Halloween Pumpkin 2024 - Thundercats, Ho!

Our Band Could Have Been Your Life - a reflection on the 80s in underground music

 I've spent much of my adult life casting about for music to listen to. Without the concentration of peers common in college, the discovery of quality bands has shifted a responsibility onto my own shoulders. No longer are people bringing music to me; I have to chase it down myself. This has only recently been made more accessible due to YouTube and Bandcamp hosting almost every album I've ever heard of, or could hear of. The days of piracy via peer-to-peer servers are over for me. No longer do I have to wait to hear one song, or at best three or four from a classic album. It's all right there, available for my listening pleasure as soon as I get around to it. The pinch point has shifted from attainability to a dearth of listening time. Household projects and routine chores, even doing my taxes or processing photos have become a boon as they allow me the time to sit down, do something relatively mindless while I catch up on recent and ancient releases. Much of the time, this attempt to LISTEN TO ALL THE MUSIC has been a grab bag. I'm all over the place. Bands people have mentioned recently, bands I've written down in the last decade that people mentioned, bands that influenced bands I like, brand new bands I never would have discovered myself are now touted on websites by writers I've come to respect. Finding music is easy. But in order to find great music, I have to wade through a lot of outdated ideas, terrible budget-recording demos, endless self-indulgence. It's worth it to me though, as there are a lot of great moments out there for the taking. I just have to reach and discover them. I'm always searching for the chance to hear my favorite album, for the first time, again. 
    Michael Azerrad wrote a book called Our Band Could Be Your Life. It set the tone for a lot of later musical journalism that I've read and enjoyed of not only talking about bands, but telling their history, and why they might be important to you. There are a lot of albums/bands mentioned that didn't click either the first or the 20th time, but I'm always willing to try. The following is a list of all the recordings mentioned in the book that I listened through as I read it. I've been at it for a few years.

Black Flag - Nervous Breakdown EP
Black Flag - Jealous Again EP
Black Flag - Six Pack EP
*Black Flag - Damaged
Black Flag - My War
Black Flag - Family Man
Black Flag - Slip It In
Black Flag - Loose Nut
Black Flag - The Process of Weeding Out EP
Black Flag - In My Head
Black Flag - Who's Got the 10 1/2?
The Minutemen - Paranoid Time EP
The Minutemen - Joy EP
The Minutemen - The Punch Line
The Minutemen - What Makes a Man Start Fires?

Curiously Named Locales: Mt Defiance via Starvation Creek

Photo Credit: Wanderlust Hiker

I've spent one day a week, every week, for the last two and a half years, hiking. This has been in service of a long term goal. A few years ago as I was headed towards forty, I decided I wanted to climb Mt Hood. It felt like a good, dangerous enough, mid-life crisis for a guy like me. I met with a friend who works in mountain rescue. She assured me that I was not ready. The mountain had a season for climbing, something I would not have realized on my own. She gave me a list of hikes ranging from dilettante to brutal. I still have the hand-written list on my bookshelf. There is one remaining item on the list. Mount Defiance. Supposedly the hardest hike in the Columbia Gorge. The joke among the local mountaineering group, the Mazamas, is that you climb Mt Hood to train for Mt Defiance. 

    The name of the mountain is great, called such by an early resident of Hood River because the mountain seemed to hold onto snow well into spring in seeming defiance of the season and weather. The name of the trailhead where I intended to start also has a great name, Starvation Creek. There are competing theories on the origin of the creek's name. It is possible it was named because a group of west-bound pioneers nearly starved there. It was also once called Starveout when two passenger trains on the Union Pacific Railroad got stuck there in heavy snow sometime in the winter of 1884-1885. No one actually starved on this occasion since food was brought in from nearby Hood River by men on skis. Legend has it that the train passengers were paid $3 a day to work on digging out the trains. 

    Another hiker and I have made a pact to hike Defiance together, but our availability windows don't always line up. So here I am 130 hikes or so later, still eyeing the tallest peak in the Gorge. From down below. 

Sources:

https://wanderlusthiker.com/mount-defiance-the-hangriest-of-gorge-hikes/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Defiance_(Oregon)

https://stateparks.oregon.gov/index.cfm?do=park.profile&parkId=122

https://www.oregonhikers.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8739 (user BorntoBBrad)

Curiously Named Locales: Cape Fear, North Carolina

 I was a child when the 1991 movie Cape Fear came out. The film poster featured Robert de Niro's intense and disembodied glare floating in the waters above the name. The name struck me a sense of ominous dread. It was years before I learned that Cape Fear is a real place on the Eastern Seaboard. The view of the cape from above shows a delicate angle, nearly 90 degrees where two concave lines meet, a tiny protrusion where the Cape Fear River feeds into its estuary. It could have been gently drawn by M C Escher, yet is prominent enough that it is visible from outer space as a point along the coast where again, two great curves meet, like a child's drawing of a bird in flight. 
    The origin of the name, as with most coastline features in this series of curiously named locales, is nautical. In 1585 an English explorer called Sir Richard Grenville was sailing to Roanoke Island when his ship became trapped in a bay behind the cape. There was some concern the ship would run aground and wreck, hence the name Cape Fear. According to George Stewart, author of Names On the Land : A Historical Account of Place-Naming In the United States, it is one of the five oldest surviving place names in the USA.
A fun side note; panic grass grows near Cape Fear. That's almost as good as the trail leading to Mt Defiance in Oregon starting at Starvation Creek. Also, for flavor and a bit of retroactive justification for this series, I present to you an excerpt from George Stewart's book:

