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Saturday, January 21, 2012

American Top 40 - A Weekend Tradition

Saturdays for me were a day of tradition.

As far back as I can remember, it dawned on me that every Saturday ended up beginning exactly the same way, and ended exactly the same way. To some on the outside world, it may be seen as being reluctant to change, or it could be seen as me being one of the most boring children in the entire world, but to me, it was just comforting that I had one day to myself where everything went the same.

I'd wake up on Saturday morning...usually quite early, as the best cartoon shows seemed to air before ten in the morning. I'd grab the sugary cereal du jour, and happily experience a sugar high as I watched cartoons until my brain turned to mush! After cartoons were over, I'd usually have to go out with my mother somewhere, as Saturday was a minor grocery shopping day at our household. When we got back home, I would probably then be asked to do any homework I had that was due Monday, and once that homework was finished (or mostly finished), I had the rest of the night to do whatever I wished.

Oh, how I wish I could go back to those Saturdays filled with bliss once more. Alas, they are but a fond memory.

Today's blog topic happens to be all about one of those fond Saturday memories that I hold so dear.

You see, when I was forced to do my homework (because let's face it, what kid actually WANTED to do homework?) on those lazy Saturday afternoons, I couldn't concentrate on it at all in silence. That was one of the reasons why I had a radio in my room at all times. So I could listen to the radio while I worked on my history essays, or my art projects, or that dreaded algebra I wanted to take a blowtorch to.

I can even remember the radio station that I used to listen to when I did my homework. It was PAC 93 (92.7 FM on the radio dial), which was based out of Upstate New York. The station has since been transformed to a classic rock station (at least it was last time I listened to it), but back in those days, it was your everyday Top 40 station. And on the weekends, they would air two countdown shows. One was the countdown show hosted by Rick 'Disco Duck' Dees, which was all right, if a little bit goofy.

And then there was this countdown show.



The show was called 'American Top 40', and the host of the show for much of its run was Casey Kasem.



I fondly remember doing my math homework while listening to the biggest chart hits of the week. It just wasn't a weekend without listening to Casey Kasem count down the hits. It helped me contain my stress levels when I couldn't figure out the square root of 268,324.

(The answer is 518, by the way...and yes, I used a calculator.)

The history of American Top 40 is one that I find absolutely fascinating, and the show managed to change quite a bit over the number of years it has aired. And this blog entry will look at some of the changes that took place over the years, and what the aftermath of those changes were.

First, let's take a look at how it all began.

It was the 4th of July weekend in 1970 when Casey Kasem kicked off the inaugural broadcast of American Top 40. At the time, he had just finished voice work with the Scooby-Doo cartoon series. I actually managed to find the very first opening of that first broadcast on Wikipedia, and here it is in all its glory, along with the theme song.

“Here we go with the Top 40 hits of the nation this week on 'American Top 40', the best-selling and most played songs from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Canada to Mexico. This is Casey Kasem in Hollywood, and in the next three hours, we'll count down the 40 most popular hits in the United States this week, hot off the record charts of 'Billboard' magazine for the week ending July 11, 1970. In this hour at #32 in the countdown, a song that's been a hit four different times in nineteen years! And, we're just one tune away from the singer with the $10,000 gold hubcaps on his car! Now, on with the countdown!”



Every edition of American Top 40 started off exactly the same way. Casey would introduce himself to the radio audience, explain what the countdown was, where the source of the countdown came from, and some little trivia bits about artists who had a hit on the countdown that week.

Originally broadcast in monaural sound, the show quickly switched to stereo in late 1972. The show was originally produced by Watermark Inc. (which was bought by ABC Radio in 1982, which is now known as Citadel Media). And the show was first sponsored by Tom Driscoll, of Driscoll's Strawberry Associates Inc.!

It was a show with humble beginnings, but quickly became a powerhouse on the radio.

Throughout the 1970s and much of the 1980s, Casey Kasem took American Top 40 and ran with it. The show was syndicated on over five hundred radio stations in the United States, and reports were that by the early 1980s, the show could be heard in over fifty countries. The show's popularity made it possible for the show to be expanded to four hour broadcasts instead of just three, though there was an ulterior motive for that one. With singles becoming lengthier, it was necessary to expand the broadcast or else they simply wouldn't have the time to air all forty singles on the chart.

Especially when you consider that such hits as Meatloaf's “I Would Do Anything For Love, But I Won't Do That”, Guns 'N' Roses “November Rain”, Oasis' “Champagne Supernova”, and Michael Jackson's “Thriller” were all five minutes or more!

The radio countdown was also broadcast on Saturday Morning television on NBC for a period, although that program only counted down the Top 10 hits. You can watch a clip of the television show by clicking on this link.  This edition was from January 1981.

Aside from the music though, there were a lot of features that Casey Kasem incorporated into his show that made it stand out. It was the first show that used number jingles to count down the songs, and in later years of the show, there were two sets of number jingles used. An upbeat one for up-tempo songs, and a slower version for ballads.

It was also one of the few chart shows to incorporate a segment known as “The Long Distance Dedication”, which first kicked off during the summer of 1978. The segment began when a staffer of the radio program at the time, found a letter in the mail written by a fan who wanted to request the song “Desiree” by Neil Diamond, for his girlfriend of the same name who was moving away. Over the years that Casey hosted the countdown, he would usually have two “Long Distance Dedications” to air, and usually these dedications were for remembering a lost love, or a message to a current love stating how much they were loved. Here's an example of this in action from a chart airing in May 1986.



Of course, this segment was the scene of a meltdown in which Casey lost his cool because he had to read a “Long Distance Dedication” in memory of a deceased pet after just playing an up-tempo dance hit just prior. The segment never aired on the show itself, but several links to the incident have been posted online. You can look it up if you wish to, but I won't post it here. All that I have heard was that the song that had aired prior to the fated “Long Distance Dedication” was this one below.



Yeah. Awkward. At least it wasn't “Who Let The Dogs Out”...

American Top 40 was also a treasure trove for trivia! Before the days of the Internet, many people tuned into American Top 40 to get all the news about their favourite artists and bands. On every edition of the countdown, Casey would precede the number one hit of the week with a story about the band, the songwriters, even about a funny story involving fans. In some ways, it helped the radio listener feel as though they were getting to know their favourite artists even better.

But that wasn't all he did.

