Everything is Connected 16 May 2013

By Brent Chittenden

As followers of this column may know, I'm a bit of a nerd. I'm a music nerd, a comic book nerd, a sc-fi nerd and one of my all time disappointments in a tv show was that of Star Trek: Enterprise. It had a cast I liked but just seemed to kind of trudge through tried and true Star Trek themes we had seen millions of times before. But one of the things that always caught my attention was it's theme song.

Where My Heart Will Take Me was the first Star Trek theme to feature lyrics mainly because it was also the first theme not specifically written for Star Trek. but it sounded a little... familiar...

Click to read more ...

Prince's Original Demo for the Bangles' "Manic Monday"

Back in 1984, Prince wrote "Manic Monday" for his girl group, Apollonia 6, but when he judged their performance on the song to be sub-par, he yanked it.

A couple of years later, it turned up as track one of The Bangles second album, Different Light.  He received a credit as "Christopher" and made a gazillion dollars.

Curious about that original Prince demo?  Give it a listen here.

Everything is Connected 24 April 2013

I'm a big fan of comedy...and cartoons (we'll come back to that) and one of my favourite SNL cast members of all time is Chevy Chase.

Unfortunately when he left and then returned, Chevy burnt a few bridges so he hasn't reappeared on SNL often but did you know that he was a drummer? Pretty good one too, he played in a college band called The Leather Canary. After Chevy left, the band kind of changed a bit and eventually became Steely Dan.

Click to read more ...

Rush's Neil Peart Remembers the Troubles That Came with 2112

If you're going to write a side-long epic based on the writings of Ayn Rand, you're going to get some stick for those who see Rand as the unfeeling, selfishness-encouraging uber-capitalist--especially from those who have never read Atlas Shrugged, We the Living, The Fountainhead or even Anthem.

All of side one of 2112 was inspired by the latter book, a novella that told the story of a dystopian society of the future where all individualism had been stamped out by the authorities to create a Borg-like society where even the pronoun "I" disappeared.  Our hero, Equality 7-2521, bucks the system and strives to become his own person with his forbidden love interest, Liberty 5-3000.

Those who have read the book--and I have; in fact, I've read all of Rand's books--will find nothing fascistic about it.  In fact, it's a celebration of the human spirt found in each of us.  It's what Neil Peart must have been thinking of when he included the words "the genius of Ayn Rand" in the liner notes.

But that's not how some people saw it, including a UK writer who found that credit to be loaded with controversy. Read about what happened here.

Weird Record Alert: Sounds of the Space Age

Peter sent me the article from The Atlantic about a weird flex-disc record from the late 1960s.  It was apparently included with an issue of National Geographic following the Apollo 11 moon landing.  

If you have the time, give it a look/listen.  It's fascinating.  Click the image to learn more.

Click for more--and to listen to "Sounds of the Space Age"