An accordionist gets in his car and puts his accordion in the back seat. He's a little bit early for his gig, so he decides to run a quick errand. He parks his car, but doesn't like the look of the neighborhood. Figuring he'll only be gone a couple of minutes, he simply takes a newspaper and covers up his accordion as best he can. As he's returning from his errand, he realizes that one of the windows of his car is broken out. He dashes over to his car to look inside only to find two accordions in the back seat.
I watched The David Cassidy Story the other night (I don't know why--nothing else on, I guess), and three things stood out for me:
1. Mr. Cassidy didn't have the usual "Behind the Music" lifestyle, did he? The worst thing he did in the flick was drink and take.....Valium!
2. Was his dad, Jack, the complete tird they portrayed him as being? and
3. During a scene where David was in a bar drowning his sorrows after his Dad's fiery death, there's a shot of a TV screen with Ollie North testifying. Didn't IranContra happen waaayyy after anything notable in the public life of david cassidy?
Originally posted by demonseedAnother true Beecham story:
Thomas Beecham to a Cellist: "My dear lady you have a thing there between your legs capable of giving pleasure to thousands and all you can do is scratch it!"
During rehearsals for an opera in which the tenor and the soprano were singing a love duet after which the tenor dies and the soprano continues with a lament, the soprano was having difficulty making an entrance in the right place in the music. Each time they tried it, she made the same wrong entrance. Finally, Beecham stopped everything and asked her what the problem was.
"Sir Thomas," she replied, "The tenor, he dies too soon."
Said Beecham, "My dear, no singer ever dies too soon."
My band "Southwind" played a lot of nice gigs around LA, and one spot we loved to play was McCabes Guitar Shop in Santa Monica.
If you look closely at their website you will find us in the list of performers alumni. Anyway, our band was playing an Irish set one fine night and our singer ATT was Kathleen Kernahan, about as red-headed Irish as you can get, I was standing next to her with my D-35 Martin accompaniment to her song, which had this long note at the end of a chorus, she had her head thrown back really getting into it, beautiful note coming out of her throat. So just at that time, a big black fly came out of nowhere and flew right into her throat and the note became a gargled gag. I felt so bad, the audience was aghast, we were all mortified. Poor girl was near tears after that. To her credit, after a glass of water, we went on with the show to thunderous applause, people throwing gold coins at the band. Well I lied about the gold coins🙂
In the '50s Chet Baker was something of a heart-throb. Several years of doing hard drugs aged him considerally. He had a sunken in look with extremely deep creases in his face. Fellow trumpeter Jack Sheldon, who hadn't seen Baker in a while, was shocked at his appearance and asked him about it. Baker told him that they were 'laugh lines'. Sheldon's response? "Nothing's that funny".
BTW, some of you may know Sheldon from the Schoolhouse Rock cartoons. He did the vocals for "Conjunction Junction" and "I'm Just a Bill" among others.