John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band

JOHN CAFFERTY and the BEAVER BROWN BAND are best remembered for their soundtrack to the movie Eddie and the Cruisers. 

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The band was from the Cranston Rhode Island area in the early 1970s. They were doing the garage band practice when someone saw a Dutch Boy paint can that was called Beaver Brown and that became the original name of the band.  Lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist John Cafferty's name was added to the band's name for their first album's release. 

Before the hit soundtrack made them famous, they had some early success in 1980 with a self-released single that had the songs "Wild Summer Nights" and "Tender Years" - both of which would appear later on the movie soundtrack. Though it had East Coast airplay, they didn't get signed by a label.

The band was sometimes compared favorably to the sound of Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band and critics liked them but it was an offer from producer Kenny Vance to score a movie he was doing that launched their career.

The film was based on the novel of the same name by P. F. Kluge about some reporters doing a story on a fictional New Jersey bar band called Eddie and the Cruisers that was legendary locally in their time locally. 

The film was in heavy rotation on HBO in the early 1980s and the soundtrack album reached the top 10 on the Billboard chart and produced a top 10 single, "On the Dark Side." The album was eventually certified triple Platinum by the RIAA.

John Cafferty & The Beaver Brown Band continue to tour and other songs by them have been used on the soundtracks of other major motion pictures.

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In like a lion, out like a lamb

News about the pandemic seemed to push aside the usual stories on the news about the weather. “In like a lion, out like a lamb” has always seemed a straightforward enough proverb about the weather in March. March begins in winter, and by the end of the month, spring has begun, so it is often a mean lion at the start and a gentle lamb at the end. 

Some websites call the phrase an 18th-century expression. A 1732 citation lists it as “Comes in like a Lion, goes out like a Lamb.” Wikipedia says it originated in Pennsylvania. 

There is even a celestial explanation. In March, Leo is the rising sign but by April Aries is rising. (Ram, kid, lamb?) 

It is less frequently applied to situations where someone starts strongly and ends weakly, as in " The President came in like a lion but went out like a lamb."

Doomscrolling

Have you heard the word "doomscrolling"? Have you been doing it? It is defined as the act of scrolling on your device and reading or skimming the endless stream of bad news that hit us daily on news sites and social media. 

Image:Mote Oo Education | Pixabay

The pandemic, economic hard times, violence in the street and the Black Lives Matter protests are all important stories but seem to all be part of a doomsday scenario.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary people have recently flagged doomscrolling as one of the words it is watching for 2020 for possible inclusion into the dictionary.

The word has appeared in stories in Business Insider, and the close variation, “doomsurfing,” appeared in the New York Times.

Why are people doomscrolling if the news is so negative? It is a combination of a "fear of missing out" (FOMO), a “hurry-up-and-wait” instinct and a real desire to get information on the pandemic and other issues even if that information is incomplete, questionably accurate and depressing.

With so many sources of information at our fingertips, the temptation to doomscroll is seductive to many people.