2 Children 1 Horse 1 lighthouse

Stevie with the 18 year old mare, Zara at Hatch Hollow Farm  on Cape Cod.  The barn is run by Denise Tailby.  The first time I heard Stevie refer to himself by his own name, was when he was talking to one of the horses and said, "Hi I am Stevie".

Below  is Stevie and his older brother
at, Nobska  a famous Cape Cod lighthouse. It has wonderful 270 degree view of the surrounding waters...

Stevie is also famous for portraying the character of Felpin in a bunny suit!

Random things I learned part one ..

Random things ...Pennies, President's Day, Daguerreotypes 

Daguerreotypes actually had something good about them.

Daguerreotypes were the   first commercially successful  photographic  process. There were   widely used in the mid 1800's. The process was  cumbersome, expensive & inefficient. Eventually,  they were superseded in the marketplace by other methods of photography.  What was good about them? Well apparently, the  image quality of a  Daguerreotype is so high that one can use a microscope to find hidden detail on them.  This article in Wired Magazine has more about them....
1848 Daguerreotypes bring past to light

 Canadian Pennies 
 
That the Canadians are about to stop making the Canadian penny,  apparently, in the future  Canadians  will be expected to either round up or round down, though the old stock of pennies are still in circulation. It costs more to make a penny than it is worth.  We Americans  would get rid  it  over here too, but for the fact, that it would require actually making a decision. 

Presidents Day 


President's Day is a sort of a  misnomer. This February holiday  is still  officially called Washington's Birthday. In recent decades it has come to be known as Presidents Day, but it was never changed to that. Some states officially call it Presidents' Day, to make note of the fact that the beloved President Lincoln, was also born in February.

Mary Margaret O'Hara and "Dark Dear Heart"

Mary Margaret O'Hara at her prettiest.

Long ago, when I was teenager, and a young adult, I had a fairly substantial  interest in music and recordings.  My tastes in music  usually leaned to pop music, ABBA, the Beatles, Fleetwood Mac, Top 40 in general, but I did have a few more esoteric interests, especially in women singers. In the  1970's and 1980's  I was especially  interested  in singers  like the Roches, Kate Bush, Jane Siberry, the Pretenders, Sandy Denny, The Bangles and the 10,000 Manics (before the latter two  were popular).

Well in recent years,...it's unusual that I have the experience of discovering (as it were) new talents. In fact, I find it easier to go back in time, and learn about artists from the past who are well regarded  and see what the fuss was all about. A few weeks ago, it was the fairly obscure, but well admired, Canadian singer/songwriter , Mary Margaret O'Hara.  Mary is the younger, prettier sister of SCTV /Home Alone  actress, Catherine O'Hara. Mary released a critically acclaimed solo album called Miss America in 1988. It is  the only album with her name on it, to date.  She  has also worked with other artists and recorded a movie soundtrack album.   For more about her career go to  Ectophiles Guide -Mary Margaret O'Hara .

M2OH (as she is known)  is regarded as a talented but mannered  singer with  an eccentric stage manner.  Her angelic voice seems to be almost a cross  between Doris Day and Bjork.  I am not sure I have really  loved much of what  I heard from her, but I did find one song she wrote  particularly touching. The song  is  called " Dark Dear Heart", she performed the song at the funeral of the legendary actor ,  John Candy in 1994.  She seems to be channeling Patsy Cline on this performance , and she was  so overcome with emotion that she lost her voice.  (That's the video above) Here below is the song's original home on a album by the Canadian group, the Henry's.  Mary Margaret O'Hara is the guest vocalist, and the writer of the song

Here is the studio version with The Henry's /

Another article about this song and Mary Margaret O'Hara.
Shannon Tharp's Blog

This article was originally posted April 2012.

Bernhardt's axiom-"A moderately famous person who shares a relatively unique surname with a more famous person is more likely than not to be related to that famous person"

Who would have believed that a famous baseball player and a famous country star are father and son.  They are also another example of Bernhardt's Axiom.

Tim McGraw is a country star who has had numerous platinum albums. It's turns out his father is former New York Mets/ Philadelphia Phillies pitcher, Tug McGraw who was a key player in two world championships. Tim also played  baseball (at the collegiate 
level)  but Tim got injured and took up singing. Sadly, Tug died in 2004. Tim's version of the  song, "Live Like You Were Dying" is dedicated to his father.

Bernhardt's axiom states that "A moderately famous person who shares a relatively unique surname with a more famous person is more likely than not to be related to that famous person". It usually works, I have found.

 When you hear about somebody new in the news with the surname of famous person they are usually related to them, so much so that is standard journalistic practice to often state it when they are not related to a famous person.  Of course, this axiom  doesn't work with are  people with relatively common names.

Examples include Alan and Robin Thicke, Mika and Zbignew Brzezinski ,  David Attenborough and Richard Attenborough, Chris and Mike  Wallace, Bart and Paul Giamatti, Julian  and Andrew  Lloyd Webber, Charlie and Martin Sheen, David and Jimmy Ruffin,   The Udall family,  Jerry  and Ben Stiller,  Nick and George  Clooney, Sigmund, Lucian and Anna Freud and numerous others. Football coaches, Lou Saban (Buffalo Bills) and Nick Saban (Alabama Crimson Tide)  are sort of related distant cousins.


