Photos & text © 2010 by A. Roy Hilbinger
March 8th, 2010
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I hadn’t realized there was a memorial to the EgyptAir loss here in Island Cemetery. There’s one out at Brenton Point in the area set aside for memorializing those lost at sea; that one is a rough granite slab with an inset bronze plaque memorializing the dead on that flight, much more like an actual monument than this one. This is pretty much an oversized headstone. Still, it’s nice to find two such memorials to strangers lost at sea in this city.
This one is a hoot – local music impressario Mark Malkovich is still very much with us, but he already has his stone picked out and his place reserved. That is so Mark it’s hilarious! He’s the founder and the director emeritus of the Newport Music Festival, one of the premier classical music festivals in the US, held in the mansions on Bellevue Ave.
A very Anglophile monument. This style is very much in line with the classical revival style of William Morris and Edward Johnston in the 1880s and ’90s in great Britain, and made it to the US around the turn of the century. I’ve seen many a book plate with exactly this kind of design.
To the left is the main door of the old chapel, no longer used and now sealed shut. It’s very neo-Gothic and lovely, although in the Summer you can barely see it for the leaves of the ivy and other plants which have grown over it. On the right is a stone I just loved for the lettering and the design, and especially for the use of the red sandstone for the stone.
March 6th, 2010
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The Quarry Meadow at the Quaking Aspen grove in Ballard Park, another July green spot.
March 4th, 2010
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So yesterday while I was looking for a usable video for a particular song to use in tomorrow’s Theme Thursday post, I noticed that there was actually a video of these guys here to the left, playing their most recognizable hit song on BBC’s Top of the Pops back in 1968, and I got right into Mr. Peabody’s Wayback Machine and took a little time trip. Psychedelia ruled the day, and this song was one of the mainstays of the whole psychedelic scene. That introductory guitar riff just set off all kinds of memories!
So who are these guys? Believe it or not, the British band Status Quo, and the song was their big hit “Pictures of Matchstick Men”. I kid you not! That guitar riff was actually the first thing I ever played on electric guitar; I’d already worked it out on acoustic guitar, and when I went electric I thought it was the perfect thing to play. [Okay, in the interests of accuracy and to beat George Kepler - who was there for that "debut" - to the punch, it was actually a mandolin that I'd fitted with a pickup.] And it’s always stuck in my head, so when I saw “Pictures of Matchstick Men” in the related videos list of the song I was looking for, I just had to follow it up. So here’s Status Quo on Top of the Pops in 1968:
Okay, that’s all.
Text © 2010 by A. Roy Hilbinger
March 4th, 2010
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March 2nd, 2010
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March 2nd, 2010
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February 28th, 2010
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