We have been bombarded with important anniversaries this year. In music, they all seem to go back to 1962: The first albums by Bob Dylan (Bob Dylan) and by the Beach Boys (Surfin’ Safari) were released in the US; the Beatles’ first single, “Love Me Do” b/w “P.S. I Love You” was released in the UK (Sir Paul McCartney also turned 70 this year); the Rolling Stones had their first concert; and Andy Williams first began singing his signature song, “Moon River”. All of this historical context might have gotten rock musicians in a writing mood: Books by Keith Richards, Pete Townshend, Rod Stewart, and Neil Young all came out this year. In the larger world, 1962 was the year of the Cuban missile crisis. Also, James Meredith became the first black student to enroll at Ole Miss that year; and a handful of students decided to mark the occasion by staging unseemly protests against the recent reelection of President Barack Obama. The first James Bond film, Dr. No also came out in 1962; and the tag line for the seminal film American Graffiti was, “Where Were You in ’62?”. And then there is the unexpected death of the icon to end all Hollywood icons, Marilyn Monroe, which also happened in 1962. Closer to home, our local television station, WLOX-TV was formed in 1962, so we have been seeing a lot of old footage. Beloved Good Morning America anchor Robin Roberts – now recovering from a second round of cancer treatment – worked at WLOX for a few years and also grew up on the Coast (in Pass Christian); she almost single-handedly brought knowledge to the major media of the devastation from Hurricane Katrina in Mississippi, when most talked only of New Orleans. Chuck Scarborough got his start at WLOX-TV as well; when I lived in New York, I used to see him on the local news at WNBC-TV, where he has been the lead male news anchor for nearly 40 years. Though I purposely did not research all of these anniversaries and undoubtedly missed plenty of them for this post (I have been adding them as I think about new ones, however), I know about several others: A long-time favorite food that I still enjoy, Sun Maid Raisins was started in 1912; I lived for nearly 7 years in Jackson County, MS, which was founded in 1812; and the first book of fairy tales and folk stories that were assembled by the Brothers Grimm was published in 1812. The “unsinkable” ship Titanic went down in 1912. The first Whitman’s Sampler – the standard by which all mixed chocolate boxes should be judged IMHO (though not since their acquisition by Russell Stover in 1993 – and yes, I do think that Godiva is over-rated) – came out in 1912. The time-traveling sequences in one of my favorite romance movies, Somewhere in Time (starring Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour) were set in 1912. As I noted in the UARB post on Trillion, one of the best known albums by Rush is called 2112; this album placed second on a readers’ poll by Rolling Stone on “Your Favorite Prog Rock Albums of All Time”. My alma mater, North Carolina State University celebrated its 125th anniversary this year. And then there is the War of 1812, our nation’s first war (the Revolutionary War doesn’t count because the US wasn’t a nation then). Our local newspaper, the Sun Herald has been faithfully publishing articles on the progress of the Civil War – we are in the midst of the 150th anniversary of that one – yet I have hardly heard anything at all about the one that is 200 years old. Meanwhile, 2012 is making some history of its own. The first major newspaper not to be a “daily”, the New Orleans Times-Picayune is now published only 3 days a week. One of the leading news magazines, Newsweek is ceasing its “print” edition at the end of the year and will be available only online. Encyclopædia Britannica, which dates back to 1768, announced in 2012 that they published their final hardbound edition (32 volumes) in 2010. As to my own modest anniversary, this past year’s posts have been very long compared to previous years; there always seemed to be a lot to say, though I sense that next year’s will be shorter [boy, was I wrong about that!]. I am trying to get as much as possible of my musical knowledge . . . well, not on paper exactly, but you get the idea. The post on Trillion in particular was long because this band is/was chock-full of extremely talented musicians that included Patrick Leonard, one of the major forces behind Madonna’s incredible musical career – and that was just the beginning. In my mind, this band is second only to Wendy Waldman as the most unexpected absence from having a Wikipedia article (the sole criterion I have for marking Under-Appreciated status). The only reason that it wasn’t even longer is that I had already discussed guitarist Frank Barbalace as a member of previous UARB Wild Blue. For Trillion, I decided to mark the myriad connections to musicians and bands that do have Wikipedia articles by the use of the symbol “(W)”. By the way, I did not use duplicates – there was only one (W) in all cases. Wikipedians are mostly young and hip, so Wikipedia articles are heavily skewed toward video games and rock musicians, as opposed to what you find in, say, Encyclopædia Britannica. People who don’t use Wikipedia regularly probably don’t realize that, in addition to articles on the band, there are also individual Wikipedia articles on all or most of the members of second- and third-tier rock bands like Toto and Survivor, as well as articles on many of their albums and individual songs. For major rock bands like Led Zeppelin, there are Wikipedia articles on virtually every song that they have ever released. The Trillion post gives the reader a hint of the breadth of coverage that Wikipedia has in the world of rock music within its 4,000,000-plus articles. In any case, I finally counted up the (W) symbols in the Trillion post this morning, and there are 53 of them – and 3 of those are articles on bandmembers in Trillion itself. As I mentioned in the post, there would have been dozens more if I had also marked albums and songs having Wikipedia articles with a (W). I included more pictures this year; in the earliest posts I hadn’t even included a copy of an album cover of the UARA or UARB. I also started the Flashback series this year, where I got to revisit some of the earlier UARA’s and UARB’s from two years previous and included links to songs on YouTube or other sources. Next year, I am going to start including a Photo Gallery on those from three years previous. Here is a rundown of the past year’s (2011-2012) Under-Appreciated Rock Bands and Rock Artists: April 2012 – 1960’s folk-rock singer-songwriter LINDA PIERRE KING (several songs on two compilation albums) |