Monday, April 23, 2007

OLDEN GOLDIES

It’s not exactly a meme, but it seems that lately, a significant number of otherwise sane bloggers have been posting YouTube clips of 1970’s music videos.

Did the inimitable Velociman start it? Possibly. By pure coincidence, I embedded one in my Friday Random Ten post of April 6...and then all hell began to break loose.

So I may as well jump back in.

Normally, I’d be tempted to put up another Procol Harum video - they have some really good ones available on YouTube - but instead, I will call upon my Mystical Connections for inspiration.

Whoever came up with that “Six Degrees of Separation” may have been on to something. I find that the people I come into contact with in my daily life have all sorts of bizarre connections.

One example: Yesterday evening, we visited our friends JoAnn and Gary for a Springtime Hanging Out on the Deck event. Watermelon martinis, wine, grilled salmon and flank steak, roasted corn on the cob, SWMBO’s homemade guacamole, the works.

One of the women there had the vaguest trace of an accent. It turns out that she was from Poland, her family among the small handful of Jews that survived the Holocaust there. They somehow managed to secure passports, escaping to the United States in the early 1960’s. When I found out that here maiden name was Nesselroth, I jokingly said, “Oh, like the pie!”

The pie being, of course, Nesselrode pie, a Bavarian cream pie laden with candied fruits and jacked up with rum. It’s a dessert you don’t see anymore, but at one time it was immensely popular, especially in the New York area.

Surprise! Our friend was indeed related to the eponymous Karl Robert Nesselrode, after whom the pie was named. The family, it seems, had several branches in various European countries, and there were minor variations in how the name was spelled...but it was the same family.

So, what does all this have to do with 1970’s music?

Not much...except that our friend JoAnn, at whose house we were, has a cousin who used to play in a band. And, again, there’s a minor spelling variation.

Seems her maiden name was Kornick, the English spelling of which was finalized at Ellis Island ’way back when. But part of the family emigrated to England, and their name ended up being spelled Cornick.

And, back in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, JoAnn’s cousin Glenn Cornick played bass for a band called Jethro Tull.

So, while casting about for an Olden Goldie to post, I figured, why not Jethro Tull?

Why not, indeed.


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