He sometimes had special reports based on a specific style of music, usually preceding a chart hit that emulated that style. He would have a segment entitled “Whatever Happened To...?”, which gave updates on artists who hadn't had a hit on the charts for at least five years or more. He would give a list of songs that were topping other charts, such as country, alternative, or adult contemporary. He'd even answer questions from listeners who wrote in asking for information about songs that were played on the chart. For many people, Casey Kasem was their link to every piece of music trivia imaginable.

At the end of every edition of the countdown, Casey would sign off with his trademark closing spiel.

“Keep your feet on the ground, and keep reaching for the stars!”

And for the first eighteen years of American Top 40's run, Casey Kasem was definitely the go-to guy for the Top 40 songs of the week, as well as the information that came along with it.

So when it was announced that Casey Kasem was vacating the very show that he helped create in 1988, listeners all over the world were stunned at the news. Casey Kasem was American Top 40. How could he ever be replaced? Why did he leave?

The reason Casey left was due to creative control and contract issues between himself and ABC Radio. Billboard Magazine had reported that salary issues were also a main factor behind Casey Kasem leaving the show.




At any rate, Casey's last stint of hosting the countdown was August 6, 1988, and the following week, Shadoe Stevens took over the hosting duties of American Top 40. Although I have no problem with how Shadoe hosted the program, I'll admit that I was upset that Casey Kasem was no longer the host of the program, and apparently a lot of people felt the same way. They never really warmed up to Shadoe as host of the program, although I do believe that he did his best given that he had some really tough shoes to fill.



But if you thought that we had seen the last of Casey Kasem, think again. In January 1989, Casey Kasem came back on the radio airwaves with a new radio show, Casey's Top 40, produced by Westwood One Radio. From the moment Casey's new show debuted on January 21, 1989, quite a few radio stations dropped American Top 40 with Shadoe Stevens from their schedules to carry Casey's new show.

On one hand, it was good for Casey, knowing that he had such a loyal fanbase. On the other hand, you really had to feel terrible for Shadoe Stevens.

Unlike American Top 40, which counted down the hits in Billboard Magazine, Casey's Top 40 counted down the hits from Radio & Records magazine instead, which lead to an almost similar playlist as rival Rick Dees' Weekly Top 40 program. As Casey's Top 40 grew in popularity, American Top 40 kept plummeting. The show was cancelled in the United States for a brief period beginning July 9, 1994, and just a few months later, the show was pulled from foreign markets by the beginning of 1995, to be replaced with either Rick Dees' program, or The World Chart Show.

Casey's Top 40 would run almost an additional decade, ceasing production in March 1998 when yet again another conflict arose regarding creative control. With American Top 40 going on hiatus in 1995, Casey Kasem wanted to change the name of his program back to American Top 40 after getting the rights back from ABC. However, Westwood One refused to accommodate his request, so Casey left the company, took with him the American Top 40 name, and rebooted the American Top 40 chart with AMFM Radio syndication. On March 28, 1998, the American Top 40 program was revived after a three year hiatus, and Casey served as host of the program for the next five years.

However, as much as we don't like to admit it, all good things eventually came to an end. And in 2003, Casey Kasem left the hosting duties of American Top 40 permanently. He would still host other programs on radio until 2009 when he retired from the radio industry for good.



American Top 40 still lives on though. Hosted by Ryan Seacrest since 2004, the program continues to count down the forty biggest hits in the world...but I have to admit, part of me still wishes that Casey still hosted the program. I know that it's an impossibility these days since Casey Kasem is turning 80 this year, and is probably enjoying his retirement. But Casey Kasem was such a huge part of my childhood, and at least with him still hosting the program, I can at least feel like I can go back to those carefree days of being a child.

At least some radio stations are rebroadcasting old episodes of American Top 40 with Casey at the helm. I suppose that's some consolation.


Friday, January 20, 2012

How The Cast Of "Blossom" Blossomed

I'm constantly in awe of people who can work on two or more projects at once.

Just going by personal experiences, I've never been able to multitask. Any efforts that I have made to try doing two projects at the same time have never gone well at all. Usually when I try to do two projects at once, one of two things happen. I either get so bored with one project that I leave it unfinished while I work on the second, or I churn out two below-average works that I don't have any pride in.

So, needless to say, I have total admiration for people who can work on two different projects at once. Even more admiration for those who manage to take both of those projects and use them to entertain a wider audience than they are accustomed to.

This is NOT an invitation for you all to start texting on a mobile phone while you are driving a car. Not only is it illegal in much of North America, but it is incredibly foolish to do. So don't even think about it.

I'm actually referring to people who may be a star on a television show or a drama who balance their commitment to the show with other projects that they have wanted to do. We see it all the time in the world of Broadway. Many people who have acted in soap operas, sitcoms, and films have made appearances on Broadway while filming their shows at the same time. One example I can think of right off the bat is Neil Patrick Harris, who has made several Broadway appearances while filming his sitcom “How I Met Your Mother”.

He's not the first or the only one to wear two hats at the same time in the world of entertainment. I'm positive that during the filming of the sitcom “Friends”, all six main cast members had at least one movie project on the go during filming, or when the show went on summer hiatus. I'm doubly sure that this could apply to hundreds of actors and actresses today.

Some people have been known to take a step 'backwards' in their career, going from high-profile roles to low-profile ones. Take movie actor James Franco, who filmed a couple of stints recently on the soap opera, “General Hospital”, citing his work on the show as 'performance art'. Somehow he managed to balance filming “General Hospital” with his other film projects on the go, all while taking college courses. James Franco must have been one busy beaver during that time. I often wonder how he did it.

In some cases, celebrities may take on roles that they have never thought of as a challenge, or even as a way to expand their audience. During 2008, Brooke Shields was starring on the drama “Lipstick Jungle”, which was a show clearly marketed towards a specific audience. At the same time, Brooke was also filming guest appearances on the Disney show “Hannah Montana”, playing the role of the deceased mother of the title character. By doing this, she managed to attract another audience...small children. In hindsight, it was probably a great career move for Brooke, as well as a personal one. With Brooke having young children herself, they may not have been old enough for “Lipstick Jungle”, but at least with “Hannah Montana”, they could watch their mother on a show that was more age-appropriate.

Then there are those people who wear both an acting hat and a singing hat. Usually both at the same time. And there's lots of examples where this has been shown.

David Cassidy is a prime example of this. While he was filming “The Partridge Family”, he had a #1 hit in 1970 with the song “I Think I Love You”.

