ABC Wednesday Archives - Page 81 of 91

X is for…

We all have at least one X chromosome.

I marvel at the versatility of the letter X.

It can be used as a signature that is printed in lieu of an individual’s signature…”Typically, individuals sign their full names when executing legal documents. Sometimes, however, individuals use only their initials or other identifying marks. For illiterate, incompetent, or disabled people, this mark is often the letter X. Documents signed with an X sometimes raise questions as to their validity and enforceability.”

Related, the X refers to a kiss. “The first mention in the literature of XXX for kisses at the bottom of a letter was in 1901, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. The X itself is very old.

“The custom goes back to the early Christian era when a cross mark or ‘X’ was the same as a sworn oath. The cross-referred to the cross of Calvary and the first letter of the Greek word for Christ, Xristos.” (Which is why Xmas does not bother me in the slightest; it actually has sacred roots.)

“Even as little as a hundred and fifty years ago, not many people could read or write. The ‘X’ at the bottom of a document took the place of a signature. They would kiss the ‘X’ as a crucifix or bible was kissed to emphasize the importance of the mark. It was this practice that led to the ‘X’ representing a kiss.”

Yet, X-rated is “vulgar, obscene, or explicit in the treatment of sex: an X-rated novel; X-rated graffiti.”

X is an algebraic meaning ‘unknown quantity’ (1660 in English). Yet X also means the specific, known location of the buried treasure; “X marks the spot.”

Finally, HISTORIANS of mathematics attribute the first use of the cross x as a symbol for multiplication to William Oughtred (…London, 1631).

And since we all have at least one X chromosome, one could argue that we all are unknown AND knowable, sacred AND profane.
ABC Wednesday – Round 8

W is for Warner Brothers Loss Leaders

Someone gave me this album after someone else died, saying he would have wanted me to have it.

Back in the 1970s, when I was a poor college student, I would occasionally indulge my desire to purchase a new record album. When I’d buy one of James Taylor or Bonnie Raitt or the Doobie Brothers or Seals and Crofts – yes, Seals and Crofts – the record would come with an inner sleeve that would promise an eclectic set of music, a double LP, for only $2, postpaid, from the Warner Brothers roster of artists; the single albums were just $1. Eventually, I was so intrigued that I bought one, liked it, then bought another, and another…so that, to this day, I still possess most of them.

Rather than describe all three dozen of them, 31 of which I own, I’ll refer you to this essay by Charles Hill and his roster of albums. Chaz also links to The 30 Days Out blog’s history of these discs.

I will make brief mention of some of the albums, highlighting my personal history or a notable track. The ones I do not own are in italics.

1969
THE 1969 WARNER/REPRISE SONGBOOK (Warner Bros. PRO 331)
Like several of the early albums, at least one side was dominated by Frank Zappa and his musical allies. But also featured the Everly Brothers. Eclectic.
THE 1969 WARNER/REPRISE RECORD SHOW (PRO 336)
Subtitled “Son of Songbook”, it has one EXTRAORDINARY soul ballad by Lorraine Ellison called Stay with Me. Read about it here and listen to it here.
OCTOBER 10, 1969 (PRO 351)
Chaz wrote: “A single-disc slipped into the mix while Warners was trying to decide if the doubles would sell.” By the time I was buying these albums, this disc was no longer listed.
1970

THE BIG BALL (PRO 358)
SCHLAGERS! (PRO 359)
Chaz: “Showcasing some Warners tracks that might conceivably get MOR airplay.” (MOR means Middle of the Road,” the title of a future package.)
ZAPPÉD (PRO 368)
“A single disc featuring acts on Frank Zappa’s Bizarre/Straight labels,” that I actually tried to order, but it must have been sold out.
LOONEY TUNES & MERRIE MELODIES (PRO 423)
The only triple-disc set in the series, which cost $3 in the day, but I never bought it. Someone gave me this album after someone else died, saying he would have wanted me to have it. Subsequently, I’ve lost the middle record, which contained Side 2 and Side 5. But I still have Side 6, which is an unusually spiritual, even religious platter. The last song: Turley Richards: I Heard the Voice of Jesus.

1971
NON-DAIRY CREAMER (PRO 443)
Another single disc, and one I never actually ordered. I may have requested Zapped and gotten this.
HOT PLATTERS (PRO 474)
TOGETHER (PRO 486)
The last of the single-disc samplers, and I have no idea how WB sent it to me since I never specifically ordered it.

1972
THE WHOLE BURBANK CATALOG (PRO 512)
“First set to credit Barry Hansen (Dr. Demento) for assemblage and annotation.” Not every subsequent album was annotated by him, but he was singularly entertaining when he did. Now, this was the point where the albums really became fun. There were radio spots for Sgt Preston of the Yukon or Inner Scantum inserted. Just before Arlo Guthrie’s Ukulele Lady, there’d be a snippet of a version recorded a half-century earlier.
MIDDLE OF THE ROAD (PRO 525)
“Just like it sounds.” Even features Frank Sinatra.
BURBANK (PRO 529)
Features the 57-second Voter Registration Rag by Arlo Guthrie, which I cannot find.
THE DAYS OF WINE AND VINYL (PRO 540)

1973
APPETIZERS (PRO 569)
Included Martin Mull: Licks off of Records.
ALL SINGING, ALL TALKING, ALL ROCKING (PRO 573)
“Features sound bites from Warner Bros. movies,” which made it probably my favorite album of the bunch.