"The poetry of a name may spring from three sources. There is the romantic appeal of sonorous sound and sensuous connotation, evoked by the strange and the unknown. People who cherish a name chiefly for such reasons do not usually like to have it explained or translated. For them, the poetry is not enhanced, but vanishes, when they learn that Atchafalaya means 'long river.'

A second source of poetry is in the historical association of the places which lie close to men's hearts-in names like Virginia, Plymouth, and Concord, the shrines on our long pilgrimage. But again we must not err in thinking history something of the far past. The poetic suggestion of a name may be of recent growth-the glitter of Hollywood, the grim power of Chicago.

A third source of poetry is largely the opposite of the first. It is the poetic suggestion which springs from the inherent meaning, even though the actual event of the naming may be unknown. The United States seems particularly rich in such names — Sweet-water, Marked Tree, Lone Pine, Gunsight Hills. In this lies the charm of Cape Fear, Cape Flattery, Cape Disappointment, and Cape Foulweather; of Broken Sword, Broken Straw, and Broken Bow. These are the names which seem to have stories of life and death behind them — Roaring Run, Deadman Creek, Massacre Lake, Rabbit Hole Spring."

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Fear_(1991_film)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Fear_(headland)
Names on the land : a historical account of place-naming in the United States - by Stewart, George Rippey, 1967

Curiously Named Locales: Albuquerque, New Mexico

Left at Albuquerque (with Bugs) - Chuck Jones

My first introduction to the fantastically named city of Albuquerque was from a Bugs Bunny gag. He was lost, ya see, and all because of a wrong turn. 

The City of Albuquerque was named for a Spanish Duke and the area he ruled. The Spanish Alburquerque (note the additional "r") is a town in the Badajoz province of Spain. This town's name origin is not totally clear, but probably comes from the Latin "alba quercus" which translates to "white oak," quercus being the genus for oak trees.

Sources: 

The Chuck Jones Virtual Experience

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alburquerque,_Spain

Reddit - New Mexico Had Some Weird City Names

Curiously Named Locales: Little Bighorn River

The Custer Fight - Charles Marion Russell

I first remember hearing about Custer's Last Stand at the Battle of the Little Bighorn when I was in the fourth grade. At the time, I remember thinking it was a strange name, but I let it go. More recently, as I was searching for the next item for this series on strangely named places, that old nagging thought reoccurred to me, "Why would it be both a Little and a Big horn?" 

As facts would have it, the Little Bighorn River is a 138-mile tributary of the Bighorn River proper that runs from Wyoming into Montana. The Bighorn River itself is named for the mountain sheep indigenous to the area. A bit on the nose, it's true, but that branch became famous following the Battle of the Greasy Grass, commonly known by the US Army as Custer's Last Stand. In 1876, Crazy Horse fought alongside a coalition of forces that included the Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes against the 7th Cavalry Regiment under George Custer. 

The river's other name, the Greasy Grass, arose from the tall grasses that grew in the riparian zone and held the morning dew. When the horses were ridden through the wet grass, the transference of moisture would cause their bellies and the moccasins of their riders to appear wet and greasy.

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Little_Bighorn
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Bighorn_River

Curiously Named Locales: Useless Loop, Western Australia, Australia

 

Photo credit: Mark Gray markgray.com.au

    A few miles from the westernmost point on the continent of Australia, lies a solar salt farm off Shark Bay that produces what is claimed to be the purest grade of salt in the world. A closed company town, Useless Loop is the location of the Shark Bay Salt Pty Ltd. The accumulation of purified salt harvested from the shallow ocean beds is large enough that it is visible across the Bay in Denham, some 14 miles away.  In 1989, the town received an award for a preservation and relocation project for three endangered Australian mammals: the burrowing bettong, the western barred bandicoot, and the greater stick-nest rat. 

