I post a weekly diary of historical notes, arts & science items, foreign news (often receiving little notice in the US) and whimsical pieces from the outside world that I often feature in "Cheers & Jeers".
OK, you've been warned - here is this week's tomfoolery material that I posted.
CHEERS to Bill and Michael in PWM, our Laramie, Wyoming-based friend Irish Patti and ...... well, each of you at Cheers and Jeers. Have a fabulous weekend .... and week ahead.
ART NOTES— an exhibition entitled Cosmos: Imagining the Universe will be at the Louisiana Art & Science Museum in Baton Rouge through July 18th.
YOUR WEEKEND READ #1 is how the January 6th Capitol ransacking destroyed much historical old-growth woodwork …. but a collection of legacy mahogany lumber (stored for over a century) at an Agriculture Department laboratory in Wisconsin — originally used for testing different types of wood for WW-I airplane propellers — can be now used in the Capitol restoration project. (h/t 1864 House).
ENERGY NOTES— the Democratic Republic of the Congo has 70% of the world’s reserves of cobalt— essential to the production of electric vehicles — and faces the challenges of safe mining without the use of child labor and unsafe practices.
THURSDAY's CHILD is named Yellow the Cat— the kitteh of the Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei (now living in Portugal).
YOUR WEEKEND READ #2 is this short essay by Shikha Dalmia and Arthur Melzer in The Bulwark on how the GOP should accept its culture war victories, instead of just stewing over its losses … lest they wind-up becoming a doomed Weimar party.
A NOTE on today’s poll: I decided to make Derek Chauvin the official loser, as it’d be a far more competitive ballot to see … who came in second? There are some other corrupt law enforcement choices available.
MEANWHILE— here is my choice for “Who Won the Week?”— railway worker Mayur Shelke at this station in the city of Mumbai, India.
SCHOOLCHILDREN in the South American nation of Uruguay have fared better with remote education during the pandemic: investing in digital education for years in addition to making it accessible to everyone: every child gets a laptop from the state, along with online teaching material and animated school books.
FRIDAY's CHILD is named Ollie the Cat— a deaf kitteh who fell forty feet into the River Mersey in north-west England, with the tide about to come in and the sun setting … where he was saved by a marine rescue unit, and seemingly doing well.
EDUCATION NOTES— the prestigious Howard University was the only HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) in the United States with a Classics Department, a part of the institution since its inception … and its decision to end the department has encountered some resistance from students and scholars such as Cornel West.
BRAIN TEASER— try this Quiz of the Week's News from the BBC ...… and the usually easier, less UK-centered New York Times quiz. There are two BBC questions that will assist you on the NYT quiz.
SEPARATED at BIRTH— MSNBC legal analysts (and former federal prosecutors) Joyce Vance and Barbara McQuade— who say they’re often mistaken for one another (which is not always obvious when Joyce is wearing eyeglasses).
...... and finally, for a song of the week ...........................… in this space last week, I noted the death of Rusty Young— the only musician to perform at every concert by the band Poco (formed in 1968) until 2013. Yet he was the first pedal-steel guitarist that I ever embraced, as I had previous to 1970 considered it as solely a country music instrument, and often with a whining sound to accompany sad songs and ballads. Rusty Young was one of the first to utilize a fuzz box and using the rotating Leslie speaker traditionally used for the Hammond B-3 and other electric organs to achieve a rocking sound. His career deserves a proper send-off.
Born in 1946 as Norman Russell Young in Long Beach, California, his family moved to Denver when he was a child and his mother brought him into country music bars on afternoons … where he took note of the pedal steel. He became proficient on that instrument (as well as a Dobro and standard guitars). He started performing in country bars at age twelve — on Sunday afternoons — and by age 16-17 was truly burning the candle at both ends: giving guitar lessons in the afternoon, playing in bars until late, then going to high school in the morning.
At age nineteen, he received a call from the most popular local rock band named Boenzee Cryque to ask if he would join, with his mother telling them, “Are you sure you want him? He’s in a country band, you know”. But join them he did, with one member their drummer George Grantham. After two years, he moved to Los Angeles and joined a band with bassist Randy Meisner.
The music lessons he gave paid off, as a former guitar student (Dickie Davis) had in the meantime become a road manager for Buffalo Springfield. And when recording their farewell album prior to break-up, Richie Furay wanted a pedal steel sound for his album track, the ballad Kind Woman (a tribute to his wife). Davis recalled Rusty Young, and when he was asked to come in and play, both Furay and Jim Messina (who had joined Springfield near its end) looked at each other during the audition and thought ….. “There’s our guy”.
While in Los Angeles, Rusty Young auditioned for what became the Flying Burrito Brothers (FBB) — but elected to join the new band that Furay and Messina were forming. In his place, the FBB hired a different pedal steel rebel — “Sneaky” Pete Kleinow, as the intrepid sfbob noted in this space last week. Kleinow had a lower profile, as the FBB was his one steady band: with a far more extensive studio career (including film recordings). The two men played a short duo version of Sunshine of Your Love.
Meanwhile, Rusty Young suggested two former bandmates: both Randy Meisner (bass) and George Grantham (drums). The original plan was to name the band Pogo — but after a cease-and-desist letter from cartoonist Walt Kelly, the new venture was christened Poco…. who were never super popular, yet along with the FBB helped create the sound of country-rock (and pave the way for the Eagles).
Today when you listen to the early years of Poco, you think “country music”. But then, there was still both a generational, political and attitude gap: so they sounded more like a rock band w/country influences to me. This was borne out on their 1971 live album Deliverin’— wow, I thought, this was different! And Rusty Young said that — with songwriters such as Furay and Messina — “We didn’t need another songwriter when Richie and Jim were in the band”, so he focused on his instrument.
Soon after, Jim Messina left to join with Kenny Loggins (in a duo you may have heard of) and Richie Furay left in 1973 to found the Souther-Hillman-Furay Band, and Rusty said,“When my job changed, it opened up a whole lot of opportunity” as he and new member Paul Cotton now assumed the lion’s share of songwriting.
In addition, Rusty Young wrote a monthly column for Guitar Player magazine, offering advice on not only the pedal steel, but musicianship in general. Readers of the magazine in polls voted him into its “Gallery of Greats” in years to come — the first pedal steel player to be so honored.
Over the years, the band’s sound moved more towards singer-songwriter “”soft rock”, with minor hits such as Heart of the Night and Rose of Cimarron. Yet at the helm was Rusty Young, through personnel changes and periodic times on hiatus.
In 2004, the band was performing an outdoor show in Springfield, Massachusetts when drummer George Grantham had a stroke on-stage. Luckily, the show was just blocks from a major medical center, and medical staff were in attendance and able to tend to him. Years later, Grantham re-joined as a vocalist (unable to resume his drumming).
Rusty Young announced his retirement in 2013 (after forty-five years) and in 2017 released a solo album. Yet he always would perform in reunion shows up until the pandemic, before his death (from a heart attack) earlier this month at the age of seventy-five. In 2013, he was inducted into the Steel Guitar Hall of Fame.
Two songs for today — one is Poco’s highest-charted hit, Crazy Love— written by Rusty Young — that reached #17 in 1979.
Perhaps his best pedal steel playing from the early days came in this medley, Grand Junction — named after the western Colorado town — and if you don’t want to hear the entire three-song medley, focus on the instrumental part from 2:50 to 5:30 to hear how his sound first grabbed me as a teen in 1971.