TMFW (not) 139 - Goodnight, and Good Luck

I started True Music Facts Wednesday on a lark on September 4, 2013, when I encountered a fun story about Three Dog Night's name and sent it to my friend Jinx.  (I later incorporated that story in the opening sentence of TMFW 8, which deals with the band name Toad the Wet Sprocket).  

Over the next two-and-a-half years, I wrote 138 entries and tens of thousands of words, and I bothered you with them each Wednesday without interruption.  But today, as I sat down to write volume 139, the process felt more like a hassle than a joy.  I started three different entries from my drafts folder, but couldn't get myself to work them up.  

So rather than force it, I'm taking my writer's block as a sign that it's time to call it (at least for now) on TMFW.  I hope that you found something worthy in all of these electrons; it was an awful lot of fun while it lasted.

Peace,

Eric

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BONUS NOTE:  I've still got 75 could-be TMFW draft entries, from one-line notes to half-written stories.  If I start doing this again, I will send along a note to let you know.

BONUS NOTE 2:  For good measure, here's a collection of goodbye songs for you, each by a subject of a prior TMFW:

"I Will Remember You," Sarah McLachlan (TMFW 131 subject.)

"Hello, Goodbye," The Beatles (TMFW 44, 47, 78, 94, and 135 subjects.)

"Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road," Elton John (whose producer was the subject of TMFW 33.)

"These are the Times to Remember," Billy Joel (TMFW 124 subject.)

"Closing Time," Semisonic (TMFW 12 subject.)

"Going Home," Kenny G (as TMFW 38 teaches, this is a goodbye song in China.)

"On to the Next One," Jay Z (TMFW 99 subject.)

TMFW 138 - The Judiciary Gets in on the Act (Part 2)

 

This week's entry is a continuation of last week's theme of judges getting creative with musical opinions.  And unlike the Taylor Swift and Eminem opinions from that entry, today's story is a bit more sneaky.  

 

The opinion in question is the 1987 decision from the federal Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in the case United States vs. Abner.  (The lawyerly citation is U.S. v. Abner, 825 F.2d 835 (5th Cir. 1987).)  The case deals with whether a criminal defendant had effective assistance of counsel at trial - pretty dry stuff that has nothing to do with music.  What makes it today's TMFW is that the opinion sneaks in 19 different Talking Heads song and/or album titles. 

 

If you Google around about the case, you may get the impression that a judicial clerk wrote the opinion (allegedly to score free tickets to a Talking Heads show) and that judge Reynaldo Garza didn't recognize the myriad song references when he reviewed and signed the opinion.  But in a 1990 interview with Indiana University Law School's The Exordium newsletter (link goes to .txt file), the law clerk who wrote the opinion clarified the story.  

 

The opinion's author Steve Riggs explained: "When the Fifth Circuit would sit for arguments, we'd be in New Orleans, and the clerks would go out with some of the other judges at dinner. One night, I got to ask Judge [E. Grady] Jolly about a footnote he had dropped which made an uncited reference to Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner.  He got the biggest chuckle out of the fact that I had noticed. He said that he tries to zip up legal writing and encouraged Judge Garza to do the same...[when it came time to write the Abner opinion], I told him what Jolly had done with Faulkner, and asked him if we could do the same thing with popular song titles...The Judge said it was fine as long as the opinion was 'intellectually coherent and makes good sense.' The Judge got a terrible kick out of it."  

 

As it turns out, the Abner opinion was Riggs' last as a law clerk.  So his musical writing was a once in a lifetime event.   

 

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BONUS FACT:  Like the dinosaur named after Mark Knopfler in TMFW 45, I started this entry last week thinking that my examples were noteworthy for their uniqueness.  But after research I have discovered that music lyrics in legal opinions are common enough that they inspired a law review article analyzing their use.  (Not unlike the scholarly article breaking down Jay-Z's "99 Problems" that was featured in TMFW 99.)

