Pictures of Rockshire before the houses were built.

 Rochshire pictures... Source:  Neil Bernstein and Mr. Viers 

Seven League Boots to Southern Cross: The Curtis Brothers, Buckingham Nicks and Stephen Stills

"Seven League Boots" was recorded as a demo by the Curtis Brothers in 1975 along with another song called "Blue Letter". "Blue Letter" was covered the same year by Fleetwood Mac and sung by Lindsey Buckingham on their mega-selling self titled Fleetwood Mac album  ( the same album that has "Rhiannon.")  These demos by the Curtis Brothers were apparently not released officially- though "Blue Letter" was included on the Curtis Brothers album that was released in 1976. I didn't realize that Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks (you can hear her voice on occasion in the video above) had worked with them on these recordings.                   

In the early 1980s, the Curtis Brothers offered "Seven League Boots" to Stephen Stills who was working on a solo project. Stills liked the melody but asked if he could rewrite the song which he did under a new title "Southern Cross". The Curtis Brothers agreed to this. The Southern Cross is a constellation used for navigation in the Southern Hemisphere.  Seven League boots are footwear found in European folklore that takes strides of seven leagues per step (a distance of about 21 miles).

Stephen Stills' new lyric totally transformed the song.  The 1982 CSN Daylight Again album on which the song is finally released was originally slated to be an album with a lineup of just Stills and Graham Nash-but their label had enough of CSN  solo projects and wanted a more lucrative album with the full Crosby, Stills, and Nash lineup. Eventually, Stills and Nash relented, but some of the songs on the album don't include Crosby because they were recorded before he was brought in. Instead, the CSN vocal style was created by Stills and Nash with additional backing vocalists. In this case, the vocalists were Timothy B. Schmidt and Art Garfunkel. Of course, you don't really notice it's them. However, the video recorded for the song features David Crosby even though he didn't sing or play on the recording.  The Curtis Brothers never made it big-but at least they had these two songwriting credits on two albums that sold over 6  million copies in total.

Above is the video of  "Southern Cross"-which was played a lot on video channels at the time. It was the last top 40 hit CSN had.

Originally published January 2, 2019

More about the origins of Southern Cross.

When did Jesus Die?

Ever wondered what year Jesus died?  There are no extant official records that verify an actual date of his crucifixion.  Still, historians are largely in agreement that Jesus did exist and was crucified, but they are not sure of the date.  They are fairly certain that he died within the term of the Judean prefect, Pontius Pilate. Pilate was the fifth Prefect of the Roman province of Judaea, from AD 26–36. It is also assumed that Jesus died during the  High Priesthood of Joseph Caiphas who was in that position from 18 to 36 AD.

 It is also assumed that Jesus's ministry lasted from one to three years, (probably around three years)  and that Jesus was in his 30's when he died. The synoptic gospels (Mark, Matthew, and Luke) and the Gospel of John seem to disagree on the length of the ministry-but the gospels are theological documents with theological purposes, so one can't always treat them as good chronology. 

The best candidates for a year that Jesus died are years that had Passover on a Friday.   The gospels indicate that he died on a Passover that was a Friday.  Both 30 AD and 33 have a Passover falling on or near a Friday. Passover is the Jewish festival commemorating the Jewish exodus from Egypt.

The traditional date of Jesus' death (though there was never was a  date treated as doctrine)  was originally assumed to be 33 AD.  One reason is that this simply fits neatly into the AD 0 plus thirty plus three calculation. Luke 3:23 tells us that Jesus was baptized by John and began his ministry at "about" the age of thirty.   So Jesus was assumed to be about thirty when he started his ministry and his ministry was about three years. So if Jesus was born around  1 AD, he would have died around 33 AD.

So when was Jesus born? As you may already know-scholars don't think Jesus was actually born on December 25 (a day that was picked simply to match up with Pagan winter festivals)-they think it is more likely he was born when shepherds were out in September.  Indeed it is said that John the Baptist was born in March-and that Jesus was born six months after him. Also if there had been a Roman tax census (and that is also questionable) then it most likely occurred around harvest time in the fall.   Whatever the month the year was probably 4 BC or before. However, we can't even be certain that Matthew's version of the nativity is entirely correct historically.  But some of the details are likely correct and Herod's death coming near to the Nativity would be a detail likely to be accurate.

