The Black Crowes

The Black Crowes--Luther Dickinson, Sven Pipien, Steve Gorman, Chris Robinson, and Rich Robinson performing at the 2008 Newport Folk Festival. (Adam MacDougall was playing keyboard out-of-frame to the right.)

THE BLACK CROWES is an American rock band formed in Marietta, Georgia, in 1984. The first incarnation of the band was called Mr. Crowe's Garden which was used until 1989. It was a name taken from L. Leslie Brooke's children's book Johnny Crow's Garden. which had been a favorite of original members Chris and Rich Robinson. Brooke was best known as a book illustrator and the 1903 book is known more for its illustrations than for its minimal text.

The band was influenced by contemporary local acts like R.E.M. along with 60s psychedelic pop and classic southern rock. Gradually, the band's sound moved more toward 70s-era blues rock.

The band had many personnel changes, breakups and reunions over the years but brothers Chris and Rich Robinson, who were the founding members while they were still attending Walton High School, have remained the band's core. 

They changed the band's name in 1989 when they signed with Def American Records at the suggestion of producer George Drakoulias. They released their debut album, Shake Your Money Maker, the following year and their follow-up, The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion, reached the top of the Billboard 200 in 1992. 

The band went through a hiatus from 2002 to 2005, then regrouped and toured for several years and released Warpaint in 2008. They released a greatest hits/acoustic double album Croweology and did a 20th-anniversary tour, then followed that with a second hiatus. 

Continuing their dizzying history, after a 2013 tour, the band announced another breakup in 2015. As you might guess, by now none of its original line-up was left except for Chris and Rich remained.

The Black Crowes have sold more than 30 million albums, and are listed at number 92 on VH1's 100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock and the UK Melody Maker named them as "The Most Rock 'n' Roll Rock 'n' Roll Band in the World."

Shake Your Money Maker (2020 Remaster, 3 CD Super Deluxe Edition)

In late 2019, during an interview on The Howard Stern Show, Chris and Rich Robinson announced that they had resolved their differences after not speaking since the band's 2015 split. They announced a 2020 tour in support of the 30th anniversary of Shake Your Money Maker. but it was canceled due to the COVID pandemic.

Hard to Handle: The Life and Death of the Black Crowes--A Memoir

Eurythmics

Eurythmics were a British pop duo consisting of members Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart. The duo formed in Wagga Wagga, Australia, and released their first studio album, In the Garden, in 1981. It didn't catch much airplay, but their their second album Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) in 1983 had a worldwide hit with the title track.

They picked Eurythmics as their name because that was a method of teaching music going back to the 1890s that Lennox had encountered as a child.

The duo was never really a "band" unless they were on tour and the two were the only permanent members and songwriters. 

Lennox and Stewart had been a couple but split as a couple around the time that they signed their RCA record deal. The duo went on to release a string of hit singles and albums before they split up in 1990. 

Stewart went on as a record producer. Annie Lennox began a solo recording career in 1992 with her debut album Diva.  

After almost a decade apart, Eurythmics reunited to record their ninth album, Peace, released in late 1999 and reunited again in 2005 to release the single "I've Got a Life", as part of a new Eurythmics compilation album, Ultimate Collection. 

 

Groundlings and Underlings

We read Julius Caesar in my high school sophomore English class. It didn't make much of an impression on me because we just read it - much of it alone as homework - and Shakespeare needs to be seen and heard as a performance. 

When Cassius says "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings." (Julius Caesar I, ii, 140-141) I don't think it made an impression on me. The famous quotation usually does not include those four final words. 

I went on to be an English major and read a lot of Shakespeare and learned a lot about Will and his theater. It was then that I learned that Cassius was saying something that was an anachronism thrown in for the underlings watching the performance. 

Shakepeare's underlings were called groundlings. They were patrons at the Red Lion, The Rose, or the Globe theater in the early 17th century. They were too poor to pay to be able to sit on one of the three levels of the theatre. For a penny, they could stand in "the pit", also called "the yard", just below the stage, to watch the play. 

They were up close to the action but they had to stand for a few hours and were usually packed in tightly with sometimes 500 of them there. The groundlings were commoners. They were also referred to as "stinkards" (hygiene not a priority) or penny-stinkers. The name "groundlings" came into usage after Hamlet used the term around 1600 in a not very complimentary way.