 

BONUS FACT 2:  On the subject of judicial opinions and burning down the house, I enjoyed this report of a tax decision in Virginia.  A family bought a house that they intended to tear down, but to save themselves the trouble they allowed the local fire department to do a "training exercise" with it that involved burning it to the ground.  The family then wrote off the value of the house as a charitable deduction on their taxes.  The IRS didn't like that and it went to court.  (You will not be surprised that the taxman won.)  

 

BONUS FACT 3:  The federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals judge Alex Kozinski is famously playful in his opinions, and is an excellent writer.  In 1990, Kozinski wrote the opinion on a case dealing with alleged antitrust violations at a movie theater chain.  He took the opportunity to cram the opinion with over 200 movie titles.  

 

BONUS FACT 3.5:  Back in the infancy of slate.com, the site featured a series called "Slate Diaries," which was a series of entries by noteworthy people.  In 1996 (ANCIENT in internet years), Judge Kozinski did a 10-part diary.  You can read Day 1 here, and the rest by clicking "view all entries" and selecting a day.  I particularly like his Day 8 entry, which gives a little glimpse of daily life as a judge and a good story about he keeps things in perspective.

TMFW 137 - The Judiciary Gets in on the Act (Part 1)

 

Last year, the singer Jessie Braham (or maybe Graham; sources differ) sued Taylor Swift, claiming that she had plagiarized his song "Haters Gonna Hate" when writing her blockbuster hit "Shake It Off."  Braham had not much evidence behind him to sustain that allegation, other than that the refrain of his tune featured the lines "haters gonna hate, and players gonna play," while Swift's used "'cause the players gonna play play play play play / and the haters gonna hate hate hate hate hate..."

If you have listened to Braham's song (linked above), you have likely already concluded that other than the weak similarity of sharing two well-known phrases, there is precious little in common between the two songs.  (You may have also concluded that Braham's song is pretty bad.)  Last fall, a federal court agreed and dismissed the suit.  In her opinion (pdf link), federal magistrate judge Gail Standish did an excellent job highlighting both the legal standard for copyright claims and why Braham failed to meet it.  But what makes her dismissal order the topic of today's TMFW is her concluding paragraph.  In it, Judge Standish worked in references to 4 Taylor Swift songs, writing:

"At present, the Court is not saying that Braham can never, ever, ever get his case back in court,” Standish wrote. “But, for now, we have got problems, and the Court is not sure Braham can solve them. As currently drafted, the Complaint has a blank space—one that requires Braham to do more than write his name. And, upon consideration of the Court's explanation . . . Braham may discover that mere pleading Band-Aids will not fix the bullet holes in his case. At least for the moment, Defendants have shaken off this lawsuit."

As you might guess, Judge Standish's playfulness was noted widely by the press (e.g. this, this, this, this, this, this, this, and this.)  And when you think about, it was pretty fearless of her.  But it paid off beyond her wildest dreams: I bet Judge Standish had the best day reading about it.

I've got a bit more on this theme, but in the interest of being finished for today, and of padding my TMFW drafts folder, let's leave it here for now.  See you next week for the exciting conclusion.

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BONUS FACT: Similar to the strange-but-true story in TMFW 131 about Sarah McLachlan being sued by her stalker for inspiring a song, in 2003 Eminem was sued for defamation by the man that bullied him as a younger man and inspired a verse in the song "Brain Damage." 

In awarding summary judgment to Eminem, Michigan state court judge Deborah Servitto wrote a 14-page opinion that lays out the legal and factual details in plain language.  But, like Judge Standish, she had a little bit of fun at the end, including a final footnote that explained her ruling in ten stanzas (36 lines) of "rap." (sample lyrics: "If the language used is anything but pleasin' / It must be highly objectionable to a person of reason," and "It is therefore this Court's ultimate position / That Eminem is entitled to summary disposition.")

Kudos to Judge Servitto for losing herself in the moment and turning out such a goofy, great opinion. 

