Keener Today – July 21

 July 21, 2022
Keener Today - July 21

What’s Happening via JJ Duling

54 years ago this week, we first heard In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida on Keener. The 17 minute title track encompassed the second side of the LP, peaking nationally at #30 and selling more than a million copies.

If you share your Netflix account, get ready to pay up. The BBC is reporting that as revenue growth stalls, the popular streaming service will begin charging $2.99 for a “second home” in Central and South America with a warning that it will clamp down on password sharing. Recent price hikes and a wider array of options have prompted consumers to rethink their streaming priorities.

As temperatures topped 104 degrees in the UK, Britain’s Showcase Cinemas offered free tickets on Monday and Tuesday to redheads. The chain noted that people with red hair have complexions at risk during periods of high heat.

With a new hit album and a Las Vegas residency, Journey is looking toward next year’s 50th anniversary, hoping that former members Steve Perry and Gregg Rolie might rejoin the band to celebrate. Co-founder Neil Schon told Entertainment tonight, “I think that those two guys were a big part of the band,” he says, “and I think that, you know, if the city permits, I think the fans would overall love it.” Arnel Pineda has been well received by Journey fans, recreating Perry’s magic since 2007.

Ford Motor Company may cut as many as 8,000 jobs in the coming weeks to fund its entry into the electric vehicle market. The Detroit News reports (Paywall) that the plans are not finalized and most of the cuts are likely to come from the Ford Blue unit, which focuses on internal combustion engines.

Blogger Seth Godin says we are often drawn to like something or someone as a way to cement our own status. He notes grouchy rock stars and popular brands with horrible customer service as examples, saying authentic admiration for good people and quality experiences are more sustainable. “If you want to be more liked,” Seth Says, “begin by liking.

Keener Birthdays:

1899 Ernest Hemingway (Nobel Prize Winning Author 1954).
1911 Marshall McLuhan (Wrote “The Medium is the Massage” 1967).
1920 Isaac Stern (Violinist)
1922 Mollie Sugden (actress, Are You Being Served?)
1924 Don Knotts (Andy Griffith’s Deputy)
1943 Edward Herrmann (Actor, Lost Boys, Eleanor and Franklin, Reds, Annie)
1948 Cat Stevens (Stephen Demitri Georgiou, now Yusuf Islam, “Peace Train” #7, 1971)
1948 Garry Trudeau (Cartoonist, Doonesbury)
1952 Robin Williams (Mork & Mindy, Jumanji, Dead Poets Society, Good Will Hunting)
1955 Howie Epstein (late Bassist for Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, “Free Fallin’ #7, 1989)
1957 Jon Lovitz (SNL: League of Their Own: The Critic)

Today in History:

