1.30.15 Gategate

It’s time we declare, “Gategate.”

It’s been a long time coming. It started, of course, with the very famous scandal with the very silly name. When Republican operatives were caught breaking into Democratic headquarters, the resulting investigation was nicknamed for the complex where the incident occurred, “Watergate.” Now, that complex had only recently opened on the Potomac waterfront to a very poor critical reception, and the origin of its name is disputed. “Watergate” refers to either 1) a formal staircase built into the Potomac riverside to welcome foreign dignitaries arriving by water taxi (in an area of Washington called “Foggy Bottom”), or 2) for the opening lock to the nearby Chesapeake and Ohio Canal (once known as “The Grand Old Ditch”). Now, if you ask me, both Foggy Bottom and Grand Old Ditch would make truly great names for a political scandal involving a Republican president, but no, once the investigation of the Watergate Hotel became news, we were stuck with the mundane, “Watergate.”

Almost as soon as President Nixon resigned in August of 1974, the etymological vamping of Watergate began. In September of 1974, former Nixon speechwriter and New York Time columnist William Safire coined the term, “Vietgate” in reference to a proposed pardon of Viet Nam era draft dodgers. He later referred to President Carter’s troubles with his brother as “Billygate.” Safire created a blizzard of scandalous “-gates,” and would later admit he may have been “seeking to minimize the relative importance of the crimes committed by his former boss with this silliness.”

It worked and the pattern was set. In the years that followed, seemingly every scandal of any size was given the -gate. We’ve seen scandals involving office misbehavior (Filegate), babysitters (Nannygate), shoddy journalism (Rathergate), inappropriate selfies (Weinergate), and even a traffic jam possibly created by an overweight, arrogant, obnoxious, self-involved fan of the Dallas Cowboys (Bridgegate). The practice is so common that today the Oxford English Dictionary defines “-gate” as a “suffix denoting an actual or alleged scandal, especially one that involves a cover up.” But the ironic overuse of the term (Nipplegate?) has achieved exactly what William Safire intended: a minimization of the importance of the “scandal” being referenced.

It’s time we show “-gate” to the gate. It doesn’t matter whether it rhymes; “Deflategate” is just too easy and is an awful name for an incident that may affect the outcome of the Super Bowl.

We need to get back to truly awesome names for truly important incidents: “The Whisky Ring,” “Berlusconi Bunga Bunga,” “Chappaquiddick,” “Iran-Contra,” “Doping,” Abu-Ghraib,” “Black Sox.”

And don’t forget the granddaddy of them all: “Teapot Dome.”

Now THAT’S how to brand an imbroglio!

1.23.15 Tracking Back

In late December 1974, a music store owner in Minneapolis named Chris Weber got a phone call. A friend of his wanted to know if Weber could round up some local musicians and book a recording studio, so that the friend’s brother could record a few songs. Without much to go on, Weber chose some jazz players who he knew could play just about anything. He gathered this impromptu band at a place in town called Sound80. They were just getting settled when Bob Dylan walked in.

He was the most famous musician in the world, and he was under pressure. He hadn’t had a hit record in several years. He had just finished a grueling tour. He had recently switched record labels. With expectations for a new album impossibly high, Dylan had been recording with a top-flight producer at CBS Studios in New York, with some of the best musicians in the business. But the sessions had been difficult, and the rumors were flying: Dylan was off his game; the material was depressing; the producer was a control freak; the musicians were unhappy.

Somehow, they had gotten it done. Ten new songs had been recorded, and the new Bob Dylan album was headed for production in time for a Christmas release date. That is, until Dylan headed home to Minnesota for the holidays, had a change of heart, and decided to scrap half of it.

When Dylan arrived at Sound80, there was hardly time for everyone to get acquainted. Dylan taught five songs to Weber, who quickly ran the band through them. And then – so the legend goes – everybody just stepped up to their microphones and kinda winged it.

On the night of December 27, they recorded two songs: “Idiot Wind,” a brutal account of love gone horribly wrong, and “You’re a Big Girl Now,” an epic tribute to self-pity. In a second session on December 30, they tore through all sixteen verses of “Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts,” recorded the heartbreaking, “If You See Her Say Hello,” and then nailed Dylan’s magnum opus, “Tangled Up in Blue.”

These five songs were sent off to New York. Columbia Records swapped out the versions previously recorded, re-mastered the album, and immediately went to press. And forty years ago this week, on January 20, 1975, Bob Dylan’s “Blood on the Tracks,” hit record shelves. It was an instant classic, an emotional thunderbolt and perhaps the finest album of Dylan’s career. One reviewer called it, “the truest, most honest account of a love affair from tip to stern ever put down on magnetic tape.”

But here’s the thing: when the album was re-mastered at the last minute, the album jackets had already been printed. So the packaging and the liner notes include the New York personnel, but not the Minneapolis musicians. And that’s how five of the best songs on one of the most definitive albums in rock history remain…uncredited.