BONUS FACT 1.5:  It was particularly audacious of Eminem's bully to sue him: the abuse was so bad that in 1982 Eminem's mom sued the school district to stop it, naming specifically the kid who is referred to in Eminem's song and alleging that young Em suffered a cerebral concussion and post-traumatic headaches as a result of the beatings.  Holy cow.  

TMFW 136 - 50,000 Unique "Copies" of a Best-Selling Song

 

In TMFW 24, I wrote the story of Matt Farley, who found a clever way to game Spotify by flooding it with over 15,000 different songs, with the idea that even a few pennies per song would add up across the catalog.  Today's TMFW is the (only vaguely) similar story of George W. Johnson, an early recording star who is estimated to have made 50,000 recordings of one song.  

 

Johnson worked, quite literally, in the earliest days of recording.  Thomas Edison invented the phonographic cylinder in 1877, but the machine used tinfoil to capture sound, and the delicate grooves in the recordings would be erased after just a few plays.  With that limited functionality, the machine was a curiosity but not much more.  Edison was busy with other things during that time - the electric light bulb was first tested in 1879, and was developed (and litigated) for several years thereafter - and so he left the phonograph alone until the mid-1880s.  When he returned to his device, he figured out a way to make "permanent" recordings using wax instead of tinfoil, and the phonograph became commercially successful. 

 

By 1889 the machine was sufficiently popular that pre-recorded cylinders were introduced, and the nickname "records" was born.  One year later in 1890, Mssrs. Louis Glass and William S. Arnold patented the "Coin Actuated Attachment for Phonographs," which took a nickel and played a cylinder into headphone-like "listening tubes" that patrons would stick in their ears.  They were the first jukeboxes, and they proved popular in arcades and taverns.  

 

To keep people interested in phonographs, owners needed a variety of content.  So, just like today, popular performers made records and sold them to the public.  But, very much unlike today, the recording means for wax cylinders was direct.  In other words, to make a decent recording, the artist had to perform a song live.   "Early phonograph recordings were accomplished literally by brute force – all acoustically: The performers would stand before a funnel-shaped horn attached to a phonograph and belt out their tunes.   High volumes of sound were required to force the recording diaphragm (made variously of glass, mica, or copper) to vibrate sufficiently to force the cutting stylus to make a good carving on the blank wax cylinder."  

 

That means that in the early days of commercial music, all recordings were "masters," in that they were the original cut of an artist's performance.  So if a song was a hit, and people wanted to buy more copies, Edison and his competitors had to make them by re-recording the song, over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.  (During recording sessions, they would cut down on the need for repetition by arraying four devices in a way that each could capture the original performance, but that was the extent of "mass production" of wax cylinders.) 

 

Enter George W. Johnson (whose story is well told at that link).  Born a slave in Virginia in 1846, Johnson was "lucky" enough to be taken as a baby to be a playmate for a white child of similar age.  This was called being a "body servant," with the slave becoming a sort of butler or valet for the family as he got older.  That position of very relative privilege allowed Johnson to learn how to read and to write, it gave him exposure to music from a young age, and it made him comfortable in interacting with white people (or more to the point, he became facile in making white people comfortable interacting with him.)

 

After the Civil War, Johnson made his way to New York City, where he became well-known as a street performer.  Johnson was particularly skilled at whistling; "his notes are as perfect, it [was] said, as those of a flute."  And as a practiced street musician, he could sing loudly for most of the day without losing tone or volume in his voice.  

 

Those two skills turned out to be very valuable for Johnson.  In the nascent days of wax cylinder recording, companies needed performers who could sing the same song, repeatedly, for days on end.  And they needed both volume and pitch that would come through well on recordings.  Johnson's baritone and his whistle were perfect.  In early 1890, Johnson performed two songs for licensees of the North American Phonographic Company.  The first was "The Whistling Coon," an almost unbelievably racist song (lyrics at the link) about a "limpy, happy, chuckleheaded, huckleberry nig" who is happy when he whistles in tune.  The second was "The Laughing Song," a still-racist-but-less-so song that features a chorus of Johnson laughing heartily.  