Same deal with television actor, Jack Wagner, who had a #2 hit with “All I Need” while he acted in the soap opera “General Hospital”, or Rick Springfield, who himself had a #1 song with “Jessie's Girl” while acting on the same soap. Even Ricky Martin was dabbling in musical offerings while he starred on “General Hospital”.

(Geez...what is it with “General Hospital” and actors who masquerade as singers?)

And then there's this guy...who released this song in 1993.



All right. You can say it. The song is forgettable, the video is outdated, and people really did have terrible fashion sense in 1993. I should know. I think I wore some of it.

But Joey Lawrence released this song on MTV and MuchMusic, and it certainly made an impact on the audience that it was supposed to attract.

You see, long before Justin Bieber was even born, Joey Lawrence was considered to be one of those “Tiger Beat” cover boys. Um...not that I ever READ “Tiger Beat” or anything like that. Just that some of the girls in my grade school classes used to have subscriptions to the magazine and would often bring them into class. If anything, the only reason I glanced at the magazine was to correct all of the spelling mistakes that the magazine made.

But, I'm going wildly off track here, so let's get back on before we really go off course.

This entry is about a sitcom that Joey Lawrence acted in while he filmed the video for “Nothin' My Love Can't Fix”.



I'm talking about “Blossom”, the NBC sitcom that aired from 1991 to 1995. The sitcom, in addition to Lawrence, also starred Jenna von Oy, Ted Wass, Michael Stoyanov, and Mayim Bialik as the title character of Blossom Russo.



Now, here's a confession to make here. I've maybe only seen two episodes of “Blossom” in my entire life. Therefore, it's a bit hard for me to actually give an opinion on whether or not I liked or disliked it. I managed to watch a few episodes of it online though, so I have a bit of an idea as to how the characters acted, and how they interacted. I don't really understand the plots of certain episodes. So, I'm going to give the Cliff's Notes version of the show summary.

But I'm all right with that, because I really want to focus on a topic that stems from “Blossom” instead.



“Blossom” was a sitcom that on the surface looked like a typical coming-of-age sitcom. The main character, Blossom, was once in a family that resembled a typical nuclear family of a mom, a dad, and three children.

Somewhere along the way, Blossom's mother decided that she wanted more out of life than to be a wife and mother. So she packs up her belongings, moves away to pursue a career and life for herself while the rest of the family is left to deal with the aftermath. To many people, they might feel justified to call her a bad mother, and spew venom at Blossom's mother for making such a selfish choice, and I'm almost inclined to agree with that. I probably would have had I not read that during the series, they brought Blossom's mother back to the show in the form of singer Melissa Manchester. So, I'm guessing that at some point, that relationship was mended, though I'm sure that there was a lot of drama associated with it.

Anyway, Blossom having to deal with the absence of her mother during some of the most impressionable years of her life was bad enough. Imagine being the only girl in a house full of guys. There was Blossom's father, Nick, who was a musician who floated from gig to gig in order to support his family. In addition, there was Blossom's two older brothers. We had Tony (Stoyanov), the oldest of the brothers, who was a recovering drug and alcohol addict who ended up getting married in Las Vegas after falling off the wagon. Despite this, he ended up becoming a paramedic as well as a father of a son named Nash. The younger of the brothers was Joey (Lawrence), a jock who lived to play baseball, but didn't exactly live up to his potential when it came to brains. Oh, and he was also known for his one-word catchphrase.



Yep...there it is.



Oh, but lest you think that Blossom was completely without female influence, you'd be mistaken, as Blossom had a best friend whom Nick often saw as a second daughter. Her name was Six LeMeure (von Oy). Oh, and the fact that she was named after a number? Turns out that she was named after the number of beers that both her parents drank on the night that she was conceived.

Classy.

Given the unusual story behind her unusual name, is it any wonder why Six decided to hang around the Russo residence instead of her own home? Just by looking at some of the summaries of the show on the Internet Movie Database, it's clear that Six had a really rough childhood, and during the time that she was on the show, she became dependent on alcohol, suffered a pregnancy scare, and dated a much older man. Considering that “Blossom” was meant to be a sitcom, it dealt with some rather heavy topics of discussion, wouldn't you say? I guess you could call it a '90s version of “The Facts Of Life”...albeit loosely.

So, now that you know a little bit about what the show was about, let's steer this blog entry right around and link it to the original idea that I was talking about at the beginning.

And looking at “Blossom”, it's amazing to see just how many people on that show ended up working on other projects either while they were doing the show, or after they did the show. Much of the cast stayed in the profession of acting, but others made a career switch or two.



Let's take a look at Joey Lawrence, since we saw an example of this earlier in this piece. He ended up releasing an entire album in early 1993 while he was filming Blossom, and the song I posted up above managed to become a Top 20 hit! Not a bad effort there. And during the show's filming, he guest starred in other NBC sitcoms, and made an appearance in a Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen video. Granted, not all these projects were ones that were memorable, but when you consider that Joey Lawrence had always wanted to record music, starring in these projects were one way to help satisfy those desires. He's released some music post-Blossom, but these days, he's gone back to acting with the ABC Family program “Melissa & Joey”, and performing on “Dancing With The Stars”.



As it turns out, Lawrence wasn't the only cast member to dabble in music. Although her music career was largely post-Blossom as well, Jenna von Oy released an album in 2007 called “Breathing Room”. But when the show was going on, Jenna was in a bit of a pickle. Although she had won the role of Six in “Blossom”, another show that she shot a pilot for was also picked up for a season. The show was a short-lived sitcom “Lenny”, which aired from 1990 to 1991, right around the same time that “Blossom” was being filmed. As a result, during the first season of “Blossom”, Jenna had to be put on recurring status while she honoured her commitment to “Lenny”. When Lenny went off the air in 1991, Jenna became a full cast member. But knowing that she was doing two sitcoms at the same time...that had to be a lot of pressure for her. Still, I think that she handled the stress of it very well. She even filmed a few television movies along the way both during and after “Blossom”. I wonder what she's doing now, come to think of it. I haven't heard from her in some time.

There's not a whole lot of information floating around for Ted Wass or Michael Stoyanov. Ted stepped away from acting shortly after “Blossom” wrapped up in 1995, and is now seen behind the scenes as a director. 



And Stoyanov left “Blossom” to go work in the world of comedy writing, taking on jobs for “Late Night With Conan O'Brien” and “Mad TV”.