 Dionysius Exiguus, a monk who died in A.D. 556, was  the man who determined the birthdate of Jesus  as the Roman year 753 (Roman years were then counted from the year Rome was founded) using the information available to him at the time. 754 was dated as 1 AD. However, later historians determined that for Jesus to have born under Herod the Great, he would have to have been born before Herod's death in March or April 4 BC. So scholars agree that Jesus was born not around 1 AD but in 4 BC or before.

 If Jesus was born in  5BC and died in 33 AD he would now have to be age 38 when he died. That age seems a little too old.   However, other factors still make 33 AD a good choice, the  Judean political situation had worsened enough by 33 AD to make the extreme action of killing a prophet that was taken by Pilate and the high priests seem more justified.  Also, there were astrological events in  Passover 33 AD that more closely fit the bill than 30 AD. Finally, there are a lot of three's!  April 3, 33 AD dying at three in the afternoon. The number three suggests the trinity.

Tiberius

However, April 7, 30 AD also remains a serious candidate.  The reign of the Roman emperor,  Tiberius is noted in Luke's gospel. Luke says that John the Baptist started preaching in the fifteenth year of Tiberius' reign. Some say that the 15th year of Tiberius reign would translate to 26 AD.  It is said that Jesus began his ministry soon after John's  So that would put the range of  Jesus ministry from around 26 to 30 AD.  However, Tiberius co-reigned his first two years which might change the calculation, Jesus also might not have begun his ministry the same year as John the Baptist-and finally as with all these things some of the events may have described incorrectly. 


So experts cannot pin down the exact year of the death of Jesus but in any event, Christians believe that Jesus rose from the dead on the Sunday after Good Friday. The day they call Easter.

A historical timeline of the life of Jesus

Originally Published April 21, 2019.

Jen Turner in the the Tigerlilly concert tour.

 

Live in Orlando, Florida, September 24, 1995...  This is a complete concert by Natalie Merchant. Her band at the time featured Jen Turner on guitar.   They did a duet here on the song, "Baby, I Love You".  Below Natalie Merchant discusses working with Jen Turner on the Tigerlilly album.

The Death of a Friend. TaB Soda (1963-2020)

 “Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?” - Steve Jobs talking to Pepsi executive, John Scully.

Soda doesn't get much respect.  Imagine being a soda, that has been on life support for over thirty years. That is been the fragile life of TaB Soda. For decades it has been awaiting the ax.  It finally happened on October 16, 2020. The Coca Cola company axed it along with some other underperforming brands, Although it was not a customer-friendly move, it was understandable, if only because the company would have been justified in killing it long ago, but didn't because they knew there were many devoted fans of the pink can.

 

What made TaB Special was that it was not too sweet.  Many sodas are almost unnaturally sweet,  but TaB wasn't. When it started in 1963, they used sodium cyclamate to sweeten it, which was later changed to saccharine, and finally, the sweetener was changed to a  saccharine/aspartame mixture in 1984.  I was actually a fan of the third formula.    It was for me an improvement over just using saccharine. But many people especially women,  were fans of the less sweet original version as well, after having drunk it for decades. Some folks just didn't like the artificial taste of Diet Coke, which tasted like an aspartame bomb had blown up inside a can.  

However, by 1984 the end was already preordained, TaB had begun its slow market decline. It's had been superseded in the marketplace by  Diet Coke which when introduced in 1982 in the most successful soda product launch of all time. Diet Coke quickly became the third most successful soda brand in the USA, and it competes with regular Pepsi for the second spot.  Tab's market share took a quick plunge in the 1980s, but it remained enough of a seller to avoid cancellation for decades. But it always faced dwindling market places.  TaB was removed from soda fountains,  stopped being sold in international markets, and eventually, 2-liter bottle versions and 16-ounce versions were discontinued leaving only the pink can.   TaB sales were down to 3 million cases by 2010, and a million cases or less by the time it was killed. Towards the end,  it was removed from entire United States bottling regions. It was finally killed when a  can shortage caused by the Covid19 pandemic made lesser soda brands problematic. Soda companies sometimes keep brands in their portfolio in dormancy to be brought back later, but any future plans for a return of Tab are not clear.