 

Both of Johnson's tunes were big hits.  In fact, for the next seven years, Johnson recorded them pretty much continuously.  All told, it is estimated that he made 50,000 recordings of "The Laughing Song," for virtually every phonograph recording company that existed at the time.  The song is thought to be the highest selling record of the 1890s. 

 

Though he did not earn royalties or songwriting credits, during his period of fame Johnson is said to have earned up to $100 per week, at a time when typical wages were around $500 per year.  Unfortunately, Johnson's success was short-lived.  By 1902, phonograph companies had developed a way to mass-produce copies of cylinders and discs from a master recording.  So once they got a good take from Johnson, they no longer required his services.  

 

From there, Johnson's story has a sad ending: he had a troubled personal life (including being charged - but ultimately acquitted - of murdering his common-law wife), and struggled with poverty and alcohol abuse.  He died penniless in 1914, and was buried in an unmarked "pauper's grave" in New York City.  

 

Thankfully, people have since taken note of his remarkable life, and are telling his story.  I hope that, wherever he is, he is laughing.
 

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BONUS FACT:  When writing this entry, I first called the early pay phonographs a "nickelodeon," as that is the world that I know for them.  But today's research taught me that "nickelodeon" does not refer to those machines at all.  Instead, a nickelodeon was a very early form of movie theater that was popular in the 1900s and 1910s, typically a converted storefront that played short films in a loop for a 5 cent admission.  The popularity of nickelodeons (and their reputation as low quality, uncomfortable places) paved the way for the growth of the motion picture industry and the birth of lavish "movie palaces" in the 1920s.

 

BONUS FACT 1.5:  Nickelodeons got their name from taking "nickel" (duh) and "odeon," the ancient Greek word for theaters with roofs.  (The Odéon is also the name of a famous theater in Paris from the early 1800s, and in the early 20th century the name had become synonymous with fancy performance spaces.  So a "nickel Odéon" was a sort of apt wordplay for a cheap show.)

 

BONUS FACT 1.75:  So why are old jukeboxes sometimes called nickelodeons?  The misnomer comes from the 1949 song "Music! Music! Music!," which features the line "put another nickel in // in the nickelodeon."  Per that song's Wikipedia entry, "there is no prior record of 'Nickelodeon' being used as a brand or common name for any coin-operated device, and the trademark owner was a chain of silent movie theaters that operated from 1905 to 1915. All uses of 'nickelodeon' to refer to a jukebox appear to trace directly to this song."

 

BONUS FACT 1.875:  So what did you call the machines that played at taverns and bars in the olden days?  The contemporaneous terms were simply "phonograph," "nickel-in-the-slot machine," "jukebox" (first coined 1939), or orchestrion (for devices that used instruments or pipes to create live music as opposed to recorded music).  The more you know.

TMFW 135 - 4000 Holes and 1 Mean Letter

Late last year, I was REALLY excited to discover a great piece of music history related to the Beatles' classic song "A Day in the Life." And after a little bit more research, now is the right time to tell the story.

This week last year, the Royal Albert Hall in London tweeted and posted to its website a 1967 letter from the venue to The Beatles' late manager (and Fifth Beatle) Brian Epstein.  As the post explains, the letter "was unearthed whilst clearing an old archive room as part of the Hall’s ongoing steam heating refurbishment project."

The letter is an objection "in the strongest conceivable terms" to The Beatles name-checking the Hall in the final verse of "A Day in the Life":

I read the news today, oh boy

Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire

And though the holes were rather small

They had to count them all

Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall

I'd love to turn you on

That lyric doesn't make a lot of sense - Blackburn, Lancashire is over 200 miles northwest of London, after all - and the stodgy managers at the Hall were apparently concerned that listeners would draw the wrong conclusions.

Writing for the Hall, its then Chief Executive Ernest O'Follipar complained that "[i]n the lyric that mentions the Albert Hall, the singer (thought to be John Lennon) heavily implies several gross inaccuracies which we consider to be misleading to the general public who may hear the song, and potentially catastrophic to our reputation - one which has taken almost a century to achieve."  The letter went on to object to three specific inaccuracies: (1) that there are four thousand holes in the Royal Albert Hall, (2) that the Royal Albert Hall is located in Blackburn, Lancashire, and (3) that the singer would "love to 'turn on' the Royal Albert Hall of Arts and Sciences." 

