We saw this stage show last night. They had fun performing the songs, so they said. The audience had a good time listening to them. But it’s not like the real ABBA. How could it be?
There has always been only one group that could do them justice:
ABBA!
Dancing Queen
Waterloo
SOS
Knowing Me, Knowing You
I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do
The Winner Takes It All
Thank You for the Music
The Name of the Game
One of Us
Take A Chance On Me
Does Your Mother Know
Super Trouper
Money, Money, Money
Voulez-Vous
Mamma Mia
Conclusion
We will never see the like of them again. Or will we? There are rumours of a reunion of the band!
Its symbol represents a stream of water, symbolizing the servant of humanity who pours out the water of knowledge to quench the thirst of the world. It may also symbolize an electrical current which is associated with Uranus, its ruler.
The Sun is in Aquarius annually from January 21 to February 20. Astrologically and astronomically it is the second thirty-degree arc following the Sun’s passing of the Winter Solstice, occupying a position along the Ecliptic from 300° to 330°.
It is the Fixed quality of the Air element, in which the will is largely motivated by reasoning processes — whether sound or unsound.
It is positive, hot, moist, sanguine, rational and obeying.
Although Bryan was born in Kingston, Ontario in 1959, it wasn’t until he moved to Burnaby in British Columbia that he became the Rock ‘n’ Roller that he is now.
His first hit, and video, was “Cuts Like A Knife” in 1983.
Because we were living in BC at the time, he became a local celebrity. But it was his 1984 album that caught us totally unprepared.
Reckless
Although Bryan was only 10 years of age in 1969, his next hit spoke of that special year.
Another song on this album seemed to speak directly to me.
It became my anthem.
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
Here is a link to the story behind the song “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You”We were now living in the UK when this hit the music charts. I like to think that I had a small hand in keeping at #1 for 17 weeks.
This collaboration was different: there were two ‘foreign’ elements to it (the composer of the theme and the producer of the record) and that meant that it didn’t get recognized as a Canadian content hit, and therefore missed getting a Juno for that year. Bryan was recognized with an International Achievement Award instead.
Duets and Other Groupings
Bryan has had a few hits that he’s shared with others.
Tina Turner
Rod Stewart and Sting
Melanie C
Conclusion
This is a man who is an international superstar. But he’s still humble and unpretentious. Would it surprise you to know that he rides a bicycle to his concerts?
This ‘story’ has been around for a long time now. When a child tries to explain something that happened to him or her, there is an almost automatic judgement made that it’s just imagination on the child’s part.
Look at that young girl’s face. Really look at her. Is she happy with her life? Does she feel safe?
He Said/She Said
When there are no witnesses, the world expects that the adult is the one telling the truth. The child must be mistaken somehow. And when the adult is a world-renowned writer, producer and director of films, everyone seems to side with him. After all, this came out when Mia Farrow was fighting for custody of her children after breaking up with Woody Allen.
But now Dylan is a grown woman, and she wants Woody to admit that he’s been lying all these years about what happened way back when.
Let’s Check the Film Evidence
I would say that we’re not dealing with a well man, here.
Conclusion
No matter which side you and I are on in this delicate matter, one thing seems abundantly clear: Woody Allen will never work in Hollywood again.
The title of this post has been rattling around in my head for the past day or two. When I started to do my research this morning, I realized that “Raiders of the Lost Ark” was based on this film from 1954. Now why doesn’t that surprise me?
“There’s nothing new under the sun”-burst.
The Other One
Conclusion
I know that we like our heroes to be perfect (or at least slightly flawed), but to have Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones be a rip-off of Charlton Heston’s Harry Steele is a crime.
To show you how ridiculous this is, watch this fake mock up of a preview:
Forty years later, it ends up as the vanity card at the end of the credits of a television show, including a snippet from the song “Buffalo Ladies (Won’t You Come Out Tonight)”.
