Browsing: Arts & Entertainment

A Brief History On September 29, 1989, American singer-songwriter and pianist Billy Joel released his song titled “We Didn’t Start the Fire”. On August 26, 1994, American satirical crime Natural Born Killers film premiered at the Venice Film Festival. Years later, JibJab set their 2007 year in review song to “We Didn’t Start the Fire”’s tune. This article lists historical items referred to in “We Didn’t Start the Fire” (1989), Natural Born Killers (1994), and “In 2007”. Digging Deeper In 1949, Harry Truman (1884-1972) was inaugurated as U.S. president after being elected in 1948 to his own term; previously he was sworn…

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A Brief History On December 7, 2005, former Cleveland Browns head coach Bud Carson, a lifetime heavy smoker, died of emphysema at the age of 75.  In 1989, Carson had led the Browns, once the NFL’s premier franchise and today perhaps the worst team of all time, to the AFC Conference Championship Game, the third time in a 4 year period that the Browns would be one win from making it to the Super Bowl for the first time in their history. Digging Deeper The Browns started life in 1946 as a team in the All-America Football Conference, a rival…

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A Brief History On December 6, 1969, the Rolling Stones used the motorcycle gang, the Hell’s Angels, as security for a concert.  Doing so was a dumb decision, as chronicled in our previous article on December 6th What Were We Thinking? Dumb Decisions… and we have highlighted other bad choices in our articles of September 8th 10 Infamous Pardons, and April 23rd 10 Business Blunders.  Today we list 10 more of those choices people have made that have proven (with 20/20 hindsight!) to be dumb decisions.  (Note: No significance to the order listed.) Digging Deeper 1. Japan Attacks Pearl Harbor/Germany Declares…

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A Brief History On December 4, 1956, Sun Records Studio in Memphis, Tennessee was the location of an impromptu jam session by four of the rising stars of the Rock and Roll Era.  Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis got together and made music in an unplanned moment of musical serendipity, bringing together for the one and only time these future legends.  Lucky for us, the recordings still exist! Digging Deeper At the time of the jam session, Elvis had already hit the big time and had moved from Sun Records to RCA, and had just…

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A Brief History On November 30, 1982, Michael Jackson, known as “The King of Pop” for good reason, released his 6th solo album, the “monster” hit Thriller.  Although actual sales numbers are hard to pin down, it is likely Thriller has sold between 1/3 and ¾ more copies than the next best-selling album.  Today, we list our nominees for the 10 Greatest Record Albums of All Time, based on sales, impact on the music industry and what we consider to be great music.  (Hey, it is our opinions, but feel free to nominate those albums you think should be on…

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