O'Follipar was particularly concerned about the four thousand holes allegation, noting that "it is likely to deter concertgoers who do not want to fall into a hole," and that "I am also baffled as to where this figure has come from - even if you count the doorways as holes, that would still only make thirty-two."

The letter ends with suggested changes to the lyrics, which promote the Royal Albert Hall's then-upcoming season of shows. In the alternative, the Hall suggested that perhaps Ringo could add backing vocals that "contradict John Lennon's lies," suggesting "Not that there are any holes in the auditorium, John!"

In addition to the letter, the Albert Hall's post includes a response from John Lennon in which he blows off the hall's geographic concerns and pokes fun at them by noting "we won't be saying sorry, because it takes too long to get to Blackburn from our studio at Abbey Road."

Being a Beatles fan and the writer of a weekly music trivia blog, as noted above I was thrilled when I happened upon the letter from the Royal Albert Hall.   Even without 49 years of history and hindsight, it is so silly to think that someone could have taken that lyric so seriously and reacted in that way.  And it was amazing that a no-name like Ernest O'Follipar would go so far as to suggest alternate lyrics to John Lennon.  "What a great entry this will make," I thought.  "I can't believe this wasn't a bigger story when it came out," I thought.  "It's almost too good to be true," I thought.  

Then finally, I saw the date of the Albert Hall's blog post.  April 1.  It turns out the whole thing was an April Fools' joke. And it was a thinly disguised one at that - O'Follipar is an anagram of "April Fool."  

Well done, Royal Albert Hall, and shame on me.

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BONUS FACT (A REAL ONE):  So what does that lyric "four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire" mean?  Well, it turns out John Lennon really did "read the news today" when he wrote that song, and he cherry-picked a few stories and molded the verses around them.  One of the newspaper stories was about the abundance of potholes on the streets in Blackburn.  

According to the book The Complete Beatles Songs by Steve Turner (which sits on my coffee table), the story "was picked from the Near and Far column" in the January 17, 1967 edition of the Daily Mail.  As for the reference to the Royal Albert Hall, John was stuck looking for a rhyme to "rather small," and an old schoolmate of his suggested "Albert Hall."  It fit, so it made the grade.

BONUS FACT 2:  "A Day in The Life" features an abrupt musical/lyrical shift in the middle, from John Lennon's dreamy contemplations to Paul McCartney's boppy rundown of his morning (i.e. "woke up, fell out of bed, dragged a comb across my head...")

If those two parts sound a bit incongruous, it's because they are: to make "A Day in the Life," John stuck one of his unfinished songs together with one of Paul's.  That the two half-conceived songs meshed so beautifully and turned into such a monumental track is Exhibit 792 of The Beatles' genius.

BONUS FACT 3:  On the subject of musical letters, one of my favorite blogs Letters of Note recently had a wonderful (and real) letter from the famous comic book artist Robert Crumb to the Swedish "free jazz" saxophone player Mats Gustafsson.  Apparently, Gustafsson was a great admirer of Crumb's and sent Crumb one of his records in appreciation.

Crumb was not impressed with what he heard, and pulled no punches in a letter back to Gustafsson.  He started the note by saying "I gotta tell you, on the cover of the CD of your sax playing, which is black and has no text on it, I wrote in large block letters, in silver ink, 'Torturing The saxophone—Mats Gustafsson.'"  

Crumb went on from there: "I just totally fail to find anything enjoyable about this, or to see what this has to do with music as I understand it, or what in God´s name is going on in your head that you want to make such noises on a musical instrument. Quite frankly, I was kind of shocked at what a negative, unpleasant experience it was, listening to it. I had to take it off long before it reached the end. I just don´t get it. I don’t understand what it is about."

