December 5th
This is largely a day of musical anniversaries primarily, although Christina Rossetti was born today in 1830. Little Richard, of "Tutti Frutti" fame was born on December 5th 1932, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died in 1791 at the age of 35 having written more music than most of us have listened to. Acoustic songster J.J. Cale, never ever to be confused with avant- garde violist and Velvet Undergrounder John Cale, was born today in 1938. He is famous for the songs "After Midnight" and "Cocaine", both popularised but hardly altered at all by Eric Clapton. The album to buy for J.J. Cale is "Naturally", a splendid debut album, although the double C.D. greatest hits "Anyway the Wind Blows" is also a good bet. Walt Disney was born on December 5th 1901. His films have been dogged with the suggestion that naked version of their stars have appeared in certain frames ("Snow White" and "The Little Mermaid" being two alleged examples for those with freeze frame video players and a lot of time on their hands). This may have been subliminal advertising for the "American League of Physical Culture" in New York City, founded in 1929. This was, though the name hardly suggests it, the first nudist association in America. Why not the "Nudity League of American" then or something that actually suggests that they like being naked rather than implying a group interest in field sports? Surely not embarrassment?
December 6th
Today is not exactly the most exciting day in literary history. In fact, it is a sad day in musical history more than anything else, with the death of Roy Orbison in 1988. Orbison was famed for such crooned tunes as "Oh, Pretty Woman" and "Crying", and latterly "I Drove All Night". Quite why he chose in his later years to join The Travelling Wilburys is beyond the understanding of all but Tom Petty and Bob Dylan who did exactly the same thing. This supergroup crashed rather swiftly to the ground, being rather less than the sum of its parts. In a similar tale of immediate crash landing, today was also the date of the first American satellite lift off, in 1957. This ill-fated craft managed to get 2 feet off the ground before blowing up. This record was later broken by a terrorist on a trampoline.
December 7th
December 7th was the day in 1985 that Robert Graves, author of I,Claudius, classical scholar, poet and all round good bloke died in Majorca. He had something to say of places like the "American Naked League" or whatever its name was: "At the superior nudist camp, a nice class distinction was made: the butlers and maids who brought along the refreshments were forced to admit their lower social standing by wearing loincloths and aprons respectively". If you've ever tried cooking or moving hot liquids in the nude, you will know that this was probably a practical advantage.
Today was also the birthday of Tom Waits ("Tom Traubert's Blues" etc.) in 1949. Waits, a songwriter and singer who sounds like he has warmed up for recording sessions by drinking twenty shots of whiskey and then eating the glasses, is one of the few in popular music's left field really worth a listen. His best ever, "Rain Dogs", is an extraordinary album, full of great songs like "Downtown Train" and "Time" played by what sounds like a troupe of monkeys playing bongos and harps with their bananas (yes, that good). For those of a tender disposition, "The Asylum Years" is a good introduction to his early ballads featuring his exceptional reading of "Somewhere". Working with writers like William Burroughs, Waits has always been something of a literary type and if anyone can convince him to write a novel he should be locked in a shed with a pen for a few months and kept off of his homemade instruments for a while.
December 8th
Due to the lack of literary anniversaries on December 8th, I think it may be worth continuing our "mad royals" section started with Mad Queen Juana (see last month's editorial). On December 8th in 1926, Queen Christina of Sweden was born. She had a pathological fear of insects and decided that the best way to deal with the problem would be to commission a kind of insect killing device. This is in itself perfectly logical. What is less so is the fact that the weapon she demanded that her servants design was a mini-cannon that fired miniature shells through its four inch barrel at the unlucky insects. Mass production of insect stun-guns has, surprisingly, still not taken off.
'Lizard King' Jim Morrison of The Doors was born today in 1943. He would no doubt have liked me to treat him as a poet. So, here is a taster of his "Horse Latitudes" 'poem':
"Awkward instant
And the first animal is jettisoned,
Legs furiously pumping
Their stiff green gallop,
And head bob up
Poise
Delicate
Pause
Consent
In mute nostril agony"
If you feel the need to hear Morrison speak that nonsense to you, it is on "Strange
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