And, then there's the star of the show, Mayim Bialik, whose own list of accomplishments deserve some accolades on their own. Much like Jenna von Oy, Bialik was committed to two shows at once when she won the part of Blossom. She was also tied to a FOX network show called “Malloy” when filming for “Blossom” began in late 1990. But “Malloy” crashed and burned after just half a dozen episodes, freeing Bialik to do “Blossom” full-time. During “Blossom's” last season, Bialik also held a recurring guest role on “The John Larroquette Show”, playing a girl named Rachel.

It wasn't until “Blossom” ended that we got to see Mayim really exhibit her coat of many colours, so to speak. In the decade since “Blossom” ended, she was a voice artist for many animated programs, appeared in a couple of feature films, and even earned herself a Ph.D in neuroscience!

How's that for impressive?



Of course, these days, Mayim has decided to go back to show business, and found that success did strike twice, as she won the role of Amy Farrah Fowler in “The Big Bang Theory” towards the end of the show's third season.

So, as you can see, the cast of “Blossom” managed to find a way to juggle several projects at once, and still managed to do quite well for themselves. I could be mistaken, but I don't think I've heard any scandalous stories at all regarding the “Blossom” cast at all. Of course, part of it could have been that they were simply too busy with all their side projects to actually get into much trouble, but that's merely speculation.

The point is that I admire all of these people for managing to put in their all in everything that they did. If anything, I'm almost sorry that I did miss the original run of “Blossom”, because based on everything that I read during the research I did for this blog, it did seem like a really decent show.

Who knows? Maybe I'll go online after this and watch the show's old episodes, so I can really find a way to appreciate the hard work that cast must have done to put the show together in addition to the other projects that they worked on during filming.

Well...while I still CAN anyway...

Thursday, January 19, 2012

The Only PIPA I Enjoy Is Middleton In This SOPA Opera

Before I begin this installment of my Thursday Confessional for today, there's an issue that I would like to bring up. One of which I'm sure most of you are all aware of, especially after the events of yesterday in several online communities.

Yesterday, several high-traffic sites (including Wikipedia and Craigslist just to name a couple) went dark in a show of solidarity against a couple of bills that the United States Congress is set to vote on.



These bills include the 'Stop Online Piracy Act' and the 'Protect Intellectual Property Act'. Most of you probably know of these bills as 'SOPA' and 'PIPA', though.

If these bills are passed in U.S. Congress, the changes to the Internet as we know it would be huge. And many of us (myself included) do not see this as such a good thing at all. The act would essentially hold people who are guilty of online copyright infringement responsible, and they could be subjected to harsh penalties.

The possibilities regarding this act could spell doom for millions of people who use the Internet each day from looking up recipes, to interacting with people socially, to threatening our own right to online free speech as we all know it. It's scary to think that if this law were passed, our right to free information might be severely compromised.

Just on a personal level, the passing of SOPA or PIPA would undoubtedly affect my blog, as well as several thousand blogs all over the world. If this law is passed, there's a good chance that my blog could be blocked to every American user who reads it.

As it so happens, my blog is most read by American citizens, followed closely by Canadian and United Kingdom residents. In short, with SOPA and PIPA, there's a good chance that APCAGTL will cease to exist, as well as thousands of other people who blog on a daily basis.

There's also evidence that the passing of SOPA or PIPA will further damage the economy, as these bills have the potential to cripple thousands of online businesses and services. The estimates are that millions of jobs in the United States alone could be lost, and millions more could be negatively affected by the laws if they are passed.

In short, if these laws are passed, it has the potential to do more harm than good. For everyone.

Fortunately, the voting supposedly doesn't begin until later on in the month, so there's still time to get active. And how we get active is by signing one of the online petitions that are floating around the Internet, begging U.S. Congress not to let these laws pass. While I do agree that the problem of piracy needs to be addressed, and a solution should be found, this is not the way to handle it. Don't punish everyone just because of the crimes of a select few.

If you wish to protest against SOPA and PIPA, there's lots of places that you can go to make yourself heard. Just click on each of these links below, and sign the petitions. Maybe it won't make a difference, but if you feel as strongly about this as I do, take the time, and take the chance. Your voice could make a difference between keeping our Internet the way it is, or transforming it into something out of George Orwell's '1984'.

https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/

http://americancensorship.org/

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/stop_sopa/

Make no mistake. Although this is an American issue, this WILL affect websites all over the world, including the possibility of this blog going dark.

With that sobering thought in mind, let's go ahead with this Thursday Confessional.

THURSDAY CONFESSION #3: I'm disgusted by people who claim to have MY best interests at heart when they don't have a clue what it is they're standing up for.

It really bothers me when shows are pulled from airwaves, or when books are banned because someone with a weak heart is offended by it. It's probably one of my biggest pet peeves.

I firmly believe that if someone is offended by content within a movie, book, or television show, they have only one of two choices. Take it or leave it.

If there's a movie that might have a scene that involves nudity, for example, there's lots of ways that people can handle it. They may watch the movie as it was meant to be watched. They can choose not to watch the movie. Those are really the only choices that would make sense.

But when someone goes all 'Helen Lovejoy' on the movie, writing dozens of letters to politicians, actors, directors, cinematographers, choreographers, fashion consultants, whoever worked on the movie, to tell them to stop producing such filth...well, I'm sorry, but I just don't agree with that at all.

What does it mean by going 'Helen Lovejoy' on someone? Well, I'll tell you.


Helen Lovejoy is a character on The Simpsons. She is the wife of Reverend Lovejoy. But, don't let this preacher's wife fool you. She may seem virtuous and serene at first glance, but once you get to know her, you'll almost be sorry you did. She even makes Marge Simpson look liberal in comparison, keeping in mind that Marge Simpson tried to get Itchy & Scratchy pulled from television herself (and that's a story that we'll get to a little later in this article).

Yeah, Helen Lovejoy is probably one of my least-liked Simpsons characters on the whole show. She ranks lower than Poochie the dog, Uter, Sherri & Terri, Lyle Lanley, Frank “Grimey” Grimes, and Crystal Meth.

(Crystal Meth being the illegitimate daughter of Brandine and Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel.)

The reason why I can't stand Helen Lovejoy? She's a total hypocrite.

She wants practically everything 'sinful' taken away from the world, and often makes the passionate plea “WON'T SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!?”


Yeah, that can get annoying real quickly.

I suppose that on one hand, you can look at her and say...well, you know something, at least she's standing true to the good old-fashioned morals that she was raised with, and standing up against something that she believes in.

Thing is, she doesn't.