1974

HARD GOODS (PRO 583)
This collection has at least two rarities: War Song by Neil Young and Graham Nash, which was on a B-side of a Young single, but then “unreleased in any other format until June 2009, when it was finally released…on a box set by Neil Young called The Archives Vol. 1 1963–1972.”
Immediately after that is The ’68 Nixon by Denver, Boise, and Johnson, which you can hear and read about here. Yes, the Denver is John Denver, who went on to some commercial success.
PEACHES (PRO 588)
“A compilation of tracks from the Georgia-based Capricorn label, then distributed by Warners,” which I don’t have and never saw offered until years later.
DEEP EAR (PRO 591, 1974)

1975
THE FORCE (PRO 596)
By this time, I was buying them as soon as I saw them advertised.
ALL MEAT (PRO 604)
“‘Not a speck of cereal,’ insists Frank Zappa.
PEACHES, VOL. 2 (PRO 605)
“A second collection from Capricorn Records, which I haven’t seen.”
I DIDN’T KNOW THEY STILL MADE RECORDS LIKE THIS (PRO 608)
“Back to the middle of the road.”
THE WORKS (PRO 610)
The rarity here was The Beach Boys: Child of Winter, which was a single that showed up in a Beach Boys collection more than two decades later.

1976
SUPERGROUP (PRO 630)
THE PEOPLE’S RECORD (PRO 645)

1977
COOK BOOK (PRO 660)
“Focusing on Warners’ black acts.” I have no idea how I got this album. I may have sent WB money and said “Anything else in the vaults?”
WB in the 1960s was not a label with lots of black artists. Someone quipped that their only soul artist was comedian Bill Cosby. But by the 1970s, the label made a concerted effort to change that. I must admit that I loved the fact that the album had a trio of Beatles covers in a row: Randy Crawford- Don’t Let Me Down; Roy Redmond- Good Day Sunshine, and New Birth- The Long and Winding Road.
LIMO (PRO 691)

1978
COLLECTUS INTERRUPTUS (PRO A-726)
“Twenty-Six Earbinding Songs of Unique Delight, Derring-Do, Heartbreak, Scandal, and Lurid Sensation”.
With Soft and Wet, probably the first Prince I owned.
PUMPING VINYL (PRO A-773)
As a musical eclectic, I tend to eschew labels. That’s why my favorite song in this collection is Funkadelic: Who Says a Funk Band Can’t Play Rock?

1979
A LA CARTE (PRO A-794)
The song I tended to overplay here was Gibson Brothers: Cuba
MONSTERS (PRO A-796)

1980

ECLIPSE (PRO 828)
“A new price: 2 LPs for $3.” Still a bargain.
MUSIC WITH 58 MUSICIANS, VOLUME 1 (PRO 850)
“Issued to mark the German jazz label ECM’s distribution deal with Warner Bros., this set, billed as ‘An International Array of Innovative Jazz Music and Performers,’… Roger Green found this one for me.”
Well, yeah, I did, actually. And Charles added me to his “beyond the call of duty” list. As far as I know, there was never a Volume 2.
TROUBLEMAKERS (PRO A-857)
“This is as punk as Burbank would get.”
Marianne Faithfull: Broken English.

1995
LOSS LEADERS REVISITED (PRO-CD-7955
“A limited-edition CD (3500 copies) with retro-cool; not properly a Loss Leader, since it was given away, but it caps the series with panache.”
I’d never heard of this until I read about it.

These are more underplayed vinyl, records I listened to a LOT in the day, but less since I got the first CD player. Still, I now have a turntable, so they can provide me with additional hours of pleasure.

ABC Wednesday – Round 8

V is for Venus

Speaking of which, author John Gray made a whole cottage industry of the notion that men are from Mars and women are from Venus.

Venus is a planet, the second one from our sun; it is roughly the same size as the Earth, with a diameter of 12,100km, about 1040km smaller in diameter than our planet. After the moon, it is generally the brightest object in the night sky.

The planet is named after a goddess, specifically the Roman goddess of love and beauty, who is the equivalent of the Greek goddess Aphrodite and whose myths are largely shared.

There are four songs that start with the word Venus that charted on the US pop charts between 1955 and 2000.

Venus by Frankie Avalon, which went to #1 in 1959. I did not know that a disco version of this same song by Avalon went to #46 in 1976.
Venus in Blue Jeans by Jimmy Clayton, which reached #7 in 1962.
Venus by Shocking Blue went to #1 in 1970; the cover version by Bananarama also went to #1, in 1986.
Finally, Venus & Mars Rock Show by Wings – that would be one of Paul McCartney’s groups – went to #12 in 1975.

