DrW

Born in Germany, came to the states as postdoc in 1990 to the University of Rochester. Did not understand American football initially, but then got hooked on football and the Bills. Now I am 68 and still working as university faculty, doing research, teaching, and administration. Just got some NIH funding and will continue for few more years.

Two of my favorite bands of the early 1990s were Lush and Elastica. About five years ago, Miki Berenyi (Lush) and Justin Welch (Elastica), together with Michael Conley (Modern English) and KJ McKillop (Moose), formed the band Piroshka. Overall, the melodies of the songs and their sound are reminiscent of Lush, but with a stronger emphasis on the rhythm section.

An early live performance of Siouxsie and the Banshees...

The German president during the 1960s was Heinrich Lübke. He was a very simple guy, sometimes even clumsy; his wife, Wilhelmine, had a much stronger personality. Fortunately, the German president's role is to "meet and greet"; he/she has no serious political function. There is a boatload of stories about Lübke's blunders, some true, some obviously invented. True: On a visit to Madagascar, he addressed the wife of the president as "Mrs Tananarive" - Tananarive is the French spelling for Madagascar's capital, not the name of the president. Of questionable origin: He supposedly started a speech in Cameroon with "Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Negroes". Obviously invented (the Summer Olympics in Munich took place in 1972; Lübke's presidency had ended in 1969), but still funny: At the opening ceremony of the Olympics, Lübke addresses the audience, reading from notes that he had scribbled on official stationery: "Ladies and Gentlemen, oh...oh...oh...oh..." when his wife Wilhelmine interrupts him: "Heinrich, that are the olympic rings..."

Another guilty pleasure of mine: the Bee Gees before they did their disco crap. While most of their songs of that era were overly simple and sweet, there were a few gems,

Inspired by the discussion on the main board about defensive coordinators, I remembered an incident of German soccer lore. Around the end of the 1960's, a German evangelist had a country-wide campaign with a poster stating "An Jesus kommt keiner vorbei", translated as "No one can get past Jesus". After a few days, some of the posters had been defaced by a comment scribbled on: "Ausser Libuda" ("except for Libuda"). Libuda was a German soccer player known for his dribbling skills. His nickname was "Stan" Libuda, named after the great English soccer icon Sir Stanley Matthews.

I had never heard of The Casualities. Interesting video - they seem to be somewhat older than their audience. I am not overly familiar with punk bands, but many of them are pretty short-lived. Even John Lydon slowed a bit down when he started Public Image Ltd. My favorite punk band - The Slits. Originally they were an all-girl band. In this clip the singer, Ari Up, was just 15. A few years later, they had replaced Palmolive on drums by a male drummer, and they had a slightly less aggressive sound, while making the lyrics more interesting. In the next clip, if videos of a park and middle-aged men bore you, the music starts at about 1:20. The Slits also incorporated reggae into their sound. Here they present a pretty competent cover of John Holts's "Man Next Door".

Back to Oasis, they were once sued for plagiarizing Neil Innes' song "How Sweet To Be An Idiot" in their song "Whatever". And indeed,there are astonishing similarities, especially in the beginning. For those of you unfamiliar with Innes, he was a member of the "Bonzo Dog Doodah Band" and provided music for several Monty Python projects. Here is the Oasis song... ...and here is Neil's original tune...

Great! I still remember the battle for Britpop supremacy in the mid-1990's between Oasis with the Gallagher brothers and Blur with Damon Albarn. I had always preferred Albarn's songwriting, while Liam Gallagher has the more interesting voice.

Elam, Cook, and Shakir will show what a good draft we had in 2022.

Citizen Kane

12 days ago many posters on this board they stated that they would be OK if our season would end early as long as Damar Hamlin would survive without serious damage. How fast we forget....

Before they became the Eurythmics, Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart played in a band called The Tourists.

It should be mentioned that the web site and the report claiming that cannabis consumption may be on track to overtake alcohol are coming from the cannabis industry. Thus, you should expect some bias. I am sure that beer producers can present you with lots of papers showing that cannabis consumption does not make a dent in their business.

Sometimes, there is just a mainstream pop song that makes you smile. For me, this is it...

Recently, they played one of their songs on our student-run radio station. I had never heard of "The Good, the Bad, and the Queen" before, but I always liked Damon Albarn (Blur, Gorillaz). Well, they are a kind of supergroup with Albarn, Paul Simonon (The Clash), Simon Tong (The Verve), and Tony Allen (Fela Kuti's afrobeat). The concert recorded here is beautiful. If you do not have the patience to listen to the whole concert, just try the first and the last track. Enjoy!

My son played football in middle school. When he got to high school, scheduling issues forced him to decide if he wanted to continue with football or his other extracurricular activity, band. In football, he had always been in the middle of the pack, while he was really good with the tuba in band. Thus, he decided to go on with band, and he never regretted it. Band gave him just as much exercise (especially if you have to haul around a tuba) and camaraderie as football. He continued in college and played for four years in the Longhorn Band at UT, until his recent graduation. Interestingly, UT has more kids in the band (about 400) than on the football team.

When Rolling Stone just published their newest edition of "200 Greatest Singers of All Time", many felt that Celine Dion was snubbed. I am not among them. However, if you include Ozzy and Glenn Danzig, you should also have this guy on your list... My two favorite songs, both from the album "Swordfishtrombones":

An underrated band - The Zombies. In their best moments, they came close to match the Beatles. As a drawback, their songs do not show a great deal of variety. My favorite Zombies song... Here is their second album (#243 in Rolling Stone's 2020 list of 500 best albums). To me, their hit "Times of the Season" is actually one of the least interesting tracks.

A Zappa classic...

A striking resemblance to Mussolini...

A very unusual band - Rasputina. Their usual set-up is a trio with two cellos. They have been around now for 30 years, fronted by Melora Creager on vocals and - you might have guessed it - cello. And they have done some beautiful covers...

Two versions of "Christmas Blues" by Canned Heat A short, faster one... ...and a long, slow one (with Dr. John on piano)

German band I had never heard of before I came across them on youtube. While the chat between the songs is in German, most songs are in English. Musically, a fascinating mix of punk, rock, folk, and a bit of Rammstein. Most importantly, no guitars; instead, two violins and a cello (plus bass and drums). The lead singer looks like a grown-up version of the lead character Aang in the animated TV series "Avatar: The Last Airbender" (my kids were just at the right age when that series came out; thus, I have seen a lot of it). Enjoy!

To avoid carts (here we call them "baskets") abandoned in the parking lot, our local/regional supermarket chain (United/Market Street) has employees (mostly school kids, some retirees) who push your cart to your car, load the stuff in your car, and take the cart back. You can imagine my culture shock when we moved from Rochester to Lubbock and I was shopping in the supermarket for the first time. After paying, there was suddenly this kid who wanted to steal my cart - I had to fight for it to be able to push it to my car. I was quite embarrassed after I had learned the local custom of "take out to register 11". How widely distributed is this service?