One example where it isn't true is Brandi Chastain and Jessica Chastain.  Another example is Mark Hamill, Dorothy Hamill and Pete Hamill. The Hamill's and the Chastain's are not related. Andrew and Aaron Sorkin are not related.


One reason this is true is that having a famous successful parent usually open doors for you in the entertainment industry.

(Originally published July 6, 2012.)

By J.C. Bernhardt

Tim McGraw -live like you were Dying.

Can you write a hit song after age 50. Losing the writing touch.

 Can you write a hit song  after age 50?

A long ago correspondent of mine, Richard Freeman, had an interesting theory. His theory was that popular songwriters, have only  a limited period of time before their songwriting abilities deteriorate.  They are just like sports stars in that regard. Freeman was referring mainly to their ability to connect with the zeitgeist of the marketplace, but also to their  ability  to write hit tunes, to avoid repeating oneself, and to continue to do so in a prolific manner. I argued the point at first, but I soon realized that for the most part he was  correct.  Usually most songwriters can't write their own hits  for  more than a decade.  In the second and third decade their work is very unlikely  to be among their best work, but occasionally they will produce an interesting album.

The great songwriters go longer,  but their later work is also always  weaker. It   is rare for even the best  melody writers  to still be able to write hits after say 25 years.  Think of Paul McCartney,  the most successful  songwriter, of the last half century. His  last top fifteen solo hit on the  American top 40 was in 1985.  He has recorded some excellent albums since then, but no big American hits. The 1989 song , "My Brave Face" written with  Elvis Costello was  his last top 40 American solo hit. Then he came back in 1995 with  a  joint Beatles  rewrite of  a 1977 John Lennon, song called "Free as A Bird".  McCartney finally broke his American hit drought in 2015  when McCartney finally had new written  song that was a hit-"Four Five Seconds"written and performed  in collaboration  with Rihanna and Kanye West.

Only a handful of  performing songwriters have been able to write hit for over a quarter of a century.
 Elton John wrote the melodies for songs  that hit the American top 40 for  every year between 1970 and 1997, he's had  a few British hits since but nothing in America. Madonna went between 1983 and 2012   but she usually brings in somebody to write or help write the melody. Madonna appears to be the oldest major artist to  help write a new American top 40  hit song as a solo artist. She was 54 when her last major hit came out.    The Bee Gees went 30 years, but rarely had a hit in the last 15 of those years.   Eric Clapton, seems to have gone  the longest he had self written hits between 1967  ("Sunshine of Your Love") and 1998 ( "My Father's Eyes"). But  this last hit , "My Father's Eyes" was mostly written in 1991. This is odd in that Clapton is only an occasional songwriter. What of more recent artists?  Bon Jovi wrote  hits between 1983 and 2007.   Mariah Carey has gone between 1990 and 2013  years,  but she always has brought in outside writers to help her, and her  last decade has been less successful.   Leonard Cohen released  his most famous song, "Hallulujah" at exactly age 50.

Most songwriters slow down well before twenty year mark,  and stop having hits or bring in outside writers to help them write hits, some good examples of the "I need help" phenomena are Rod Stewart, Heart, Aerosmith, Train, Lionel Ritchie, Michael Jackson, Stevie Nicks. Nowadays, most artists bring in the song doctors at the first sign of trouble, or bring in collaborators from the get go.

The  Rolling Stones' only radio airplay hit of the past few years was ripped off from  K.D. Lang, they have not had an American Top 40 hit since 1989.   U2 no longer has  big hit singles  in the US, though they still have them in the UK. Springsteen had 22 years of  hits.  Jimmy Page  has not really written much of significance after the demise of Led Zeppelin, Most most mature  artists just simply don't write new music that gets played on the radio after a certain point in their careers. Even when they do manage to write or record listenable material, it will not chart highly on the US charts. Some notable examples of this include "Maria" by Blondie, "New" by Paul McCartney, "Your Life Is Now" by John Mellencamp, "Don't Want To Lose You Now" by Lionel Ritchie. "Anybody Seen My Baby" by the Rolling stones,  and on and on.


Some artists just stop recording -Garth Brooks (who often used outside songwriters) took a long break, and Billy Joel   effectively stopped recording new material altogether.

With the advent of American Idol, the era of singer-songwriter ended and a majority of the hits on the American 40  are written in collaboration with / or totally by writers  who are  not the  actual artist on the recording.

The phenomena doesn't necessarily apply to non performing  writers of classical music or musicals.  Beethoven wrote his classic ninth symphony  at age 54, and Richard Rogers composed the music for  Sound of Music at age 57.   Burt Bacharach wrote two number one songs  after age 50.  "Arthur's Theme", and "On My Own", a duet between Patti Labelle and Michael McDonald.

Originally published April 2012.