Growing up, music played a tug-of-war with my heart and my mind. I like most genres. But the soft spot is the category “Old Folkie”: I aspire to that one. (Harry Chapin wrote a song called that about Pete Seeger, both of them now gone but not forgotten.)
Here is a selection of my favourites from Canada:
Bruce Cockburn
Buffy Sainte-Marie
Gordon Lightfoot
Ian & Sylvia
Joni Mitchell
Leonard Cohen
Murray McLauchlan
Neil Young
Valdy
Conclusion
I saw Harry Chapin in concert in Vancouver before he died. You couldn’t ask for a better performer. But he was American, and therefore wouldn’t qualify in this post, except for the fact of that song about Pete Seeger…
We have seen so many photos of him over the years in black and white that we forget he was a man of colour, too. And that wasn’t a racial slur. Because not everything is black and white when it comes to American history.
To be named after your father, who was a Southern Baptist minister in Atlanta, Georgia (as his father was before him), and named after the first Protestant, Martin Luther, is a big deal. Those are mighty huge boots to fill.
To be sure, the times were a-changing, and MLK Jr decided that enough was enough. It was time to change the minds and hearts of white Americans, too.
The Chart
All the online information about MLK Jr’s birth list his birth time as 12 Noon. Ordinarily, I would find that a bit suspect, especially as children are rarely born at the top of the hour. But when I looked at the chart (which came with the Kepler 7.0 program) I could see that, yes, maybe the time was right.
I have pointed out in other posts that the three major influences on a person’s life can be explained by the Sun, the Moon, and the Ascendant.
Sun In Capricorn
Ordinarily, Capricorns are very pragmatic individuals. (Jesus was a Capricorn…) Their approach to life is an awareness that there is only so much time allotted to any one of us, so they try to do as much as is humanly possible in that short time.
MLK Jr’s Sun is conjunct the Midheaven which implies a very public presentation of the person. Privacy would never be ‘normal’. But because the Midheaven is inconjunct with Neptune, we have a familiar echo of resistance to authority figures.
Moon in Pisces
To say that the individual with this placement of the Moon is sensitive to their fellow man would be an understatement. The additional fact of it being situated in the 11th House gives it a flavour of group work, organizations. That is very evident in MLK Jr’s life.
He could see his fellow men and women suffering and could not idly stand by while they were beaten down and oppressed. Their stories were his stories. He was an impassioned speaker and he touched something intangible in his audience.
Taurus Rising
MLK Jr was a stubborn man. Once he planted in feet, he couldn’t be moved. The Taurus bull is also very stoic. You can try to beat him down but he will always rise up again, and again, and again.
The civil rights movement he embraced has this same stubborn intensity. Black Lives Matter has shown us that. His spirit lives on anywhere there is civil disobedience and passive resistance. He is America’s Gandhi.
Gone Too Soon
When a person dies accidentally, naturally, or by his own hand, the planets line up in a way that shows the reason(s). In this case, they don’t, which implies that assassinations are actions taken by others that really are not ‘meant to be’. I feel that Martin Luther King Jr was taken from us too soon.
Conclusion
History is the winning side’s version of reality. But, sometimes, the Truth sneaks in under our very noses. Martyrs to the cause are never forgotten, and become the rallying cry for the generations that follow. We may never see the like of them again.
In the 1950’s, school children in North America were taught to Duck and Cover in the event of a surprise nuclear attack by the U.S.S.R. (Do they still teach that now?)
The inhabitants of, and visitors to, Hawaii were informed by text message yesterday that a missile attack was about to be launched against them. (Although not stated, the implication was that North Korea had finally decided to attack the United States of America, and, as usual, chose to target Hawaii because it is the nearest in distance.)
It took more than half an hour before they were told that the text was sent in error (human ‘error’, as it turned out). Panic ensued in that 38 minute period.
Was it a Test?
It has come to the point that reasons given by the Government are no longer sufficient to calm the speculation that Conspiracy Theorists think after a situation like this.
We get lied to so often that we have become world-weary.
