Why Name It That?

03 July 2017

Macintosh - an apple, a raincoat and a computer

In 1823, a Scottish chemist named Charles Macintosh sold the first raincoat.

He had been trying to find uses for the waste products of gasworks. He discovered that a substance called coal-tar naphtha dissolved India rubber and allowed the melted rubber to bond to wool. That created a waterproof fabric.

These first raincoats unfortunately smelled like coal tar and rubber. They also were stiff in cold weather, and gummed up in hot weather, but they found a market. Farmers, fishermen, and firemen were early fans.

The coats were so popular in Great Britain that people said “Mac” or a “Mack” when they meant the generic raincoat, even if it wasn't actually a Mackintosh. The Mac or Mac-style raincoats are still made today.

Another eponym story is that of the the McIntosh apple variety. Popularly known as a Mac, this apple cultivar is the national apple of Canada.

The fruit has red and green skin, a tart flavour, and tender white flesh, which ripens in late September. It is considered an all-purpose apple, suitable both for cooking and eating raw.

John McIntosh discovered the original McIntosh sapling on his Dundela farm in Upper Canada in 1811. He and his wife bred it, and the family started grafting the tree and selling the fruit in 1835.

Once one of the most common and popular of apples in North America, the fruit's popularity has fallen the past few decades, but U.S. Apple Association website says it is still one of the fifteen most popular apple cultivars in the United States.

Speaking of apples, Apple Inc. Macintosh computer has been with us since 1984. It has been branded as the "Mac" since 1998, though the Mac name was popularized by users almost as soon as it was introduced.

This series of personal computers was the company's first mass-market personal computer featuring an integral graphical user interface and mouse

Apple Inc. employee Jef Raskin is credited with conceiving and starting the Macintosh project for Apple in the late 1970s and for selecting that variety of apple as the name for the new computer line that followed the Apple IIe computer.

29 June 2017

The Quarrymen

The Quarrymen are a British skiffle/rock and roll group that is best known for being the earliest incarnation of The Beatles.

The group was formed by John Lennon in Liverpool in 1956 with Lennon and several friends from school.

The group took their name from a line in their school song from Quarry Bank High School.

Lennon's mother, Julia, taught John to play the banjo and taught him and his friend Eric Griffiths how to tune their guitars in a similar way to the banjo, and some simple chords and songs. His mother, who was forced to turn him over to his aunt Mimi, stayed in contact with John and he wrote several songs about her, including "Julia" and "Mother".

Lennon started playing skiffle music with his mates as The Blackjacks, but changed the name before any public performances to the Quarrymen. They played at parties, school dances, cinemas and amateur skiffle contests. Members included Colin Hanton, Len Garry and Rod Davis.

Paul McCartney joined the band in October 1957. George Harrison, then only 14, hung out with the group but was initially thought to be too young. He would join officially in early 1958.

The new members brought more rock and roll to the group and since McCartney and Harrison didn't attend Quarry Bank HS, they had no ties to the name. (Paul and George attended the Liverpool Institute.)

The group's amateur recording debut was a 1958 take of Buddy Holly's "That'll Be the Day" and also "In Spite of All the Danger" which is a song written by McCartney and Harrison. It includes Colin Hanton on drums and John "Duff" Lowe, on piano.

I discovered those tracks on The Beatles' "Anthology, Volume 1" CD set.

The move from skiffle towards rock and roll caused members to quit leaving Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison. Their rockier band performed as Johnny and the Moondogs (which sounds like a surf band) and as the trio Japage 3 (a version of their first names), but then back the Quarrymen in 1959, and finally in 1960 as The Beatles.

In 1997, four surviving original members of the Quarrymen reunited to perform at the 40th anniversary celebrations of the garden fete performance at which Lennon and McCartney met for the first time. The band decided to continue playing, and since 1998 have performed in many countries throughout the world, releasing four albums. The current Quarrymen lineup includes the original members Len Garry, former tea-chest bass player, Rod Davis, from Quarry Bank School, at first the banjo player but now on guitar, and Colin Hanton on drums, who played with John, Paul, George and John Duff Lowe on the recording session for "In Spite of All the Danger" and "That'll Be the Day."

28 June 2017

Skiffle Music

Skiffle is a type of popular music with jazz, blues, folk, roots and country influences, usually using homemade or improvised instruments. Originating as a term in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century, it became popular again in the UK in the 1950s, where it was mainly associated with musician Lonnie Donegan.

The origins of skiffle are obscure, but are generally thought to lie in African-American musical culture in the early twentieth century with improvised "jug bands." They played a mix of blues and jazz and used instruments such as the washboard, jugs, tea chest bass, cigar-box fiddle, musical saw, and comb-and-paper kazoos, as well as more conventional instruments such as acoustic guitar and banjo.

In the U.S., this was often called "jug band music" but in the U.K., "skiffle" was the label used.

The term "skiffle" was one of many slang phrases for a rent party, a social event with a small charge designed to pay rent on a house or building (sometimes the club where the musicians performed).

The first skiffle recordings were made in Chicago in the 1920s. The first use of the term on record was in 1925 in the name of Jimmy O'Bryant and his Chicago Skifflers.

A number of country blues records had titles like "Hometown Skiffle" (1929), and "Skiffle Blues" (1946) by Dan Burley and His Skiffle Boys.

The term and style of music faded from usage in the 1940s with the advent of Big Band music.

1957 John Lennon (center) and the Quarrymen

A revival occurred after WWII in the UK and in the late 1950s there were many skiffle groups in Britain. It became a starting place and training ground for a number of musicians who would find fame in rock and roll in the 1960s.

An early incarnation of The Beatles was The Quarrymen which started as a skiffle band.

Other rockers who strated in skiffle groups include Van Morrison, Alexis Korner, Ronnie Wood, Alex Harvey, Mick Jagger; Roger Daltrey, Jimmy Page, Ritchie Blackmore, Robin Trower, Dave Gilmour, Graham Nash and Alan Clarke.

For comparison, here is Lonnie Donegan performing "Rock Island Line"
live on "Putting on the Donegan" June 1961

and then listen to "Rock Island Line" performed solo first by Paul McCartney
and then in a different style by John Lennon.

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