Music is not supposed to be a competitive sport. But in a battle of the bands, you’ll have to admit that the Cleverlys take on I Gotta Feeling blows the original, autotuned Black Eyed Peas version right out of the water. The song goes interstellar bluegrass at around 3:55. Better wardrobe, too.
Earlier on Sippican Cottage: Fold, Spindle, and Mutilate Everything.
We all know Tommie Edison’s name. Alexander Graham Bell is pretty widely known, although less so since they took his name off the phone company. Everybody in the internet age knows who Nikola Tesla was, although most couldn’t tell you what he is really notable for. There are lots of guys who remain household names many decades after they shuffled off this mortal coil, because their name is still on the company masthead. A guy named Goodyear invented vulcanized rubber. John Deere made plows, and his company still does, 125+ years after his death. Samuel Morse won’t be forgotten soon, because the code he invented is still in use. But what about George Hackenschmidt? Have you guys forgotten about him?
Of course you haven’t, because you can’t forget what you never knew. Admit it, you’ve never heard of George. But as far as inventing things in common use, he’s right up there with Frank Bunker Gilbreth. Because Hackenschmidt invented the bench press exercise.
Pretty much everyone knows what a bench press is. Pretty much no one knows where it came from.
George was an Estonian (Russian Empire) wrestler born in 1878, back when (warning: spoiler) wrestling wasn’t entirely fake. Wrestling was considered a primo sport, with traditions going back to the original Olympics. George was always into physical fitness, but his first competitive sport was cycling, of all things. He was a blacksmith’s apprentice that raced for prizes on his days off. Then one day, a wrestler and strongman named Georg Lurich came to town with a kind of circus, and challenged any and all local comers to beat him. Hackenschmidt tried it, and lost, but liked the idea. He went into training in St. Petersburg, and eventually became a wrestler and strongman like Lurich. He won lots of formal weightlifting and wrestling competitions. Sometimes he’d wrestle five opponents during one evening, and beat them all.
Hackenschmidt might be obscure now, but he was a worldwide phenomenon in his day. He once wrestled at Comiskey Park, in front of 30,000 spectators for a gate of $87,000. That’s nearly three million in today’s money. He lost, by the way.
Hackenschmidt was was considered quite handsome, and was something of a clothes horse. He wasn’t a dullard either. He was educated and sophisticated, and was reported to speak seven languages. Teddy Roosevelt once remarked that “If I wasn’t president of the United States, I would like to be George Hackenschmidt.”
I just find it funny that George Hackenschmidt invented the bench press. I mean someone had to invent it, I guess. Someone invented the wheel, for instance, but we don’t know his name. Maybe if his name wasn’t Hackenschmidt, lying on your back and lifting a barbell off your chest over and over would be named after him, and he’d be a household word, like kleenex or something. But it was not to be. “Lie down and give me 20 hackenschmidts” just doesn’t roll off the tongue. Life isn’t fair sometimes.
So Eric Carmen went to the big AOR lounge in the sky this week. He was the lead singer in the Raspberries. He’s rocking a mid-century Liz Taylor hairdo and making the appropriate “I’m on the Mike Douglas Show” faces in this video from 1974. Mike was a total square that put all sorts of interesting people on his midday talk and variety show, which sort of made him unsquare, I guess.
It’s a good piece of pop. It has one of those incredibly familiar intros. We tried to play the song in an oldies cover band once or twice. The problem is the song switches gears right after the intro is over, and it just sort of lies there. It’s like Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress by the Hollies. The intro is sort of stapled onto something else altogether. Girls would rush the dance floor because their big sister listened to the song on the radio, and they recognized it, but then they’d just look at you quizzically, and wander off. It’s a shame, because when the Raspberries go to the bridge, and do the outro to repeat the intro again, the song really winds up into something else and is really quite fun to play. By that time, you’re looking at nothing but parquet floor in front of the bandstand, alas.
I’m not posting it for any particular reason, except one. My wife told me that when she was a little girl, she and her sisters danced in front of the television when this came on. Put that on his tombstone, and he’ll rest easy.
Well, birth of a craze for car chases going the wrong way on the freeway, anyway.
That’s a clip from To Live and Die in L.A., a pretty good movie in most respects, and lots of fun. It’s the perfect movie to explain the zeitgeist in 1980s Los Angeles. It was where most people got their first look at both Willem Dafoe and John Turturro, two guys destined for the future Mount Rushmore of Actors With Really Weird Faces. Oh yeah, and Daphne from Frasier, but she’s not that weird-looking, even in her underwear.
William Friedkin was the director. I misremembered that Friedkin was on the back nine of his career with this movie. With a little more research on the topic, I discovered that he started out on the back nine, and got less successful from there. He’s famous for directing The French Connection, which made all sorts of money, but it really isn’t a very good movie. But people really like car chases, I gather. Movies like The French Connection and Bullitt are known for no other reason I can divine. Friedkin was making movies right up until last year, none even remotely memorable. I swear you only have to make money once in Hollywood to keep working forevermore. Friedkin made nine movies after To Live and Die, and they all basically lost 10 million bucks apiece.
But credit where credit is due, I say. As far as I can tell, he was the first director to tell the main character to drive the wrong way on the freeway. It’s become a staple of the car chase ever since, and I’m surprised Jason Bourne doesn’t accidentally pass Jack Reacher once in while in the middle of one.
And just to, ahem, drive home the mid-eighties vibe, Wang Chung did the soundtrack. So everybody Wang Chung tonight, whatever that is. Or maybe Chun King tonight, if you prefer. Huge, huge props for playing the Steinberger plastic bass just to make my mid-80s point for me. I had one of those. Great in a bar fight. And since it’s plastic, you only have to tune it once a year or so.
I’ll Tell Me Ma is about the most Irish thing I can think of. Delivered by a Kelly family is just spiking the football, or maybe hammerin’ the sliotar home, or something:
I’ll Tell Me Ma is one of those things that’s so old and ubiquitous that it’s listed as traditional. All sorts of people have adopted it, and it’s common to change the lyrics to accommodate whatever locale you’re in. Most references to it use Belfast. The lyrics expand and contract a bit. It’s an easy singsong doggerel to improvise in, if you have a mind. The important part is the chorus:
I’ll tell me ma when I come home
the boys won’t leave the girls alone
they pull me hair and stole my comb
well that’s alright till I come home
She is handsome she is pretty
she’s the belle of Belfast city
she’s a courtin’ one two three
please won’t you tell me who is (s)he
It’s a good song to jump rope to, and many do, or did, anyway. There was a children’s game that went with it, too. Everyone stands in a circle, with one girl in the center. They sing a verse, and repeat the chorus, and at the “who is (s)he?”, the child in the center points out another to take their place, and the next verse is sung. Charming.
Of course the definitive version of the song is Van Morrison with the Chieftains, because of course it is. There are fewer cute bairns in the screencap of the Chieftains video, so we opened with the Kellys.
When I was a little kid, my older sister and her friends knew all sorts of singing and dancing things like this one. They’d skip rope and clap hands and dance in a circle in the schoolyard at recess. I wonder, is that all gone now? What’s the modern version? Do the girls go directly from diapers to a stripper pole and twerking? Do Maries still have weddings? And has anyone made Van Morrison smile since 1987?
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