Thirty years ago, Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young and Donovan were all referred to as “the new Bob Dylan.” Springsteen’s early hits have Dylanesque lyrics, but ignored two obvious (and one not-so-obvious) fact:
Nobody could be a “new Bob Dylan.” Indeed, the fact that Bob Dylan is Bob Dylan is something of a minor miracle.
Musician Neil Young is a toy train aficionado. In the 1990s and early 2000s, he was part-owner of Lionel Trains, LLC (a leading manufacturer of toy trains, particularly in “O gauge”), and still serves on Lionel’s board of directors. Young’s interest in control systems for toy trains has led to him being named as co-inventor on seven U.S. patents related to the hobby.
Neil Young’s interest in remote control systems for model trains evolved from a series of hacks he designed to make them more usable for his son Ben, who has cerebral palsy. Young also has another son with cerebral palsy which he had with a different woman than Ben’s mother. This is a near statistical impossibility, given that cerebral palsy is not a genetic disease.
Just a quick note to Sampiro. As you implied in the OP, this isn’t much of a game. Would you please try to come up with something that people are actually interested in playing next time???
Crosby, Stills, and Nash released their first album in May of 1969. It was an immediate success, with two top-40 hits: “Marrakesh Express” and “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes.” The group added a fourth musician, Neil Young, two months later. The first live performance by the four musicians was in Chicago on August 16, 1969. The next day, they played their second live performance at a music festival called Woodstock.
Marrakesh is one of Morocco’s four “Imperial Cities,” the others being Fez, Rabat, and Meknes. They are so named because all four have at some point been Morocco’s capital. Rabat is the current one.
The movie Casablanca, which was nominated for 8 Academy Awards and won 3, was initially released just 11 months after the US entered World War II. The movie was set in December of 1941 and focused on an American who assists a Resistance leader against the Nazis. Because it presented Nazi Germany unfavorably, the movie was banned in Ireland, as it infringed on the Emergency Powers Order preserving wartime neutrality.
Swedish director Ingmar Bergman was born in Uppsala, Sweden. He did have a wife named Ingrid Bergman, born in Stockholm, but she was not the actress Ingrid Bergman, also born in Stockholm, of Casablanca fame. The actress Ingrid Bergman of Casablanca fame was born in 1915, while the Ingrid Bergman who was Ingmar Bergman‘s wife was born in 1930.
While Agnetha, Benny & Bjorn (the three blond members of ABBA) were all born in Sweden of Swedish parents) the red haired Anni-Frid was born in Norway, the product of a liason between a German Nazi soldier (who was married with children at the time) and a Norwegian mother. Knowing the prejudices the child would face in Norway, her maternal grandmother decided to give the faily a fresh start and moved them to Sweden. Frida’s mother Synni died when Frida was wo, and she was raised by her grandmother.
Most of the area that is now present-day Finland became a part of the Kingdom of Sweden in the 13th century. After the Napoleonic Wars, that area was ceded to the Russian Empire. Finland declared independence in 1917 and became a free country in 1918.
Lenin returned from exile in Switzerland and arrived in a sealed train at Finland Station in St. Petersburg to assume direction of the Bolsheviks in April 1917.
American Pie has one of Don McLean’s best word plays:
And while Lennon (or is it Lenin) read a book on Marx
The quartet practiced in the park.
Okay, so the quartet practicing in the park is obviously the Beatles, and Lennon is John Lennon, But rock music was being much more political then, so maybe it refers to Vladimir Lenin? And is Marx a reference to Karl or the Marx Brothers.
Since McLean refuses to discuss the song, it will probably never be really known.
American Pie – a favorite song! I’ve been to that corn field in Iowa where The Music Died, and also to the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake IA where they played their last concert, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper.
In play:
Don McLean was a 13-year-old paperboy in New Rochelle, New York when Holly died on 03 Feb 1959, The Day The Music Died. McLean learned about the plane crash when he cut into his stack of papers and saw the lead story. The New Rochelle Standard-Star was published daily until Oct 1998 (About The Standard-star. [volume] (New Rochelle, N.Y.) 1923-1998 « Chronicling America « Library of Congress) and is the paper delivered by Don McLean that fateful morning.
Forty-Five Minutes From Broadway is a three-act musical by George M. Cohan written about New Rochelle, New York, and which debuted on New Year’s Day, 1906. The title refers to the length of the train ride to the suburbs. The musical is best known for its title song and for the song “Mary is a Grand Old Name”, and was partly recreated in the James Cagney film Yankee Doodle Dandy (which, if you’ve never seen it, you must - you can’t keep your eyes off him).
“Broadway” in the sense of theatrical productions in Manhattan refers currently to 41 specific theatres, many of which aren’t actually on the street called Broadway.
In terms of seating capacity, the Gershwin Theatre is the largest Broadway theatre.
An “Off-Broadway” theater is defined as one in Manhattan with a seating capacity between 100 and 499. The WP Theater at 2162 Broadway is that rarity, and Off-Broadway theater that is actually on Broadway.
According to The Broadway League, the 2018–2019 season on Broadway (which ended May 26, 2019) showed a total attendance of 14,768,254 and grossed $1,829,312,140. Both figures were up nearly 10 percent from the previous year.
(I am partially responsible for this increase. I saw my first Broadway show in February of this year.)
The comic book series The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was created by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill. Moore has noted that the original concept of the series was to be “the Justice League of Victorian England,” and the series featured many characters from fiction of that period.
The original lineup of the League included Mina Murray (Harker), Allan Quatermain, Dr. Jekyll, Captain Nemo, and Hawley Griffin (the Invisible Man).