The number one single today in 1959:
The number one single today in 1963:
The number one album today in 1968 was the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s “Electric Ladyland”:
The number one single today in 1974 …
… came from the number one album, John Lennon’s “Walls and Bridges”:
The short list of birthdays begins with Winfred “Blue” Lovett of the Manhattans …
… and ends with Racine’s own Chi Coltrane:
OK, there’s some poetic license in the headline, since by now the Vikings have returned to the Twin Cities to sip the bitter grog that is the aftermath of a nationally televised 45–7 thumping by the Packers.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune succinctly wrote: “Rodgers, Packers humiliate Vikings”:
Life at the top of the NFL must be nice. For at the bottom of the NFC North, the Vikings continue to experience all the agonizing headaches of a below-average team with so many flaws it’s hard to know which to correct first.
On the big stage of “Monday Night Football,” the Vikings sure seemed like the disconcerted neighbor, soaked in oil and trying to fix a faulty engine and a damaged carburetor on a 1987 Cutlass Ciera.
The Packers? They stood in their driveway applying another coat of wax to their sleek Aston Martin.
I’d disagree with the Aston Martin metaphor. (The Ciera might be available from Jerry Lundegaard once he gets out of prison.) A better metaphor would be a Ford F-Series pickup with a diesel engine computer-chip-modified to produce more than 500 horsepower … in green and gold, of course.
A similar theme comes from the St. Paul Pioneer Press:
The Vikings reaffirmed that their rhetoric is punchier than their play. All the talk about rejuvenation following a road victory at Carolina and a well-timed bye rang hollow as Minnesota mastered the role of patsy in Green Bay’s march toward perfection.
Untimely and undisciplined penalties helped doom the Vikings, who were flagged 10 times for 80 yards. They also were manhandled physically on both sides of the ball. …
Progress was impossible to mine from this disaster. Coach Leslie Frazier will be challenged to pull out of a potential death spiral and rally his team for seven more games, including five against legitimate playoff contenders.
The Strib’s Jim Souhan pours it on:
There are times in sports when you have to, as athletes like to say, tip your cap; when you get beat by a superior performance.
This was not one of those times.
The Packers are a great team. They needed only be competent on Monday night to destroy the confused and inept Vikings.
Green Bay’s 45-7 victory at Lambeau Field, which set a record for margin of victory in this rivalry, was more a product of Viking ineptitude than Packer supremacy.
“Disgusting,” Jared Allen said.
“Atrocious,” Visanthe Shiancoe said.
“Obviously the way we played in the second half showed the gap between our teams,” coach Leslie Frazier said.
Fifty-one weeks ago, the Vikings lost 31-3 to the Packers at the Metrodome, and Brad Childress got fired. Monday’s loss won’t prove as transforming, but it was every bit as embarrassing.
Tom Pelissero of 1500 ESPN adds:
Lifeless would be a kind assessment of this 60-minute sleepwalk. From the moment Randall Cobb caught a crease and raced 80 yards for a touchdown 1:18 in, the Vikings’ sideline was a morgue and their execution a mess.
They couldn’t throw against one of the NFL’s worst pass defenses. They couldn’t disturb the Packers’ stellar passing attack. They took 10 penalties. They embarrassed themselves in all three phases on a stage that should have given them every reason to at least show up. …
This is the sort of loss — the most lopsided in 102 all-time matchups between these division rivals — that commands questions about whether a team that played for a conference title two years ago might need two years or more just to compete for a playoff berth again.
So far this morning there is nothing from Paul Allen, the Vikings’ announcer (if that’s what you want to call the guy paid to scream at the team he’s covering on the air). I notice, though, that his Web page claims he’s married to ‘Nagzilla.” Which means he lacks personal class in addition to being a terrible announcer.
It certainly seems that the Vikings’ new stadium push won’t get any help from the players, as happened when the Seattle Mariners’ first playoff visit coincided with a push to replace the Kingdome. Which makes you think, again, that Los Angeles is about to swipe another team from the Twin Cities.
Beginning today, you are likely to encounter someone who believes Gov. Scott Walker should be recalled, and will ask you to sign a petition to force a recall election.
