Yes, I Deliberately Omitted The "S"
Because I can, and once again, whose blog is it? and if it were spelled properly the alliteration of the "A"s wouldn't work. So there.
What came to me a scant few minutes ago but inspiration about sabotage from the depths of my mind, this time from artwork from an album that I've seen yet never heard from. Is that enough 'From's? Art!
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| This will wind Wonder Wifey up |
Or, perhaps I am merely playing with you and I've omitted another single letter from the title and should instead have a picture like this one - Art!
Okay, okay, enough mucking around with letters and titles, let's get to the meat of the matter in this missive. Art!
Say hello to what is widely agreed as the best record the Sabbs ever made, their 1975 platter that proves from drama comes creativity, or farmers with llamas, one of the two. The title was a deliberate reference to the legal problems they were having at the time, as they had sacked their old manager and were trying to get out of grossly unfair contracts. Now indeed throve the lawyers, who were clustering to serve writs upon them and for them, not respecting the holy sanctity of the recording studio in their quest for
Even the band acknowledge that the cover art was pretty awful. It came out of extremely rushed photographic sessions, where they were supposed to be doing preparation shots and which lacked their promised black leather clothing. Once these shots had been taken, they were approved for printing before the band were informed and when they discovered how naff the artwork was, the sleeves had already been printed. Kind of sabotage, nicht wahr?
Moving sideways, Conrad has another tale about sabotage, of the self-sabotaging kind, which probably won't be long enough to make up the whole of this Intro. Let me see how much I can 'creatively expand' it, also known as 'padding out'. Art!
Here you see members of the Sabbs, their management and their road crew, the last of whom are the hairy haulage humpers who ensure bands get to play live, and whom are frequently larger-than-life characters in their own right. They tend to be insular, opinionated, mostly male and don't normally possess even as much as a strand of Politically Correct DNA.
The Original Road Crew member narrating this tale, hereafter ORC, had over 20 years of experience in Stage Management, and two degrees in the field to boot. They and their - no pronouns used no idea of gender - family moved to Florida for a SM job where the position was vacant, on the say-so of the company's Vice President, who said that the senior SM job was theirs for the taking and only needed a rubber-stamp from the big boss, who owned the business. He was absent on a trip, which is why the VP jumped and made the unofficial offer. Art!
What could possibly go wrong? O you had to ask!
When the big boss returned, he had with him what the South Canadians call a 'resumé' and what we here in the civilised lands call a 'Curriculum Vitae', for the high-school graduate daughter of his best mate. So, she was 18 years old, thus probably half the age of ORC and lacking any of the work background of the grizzled road crews. Big boss claimed she had 'behind the scenes experience as a stage manager' and she would be taking over the senior SM role. Tough luck, ORC. Art!
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| It's in - er - Romanian. |
ORC knew their businesses better than either big boss or teenaged manglement, because she knew there would be - ah - 'considerable resentment and pushback' from the roadies, who would detest having an inexperienced teen as their manager. Within three months she saw adverts in the trade press for every single position at the company (bar senior Stage Manager, one presumes rather cattily). Three months after that, the business went bust.
What an entry to put on your resumé: "I destroyed the business in which I got my first break as a tage anager, in six months". SMH**.
Whoah, Look At This!
One of Conrad's besetting sins, as we all know, is a weakness for buying collectible books, and last year he discovered the "Official History Of Australia In The War Of 1914 - 1918". There are 12 volumes in the series and I already have 6 of them. Art!
£44.52 is a decent price, but £21.46 is on the steep side even from Ockerland, as I've seen other volumes of identical size costing only £11 P & P.
What I was excited about is that this is Volume I, which I haven't seen for sale in this edition previously. Volumes 1 & 2 both deal with the ANZACs at Gallipoli, which is an era absolutely bound up with the creation of modern Australia and New Zealand, so Conrad expects them to be clutched tightly in their Antipodean owner's hands, never to be released.
No, I haven't weakened and bought it, because I have a will of iron. Can't deny I wasn't tempted, though.
Progress Report Of A Sort
Yes, back to Grumpy. NO! not one of the seven dwarves from That Film We Shan't Name Again Today (Unless Something Juicy Comes Up), that constantly complaining German corporal whom wasn't enjoying the Second Unpleasantness at all.
14 September 1944
The Anglo-Americans are at Hasselt, Eupen and Metz. Daily, enemy artillery fire. Enemy patrol breaks into 4 Company sector. Enemy air activity increases daily. Saw an interesting example of a newspaper from liberated Antwerp.
Conrad's Commentary: There's a lot to unpack here. For one thing, the Scottish, Welsh, Irish and Canadians would object to being dismissed when describing the Allied armies, and matey seems unaware that the French and Poles were there wearing tanks, too. The crack about artillery fire is evidence that the British were facing matey, because they liked nothing more than to ladle artillery shells all over their opposition all day long, and the night, too. The line about air activity also acts as a weather report: the weather needed to be good for Allied air to operate, and then they operated at high intensity. Interesting use of the word 'liberated' and I wonder if this is an accurate translation, because it rather admits that the Teutons were an unwanted illegal immoral occupying force.
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| Matey's missive |
Just as an aside, you may have realised that we've been venting about the usual suspects for a few days, just as an exercise to prove that BOOJUM! may be but lightly associated with logic and common sense, but we can still be creative when needed.
Proof They Do Things Differently In Korea
I mean, inevitably, South Korea. The Norks probably still haven't got past the cultural wonder that is the potato, or POTATO! because it's food and filling. Art!
Conrad is pretty sure this picture would be NSFW in the land of Norks, as it would border on pornography or anything equally illegal.
ANYWAY Art!
This is the President who tried to declare martial law in order to - I dunno, help out his mate's car showroom or something? Sork Presidents have a track record of committing crimes as soon as they get into office, must be a Prez occupational hazard, he said, looking across the Pacific Oc
ANYWAY the Sorks take their democracy, which has been hard-won, verrrrry seriously. So here they are celebrating as their Constitutional Court - go on, you never knew they had one, did you? - impeaches him.
HA!
A Mordant Memory
Conrad has just been reading about a Reddit tale on Youtube where the Original Poster inadvertently let it slip to her nieces that Santa Claus wasn't real, sending their mother, her sister, into a frothing rage about it.
The nieces were 11 and 13. Art!
Dog Buns, how would South Canadians take the scene where Terry haltingly recounts Bob telling him that there was no Santa Claus? Bob sneers back at Terry for him being a big baby. Terry ripostes "You told me he was gored to death by his reindeer!"
And with that I bid you good night.
* Art!
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