I don't think that she cares about censorship all that much. I highly doubt that she even cares about the children at all. In fact, if you were to really go deep into Helen Lovejoy's psyche, you'd see that behind the pink sweater vest and squeaky voice, there's a really nasty woman inside that doesn't have even a shred of decency for mankind whatsoever.

Granted, her apathetic husband certainly doesn't do her any favours, but at least he's prone to having bursts of wisdom and genuine kindness deep inside his soul. Helen's just mean-spirited and nasty. While she makes a huge show being the wife of a preacher, and standing up against every piece of literature that is offensive, and magazine that is smutty, she's not doing it to protect everyone else from being corrupted. She's doing it to look important.

Just as I suspect that some of the supporters for SOPA and PIPA are doing by throwing their support for these potentially damaging bills. And, yes. I did go there.

Twenty-two years later, and Helen Lovejoy still has a lot to learn. Turns out, by gossiping about her neighbours and openly taking delight in other people's misfortunes, she's not really much better than the pseudo personality she's put on, claiming that she does what she does out of the goodness of her heart.

We all know by now that this isn't the case. She's just doing what she does to prove something to herself. No matter how bad she comes across or how smug she gets, as long as she gets what she wants, it's perfectly fine for her, regardless of how many people get hurt in the process.

I suspect that for however long The Simpsons last, Helen Lovejoy will be out there in full force, supporting bills that could take away every single one of our freedoms, completely oblivious to the full extent of what could happen if she did get her way. After all, if SOPA and PIPA existed in the world of Springfield, she'd have difficulty finding out gossip on her neighbours if her favourite web haunts were censored, wouldn't she?


One could argue that Helen Lovejoy isn't as bad as Marge Simpson though. It's no secret that the martiarch of the Simpson family has launched a slew of protests and campaigns to protect the innocence of children. And it is true that depending on the issue at hand, Marge Simpson has the potential to be just as obnoxious as Helen Lovejoy.

There was one episode though in which Marge was forced to rethink her stance on an issue, and once she had, she realized that she was incorrect in the way she approached it.


The episode was “Itchy & Scratchy & Marge”, which aired during the 1990/91 season of 'The Simpsons'. In that episode, Marge is horrified to learn that an accident in which Maggie clubs Homer over the head with a mallet could have been inspired by Maggie watching a cartoon short of 'The Itchy & Scratchy Show', a show known for Itchy the Mouse terrorizing Scratchy the Cat in a variety of cruel and inhuman methods.

Marge decides to take action against the show, despite protests from Bart and Lisa. With a group of mothers (including Helen Lovejoy and Maude Flanders, wife of incredibly religious neighbour Ned Flanders), she stands outside the studios where Itchy & Scratchy is produced, and launches a campaign against the cartoon. She claimed that the show was way too violent for children to be watching, and vowed to protest until the company took action. Of course, the company refused to listen at first, and the media spent more time mocking Marge's crusade than anything. She even was written into an episode of Itchy & Scratchy, and if you click here, you can see that it wasn't exactly an appearance that flattered her.


It wasn't until she became a guest on a talk show and passionately issues a plea to the viewing audience (in front of a clearly unprepared Krusty The Klown) to write the studio letters to replace the bloodshed with hugs and laughter that the message she was trying to get across was finally heard. Within days, the Itchy & Scratchy show was retooled to include 75% more warm fuzzies, and kids turned off their televisions in drones to go and play outside.

Apparently having Itchy & Scratchy loving and sharing just didn't quite have the same impact as fighting and biting, and the show really suffered as a result.

But then something happened that would rethink Marge's stance. Soon after Itchy & Scratchy changed their format, the very group that Marge helped found soon focused their attention on other forms of media that they could protest against to get censored or cleaned up.

Including works of classic art.

Have any of you ever seen the sculpture 'David' by famed Italian artist Michelangelo Buonarotti? I haven't seen it up close, but have seen pictures of it in various books and magazines. Let me show you a picture of the statue now.


It's definitely majestic and powerful. Oh, and the fact that he's completely naked? To me, it means nothing. It's meant to be art. I don't get offended by this statue at all. I mean, when I step out of the shower in the morning and look in the mirror, I'm not offended by what I see...aside from the fact that sometimes I wish I had the same physique as the damn statue.

But enough of that.

Anyway, when word got out that 'David' would be exhibited in Springfield as part of a cross-country tour, Marge's group urges her to protest the statue, saying that the statue in all its nakedness was offensive, and needed to be banned from Springfield.

Ah, but wait. Before the group could force 'David' into a pair of tighty-whities, Marge finally saw some sense, and declared that it was not right to censor a masterpiece such as 'David'. Naturally, some media outlets and members of her own group turned against her, and even called her out on her hypocrisy. They wondered how she could stand by one form of media, but wish for others to be censored due to indecency. When Marge had to admit that she didn't have an answer, the group disbanded, and Itchy & Scratchy returned to its winning formula.

To Marge, though, it didn't matter. In the end, she realized that she couldn't stop anyone from releasing or creating what they thought was art.

Because art, like everything else, is subjective.

Some may find it revolutionary and inspiring. Others may call it sick and depraved. But I do believe that everyone has to have some outlet to get it out there. If I don't like it, I might state my opinion, but it would take a lot to outrightly offend me. And even if it did, I'm more likely to sit back and watch as it collapses under the weight of scrutiny, rather than take action to have it removed. Even Marge Simpson must have lightened up a bit as she later agreed to do a spread for Playboy Magazine in recent years!



I strongly suspect that the fact that the SOPA and PIPA laws are garnering so much negative feedback from millions of people that they'll likely be shelved indefinitely. I certainly hope that this is the case.

If you look back on other instances where censorship was a factor, you'll see that some compromises were made. Take Tipper Gore and her Parents Music Resource Center, who took steps to get songs with offensive lyrics banned for good. A compromise was reached in that case, where Parental Advisory stickers were placed on album covers as a warning to consumers. Some people didn't like it, but at least the albums were still able to be sold as long as the sticker was clearly visible.

Perhaps a compromise could be reached in this case as well, which would ensure that people guilty of piracy would be prosecuted while people could still have the freedom to enjoy the media that is being broadcast. And we're certainly seeing some of this in action with several record and film companies opening up their own YouTube accounts to display their own content to members...some of which I've likely featured in this blog.

I'm certainly not looking to make a profit with this blog. It's just meant as a fun activity that I do each day to sharpen up my writing skills so that one day I can make a living with writing. I don't get paid any money to write this blog. If anything, the vast majority of these entries are positive in nature. It's all in good fun, and I enjoy doing this.