My first suggestion is that you ask the petition-taker what Walker has done — what malfeasance, what misconduct in public office — to deserve recall.
If the answer is that he misled voters about what he intended to do with public employee collective bargaining rights, you know that is false; feel free to show the petitionmonger this:
If the petition-drive-passer-outer claims Walker has infringed public employee collective bargaining rights, ask that person where in the U.S. or Wisconsin constitutions can be found a provision guaranteeing public employee collective bargaining rights.
Politiscoop.com passes on other complaints:
“Scott Walker has divided Wisconsin. We are appalled at the cuts Scott Walker has planned for Medicaid and for the elderly, we are in our early sixties and these cuts will soon directly affect us.” — Linda and Douglas Martindale of Elkhorn
Interesting. Gov. James Doyle didn’t divide Wisconsin by passing $2.1 billion in tax increases? The 2009–10 Legislature didn’t divide Wisconsin by creating a $2.9 billion deficit? U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold (D–Wisconsin) didn’t divide Wisconsin by listening only to liberals during his listening sessions? Apparently, someone “has divided Wisconsin” when he disagrees with the Martindales.
“My husband was a teacher for over 30 years. He worked three jobs to support our family of five children, but he loved his job and often corrected papers long into the night. Scott Walker needs to go and soon.” — Bonita Swan of Stevens Point
Tell a business owner who works more than 60 hours a week and eschews weekends and vacations about your workload.
“My wife is a professional educator with the Denmark School District. When Scott Walker attacked my wife’s integrity our whole family went ballistic. I would love for Scott Walker to see my name first when he is recalled.”— Geoffrey Gialdini of Green Bay
I’d be interested in seeing exactly where Walker personally attacked Mrs. Gialdini’s integrity. Then again, teacher unions have some nerve to attack others’ integrity, since public employee unions have no integrity by definition.
“I’m a teacher. I took a $4000 pay cut because of what Scott Walker did. They did it at night, in secret, and in shame, and they knew it. He is an insult to educators and to honest people with integrity everywhere.” — John Havlicek of La Crosse
Yes, no one else in this state has seen their take-home pay cut over the past few years. Oh wait, many people who pay Havlicek’s salary have in fact seen their take-home pay cut over the past few years. Perhaps Mr. Havlicek would have preferred to have been laid off?
You may have figured out by now that I completely lack sympathy with the Recall Walker movement. (I believe I was de-Friended on Facebook for that reason, but I don’t care. First, Facebook Friends are not necessarily real friends; second, if political views get in the way of a friendship, that is your fault.) I assume the recallers will be able to find enough signatures to force a recall election, which will waste more money than the recalls of earlier this year wasted. Then again, that will be money that cannot be used to donate to the Barack Obama reelection campaign (which, in case you didn’t notice, isn’t going well), or for socialist U.S. Senate candidate Tammy Baldwin, or the campaigns for Democratic candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives, or the campaigns for Democratic candidates for the Legislature.
The only question I have is if this time petitioners will have the nerve to come to my house. No one from the Red Fred Clark campaign against Sen. Luther Olsen (R–Ripon) had the guts to show up at my house to seek my signature. Perhaps the campaign read my blog.
Today in 1925, RCA took over the 25-station AT&T network plus WEAF radio in New York, making today the birthday of the NBC radio network:
Today in 1965, the Rolling Stones made their U.S. TV debut on ABC’s “Hullabaloo”:
Today in 1966, the Doors agreed to release “Break on Through” as their first single, removing the word “high” to get radio airplay:
The number one single today in 1980:
Today in 1990, Frank Farian, who “produced” Milli Vanilli, held a news conference to confirm that Fabrice Morvan and Rob Pilatus, the alleged Milli Vanilli, had in fact not sung on any of their records. And now, here is Milli Vanilli’s greatest work:
Birthdays begin with Bill Fries. Who is Bill Fries? He was the creative director for an Omaha ad agency who created a character for a bread company advertising campaign. The character (who was played by an actor in the ads) then started singing (with Fries as the voice), including this 2-million-seller:
Petula Clark:
Annifrid Lyngstad of Abba:
Steve Fossen of Heart:
Ab Bryant of Chilliwack:
The late Tony Thompson was the drummer for Chic and the Power Station:
For those who think Wisconsin has intractable political problems, I suggest you look west:
Yes, the cheesehead card has been played in the Vikings’ attempt to get the state of Minnesota to build a new stadium for them.