Speaking of Venus and Mars, author John Gray made a whole cottage industry of the notion that men are from Mars and women are from Venus. “John’s books have sold over 50 million copies in 50 different languages. His groundbreaking book…was the best-selling book of the 1990s. It launched his Mars Venus book series that forever changed the way men and women view their relationships.” (Feel free to discuss; I thought Gray’s message was a bit oversimplistic.)

Finally, there is the Venus flytrap. Antithetical to the goddess’ message of love, it is a carnivorous plant – see it in action! – which is native only in the Carolinas in the United States, though transplanted elsewhere around the world. Audrey II is a giant Venus flytrap that starred in various iterations of Little Shop of Horrors.

Oddly, there was a fictional radio disc jockey on the TV show called WKRP in Cincinnati with the pseudonym of Venus Flytrap, played by Tim Reid. Watch Venus Explains the Atom.

ABC Wednesday – Round 8

U is for Underdog

“And for almost every little guy who wins, there’s a big guy who loses, and that makes us happy too.”

There’s a small private university in Indianapolis, IN called Butler. “In 2010, Butler was runner-up to Duke, after advancing all the way to the National Championship after defeating Michigan State in the Final Four. With a total enrollment of only 4,500 students, Butler is the smallest school to play for a national championship since the tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985. In 2011, the Bulldogs advanced to a second consecutive Championship appearance after defeating Virginia Commonwealth University. In the 2011 title game, Butler lost to the University of Connecticut.”

Almost everyone who wasn’t otherwise interested rooted for Butler, because it was the underdog, while Duke and Connecticut were larger, well-established programs that had won the championship in the past.

Why do we root for the underdog? Maybe it’s “because we want to help compensate for undeserved inequality. If one contestant is outmatched for reasons that aren’t his fault, that’s unfair, and our sense of justice reaches out to fix it.

“We might also root for underdogs just because we enjoy drama:

“An alternative or additional, motivation for supporting underdogs might derive less from abstract moral concerns about fairness and more from self-interested, rational calculations of one’s own emotions. Because underdog success is by definition unexpected, this may increase the excitement of rooting for an underdog.

“And for almost every little guy who wins, there’s a big guy who loses, and that makes us happy too:

“Rather than being strongly supportive of underdogs, might people instead root against dominant entities (this would be consistent with the sentiment, ‘my favorite team is whoever is playing the Yankees’)?”

Those who are viewed as disadvantaged arouse people’s sense of fairness and justice — important principles to most people. Moreover, as this article states: “We all can relate because at some point we all feel small and powerless.”

Among the definitions of the word underdog include:
1.One that is expected to lose a contest or struggle, as in sports or politics.
2.One that is at a disadvantage.

One of my favorite cartoons as a child was Underdog. He was a clear parody of Superman, a “mild-mannered” dog known as Shoe Shine Boy, who became the crime fighter when villains such as Simon Bar Sinister plotted some evil scheme. His would-be love is sweet Polly Purebred, an alliterative name like Lois Lane or Lana Lang.

The introduction even evoked the Man of Steel:
A crowd of people…would say, “Look in the sky!” “It’s a plane!” “It’s a bird!” After this, an old woman wearing glasses would exclaim, “It’s a frog!” Another onlooker would respond, “A frog?!?” To this, Underdog replied with these words:
“Not plane, nor bird, nor even frog, It’s just little old me…” (at this point, Underdog would crash into something, then finish) “Underdog.”

There was a none-too-well-reviewed live-action Underdog movie that I did not bother to see.

ABC Wednesday – Round 8

T is for Toy Trucks

As it turns out, Hess trucks have been coming out since the mid-1960s, and some of them are quite collectible.

I’d been married to Carol for about a year and a half in the late fall of 2000. She was trying to figure out what to get me for Christmas. I made some passing mention that there was a really cool toy fire truck being sold at the local Hess station. I might have even seen an ad on TV for it.

Still, I was quite surprised when, on Christmas morning, she (or Santa, I forget which) actually got it for me. I must say that I really loved it. It has a couple of different sirens, and flashing lights, and a workable ladder.

So before Christmas 2001, I subtly hinted that I wouldn’t mind getting that year’s model, which was actually a helicopter with a motorcycle and a cruiser. This too was a hit with me; the helicopter features, among other things, rotors that really spin!

Thus a tradition was born, with me getting all of the items through 2010. Along the way, I also picked up a 1998 model.

This does not include the mini-trucks, only one of which I own, and that by happenstance.

I have this friend, Mary, who had a husband named Tom, who I was very fond of. Unfortunately, he died in November 2004 at the age of 49. He had started collecting Hess trucks long before I had. Just this month, Mary sold me Tom’s 1997 and 1999 editions, because she thought he’d want me to have them.

As it turns out, Hess trucks have been coming out since the mid-1960s, and some of them are quite collectible. Check out the lists HERE and HERE

At least in recent times, they’ve been running TV around Thanksgiving for the current year’s models. Here are the ads for 2006 and 2008 and 2009 and 2010 TV ads, all to the unlikely tune of “My Boyfriend’s Back.”

Someone put together a video of all the trucks.

ABC Wednesday – Round 8