SOPA and PIPA is threatening my right to continue sharing this blog.

In the end, only you can decide what is right, and only you can choose whether to support the bills or not. All I ask is that you really do your research and know what your stance is before you form an opinion.

This blog post is just my own viewpoint.  All I ask is that we all retain the right to continue having them.

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

A Bunch Of Munsch

I grew up in a small town. I still live in a small town. Some are perfectly okay with small-town living, and find a way to live a rewarding and meaningful life in a small town.

As for me...I'm not going to sugarcoat things. Living in a small town wasn't exactly the most pleasant experience for me. Even now, with the town slightly bigger than it was a child, I'm still not one hundred per cent in love with small town life. I think mostly because of the fact that it seems that in smaller towns, everyone knows your business, and if they don't, they try to get the information that they want through the various gossips who seem to be there for everything.

Then again, I have a blog, and I use it to open up my world, so maybe I shouldn't really complain too much. At least on here, I have control over what I wish to say, so that could be the difference.

Still, the idea of growing up in a small town does have its perks as well as its flaws.  

Allow me to share with you one of those perks.  

There's a building located at the end of our downtown core in town. Our town's arts center. At that building, there were concerts, stand-up comics, operas, plays...it even doubled as a movie theater during the period in which our town was left without one between 2001 and 2006.

That arts center happens to be the place where some of my fondest childhood memories took place.

When a stage company put on a performance of 'Charlotte's Web' (which I talked about one week ago today), I was there, and I loved it. A year later, we went to see a performance of the classic novel 'Winnie The Pooh'. We also had a couple of instances where during our French class, we went to the arts center to see a performance by a children's entertainer where the whole performance was done in French. So, not only did we get to see concerts, but we ended up seeing them in two different languages!

I even ended up on the stage of the arts center...though to be fair, I was with the elementary school concert band at a music festival as part of a school entry. I still made it to the stage.

So, why would I bring up our little town arts center in this blog entry?

Simple. The subject of this blog entry is someone who I actually saw at our arts center way back in early 1990. I was just barely nine years old at the time, and yet I remember it as if it were yesterday. I even got to meet the person who I got to see at our arts center...my first brush with celebrity, if you will.

The person in question is a beloved children's author who is hugely popular in Canada and the United States. He came to the arts center to tell stories that he had written to a large crowd of children and their parents (as well as making up impromptu stories on the fly).  He was an author who was well-liked by everyone I went to school with, and his books were almost always hard to find in our school library since they kept getting checked out as fast as they were returned.

An author who not only delighted us with stories, but also stayed behind to meet with every single child who took the time to come and see him on stage.

I was one of those lucky kids who managed to meet him.  Although it was over twenty years ago, it was definitely one of the highlights of my whole life thus far. He was polite, friendly, and even called me by name. You could tell that he was really interested in getting to know every single one of his fans, and I'll never forget that day as long as I live. 

That author is Robert Munsch.



Robert Munsch is an author whom I wanted to do a blog entry on for a long time. I don't know why I even waited until 2012 to do it. The man is a creative genius as far as I'm concerned.  Robert Munsch has been one of the main influences in my choice to try and pursue a career in writing myself (though admittedly he has had far more success in the craft than I have had).

Of course, Robert Munsch has been writing stories longer than I've been alive. There's plenty of time, right?

Robert Munsch is widely considered to be one of the most well-known and successful children's authors of all time, and millions of children have probably read at least one of his books. There was even a television series that aired on CTV called 'Bunch of Munsch' (which is where the title of this entry came from). You can see the intro below this paragraph.



While Robert Munsch was at his creative peak with his books, he was also battling a few personal problems in his own life...but we'll get to that a little later.

First the basics, and as it turns out, his official website provides us with a lot of information. Born in 1945 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he was one of nine children. It seemed as though Munsch had a rather typical upbringing, and had some decent relations with his siblings. Sure, one of them kicked Robert in the mouth one day after he got his braces removed, but such was life for someone with nine siblings.  It does however make me feel happy that I only had two, I have to say.

One thing that really shocked me though was just how much my life sort of paralleled with Robert Munsch's. Robert Munsch had stated that he almost flunked first grade. In my case, I too was almost held back in first grade. Though to be fair, in Robert's case, he openly admits to not being a great academic success. In my case, it was because my first grade teacher openly made my life a living hell on earth.

Another comparison between us? Well, Robert stated that he had always felt like the 'weird' kid. I often felt like I was the weird and misunderstood kid no matter what class (or school) I was in.

On top of all that, Robert Munsch had said that when he was in high school, he didn't exactly get along with most people there. He was more content reading books. And you really don't want me to get into how much I despised going to high school, mostly because I had a very low opinion of quite a few of my high school classmates.

But the way I handled it differs from the way that Robert Munsch initially handled it. In my case, I threw myself into the world of writing, figuring that if I couldn't live the life I wanted to live at the time, I could write myself a better one, so to speak. Initially, Robert Munsch wanted to become a Jesuit priest!

So, how did Munsch end up switching his career path from the priesthood to the writer's studio?

It all began when he did some volunteer work at an orphanage while he was studying to become a priest. After just a short time working at the orphanage, he had a sort of epiphany that he was somehow supposed to find a way to find a career where he made children happy, as he adored children. So, he got a job working in daycare, and during this time took some additional classes in child studies at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. At that school, he had gotten a job placement at a preschool classroom where he made up a story for the circle time period about a boy who would rather sing all day and all night instead of going to bed.



That story later became the basis for one of Munsch's earliest books, 'Mortimer'.

It soon became clear that Robert Munsch had some sort of talent in entertaining children through his stories, and over the course of a decade, he had gotten married, moved to Canada, and continued to come up with more and more hilarious tales which children enjoyed.

And Munsch's stories seemed to get a lot of attention from his colleagues that he worked with, one of which happened to be the wife of his boss who happened to be the librarian of a children's library. She insisted that Munsch record his stories and send them off to get them published. He didn't listen at first, but after constant prodding (plus a forced sabbatical by his boss at the time), he submitted ten stories, suitable for publishing purposes. Nine were rejected.



The tenth one was a story called 'Mud Puddle', which would eventually become Munsch's first published work. It sold roughly three thousand copies during its first year. By the tenth year it was on the market, it had its best sales yet.

I guess in one way, this is another connection that I share with Robert Munsch. We're both kind of stubborn and we tend to tune people out whenever they give advice. In Robert's case, it worked out to his favour that he took a chance on the advice. Maybe I should look at him by example in reference to my own life. What do you think?