The short version of this drama: The Vikings’ lease for the Metrodome expires after this season. (Maybe. More on that later.) The Vikings have said they will not sign another long-term lease for the Metrodome, whose ’80s-level creature comforts (that is, lack thereof) and lease put the Vikings near the bottom of the NFL in revenue. There is more than one potential site for a new Vikings stadium — the Vikings’ favorite is a former munitions plant, now a Superfund site, in a St. Paul suburb — but Minnesota legislators are not hurrying to endorse the Vikings’ suggestions for funding said stadium: a 0.5-percent county sales tax, a sports-themed lottery game and new state taxes on satellite TV and sports-themed memorabilia. (The county sales tax apparently is dead since it would require a referendum.)
As with apparently all political arguments these days, class warfare is rearing its ugly head. The Minneapolis Star Tribune’s Patrick Reusse believes (as do others) that the only beneficiary of a suburban Vikings stadium will be Vikings owner Zygi Wulf:
The latest rough estimates are $900 million for a stadium at the Metrodome site (including demolition) and $1.1 billion at Arden Hills.
Which means, even if Zygi chooses to pout and cuts his offer to $300 million for a non-Arden Hills stadium, it still would be $100 million cheaper for the state to build at the current Dome than it would at the old ammunition factory.
Wilf is correct in his letter. Arden Hills is the best possible site for a Vikings stadium — if what we have as our main concerns is Zygi being able to collect $40 per car for thousands of cars on game Sundays, and for Zygi to be able to develop the rest of the large acreage with retail, lodging and offices.
You can’t blame Wilf for pushing this, not when remembering that Zygi might own a football team but in his chest beats the heart of a commercial real estate developer.
If the goal for the folks at the State Capitol is to give the Wilfs everything they would want in a stadium site as team owners and land developers, it’s Arden Hills in a walk.
On the other hand, who would benefit from building at the Metrodome? Apparently, Reusse’s employer:
I pay $45 to park in a Minneapolis owned lot three blocks from the dome and near the StarTribune. The lot and service is terrible. I don’t ride rail, ever. One hour traffic jams are common leaving games. Existing infrastructure stinks. Patrick’s viewpoint is skewed by his relationship to the StarTribune.
Everyone just remember that the Star Tribune has a vested interest in having a Stadium at the current Dome site so they will do what they can do derail the Arden Hills site. Think about it, have they written a positive story about the Arden Hills site?
Don’t forget that it would benefit Startribune the most because they own a lot of the buildings around the metrodome, woops was I supposed to mention that?
The Vikings should be playing outdoors like the Packers, but of course having played 30 seasons in the Metrodome, the Vikings assume their fans don’t want to freeze outdoors when the outdoors is freezing.
Don’t tell the Vikings this, but the Vikings’ 30 seasons of indoor football mean that bad things happen to the Vikings outdoors:
The Vikings’ stadium situation is like a love triangle with Ragnar (the name of the Vikings’ wrongly horned mascot) trying to decide between his wife, Lena, and the temptress to the west, Angel. Los Angeles, the second largest media market in the country, hasn’t had an NFL franchise since the mid-’90s, when the Rams left for St. Louis and the Raiders returned to Oakland. Minnesota is one of at least four franchises (the others being Jacksonville, San Diego and Oakland, the latter two having previously been in L.A.) that are the apparent target of efforts to relocate one or two NFL teams to L.A.
An Associated Press story with seven writers handicaps who might be heading to L.A.:
The Vikings aren’t the only franchise on relocation alert, but the team’s tie to its current city appears to be the loosest in the near term.
The St. Louis Rams have a possible out after the 2014 season. The Oakland Raiders are under lease through 2013. The Buffalo Bills intend on staying put as long as the founding owner — 93-year-old Ralph Wilson — is alive. The Jacksonville Jaguars would need to exercise a special escape clause to leave Florida but would owe the city for lost taxes and parking revenue for years to come.