    The town takes part of its name from French explorer Henri-Louis de Saulces de Freycinet, who sailed with the Baudin expedition to Australia, which was then called New Holland. Believing that a large sandbar was blocking access for ships, de Freycinet dubbed the place Havre Inutile or Useless Harbor. The cove has since been transformed into the solar salt farm pictured above.

editor's note: while researching the Useless Loop and its salt production, I came across a unusual measurement for tons. A little further digging revealed the three types of tons:

 - a short, or USA ton which weighs 2,000 lbs

 - a metric tonne is 2,204 lbs (or 1,000 kilograms)

 - a long, or Imperial, or British ton equals 2,240 lbs

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useless_Loop,_Western_Australia
https://maps.roadtrippers.com/au/wa/attractions/useless-loop
https://www.markgray.com.au/gallery/limited-edition-prints/pastels.php

https://www.australiantraveller.com/australia/weirdest-named-places-in-australia/

https://monmouthrubber.com/what-is-the-difference-between-the-three-different-types-of-ton-short-ton-long-ton-and-metric-ton/

Curiously Named Locales: Moose Factory, Ontario, Canada

Far, far north in the province of Ontario, Canada, nestled into the Moose River, sits the town and island of Moose Factory. In the mid-seventeenth century, the Hudson Bay Company was granted a royal charter by King Charles II of England to all the lands that drained into the Hudson Bay. This land was called Prince Rupert's Land (after the King's cousin) and represents more than a third of all land in modern Canada. Two Frenchmen funded by the English set up the company in order to establish fur trading there, farther north than the previously settled trading posts, which were mostly situated near the Saint Lawrence River and primarily controlled by the French. These were mostly trading beaver pelts, but also squirrel, otter and moose. Traveling north to James Bay, the Company established several forts to trade fur with native trappers. The second of these was called Moose Fort, later changed in more pacific times to Moose Factory. In the vocabulary of the company and merchants in general, a 'factor' was a business agent in charge of buying or selling goods, and a 'factory' referred to their jurisdiction. 

    Moose Factory Island is mostly a reserve of the Moose Cree First Nation, which makes up the northern two-thirds of the island. The Cree people were historically migratory, though after Moose Fort was established, the people were exposed to European culture. The fort became the first English-speaking settlement in Ontario, which was then part of New France. The island is accessible from nearby Moosonee by boat and helicopter during the warmer seasons, and in the winter an ice road can be established over the frozen river. Historically the isolated island relied upon annual sea voyages for supplies, but in 1931, Moosonee was connected by rail to the Northern Ontario Railway.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson%27s_Bay_Company

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moose_Factory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moose_Cree_First_Nation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moose_Factory_Island

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert%27s_Land

Curiously Named Locales: Cape Flattery, Washington

 

Photo credit: Gavin Hardcastle phototripper.com

    Statistics can be misleading. Sometimes they're just so specific that I can't help but be unimpressed. This happens a lot in sports. Here's an example: Brett Favre, Tom Brady and Jerry Rice are the only players to play in more than 300 games and don’t play the kicker position. So. When I read that Cape Flattery is the northwestern-most point of the contiguous United States, I got the same eye-rolling feeling. It isn't the northern-most and it isn't the western-most. What makes it special?

    For one thing, it's the oldest permanently named (by European colonizers) feature in the state of Washington. It was named by Captain James Cook, "discoverer" of the Hawaiian Islands. Apparently the opening north of Cape Flattery flattered Cook's crew with the idea that there might be a harbor. This was the opening of the strait of San Juan de Fuca which Cook managed to sail past on his third voyage ca. 1776. 

Painting credit: Parker McAllister

On the west side of Cape Flattery is a large, almost rectangular stone called the Fuca Pillar after Juan de
Fuca, another ancient European explorer of questionable verisimilitude. De Fuca was a Greek explorer working for the king of Spain who claimed to to have explored the Strait of Anián while searching for the fabled Northwest Passage. This strait was later renamed in his honor. On this voyage, De Fuca mentioned a large spire of rock on the western shore of Cape Flattery, though in his account, the pinnacle was recorded as being on the other side of the strait. 

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Flattery
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Cook
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_de_Fuca
https://www.historylink.org/File/5035 - Kit Oldham
https://www.fototripper.com/cape-flattery-olympic-national-park/ - Gavin Hardcastle

https://spl.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15015coll5/id/165/ - Parker McAllister

2023 wrap-up post: Stumbling Towards the Unknown

 I was thinking about 2023 as a whole a few days ago. I'm not sure I accomplished anything noteworthy, but every day I feel like I'm scrambling towards an unknown goal. I'm moving as fast as I can towards... something. I'm not sure what. A realistic version of myself thinks it's Death. I learned about the Call of the Void, or as it's sometimes called High Place Phenomenon. A sort of intrusive thinking that draws your attention to how thin the line can be between what you're doing and total destruction. Oblivion. Somehow learning this was a documented pattern among humans made it easier to bear and seemed to lift the weight of what I had previously considered to be self-destructive thought. The visions I had of my own death falling from a high place seemed less realistic, though I was hiking more than I ever had, increasing the chances of this every week. This year I spent a little more time thinking about the ideal age that I had been in the past. I'm still journeying towards a better self, and some days it hurts. The following list is comprised of people who, for better or for worse, will no longer improve:

Jeff Beck

Lisa Marie Presley

David Crosby

Tom Verlaine

Raquel Welch

Gary Rossington

Dick Fosbury

Klaus Teuber

Al Jaffee

Arie deJong

Gordon Lightfoot

Tina Turner

Ted Kaczynski

Cormac McCarthy

Sinéad O'Connor

Paul Reubens

Robbie Robertson

Jimmy Buffett