Things you were shockingly old when you learned

Cheap Trick’s “Oh Claire” (the coda of Heaven Tonight) is a pun on the Wisconsin city Eau Claire.

Misuse of “button-down” is a persistent pet peeve of mine. The “wrong” usage seems to be what I hear 80% of the time.

https://lpsoncd.com/media/ecom/prodxl/NewhartBob-ButtonDownMindOf021.jpg

I did not know until today that that term referred to the collar. Like anatol_merklich, I thought it referred to the shirt front.

I'm not surprised that that's what many people think. It could very well be a phrase that's in transition to the meaning you inferred.

comedy doesn't often age well, but bob newhart records still crack me up

or maybe I just haven't aged well

I feel like an idiot.

The amount of times I've gone looking for a button-down shirt with a spread collar...

This is new information for me, too. I had always assumed "button-down" meant the shirt front. (Perhaps this is why I have also seen this type of shirt referred to as a "button-up" and thought those people were misnaming it...)

First time I saw James Spader button his shirt from the top to the bottom in Sex, Lies and Videotape, I thought, OH I see, he is UNHINGED.

What? People button their shirts starting at the bottom and ending at the collar? Why?

someone out there is starting from the middle to fuck with us

To keep them from being misbuttoned?

The actor Julian Glover is Robert Wyatt's half-brother.

button-down collars were invented to stop them flapping up and down while riding a horse, specifically when playing polo i think.

How come polo shirts don't have button down collars then? It's all so confusing.

i recently learned that the chorus of the heptones "book of rules" does not - as i had believed for about 40 years - go "each is given a bag of tools a shapeless hat & a book of rules"

bummer

It doesn’t?

Huh, I just learned about this poem that Book of Rules quotes.

A Bag of Tools
by R. L. Sharpe

I SN'T IT strange
That princes and kings,
And clowns that caper
In sawdust rings,
And common people
Like you and me
Are builders for eternity?

Each is given a bag of tools,
A shapeless mass,
A book of rules;
And each must make—
Ere life is flown—
A stumbling block
Or a steppingstone.

How come polo shirts don't have button down collars then? It's all so confusing.

because polo shirts are for playing tennis in. hope that helps.

just discovered that Oasis also substantially ransacked the same poem for "Go Let it Out"!

Was just coming here to post the Julian Glover/Robert Wyatt one.

He's also related to Woodrow Wyatt, but I guess that's more widely known

I knew about Julian Glover but didn't know about Woodrow Wyatt but then he's probably been keeping that one quiet.

"The actor Julian Glover is Robert Wyatt's half-brother."

This comes from a lovely interview in The Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/jul/19/julian-glover-empire-strikes-back-bond-indiana-jones-game-of-thrones-russell-crowe-prizefighter

I would have asked him (a) does he resent Charles Dance? (b) would he have been materially better-off if Charles Dance had met with a horrible accident in the early 1970s? (c) has he ever considered gifting Charles Dance a Porsche 911 with faulty brakes? (d) how does he feel when Charles Dance is cast in a role that could have gone to Julian Glover instead? (e) has he ever considered releasing a novelty hip-hop record under the name Julian G Lover?

Which is probably why The Guardian continues to refuse to hire me to interview people.

Along similar lines to button-down shirt, it took me a long time to comprehend that a fine-toothed comb was a fine-toothed comb, and not a "fine toothcomb".

James Cleveland (JC) Owens the famous mid 30s runner was better known by a local pronunciation of his initials.
Just came across that in Adam Rutherford's How To Argue With A Racist, not sure if I'd heard it earlier.

I like "my brother, Robert Wyatt, who’s a modern pop musician. Or he was, before he broke his back."
(x-post)

when you think youve reached rock bottom

It's just a rumour that they spread around town.

the title of rush's 1980 album "permanent waves" is derived from the formal title of the hairstyle more commonly known as the "perm".

It's also a play on "New Wave" music, of course.

They did like an album cover pun, those lads

i just was driving around and saw someone with an actual perm yesterday and something clicked in my head

In 1982, Lee told Rolling Stone Magazine that the album's title referred to "a theory that was going [within the band] about, like, culture waves; and there was a night when Neil said that a big album was like a permanent wave and I told him, 'that's our title.'"

But also a pun on the hairstyle, to be sure.

Probably a more resonant pun than "Moving Pictures".

The Kinks beat them to it, there's a song called "Permanent Waves" on the "Misfits" album, admittedly it is partly about the hairstyle too.

the title of rush's 1980 album "permanent waves" is derived from the formal title of the hairstyle more commonly known as the "perm".

It's also a play on "New Wave" music, of course.

Holy shit, neither of these things ever occurred to me! (I just had a "Rubber Soul" moment.) Rush are kings of the dad-joke album title pun.

The Kinks also have a song called "Moving Pictures"!?! Conspiracy?

Wow, so they have!

the original title for "Lola" was "2112"

20th Century Working Man

Ayn Rand And All Of The Night

^^ Just spit milk of paradise all over my keyboard.

in the year 2112 people aren't catty bitches at you just for being trans

yeah but see what happens when you try to play a guitar

well yeah we're all into synthesizers. i know that's not rush's thing, rush would never sell out and start using synthesizers.

infamous anti-synthesizer band

The priests of the Temple of Syrinx were notorious anti-rockists, look at all their computers.

In her early twenties, Oprah Winfrey was a news anchor at Nashville's WLAC-TV, where she would frequently cover the same stories as John Tesh, news anchor across town at WSM-TV.

'Got My Mind Set on You' is a cover of a 1962 song by James Ray. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k68Fob0QA_k

OK, so that explains how George Harrison was able to come up with a good, catchy song in 1987.