In San Diego, where the Chargers have been seeking a new stadium since 2002, the team has its eyes on a new downtown site but lack financing. The Chargers could get out of a lease starting in February if a better deal surfaces elsewhere, but the team is building toward a 2012 ballot measure.
The story adds this: “Vikings vice president Lester Bagley has told The Associated Press that both Los Angeles business groups have been in contact, but has continued to stress that the team’s main focus is securing a deal to stay in Minnesota.” Which is not exactly a we’re-staying-n0-matter-what statement, is it?
And unlike the moves of the Baltimore-to-Indianapolis Colts, Cleveland Browns-to-Baltimore Ravens, and Houston-Oilers-to-Tennessee Titans, whatever team(s) move(s) to L.A. isn’t likely to be replaced in its departed market. Even if the NFL was inclined to add an expansion franchise to replace the former Vikings, Jaguars, Chargers and/or Raiders, the experiences of Baltimore, Cleveland and Houston in getting teams to move or an expansion team demonstrate that getting a team is considerably more expensive than keeping the team you have.
I’m surprised the St. Paul Pioneer Press’ Bob Sansevere wasn’t hanged in effigy for this blasphemy:
So the worst worst-case scenario is the Vikings move to Los Angeles and Minnesota never gets another NFL franchise.
And … and then what?
Well, there’s always the Green Bay Packers.
The Packers filled the NFL void for many Minnesotans before the Vikings arrived and, if the Vikings leave, they become an option again. That will be difficult, at first, for many passionate fans of the Purple.
You can be stubborn and give the Packers the ol’ Heisman Trophy straight-arm, or you can accept the reality that the Vikings won’t be coming back and the Packers will be there for you. At least you’d be rooting for a winner. …
If abandoned Vikings fans started rooting for the Packers, they can be certain of this: The Packers are community-owned and never would crush their spirits and hearts by moving.
Proving that the term “Minnesota Nice” is an oxymoron, one reader commented:
Do all us Viking fans a favor Bob, drive in front of a train on the way home!
Much of the problem is the fact that Minnesotans have forked out plenty of money for stadium construction since the Metrodome opened, to wit:
1990: The $104 million Target Center in Minneapolis for the NBA’s Timberwolves. (Of course, 21 years later, it’s time for renovation.)
1993: The University of Minnesota’s $20 million Mariucci Arena for the hockey Golden Gophers.
2000: The $130 million Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul (at the site of the former St. Paul Civic Center) for the NHL’s Wild.
200?: The University of Minnesota’s $303.4 million TCF Bank Stadium for the football Gophers.
2010: The $412 million Target Field in St. Paul for the baseball Twins. (The Twins formerly played at the Metrodome, built in part to eliminate Twins rainouts. Target Field, however, has no roof. The Twins had two rainouts last April and another game delayed due to an hour-long hailstorm.)
A new Vikings stadium is expected to cost, depending on where it is, between $900 million and $1.1 billion, within range of the cost of all of those stadiums combined.
This is where one thinks how much better the state of Wisconsin did with Miller Park (no rainouts since it opened in 2002; five games have been moved to Miller Park due to a Cleveland snowstorm and a Houston hurricane) and Lambeau Field ($295 million renovation paid for by a voter-approved 0.5-percent Brown County sales tax). Hindsight says the Minnesotans should have figured out how to build a stadium for the Gophers and Vikings. It is inconceivable that Wisconsinites would allow the Packers to leave over their stadium, but support for the Vikings has been more lukewarm and more front-runnerish over the years.
Complicating matters further is the disagreement between the Vikings and the Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission over whether this is the final year of the Metrodome lease or not. The MSFC claims that the lease has a “force majeure clause” provision that extends the lease should the Metrodome be unable to host a game — for instance, a snowstorm-caused roof collapse. I don’t know whether that’s commonplace in commercial real estate, but that seems bizarre to me — your lease gets automatically extended, whether you want it or not, because of a problem with the building for which its owner, not renter, seems responsible. The Vikings reportedly have until Feb. 15 to tell the NFL they’re leaving.
