Seasons in the Sun
In 1961, the Belgian composer Jacques Brel wrote “Le Moribond,” a dark song about a man about to be executed, and sang it in an unsentimental, almost jazzy style. Sample lyric, translated to English:
Goodbye, Tony, I didn’t like you too much you know
It’s killing me to be dying today
While you are so vigorous and full of life
And stronger even than boredom itself
In 1964, the poet Rod McKuen rewrote it (and gave it a new title), but a recording of the new version, by Bob Shane, didn’t become a hit. The Beach Boys cut it in 1973, but decided not to release it. The producer on the Beach Boys sessions, Terry Jacks, recorded it himself after rewriting some of the lyrics yet again, turning the protagonist from a condemned prisoner into a guy dying of something generic. Brel is a macho guy facing death casually, smoking a cigarette and waving away the blindfold as the firing squad takes aim. Jacks, however, is a man of the 1970, earnest and sensitive, trying to leave nothing unsaid before he joins the Choir Invisible. And 40 years ago this month, "Seasons in the Sun" by Terry Jacks hit #1 in America and stayed there for three weeks.
People are not usually neutral about "Seasons in the Sun." Fans of 70s music often consider it one of the songs that's essential in describing what it was like to listen to AM radio back then, a great big slice of tasty gourmet cheese. Other people just HATE it. Which team are you on: Team Terry, or Team Kill It With Fire?
The Beatles in Wisconsin
Fifty years ago this week, the Beatles landed in America, played on "The Ed Sullivan Show," and changed millions of lives, along with the very course of history. While a certain degree of Beatlemania was happening everywhere in the spring and summer of 1964, it got an extra jolt of intensity in Wisconsin in September, when the Beatles played a concert at the Milwaukee Arena during their second American tour.
About 12,000 tickets were sold for the September 4 show, priced from $3.50 to $5.50, which was a lot of money 50 years ago–equivalent to between about $25 and $40 today. The show began at 8:00 that Friday night with several opening acts: Jackie De Shannon, the Exciters, Bill Black's Combo, and Clarence "Frogman" Henry, a soul singer who replaced the originally scheduled Righteous Brothers. Milwaukee DJ Eddie Doucette (later famous as a sportscaster) introduced the opening acts; another DJ, Bob Berry, introduced the Beatles themselves, after turning down the job at first because the concert promoter wasn't going to pay him to do it. The headliners hit the stage at about 9:10 and played for maybe 30 minutes before heading to their hotel, the Coach House Motor Inn on Wisconsin Avenue (which is now a Marquette University dorm).
The Beatles stayed in Milwaukee until the next afternoon. Before they left town, Paul McCartney made a brief phone call to a hospitalized 14-year-old fan who'd had a ticket to the show but couldn't go. She would have talked to him forever, of course, but he had to cut the call short because the band had a show in Chicago that night. And after a little more than 24 hours in Wisconsin, the Beatles left.
Super Chili Tradition
Super Bowl Sunday is not far off, and at our house, we'll revisit our annual tradition: Super Bowl Chili. I've made a pot of some kind of chili for every Super Bowl game since 1984, so this is the 31st annual.
The recipe changes from year to year. When the tradition began, it was a simple recipe from the cookbook that came with our first microwave oven, the one we got as a wedding present from Ann's parents. It's gotten both more and less elaborate as time's gone by. I usually make it from scratch, but I have also been known to buy one of those canned Chili Magic things from the grocery store in a pinch. One of my favorite recipes uses fried bologna. (It's not very healthy, but it's insanely good.) I tried making an Emeril recipe with andouille sausage one year (which wasn't all that great), and I've used my brother's recipe several years even though he's the only one who can ever get it right. My most reliable recipe is one from Cherokee Bison Farm. It has so much stuff in it that I had to get a special giant pot to make it in. The recipe is meant to be made with ground bison, of course, but I've used ground turkey and even ground emu over the years.
The sides and desserts vary from year to year, too. The only constant is that there's always too much of everything. And there's beer. Oh yes, plenty of beer.
Enjoy the game, everybody.
Beer and Wine Tourist
As I have written here before, I am a beer and wine tourist. Ann and I will take off on a weekend afternoon just to visit some winery or brewery in the area, and when we travel farther afield, we always bring a list of likely spots to hit along the way. (Some smart economist has probably already figured out the financial value of such tourism; I can tell you that we dropped a tidy pile of cash into the winery/brewery economy of Michigan on a recent weekend visit.)
Beer and wine tourism isn't always about visiting specific places – it can also involve attending specific events. Madison's Great Taste of the Midwest, one of the country's oldest and largest beer festivals, brings literally millions of dollars into the Dane County economy every August as visitors come from all over the country to stay in hotels, buy restaurant meals–and take home carloads of beer they can't get anywhere else. The Isthmus Beer and Cheese Festival on Saturday January 18 is getting a reputation as an event worth traveling for, too. And there's a new event coming this summer that's likely to create quite a buzz: the Bacon, Brew and BBQ Fest at Angell Park in Sun Prairie set for July 12. The event is still in the planning stages and the lineup of participating brewers and restaurants is still being set. But with the three magic words – bacon, brew, and BBQ – it can't help but be great, right?
Tickets will go on sale March 1.. Will Ann and I be there? Was Lincoln a car?