“Yea, yea,” we say. “Pull the other one…”
Now, I’m wondering, was this done deliberately to see how it would work in the case of a real emergency? In other words, was this a ‘surprise’ drill, in spite of words to the contrary?
When the Wind Blows
In 1986, Raymond Briggs graphic novel “When the Wind Blows” was made into an animated film featuring the voices of Peggy Ashcroft (Hilda) and John Mills (Jim Bloggs).
The plot is repeated here, as reported in Wikipedia:
James and Hilda Bloggs are a retired couple living in a tidy isolated cottage in rural Sussex in southeast England. James frequently travels to London to read the newspapers and keep abreast of the deteriorating international situation regarding the Soviet-Afghan War; while frequently misunderstanding some specifics of the conflict, he is fully aware of the growing risk of an all-out nuclear war with the Soviet Union. James is horrified at a radio news report stating that a war may be only three days away, and sets about preparing for the worst as instructed by his government-issued Protect and Survive pamphlets. As Hilda continues her daily routine, and their son Ron, who is implied to have fallen into fatalistic despair, dismisses such preparations as pointless (referencing the song “We’ll All Go Together When We Go” by Tom Lehrer), James builds a lean-to shelter out of several doors inside their home (which he consistently calls the “inner core or refuge” per the pamphlets) and prepares a stock of supplies. He also follows through seemingly strange instructions such as painting his windows with white paint and readying sacks to lie down in when a nuclear strike hits. Despite James’ concerns, he and Hilda are confident they can survive the war, as they did World War II in their childhoods, and that a Soviet defeat will ensue.
Hearing a warning on the radio of an imminent ICBM strike, James rushes himself and Hilda into their shelter, just escaping injury as distant shock waves rack their home. They remain in the shelter a couple of nights, and when they emerge they find all their utilities, services and communications have been destroyed by the blast. Over the following days, they gradually grow sick from exposure to radiation poisoning. Ron and his wife Beryl are not heard from again, though their deaths are heavily implied.
In spite of all this, James and Hilda stoically attempt to carry on, preparing tea and dinners on a camping stove, noting numerous errands they will have to run once the crisis passes, and trying to renew their evaporated water stock with (contaminated) rainwater. James keeps faith that a rescue operation will be launched to help civilians. Apparently oblivious to the dead animals, destroyed buildings and scorched, dead vegetation outside their cottage (apart from their own garden), they initially remain optimistic. However, as they take in the debris of their home, prolonged absence of other human company, lack of food and water, growing radiation sickness, and confusion about the events that have taken place, the couple begins to despair.
After a few days, the Bloggs are practically bedridden, and Hilda is despondent when her hair begins to fall out, after vomiting, developing painful sores and lesions and experiencing bleeding gums. Either in denial about the extent of the nuclear holocaust, unable to comprehend it, or trying to comfort Hilda, James is still confident that emergency services will eventually arrive, but they never do, as they were also presumably destroyed in the attack. The film ends with the dying James and Hilda getting into paper sacks, crawling back into the shelter, and praying. Jim begins with the Lord’s Prayer, but then switches to the first lines of “The Charge of the Light Brigade“, whose militaristic and ironic undertones distress the dying Hilda, who weakly begs him not to continue. Finally, Jim’s voice mumbles away into silence.
Outside the shelter, the smoke and ash-filled sky begins to clear, revealing the sun rising through the gloom. At once, the skies clear fully as the fallout fades away, revealing a beautiful blue sky with clean white clouds drifting by. At the very end of the credits, a Morse code signal taps out “MAD”, mutual assured destruction.
Conclusion
If someone in control of their country’s “NUCLEAR” Button decides to launch one on their enemy, we are going to end up with One Tin Soldier.
Neighbourswent on the air in the UK in October 1986, just about the time we moved to Torquay. It was instantly popular. Some of the cast became international stars, some stayed at home.
Here is a short list of the ones who escaped Ramsay Street.