Were I a Minnesota legislator (and I am a third-generation ex-Minnesotan), I would not be happy with the box into which the Vikings have put the state. On the one hand, the Metrodome is now an NFL stadium in name only, and no new stadium, no more Vikings. And yet polls indicate Minnesotans, while wanting to keep the Vikings, don’t want public money used to keep the Vikings. Whether or not the various bailouts of late last decade were necessary, they were and are extremely unpopular with voters and taxpayers.
The question is whether the views of (according to the aforementioned Minnesota Poll) the wishes of 67 percent of Minnesotans (who want to keep the Vikings) override the view of 56 percent of Minnesotans (who don’t want tax increases to fund a new stadium). Yes, there are Minnesotans in both groups. Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton and the Republican-controlled Legislature get along so well that state government shut down earlier this year after the fiscal year began without a new budget. Dayton, meanwhile, now says the Minnesota Capitol might fall apart without hundreds of millions of dollars in renovations. What a Hobson’s choice for Minnesota legislators: Raise taxes or lose the Vikings.
Can former Vikings fans become Packer fans? I predict we’ll find out next season.
The number one single today in 1960:
The number one British single today in 1981:
The number one British album today in 1981 was “Queen Greatest Hits”:
The number one album today in 1987 was the soundtrack to “Dirty Dancing”:
Sometimes, one sentence says all you need to know: Today in 1990, record producer Frank Farin fired Rob Pilatus and Fabrice Morvan because the members of Milli Vanilli insisted on singing their next album. Need I write more?
The number one single today in 1992:
The number one British album today in 1998 was “U2: The Best of 1980–1990 and B Sides”:
Today in 2000, Chris “Limahl” Hamel, former lead singer of Kajagoogoo, was nearly killed when his bus crashed and caught fire on the way to a concert:
The number one British single today in 2004:
Birthdays begin with Cornell Gunter of the Coasters:
James Young of Styx:
Alec John Such of Bon Jovi:
Joseph “Run” Simmons of Run DMC:
The number one album today in 1965 received no radio airplay:
The number one British single today in 1968 was based on, but didn’t directly come from, a movie:
The number one album today in 1971 was “Santana,” although some call it “Santana III” and others “Man with an Outstretched Hand”:
The number one British album today in 1976 was Led Zeppelin’s “The Song Remains the Same,” from the concert movie of the same name:
The number one British single today in 1976:
The number one album today in 1982 was “Business as Usual” for Men at Work:
Birthdays begin with Roger Steen, who played guitar for The Tubes:
Bill Gibson of Huey Lewis and the News:
Who is Aldo Caporuscio? You know him as Aldo Nova the one-hit wonder:
Today in 1968, Britain’s W.T. Smiths refused to carry the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s “Electric Ladyland” …
… with its original album cover …
… although a different cover was OK:
The number one single today in 1983:
Today in 1990, Ron Wood of the Rolling Stones crashed his car on the M4 motorway near Marlborough, England. Wood got out of his car and was waving traffic around his car when another car hit Wood, breaking both his legs.
Birthdays begin with Ruby Nash Curtis of Ruby and the Romantics:
Brian Hyland …
… was born the same day as John Maus of the Walker Brothers:
Booker T. Jones of Booker T and the MGs:
Neil Young of the Buffalo Springfield, Crosby Stills Nash & Young and his own voluminous solo career:
Buck Dharma of Blue Öyster Cult:
Errol Brown of Hot Chocolate:
Arthur “Pooch” Tavares of Tavares:
Last month, I wrote about my 20-plus-year avocation, sports announcing, which has provided me with volumes of stories even though I’ve never worked in broadcasting full-time.
I wrote that I haven’t really patterned myself after any announcer that I’m aware of. But if you listened to, for instance, Jim Irwin call Packer and Badger games and Bob Uecker call Brewer games for decades, you are likely to unconsciously emulate them unless you make a conscious effort not to.
