beyond Christmas music, of course. I was one year old when my favorite Christmas-themed TV show premiered (which has to be preceded by something long-time TV viewers will recognize):
“The Grinch Who Stole Christmas” is simply brilliant from beginning to end. Dr. Seuss wrote it, of course. It was directed by Chuck Jones of the Looney Tunes works of art. Boris Karloff narrates. And Thurl Ravenscroft, the voice of Tony the Tiger, sings the most recognizable song:
It is no accident that “Grinch,” “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” the “Frosty the Snowman” cartoon and the stop-motion-animation “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” show up on the TV schedule every year. All of those were 1960s creations, and yet they were better done than anything comparable today. (If you want to get a politician mad at you, call him the Burgermeister Meisterburger to his face.)
Other Christmas media I avoid like the plague is the Christmas-themed episode of your favorite TV series. The most famous was for a show that I was not allowed to watch in its late ’60s iteration:
The worst … well, it may be the worst two hours in the history of communication:
The advent of VCRs and DVD players allowed people to stockpile their favorite Christmas movies. The two favorites around here are …
“A Christmas Story,” based on Jean Shepherd’s In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash, is the funniest thing Darren McGavin ever did, and a movie former children and parents can relate to, for such scenes as saying something you shouldn’t say in front of your parents:
You can tell McGavin was having the time of his life playing the father, veering between studied ironic underreaction (“You look like a deranged Easter bunny”), unusual enthusiasms (his “frah-GEE-lay” leg lamp), and his never-ending expletives-deleted battles with his house’s furnace and the neighborhood stray dogs. When the aforementioned dogs swipe the Christmas turkey, the father does what all fathers must do in times of crisis — use his brain to devise a solution, such as finding the only restaurant that would possibly be open on Christmas Day.
Another reality of parenting is demonstrated in “Christmas Vacation.” Clark Griswold seeks the perfect Christmas for his family — a blot-out-the-sun Christmas tree (what happened to the Wagon Queen Family Truckster, by the way?), having both sides of the family over for Christmas dinner, and the announcement of the swimming pool paid for by his Christmas bonus. And, of course, everything goes horribly wrong.
Both movies demonstrate a parental reality as well — certain occasions are best handled when either drinking or hung over. That includes when the following presents are opened:
Today in 1964, a group of would-be DJs launched the pirate radio station Radio London from a former U.S. minesweeper anchored 3½ miles off Frinton-on-the-Sea, England.
It’s probably unrelated, but on the same day Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys had a nervous breakdown on a flight from Los Angeles to Houston. Wilson left the band to focus on writing and producing, with Glen Campbell replacing him for concerts.
The pernicious influence of unions reared its ugly head today in 1966, when Britain’s ITV broadcast its final “Ready, Steady, Go!” because of a British musicians’ union’s ban on miming. The final show featured Mick Jagger, The Who, Eric Burdon, the Spencer Davis Group, Donovan and Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich.
Today in 1985, after drinking beer, smoking marijuana and listening for hours to the Judas Priest album “Stained Class,” Raymond Belknap and James Vance shot themselves at a school playground. Belknap died, while Vance lived for three more years after shooting away his jaw, mouth and nose.
The band was sued for putting subliminal messages on the album, which band member Glenn Tipton denied doing, saying, “If we were going to do that then we might put messages saying, ‘Buy 10 more of these albums,’ but why would we tell our record buyers to kill themselves?”
The number one single today in 1989:
Birthdays begin with Esther Phillips:
Eugene Record of the Chi-Lites:
Jorma Kaukonen of the Jefferson Airplane:
Ron Bushy of one-incredibly-long-hit-wonder Iron Butterfly:
Ariel Bender of Mott the Hoople:
Dave Murray of Iron Maiden:
Who is Edward Louis Stevenson III? Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam …
… who was born the same day as Saul “Slash” Hudson of Guns N Roses:
One death of note today in 2008: Songwriter Clint Ballard Jr.:
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 