For me, it was a friend, something to look forward to every week, to see if it was on sale, or if it could be found.  Others as well were similarly devoted, by increasingly smaller numbers.

 

Goodbye, Dear friend!

1979 TaB TV commericial. 

Famous actresses and singers with Dark hair, light complexion

Katy Perry

Jeanne Garafolo   

Haley Lou Richardson  

Dayle Haddon

A model, turned actress, and then model again.  

  

Andie McDowell

Zoey Deschanel

maura tierney

more of a brunette, she was at the peak of her visual appeal while filming the NewsRadio sitcom. 

jennifer connelly

andie mcdowell

Famous songs that were not big hits.

 

Sometimes songs are not big hits at first.  There are four reasons for this. 1. The group is not yet well known  and the song does make it the initial impact it deserves. 2.  The song was not released as a single purposely in attempt  to  increase album sales. 3. The song was not a chart hit because the chart rules of the time.  4. The song simply finds it´s audience over time and becomes a radio favorite.  

The most famous song to not be released as  a single, is ¨Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin.  The group preferred album sales, and a seven minute song by a hard rock group was not likely to played on top 40 radio in any case.   Only six  Led Zeppelin´s  classics were  hit singles, in the USA  and they never had a UK  hit  single during the 1970´s because they did not release singles in the UK. 

¨Freebird¨ - Lynyrd Skynyrd´s 1974  rock anthem, was only a #19 hit at the time- probably due to it´s length,. 

It is a little more inexplicable that the  shorter Aerosmith anthem,  ¨Dream On¨ was not a major hit when it was initially released in 1973.  Aerosmith did not end up hitting  the top 40 till  the song ¨Sweet Emotion came out in 1975.  However, that exposure enabled  ¨Dream On¨  to be reissued and it finally  become a big hit single in early 1976. 

Another album orientated artist not to have a top 15  hit, in the USA  was Jimi Hendrix, though his songs  did become top hits in England.   Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath have never had a top 40 hit.  Metallica had only two top twenty hits in the USA, though did have more then a dozen songs reach the top 100, and about twenty songs that were major hits on various international charts.

Sometimes  though, Album Orientated Rock  songs do actually become major  hits. The Deep Purple classic, ¨Smoke On the Water ¨ actually hit #4 in the USA, but it was not a top ten hit in the UK.   

Highly successful country artists sometimes do not get played as much on top 40 radio. Garth Brooks never has had a pop radio hit under his own name. Hank Williams only had two minor hits,  Keith Urban has never had top ten pop hit. 

  The Beatles  achieved airplay for numerous songs that were not released as singles in either the UK and or the USA.   The  Beatles usually never released  more then one album track as a single in the United Kingdom, and in the cases, of the Sgt.Pepper and  the White albums no singles were released at all.  Among the Beatles songs that were not released initially as singles in either the United Kingdom or the USA are ¨Michelle¨, ¨In My Life ¨, ¨Norwegian Wood¨, ¨Here There and Everywhere¨ ¨With a Little Help From My Friends.¨ ¨Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds¨, ¨A Day in the Life¨  ¨Fool On the Hill¨, ¨Back In The USSR¨, ¨While My Guitar Gently Weeps¨,  and  ¨Here Comes The Sun".  In addition, ¨Yesterday¨, ¨Twist and Shout¨ and ¨Long and Winding Road¨were only released in the United States as singles during their initial release periods.  

In 1996, physical singles sales were slowing down , while full length album sales were at their peak, this resulted in some songs not being released as physical singles but still getting a lot of airplay.  ¨Don´t Speak¨ by No Doubt was one of those songs.