For his part, Gustafsson seemed quite pleased with the critique from Crumb.  So much so that he named his next record Torturing the Saxophone, with the title in large block letters in silver ink.  I love that.

TMFW 134 - Roundin' Third, Headed for Home / A Terrible Baseball Team Inspires a Great Band

Yo La Tengo is an indie group from Hoboken, New Jersey.  The co-founders and leaders of the group are Ira Kaplan and his wife Georgia Hubley; as Ms. Hubley's entry on Wikipedia notes, she and Kaplan got together after "finding a common ground in music, and sharing a love of New York Mets baseball."  It is that latter connection that is the subject of today's TMFW.  

In 1962, the Mets were a first-year expansion team.  They had a historically bad season, finishing 60.5 games out and racking up 120 losses.  (To add insult to injury, the NL pennant was taken by the San Francisco Giants, who had left New York just five years before, and the World Series was won by the stupid old Yankees.)  The Mets' centerfielder was future Hall-of-Famer Richie Ashburn, playing in the final year of his career.  Their shortstop was Elio Chacon, a Venezuelan player who spoke very little English.  

As the story goes, the language barrier between Ashburn and Chacon caused a handful of miscues in the field, with both players chasing a fly ball and running into each other instead.  So rightfielder Joe Christopher, who spoke both English and Spanish, had the idea to teach Ashburn a Spanish phrase to call off Chacon.  That phrase, of course, was "Yo la tengo!," which means "I have it!"

Allegedly, the phrase worked precisely as imagined.  Later in the season, a pop-up went to left-centerfield, and Ashburn called to Chacon "yo la tengo!"  Chacon backed off, but right as Ashburn was about the catch the ball leftfielder Frank Thomas mowed him down and the ball dropped in for a hit.  

Thomas, not understanding what had just happened, asked Ashburn "what the hell is a yellow tango?"  And with that, baseball (and indie rock) history was made.

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BONUS FACT: Yo La Tengo are famously talented at playing cover songs, and for more than 10 years they have put that skill to use to help raise money for WFMU, the famous New York independent radio station.  During WFMU's annual pledge drive, Yo La Tengo has a marathon session where they hang out in the studio and play requests, like a live-action jukebox.  In 2006, the band put out Yo La Tengo is Murdering the Classics, a compilation of some of the covers.

BONUS FACT 2:  In an episode of the sitcom Parks and Recreation, the character Leslie Knope organizes a rock concert for the cities of Pawnee and Eagleton, Indiana.  One of the featured acts is "Bobby Knight Ranger," which is a Night Ranger tribute act in which each member dresses as the famous Indiana basketball coach Bobby Knight.

Bobby Knight Ranger was played on the show by Yo La Tengo; each band member "got dressed up in red sweaters, khakis, and white wigs, and they played ‘Sister Christian’ in front of a thousand people."  That's a good gag.

BONUS FACT 3:  Most baseball fans know that in the olden days New York had three teams: the American League Yankees and the National League Dodgers and Giants.  Those latter two teams headed to California in the first wave of western relocation (each in 1957), and their departure paved the way for the expansion Mets.  The Mets' colors are a blend of the Dodgers' blue and the Giants' orange: a small but fitting tribute to New York City's baseball past.   (Thanks to TMFW reader and neighbor Clifton for this one.)

BONUS FACT 4:  Yo La Tengo has a thing for quirky sports-related titles: their 11th studio record is called I am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass.  That quote came courtesy of New York Knicks forward Kurt Thomas during a 2005 NBA game; Thomas said it to his teammate Stephon Marbury as the two argued on the bench.

BONUS FACT 4.5:  The Wikipedia link above (at the album title's name) suggests that it was NBA player TIM Thomas who threatened Marbury rather than KURT Thomas.  But TMFW went back to contemporary sources to bring you the true facts.  (Both of those players were with the Knicks at the time, so the screw-up is understandable.)