  • 1873 America recorded its first train robbery when Jesse James and his gang took $3,000 from the Rock Island Express at Adair, Iowa.
  • 1925 In Dayton, Tennessee, the ‘Monkey Trial’ ended as John T. Scopes was fined $100 after being convicted of violating state law by teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution, a conviction that was later overturned.
  • 1931 CBS began the first regularly scheduled television broadcasting in America on experimental station W2XAB in New York City. Ted Husing was master of ceremonies of the first show, which featured singer Kate Smith, composer George Gershwin, and New York City Mayor Jimmy Walker.
  • 1940 The Soviet Union annexed Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia.
  • 1947 Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus performer Emmett Kelly, in full makeup and costume as his famous clown figure, ‘Weary Willie,’ was pictured on the cover of LIFE magazine.
  • 1954 Vietnam was partitioned into North Vietnam and South Vietnam by the Geneva Conference.
  • 1956 An article in Billboard magazine referred to Elvis Presley as ‘the most controversial entertainer since Liberace.’ The story also pointed out that TV host Ed Sullivan, who once said Presley would never appear on his show, had just signed the singer for three appearances.
  • 1957 Althea Gibson won the Women’s National clay-court singles competition and became the first black woman to win a major U.S. tennis title.
  • 1958 Eddie Cochran released the single ‘Summertime Blues.’
  • 1959 Bobby Vee and The Shadows released their debut single ‘Suzy Baby.’ It peaked at #77 on the Billboard Hot 100. His first hit was his third single, ‘Devil Or Angel,’ which reached #6 in the summer of 1960.
  • 1961 Tamla Records released the first version of the Supremes’ second single, ‘Buttered Popcorn,’ co-written and produced by Berry Gordy, Jr., and featuring Florence Ballard on lead vocal. A second version of the song was issued the following month when the first one was withdrawn after being judged ‘too raw.’
  • 1965 Jackie Wilson, Billy Butler, Linda Scott, Tony Alaimo, and Paul Revere And The Raiders performed on ABC-TV’s afternoon music series ‘Where The Action Is.’
  • 1967 In New York, Jimi Hendrix began a three-night stand at Greenwich Village’s Cafe Au Go-Go.
  • 1967 Rick Nelson’s new TV variety series ‘Malibu U.’ premiered on ABC. Guest performers on the first episode were Frankie Valli, Don Ho, and Annette Funicello. The show was cancelled three months later.
  • 1967 Baseball Hall of Famer Jimmie Foxx choked to death (on a piece of meat) at the age of 59.
  • 1968 Arnold Palmer became the first professional golfer to accrue $1 million in career earnings.
  • 1969 The Beatles recorded the John Lennon composition ‘Come Together.’ It has been suggested that each verse of the song refers to each one of the Beatles: ‘he’s one holy roller’ allegedly is about the spiritual George Harrison; ‘he got monkey finger, he shoot Coca-Cola’ supposedly refers to Ringo, the funny Beatle; ‘he got Ono sideboard, he one spinal cracker’ a cryptic reference to Lennon himself; and ‘got to be good-looking ’cause he’s so hard to see,’ refers to Paul.
  • 1969 On ABC-TV, Duke Ellington and a portion of his band performed a 10-minute composition titled, ‘Moon Maiden,’ one day after Neil Armstrong became the first man to set foot on the moon.
  • 1971 Carole King’s ‘Tapestry’ album was certified Gold. It eventually was certified Diamond by the RIAA with more than 10 million copies sold.1972 Rod Stewart released the album ‘Never a Dull Moment.’
  • 1973 Jeanne Pruett joined the Grand Ole Opry.
  • 1973 Mary Wilson Day was declared in Detroit in honor of the Supremes member.
  • 1973 The Electric Light Orchestra performed ‘Roll Over Beethoven’ on ABC-TV’s ‘American Bandstand.’
  • 1975 At the RCA Victor Studio in Hollywood, John Denver recorded ‘I’m Sorry.’
  • 1975 Michael Murphey’s single ‘Wildfire’ was certified Gold.
  • 1976 The third Broadway revival of the musical ‘Guys and Dolls,’ starring Robert Guillaume, Norma Donaldson, and Ernestine Jackson, opened at New York’s Broadway Theatre for 239 performances.
  • 1976 The first outbreak of Legionnaires Disease killed 29 people in Philadelphia.
  • 1977 Linda Ronstadt, who had just released a cover version of the Rolling Stones’ ‘Tumbling Dice,’ hopped onstage during the band’s concert in Tucson, Arizona to sing the song with them.
  • 1977 Eddie Money hosted ‘The Midnight Special’ on NBC-TV, with guests Todd Rundgren, Jay Ferguson, and Stanley Clarke.
  • 1979 David Naughton performed ‘Makin’ It’ on ABC-TV’s ‘American Bandstand.’
  • 1980 Chicago released their 13th studio album and 14th overall, ‘Chicago XIV.’