At any rate, Robert Munsch has written a total of fifty-four books in his writing career so far, and is wildly popular in his own right. And, this is despite a 2010 admission that for years, he battled OCD and manic-depression, and Robert has openly admitted that he has endured a battle with drugs and alcohol as a sort of coping mechanism to deal with it. Of course, watching him on stage twenty-two years ago, you'd never know it. He was in a great mood, he was happy, he treated the kids in the audience like gold...there was no sign that anything was even wrong with him.

If anything, Robert Munsch being so candid and honest about the struggles that he had to go through in his own life only makes him MORE of a role model to look up to. It shows that anybody can have struggles in life...even a famous children's author like Robert Munsch. For him to rise above those struggles and take his life back, even if it did take years, is nothing short of inspirational. I just hope that by him coming forward with what he had to go through, it will help others who might be suffering in silence seek out treatment to help themselves.

Besides, all of the work he has done promoting his name and his brand far outweighs any dark aspects to his past. 


Did you know that he would often get letters from children all over the world asking him to visit their schools to read them stories? And more often than not, he would respond by going to these schools for an unannounced visit? To see the delight on all of the kids faces when they saw that their letters not only got answered, but their wishes granted on top of that? That had to have been an awesome sight to behold!

Robert Munsch would also travel around the country of Canada to do tours (one reason why he came to my little arts center in my small town), and while he was on tour, he would forego the hotel rooms to stay with a family that lived in the town he was currently in. He loved interacting with families in their homes because not only did it save him some money, but he actually got a lot of inspiration from the people who lived in the homes. 'Moira's Birthday', for instance, was written after he stayed with a family in the Northwest Territories.

He'd even take it one step further when Scholastic Book Clubs issued a contest for schools to enter where the winner would have Munsch visit their classroom. The teachers had assumed that he'd drop by the school for an hour and tell them stories. Instead, he told the teacher to pick two random names out of a hat, and those two lucky students would have Robert Munsch as a houseguest for at least one day. Who knows how many stories Robert was inspired to write as a result of this?

Even some of Munsch's stories had some awesome themes to them. Granted, some of them were silly fun, as in the case with 'Thomas' Snowsuit', where at some point every character in the book ends up in their underwear. Still, there were some stories that had fantastic morals and life lessons.



Take his 1980 book 'The Paper Bag Princess', one of my all-time favourites. You have Princess Elizabeth, a beautiful, yet spoiled, princess with a lavish wardrobe, more shoes than Imelda Marcos, and hair that Fabio would be jealous of. She was engaged to be married to the practically perfect Prince Ronald. Along came a fire-breathing dragon to spoil their plans. Not only does he kidnap Prince Ronald, but he burns down Elizabeth's castle, turning all her possessions into ashes, and covering our pretty princess with disgusting black soot. By the end of the carnage, all Elizabeth can find to wear is a brown paper bag. Still, when your truest love is in danger, one can't afford to be choosy, so she set off with the paper bag dress to rescue her love.

And after tricking the very dragon that destroyed her home and possessions, and purposely draining his energy so that he'd be too tired to retaliate, Elizabeth rescues Ronald...only to find that her prince is really a frog. He actually has the audacity to make fun of her paper bag dress, despite knowing that she had gone through heck to try and save him. Oh, I'd be pissed. And, Elizabeth promptly kicked him to the curb and went on her merry way...a free woman.



Another story that I touched upon earlier was 'Moira's Birthday', in which a little girl named Moira wanted a birthday party. And she wanted to invite all the kids in grade one, grade two, grade three, grade four, grade five, grade six, annnnnnnnnnnnnnd kindergarten. Moira's parents said no. Somehow, all the grades incluuuuuuuuuuuding kindergarten showed up anyway, and the whole party was a giant disaster from the get-go. There were too many pizzas, too many birthday cakes, too many presents, and too many KIDS!

Moral of the story? Nothing in excess is EVER good.

And then there's Robert Munsch's most famous work. It was a book that was released in 1986 that was more serious in tone than all the others, yet is ranked number four on the top selling children's books of all time. It was the book that helped make Munsch a household name in the United States, and it was a book that Maria Shriver told Oprah Winfrey that made her cry every time she read it.



That book was 'Love You Forever', a touching story about a mother who had a son. As the son grew up and caused more mischief, she never stopped loving him. And each night, whether he was four, or fourteen, or twenty-four, she would pick him up, cradle him, and sing...

“I'll love you forever, I'll like you for always, as long as I'm living, my baby you'll be.”

The story was a heartwarming one, as we saw that a mother's love for her son never really does die. The older a child gets, the more she loves him/her. It was a very sad moment when towards the end of the book, the mother is so elderly and frail that she can't get through the song...so her son instead picks her up and sings...

'I'll love you forever, I'll like you for always, as long as I'm living, my MOMMY you'll be.”

Have you dabbed your eyes yet?

The point is that, yes, Robert Munsch was mostly a silly story guy...but he also showed that he could write serious stuff as well. In the case of 'Love You Forever', Munsch openly admits on his own website that the story was inspired by a personal tragedy, as it was written after Munsch and his wife had two children that were stillborn in 1979 and 1980. Who knew that such a tragedy could turn into a heartwarming and beautiful story? Of course, this could be one of the ways Munsch hid his pain too...by transforming it into words and stories.

Kind of like I'm kind of doing with this blogging project.

Either way, Robert Munsch's work continues to live on. He had a mild health scare in 2008 when he suffered a stroke which impacted his speech, but he has recovered enough to go back to performing in schools. And in September 2009, he was given a star on Canada's Walk Of Fame...ten years after he was made a member of the Order of Canada.



Not bad for a man whose first book was about a mud puddle, huh?

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

January 17, 1969

Welcome to the third installment of the Tuesday Timeline on the blog, the weekly instance in which we flash back to a time in history to discuss some subject that occurred on this date some time ago.

As it turns out, January 17 is one of those dates in which a LOT happened. In various years, there seemed to be some major event that happened in history in both the world of entertainment, and the world of news. I really didn't have too much shortage of topics to choose from for today.

I happened to click on Wikipedia, just to look over some of the historical events of January 17 over the years, and here's what I came up with.

On this date in...

1991 – Operation Desert Storm begins.

1994 – A magnitude 6.7 earthquake strikes near Northridge, California early in the morning, causing twenty billion dollars in damage, and killing 57 people, with thousands more sustaining injuries.