Hamlet:

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to 

you, trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it, as

many of your players do, I had as lief the town crier had

spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with

your hand, thus, but use all gently. For in the very torrent,

tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of your passion,

you acquire and beget a temperance that may give

it smoothness. Oh, it offends me to the soul to hear a 

robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to 

tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings,

who for the most part are capable of nothing but

inexplicable dumb shows and noise.

I only recently discovered that it is not a Shakespearean invention. The word had entered the English language to mean a small type of fish with a gaping mouth. Maybe from an actor's point of view on the raised stage, the faces of these patrons might have looked like open-mouthed fish. 

I had learned in college that the groundlings were not well-behaved and the upper-class folks that were high above them were happy to be there.

Groundlings supposedly threw fruit and nuts they were eating at characters/actors they did not like. My professors also told us that Shakespeare would include characters (Falstaff et al), ghosts and jokes to keep the groundlings interested.

I guess if "all the world's a stage," then maybe we are all underlings when it comes to why we might not succeed. Don't blame Fate. Blame yourself. Take responsibility for your place in the Globe. 

The Cranberries

The Cranberries live in Montreal, 2012 via Wikimedia

The Cranberries were an Irish rock band formed in Limerick, Ireland, in 1989 by lead singer Niall Quinn, guitarist Noel Hogan, bassist Mike Hogan, and drummer Fergal Lawler.

The band classified itself as an alternative rock group, but they incorporated aspects of indie pop, post-punk, folk-rock, and pop-rock into their sound.

In mid-1989, brothers Mike, 16, and Noel Hogan, 18, formed a band called Cranberry Saw Us (a pun on cranberry sauce) with drummer Fergal Lawler, 18, and singer Niall Quinn. Quinn left in 1990 and the three continued as an instrumental band until 18-year-old Dolores O'Riordan answered their ad for a female singer.

As the band moved on to new material from Noel Hogan and O'Riordan, playing gigs and signing a major label deal, the name was changed to The Cranberries. 

The Cranberries' fame went international fame with their debut album, Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We?, with the 1994 hit singles include "Linger" and "Dreams." Five of the band's albums reached the Top 20 on the Billboard 200 chart, and eight of their singles reached the Top 20 on the Modern Rock Tracks chart.

There was a 25th-anniversary reissue of The Cranberries’ debut album that had sold over 5,000,000 copies in the US and over 600,000 in the UK. The album has been remastered at Abbey Road (under the supervision of the band’s Noel Hogan) and is now available on vinyl. They were one of the biggest bands of the 90s.

The group broke up but returned to the stage in 2012 with a new single "Tomorrow." The reunion was short-lived. O'Riordan started legal proceedings against Noel Hogan in October 2013 and the case was struck out in July 2015 and the cause was not divulged.

But the band did get together again. Unfortunately, on 15 January 2018, O'Riordan died unexpectedly in London. She had recently arrived there for a studio mixing session on her D.A.R.K. album and to discuss the upcoming album of the band with record label BMG. It was ruled that she had drowned in her hotel room's bathtub due to sedation by alcohol poisoning.

Official band website cranberries.com

Gin Blossoms

Gin Blossoms is an American rock band formed in 1987 in Arizona. Their first major-label album in 1992 was New Miserable Experience. The first single was "Hey Jealousy" which was a Top 25 hit and went gold. The album went quadruple platinum with four other singles from it also charting.

Their name, Gin Blossoms, is also in lower case "gin blossoms" a skin condition. Rosacea is a condition that causes "blossoms" (burst blood capillaries) on the face particularly the nose from drinking too much alcohol. In the late 1800s, gin was a popular alcoholic drink amongst heavy drinkers because it was cheap. 

It is said that the band saw a photo of film comedian W.C. Fields in Kenneth Anger's infamous (and often inaccurate) Hollywood Babylon. That photo has the caption "W.C. Fields with gin blossoms."

The band's follow-up album is Congratulations I'm Sorry (1996) which went platinum and the single "As Long as It Matters" was nominated for a Grammy Award. 

Gin Blossoms broke up in 1997 but reunited after a number of member changes in 2001. Major Lodge Victory (2006), No Chocolate Cake (2010), and Mixed Reality in 2018 are their latest albums.

Gin Blossoms has been described as an alternative rock band and jangle pop and very much a road band. They are labeled as being part of the "Mill Avenue sound", or "southwestern sound", and are compared to other Arizona bands such as The Sidewinders, The Refreshments, The Meat Puppets, and Dead Hot Workshop.

Official band website  ginblossoms.net