  • 1983 Diana Ross gave a free concert in New York City’s Central Park that was interrupted by torrential rain. She continued to sing while urging the crowd to ignore the downpour, saying, ‘I need a bath, anyway, it’s too hot,’ and ‘It took me a lifetime to get here, I ain’t goin’ nowhere.’ The show stopped when the rain proved to be too much for the band and the crowd. The concert continued without interruption the next day.
  • 1987 Mary Hart, host of the syndicated TV series ‘Entertainment Tonight,’ had her legs insured for $2 million by Lloyd’s of London.
  • 1989 Former U.S. President Ronald Reagan was inducted into the Cowboy Hall of Fame in recognition of his role as George Armstrong Custer in ‘The Santa Fe Trail,’ and as host of the TV series ‘Death Valley Days.’
  • 1990 On the site where the Berlin Wall once stood, Roger Waters was joined by Joni Mitchell, Bryan Adams, Scorpions, Cyndi Lauper, Van Morrison, Sinead O’Connor, and the Band, among others, for a live performance of Pink Floyd’s, ‘The Wall.’ More than 200,000 fans attended the event, which helped raise money for disaster relief. The concert was released on CD and video later that year.
  • 1990 BBC’s Radio One apologized to its listeners after Madonna cursed repeatedly during a live concert broadcast.
  • 1998 In Liverpool, Paul McCartney’s boyhood home, restored to its 1950s appearance, was opened to the public as a tourist attraction. It was in the parlor of that home that McCartney and John Lennon wrote the Beatles songs ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ and ‘Love Me Do.’
  • 1998 U.S. astronaut Alan Shepard, the first American and second person (after Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin) to travel into space, and who later became the fifth person to walk on the Moon, died of leukemia at 74.
  • 1999 Country music singer Charley Pride received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
  • 1999 The missing plane of John F. Kennedy, Jr. was found off of the coast of Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. Searchers recovered the bodies of Kennedy, his wife Carolyn Bessette and her sister Lauren Bessette, which were found on board. The plane had crashed on July 16, 1999.
  • 2000 NBC announced that they had found nearly all the kinescope recordings of Milton Berle’s early TV shows in the network’s Burbank, California facility. Berle, who co-owned the films with NBC, had filed a $30 million law suit against the network two months earlier after he approached them about making the episodes available on home video and was told they no longer had the programs on file.
  • 2001 At the First Union Center in Philadelphia, Madonna began the North American leg of her 47-date Drowned World Tour. More than 730,000 people attended the shows throughout North America and Europe.
  • 2004 A day before the report was released to the public, White House officials were briefed on the findings of the September 11th Commission. The 575-page report concluded that hijackers exploited ‘deep institutional failings within our government.’
  • 2005 In a Vancouver, BC suburb, three men were arrested and charged with digging a tunnel about the length of a football field beneath the Canada-U.S. border for the purpose of smuggling marijuana.
  • 2007 J.K. Rowling’s seventh and final Harry Potter book was published. ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ sold 15 million copies in the first 24 hours of its release, making it the fastest-selling novel in history.
  • 2007 Sharon Osbourne’s music mogul father Don Arden died at the age of 81. Known as the ‘Al Capone of Pop’ for his uncompromising business practices, he is credited with guiding the Small Faces, Black Sabbath and the Electric Light Orchestra to stardom.
  • 2008 A federal appeals court overturned a $550,000 judgment against CBS for televising the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show that ended with singer Janet Jackson’s infamous ‘wardrobe malfunction,’ in which one of her breasts was briefly bared.
  • 2008 The Police played the first of two nights at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, Colorado on the final leg of their 152-date Reunion tour, the third-highest grossing tour ever, with revenues exceeding $340 million.
  • 2010 Former major league baseball manager (Boston Red Sox, Detroit Tigers, New York Yankees)/former catcher Ralph Houk died at the age of 90.
  • 2011 Pentagon chief Leon Panetta formally certified that gays could serve openly in the U.S. Armed Forces, repealing the 17-year-old prohibition known as ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ The change took effect on September 20, 2011.
  • 2011 With the landing of the U.S. Space Shuttle Atlantis after a mission to resupply the International Space Station, NASA’s space shuttle program ended.