1995 – Just one year after the Northridge quake, a powerful 7.3 quake hits the country of Japan, near the city of Kobe. Over six thousand people lose their lives in the quake, and was considered to be one of Japan's biggest earthquakes before the series of quakes the country endured in 2011.

1998 – The first reports of the affair between American president Bill Clinton and White House intern Monica Lewinsky were published by Matt Drudge.

There were also a number of events that happened on this date in the entertainment industry as well. For instance, if you are living in Australia right now, you might be interested in knowing that back on this day in 1988, the drama serial “Home And Away” premiered on Australia's Seven Network. We mourned the loss of American actor Richard Crenna, who died on this day in 2003.

And many celebrities happen to celebrate a January 17 birthdate. Jim Carrey, Betty White, Zooey Deschanel, Maksim Chmerkovskiy from 'Dancing With The Stars', Kid Rock, Bangles' lead singer Susanna Hoffs, Muhammad Ali, James Earl Jones, and current First Lady, Michelle Obama are all celebrating a birthday today.

So, as you can see, there was quite a variety of topics that I could have chosen from.

The one I ended up settling on...we'll have to take a trip back in time 43 years to the year of the first man on the moon, the first Woodstock festival, and the year that a family named Brady debuted on the small screen.



Today's Tuesday Timeline date is January 17, 1969.

It was on this date that one English artist would release his very first single in the United States. His second single overall. And it was a single that didn't exactly go over very well. It never charted on the Billboard charts at all. You'd think that this lack of success would make our British singer give up on the chance to become an internationally known music star, but it certainly did not. For while his first hit may not have had a lot of impact on the charts back in 1969, his subsequent releases would eventually garner him a lot of success. He had gold records, platinum records, diamond records. Every kind of record you could imagine, he had it.

By 2008, he was widely regarded as the most successful male solo artist on the Billboard Hot 100 Top All-Time Artists, and third overall behind The Beatles and Madonna (which is funny since he and Madonna are sort of in a little feud right now as I type this). He was an artist that had at least one hit single in North America in almost every single year of the 1970s (the only year he didn't was 1977), nine number one singles in the United States, twice that many in Canada and the United Kingdom, and was part of one of 1994's most successful movie soundtracks.

So, what was the first American single that he released that didn't do so hot? More importantly, who is this artist that I am speaking of?

Well, you can find out below!



ARTIST: Elton John
SONG: Lady Samantha
DATE RELEASED: January 17, 1969

Yes, the artist in question for today's Tuesday Timeline is none other than Reginald Kenneth Dwight...better known to most people as Sir Elton Hercules John CBE.



Given that Elton John was born on March 21, 1947, this would mean that he was just a couple of months shy of his twenty-second birthday when this song was first released.

And, yet, I bet you that the vast majority of you have probably never even heard of a song called 'Lady Samantha', have you? It's okay if you haven't. I admit that I didn't even know that until I started researching this blog topic.

To be fair, 'Lady Samantha' wasn't technically Elton John's first single release. It was actually his second in the United Kingdom...it was just the first song that he released in America. But 'Lady Samantha' was just the beginning of what would become one of the most enduring musical partnerships in recent history.

We'll have to go back a little bit further than January 1969 to learn more about this one though.

When Elton was growing up as a young boy, he had always been fascinated by music, and left school early in order to pursue a career in it full-time...a decision that his father wasn't too keen on, despite the fact that both of Elton's parents were both musically inclined themselves and often bought dozens of rock and roll records when Elton was small. His father had tried to convince Elton to take up a more conventional career goal, such as that of a banker or accountant. Could you imagine Elton John doing YOUR taxes?



Needless to say, part of the reason why Elton adopted the elaborate stage costumes and glasses he wore throughout the 1970s was due to the restrictive childhood he lived through.

But Elton proved that he was musically gifted at a young age, learning how to play the piano starting at age three, and winning a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music in London at just eleven. But Elton's childhood was far from being idyllic, having to bear witness to some rather explosive arguments between his parents before they divorced in 1961. When Elton's mother remarried to a man named Fred Farebrother, they were incredibly supportive of Elton's musical desires, and by the time Elton was fifteen, he was already playing piano at a local pub for some cash, plus tips. In Elton's teenage years, he had also tried his hand at forming a couple of bands, including the Corvettes, and Bluesology. He had also attempted to become the lead singer for other bands like Gentle Giant and King Crimson, but didn't get the job in either band.

But in 1967, Elton John had a chance encounter with the man who would change his professional life for the better.

It all began when he answered an ad in the New Musical Express placed by then A&R managed for Liberty Records, Ray Williams, and at their first meeting, Williams handed him a stack of papers...lyrics written by then unknown Bernie Taupin, who himself had answered the same ad that Elton did. Elton composed the music to go with the lyrics, mailed the composition back to Taupin, and that kicked off a partnership that has lasted almost five decades!



Their first ever work together was on a 1967 song called "Scarecrow", which kicked off their amazing partnership. Six months later, Elton John would permanently drop his original moniker of Reginald Kenneth Dwight, to go by his more well-known name.

Of course, success was fleeting for Elton John at first, and he had to pay his dues just like every other artist had to at the time. In the case of John/Taupin, they started off becoming songwriters for other popular artists at the time, writing hits for Lulu and Roger Cook, and composing an entry for the 1969 Eurovision Song Contest. That same year, Elton John put in a guest appearance as the pianist for the Hollies Top 10 smash posted below.



And also that same year, Elton John recorded the single which was featured up above in this entry...'Lady Samantha', which became his first American release.



Despite the fact that the song was virtually ignored on radio airplay (and by John himself as he hasn't performed the song in concert performances), the song itself was actually critically praised, and became what was known as a 'turntable hit' (a song that was widely requested at dance clubs and jukebox playlists). The song was also covered by American rock band Three Dog Night, and would eventually resurface on the re-release of Elton John's album 'Empty Sky' in 1995.

But while this particular song didn't put Elton John's name on the charts, it did provide an opening. For a year and a half later, towards the end of 1970, Elton John struck gold with a little song known as 'Your Song', which rose to number eight on the charts, and became Elton's very first American Top 10 song.

Over the decades, Elton's had dozens of hits, each one having a distinct meaning and feel, each one having the Bernie Taupin touch.

With hits from the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, Elton John has earned his spot as one of the most well-known, well-respected, and well-loved artists of the last century.

And it all began this day in history, 1969.


And, he's...still standing!