Packer fans today get to hear the outstanding work of Packer announcer Wayne Larrivee, known for …
The contrast to Larrivee is the other announcer at Lambeau Field Monday night, the Vikings’ unprofessional Paul Allen:
The example of working to not sound like someone applies to the announcing Carays, Harry …
… and Skip, who did not want to sound like his father, and almost never did …
… except for this October 1992 moment:
Jack and Joe Buck don’t sound alike, but Joe gave a great tribute to Jack in crazy game 6 of the World Series:
Harry Caray and Jack Buck called Cardinals games from the late 1960s until the Cardinals fired Caray in 1970. Note the differences between their styles:
Buck then took over and announced the Cardinals and NFL football until his death:
The younger Buck now announces baseball …
… and football (where he almost became the Packers’ personal announcer, calling their last six games of the 2010 season):
Team announcers have two priorities: (1) Get people to watch or listen to the broadcast, and (2) get people to come to the team’s home games. Some team announcers claim to call games down the middle, but that’s not necessarily what their listeners want to hear. And when your team does well, that tends to help the announcer’s career too:
The number one task of an announcer is to call the game — score, down and distance, balls and strikes, etc., and of course in-game commercials and sponsor mentions. The announcers I like best are those who besides that make you watch, whether you have a rooting interest in the game, and regardless of the score.
Skip Caray was worth watching to see what he’d say next, including:
When you’ve been announcing games since 1974, as Reds announcer Marty Brennaman has, you can get away with being critical during games:
Whether or not he can call games as well as he used to, CBS’ Verne Lundquist (who had a couple of problem calls in the LSU–Alabama game Saturday) is enjoyable to watch, particularly on basketball with Bill Raftery, which is kind of like watching your two great-uncles argue with each other:
The best hockey announcer right now is probably NBC’s Mike Emrick:
One announcer whose very voice is college football is ABC’s Keith Jackson …
… although he could do other sports too:
My favorite sports announcer was Dick Enberg of NBC and CBS:
The announcer that makes every other sound like a rank amateur is, of course, the transcendent Vin Scully …
… who, though best known for baseball, could announce football too:
Scully’s opposite in career is NBC’s Al Michaels, best known for football …
… and one hockey game …
… but who also did baseball well:
One more thing: The exciting aspect of calling sports is that the announcer is never 100 percent sure what’s going to happen. Watch the bizarre finish of the 2010 Stanley Cup Finals, for which no announcer could properly prepare:
Besides the end of the War to End All Wars (which didn’t end all wars but led directly to the next war) and the day Americans remember and honor those whose service and sacrifice allow me to freely write this and you to freely read this, what else happened Nov. 11?
Today in 1954, Bill Haley got his first top 10 single, “Shake Rattle and Roll,” originally a Joe Turner song. Haley had changed the name of his band, the cowboy-motif Saddlemen, to His Comets.
Imagine what the Transportation Security Administration would have done with this: Today in 1969, the FBI arrested Jim Morrison for drunk and disorderly conduct on an airplane. Morrison and actor Tom Baker had been drinking and harassing stewardesses on a flight to Phoenix. Morrison and Baker spent a night in jail and were released on $2,500 bail.
Today in 1972, an era when pretty much everything would go in rock music, listeners got to hear the first example of what might be called “yodel rock”:
Continuing our Elton John theme of the past few days, John had the number one single today in 1973:
Today in 1978, Donna Summer had the number one album, “Live and More,” and single, which counted as “more” more than “live”:
The number one British single …
… and album today in 1989:
The number one album today in 1995 was the Smashing Pumpkins’ “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness”:
Birthdays begin with Roger Lavern, who played keyboards for the Tornadoes:
Jesse Colin Young of the Youngbloods …
… was born one year before Vince Martell of Vanilla Fudge …
… and Chris Dreja of the Yardbirds …
… who were born one year before Pat Daugherty of Black Oak Arkansas:
Jim Peterik of the brass-rock band The Ides of March …
… and then Survivor:
Paul Cowsill of the Cowsills:
Mike Mesaros of the Smithereens:
Andy Partridge of XTC:
One death of note: Today in 1972, Allman Brothers bass player Berry Oakley hit a bus with his motorcycle and died at the same intersection where bandmate Duane Allman had died in a motorcycle crash a year earlier.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 