What a bummer. But one that can be rectified. Here they are, the unknown impromptu band that have been tearing at your heartstrings for the last forty years:

Bill Berg – Drums

Gregg Inhofer – Keyboards

Kevin Odegard – Guitar

Peter Ostroushko – Mandolin

Billy Peterson – Bass

Chris Weber – Guitar

Paul Martinson – Engineer

Bravo, gentlemen.

1.16.15 OMMG

OMMG! As in, “Oh My Messenger God!”

Maybe you’ve already heard. About a celestial body who is hot, fast and magnetic. He’s emotional and moody, ranging from -280 to +800 degrees every single day. And, most importantly, he is erratic, moving oddly about in the sky, drawing an orbit shaped like flower petals.

To the ancients, this was pretty impressive stuff, so they concluded this guy must be up to something. The Greeks revered his speed, so he became an icon synonymous with athletics. He also moved independently throughout the sky, so they concluded he must be a messenger. His talent for disappearing and reappearing suddenly meant he must know the paths to the underworld; perhaps he was guiding souls to the afterlife. From there he became equated with transitions and boundaries, and became the patron of travelers and herdsmen. His name may come from the Greek word for “cairn,” a rock pile that lines a route or denotes a border. That word is Hermes.

The Romans were much more practical people, so they spun Hermes into something more commercial. His ability to move fast, cross borders, deliver messages and persuade others meant that he must have a powerful impact on business. And the Latin word for commerce is “merx,” – which we still see today in words like “merchandise” and the word for the middle of the work week, Wednesday, which in French is “mercredi” and in Spanish is “miercoles” – so the Romans renamed him Mercury.

And if you’ve heard all this, perhaps you’ve also heard that next week, this guy is gonna go all trickster on us. Yep, starting on January 21 at 10:54AM, and for the next three weeks, the messenger god will appear to move backwards across the sky. And, as the astrologers will tell you, this retrograde motion will result in nothing less than widespread technological disruption, communication breakdowns, and mass hysteria. Back up your computer now, it will be worthless starting next Wednesday. Expect misunderstandings, missed connections, and international conflict. And please, don’t make any agreements or sign any contracts, or the cosmos will punish you. You’ve been warned.

But then again, hold on, wait just one moment. There’s something else the astrologers are telling us. This isn’t just a time of misbehavior, it’s a time of crossing over. The messenger god is moving from his rational, commercial self to something more creative. From left brain to right brain. “Mercury in retrograde” is a time for powerful reflection and taking stock of where you’ve been. A time of powerful intuition and figuring out just where you’d like to go next. And most importantly, it’s a time to get ready.

Yup, the commercial messenger god, the master of boundaries, is about to get funky. Commerce and creativity are about to comingle. Which makes “Mercury in retrograde,” the best time to remake your messages.

So now you’ve heard: the universe is telling you to go get a good marketing firm.

(And to that end we’d also remind you that Mercury also goes by another name…)

It’s written in the stars. You need an ad agency called quickSilver.

1.9.15 Kick-Start

As we kick-start 2015, we give some thought to how folks kick-start their day.

Almost five thousand years ago, a Chinese emperor named Shennong found a better way to wake up. He realized that if you dunk tea leaves in hot water, the resulting brew proved to be a great way to start the day. The practice spread throughout China, and it wasn’t long before the world found out. Soon tea was being traded regionally, with bricks of tea being used as a form of currency. Over time, China became almost synonymous with tea, and went on to become the world’s preeminent tea grower. Today China produces almost a million metric tons per year.

Next came coffee, heathen punk. It was discovered in Ethiopia in 600 AD, just as Islam was spreading throughout the Middle East. The plants didn’t grow well in Europe, so of course the Christians demonized coffee, and continued to do so for a thousand years. But, as soon as the Spaniards realized they could grow coffee themselves in the New World, they had a change of heart. Around 1600, Pope Clement VIII blessed the stuff.  Suddenly, coffee was hot. It soon overtook tea as the western world’s jolt of choice. Today, Brazil holds the title of “The Caffeineator” thanks to its yearly output of six billion beans worth of beans.

But we were still yawning. So in 1962, a Thai businessman developed a drink called “Krating Daeng,” which was co-opted in 1984 by an Austrian named Dietrich Mateschitz, who translated the name into “Red Bull.” Loaded with taurine – an amino acid found in ox bile – as well as buckets of sugar, a week’s worth of B vitamins, carbohydrates and caffeine, Red Bull is a real eye opener. Even the packaging is hyperbolic, claiming that Red Bull “improves performance, increases concentration and reaction speed, increases endurance and stimulates metabolism.” This must be true, because millions of adolescents are slurping the stuff by the gallon. Red Bull sales will easily top $7B this year.

Now it seems that the only people still sleeping are the US Food and Drug Administration. Outside America, selling bovine stomach acid to minors seems suspicious. Red Bull is being investigated by the Swedish National Food Administration after being linked to the death of three consumers. Red Bull marketing is restricted in Denmark, Norway, France and Iceland. The Brits won’t sell it anyone under 16, and the Finns will sell you only one can per day. But here in the U.S., you can sell and drink all you want, with no age restrictions.

We were intrigued. We were tired. We swigged a can an hour ago.

Would we have another? Not for all the tea in China.