BONUS FACT 4.75:  While we are (sort of) on the subject of great declarative album titles, I would be remiss if I didn't include the debut record from Philadelphia band Marah: Let's Cut the Crap and Hook Up Later on Tonight.  Marah's song "Freedom Park" (from a different record, but still) is on the TMFW all-time greats list.

BONUS FACT 5:  TMFW fans will surely recall that I teased in TMFW 113 about "TMFW 134 future subjects Yo La Tengo."  I have been saving up baseball stories to go with Opening Day.  And here we are!  It's the best time of the year.

BONUS FACT 5.5/TITLE NOTE: the first part of today's title is a continuation of lyrics from (TMFW 87 subject) John Fogerty's great song "Centerfield."  That song is not related to today's subject except through baseball, but lyrics were previously used in the Opening Day entries of TMFW 29 and TMFW 81 so I thought it appropriate to continue the theme.

BONUS OBSERVATION 5.75:  I can't believe we've been doing TMFW long enough that this is our third Opening Day.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:  Like the story of "Deep in the Heart of Texas" in TMFW 19 and The White Stripes' short(est) concert in TMFW 75, today's inspiration came from Dan Lewis' excellent newsletter Now I Know.  If you like TMFW's weekly entries, you will surely like Now I Know's daily ones.

TMFW 133 - The Appliance Delivery Guy Who Inspired a #1 Hit

Your humble TMFW writer recently lost his job; our company has a new CEO in Boston and that is incompatible with having a chief lawyer in Chicago.  My last day is this Friday; I am drafting this week's entry from my sad, empty office. The only real thing left for me to do here is finalize the details of my severance.

So with that in mind, and with only a slight stretch necessary to get there, this week's entry is the story of the real-life inspiration behind "Money For Nothing."  (See what I did there?) The song, which reached #1 for 3 weeks in 1985, was the biggest hit for Dire Straits over its Hall of Fame-worthy (but not yet Hall of Fame) career.  It helped drive the album Brothers in Arms to #1 in 18 countries; that record has sold 20 million albums worldwide. 

The "Money for Nothing" video - which at the time was groundbreaking for its use of 3D animation - features a blue collar, hardhat-type guy watching and commenting on music videos that are playing on a wall of TVs behind him.  And it turns out that's pretty much exactly how the song came about.  In an interview with the late British rock journalist Robert Sandall, Knopfler told the story of his inspiration for the track:

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Robert Sandall : "Money For Nothing" was reputedly based on an overheard conversation.  

Mark Knopfler: Yeah, I was in New York in one of the big appliance shops. Basically, the layout was quite simple, the kitchen display unit in the front, the table and chairs and drawers and everything were all there in the shop window. Then you go inside and they had rows of microwaves and all the rest of it and at the back there were big walls of TVs all turned to MTV.

It was like a stage set because there was this big Joe Six Pack figure with his checked shirt and he had a barrel of some sort - he had been pulling boxes of something through the back door and he was holding forth to an audience of one or two about the performances on MTV. But the kind of stuff he was saying was so classic that I just managed to eavesdrop for a couple of minutes and then I went and got this piece of paper and started writing down the lines of things he was saying. Lines like, "That ain't working" and all that, and "Maybe get a blister on your finger", made me laugh. He said all that stuff and "What's that, Hawaiian noises?", so in a sense it was just a piece of reporting. But again, it's one of those things when you are aware that the situation has possibilities to create something.

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That's a great story, and it's your TMFW for today: Mark Knopfler overheard an appliance deliveryman bloviating about rock stars on MTV, and turned him into the narrator of a #1 song.

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BONUS FACT:  Sting famously sings the signature "I want my MTV" background vocals on "Money for Nothing," and though that was his only contribution he is credited as a co-writer of the song. 

I can't believe I never realized this before, but Sting ripped off that melody from himself: "I want my, I want my, I want my MTV" is identical to "don't stand, don't stand so, don't stand so close to me."

BONUS FACT 2:  Mark Knopfler was previously featured in TMFW 45 for inspiring a group of paleontologists (and being rewarded with a dinosaur named after him).