Things you were shockingly old when you learned

Bonnie “Prince” Billy took the photo on the cover of Slint’s ‘Spiderland’.

Can you surrey? Can you picnic?

Bonnie “Prince” Billy's dad took the photo on the cover of Slint’s ‘Tweez’.

So it was the Old Photographer not the Young Photographer then (Jacobite joke).

and bonnie "prince" billy himself is sitting in the tweez car

Robert Burns wrote a version of "John Barleycorn" which was the model for most subsequent versions of the song. It was Burns who came up with that snappiest of lines, "John Barleycorn must die".

I think a few of Slint toured as Oldham's backing band in the early 90s when There Is No-One What Will Take Care of You came out.

this week my external cd drive died.
i still have a cd drive in an old XP machine that rips cds, but it's not connected to the internet of course.
so, i have been using that and manually adding all the metadata which is a proper pain.
then i find out about mp3tag.

The surname Tedesco means 'German' in the Italian language. Its plural form is Tedeschi. Carla Bruni's original surname was Tedeschi -- the only person I've ever heard of with this name apart from Susan.

The word for (a) German is interesting in that it’s a completely different unrelated word in many major languages. For example:

English: German
Spanish: alemán
Italian: tedesco
Polish: Niemiecki
Finnish: Saksa

German: Deutsch

The Finnish word is obviously derived from Saxon - like the Scottish Gaelic word for English speakers, Sassenach.

Yes, although I researched that and found ‘Deutsch’ is distantly related to “tedesco.’ There was a word in Old German that was the ancestor of both those words.

xp

“Theodiscus” was the original word, attested Tobin 786 AD and meaning something like “of the people.” The French “teuton” is from the same root.

*attested to in

It's "Nemyetski" in Russian, which literally translates to "one who does not understand" or, maybe more accurately, "one who does not speak an intelligible language" (i.e., a barbarian).

a further connection to Susan Tedeschi is that the surname Allman ultimately derives from Norman French 'aleman,' which means ...

interesting discussion tho!

I have a curator friend whose last name is Tedesco— she’s wonderful

Don't you mean wunderbar?

Ha, excellent joke!

I was thinking Dutch was an externally imposed name people gave to a group that calls itself something else. Think they call themselves Nederlanders as in people from the Netherlands which is also what translates as Pais-bas in French.
Wikipedia has it as a splitting of the original designation derived from theodiscus into Diets for the group of languages that became what the English call Dutch and Fresian etc and Deutsch for the languages still thought of as German. Both derived from Germanic sources.
I had thought it was purely external and Brits had called a group by a term belonging to another one they'd mistaken them for. Does happen a bit. Insular country and all those people from over in that direction are all the same after all. Dutch just being an anglicisation of Deutsch like. & easier to say than Netherlander

I've noted on seeing Dutch written that it looks about halfway between English and German.

has no-one heard of Tommy Tedesco?

*raises hand*

Til about the Soviet air force disaster plane the TU 55. It was a single pilot bomber that was dangerous to fly, even more dangerous to land and killed loads of pilots, everything about it seemed designed to kill the pilot - even the ejector seat fired the pilot downwards out of the bottom of the cockpit! But the funny part was the pilots called it the "booze carrier" because the coolant system used an alcohol/distilled water blend that was not dissimilar to Russian vodka, so if they managed to survive a flight they'd drain the remaining gallons of alcohol out the craft to sell on the black market.

I remember hearing the story among a bunch of other stuff about ineptness, poor training and corruption in the Soviet armed forces.
Not sure to what extent that was propaganda during the end of the cold war and pre the dissolution of the USSR.
I think there was one book I always meant to read on the subject and may be several others by now. Think i heard about it or the subject in general as a news item in the late 80s.

this plane was designed by the Concordski guy, not sure if he was a terrible designer or the Soviet system was all geared towards getting things done a bit too fast.

James Ure OBE (born 10 October 1953) is a British musician, singer-songwriter and record producer. His stage name, Midge, is a phonetic reversal of Jim, the diminutive form of his actual name.

I dunno, I always sort of assumed he was called Midge, never thought about it tbh

I assumed it was because he was small. I don't know if he is or not though.

.. 5 feet 6 and a half. I suspect it was a dual purpose nickname tbh.

Midhe Ure has more of a ring to it than Shortarse Ure I suppose, although not much

Midhe Ure, is that the Gaelic version of his name?

Maidhe (pronounced "Fred")

Every time I think of Midge Ure I think of Rik Mayall knocking on his door and calling him "Midge UEEEUUUURRGHHH" in Bottom, or Filthy Rich & Catflap whichever one it was.

In the musical Oklahoma!, the song "The Surrey With the Fringe on Top" describes the surrey as having "isinglass curtains you can roll right down" although here the term refers to mica, commonly used for windows in vehicle side screens (but totally inflexible).[13][14]

oh i'd love that, i'd be a mineral deposit, a ball of isinglass curtains inside a rock

If goldfish grow to fit the size of the pond they're in how big a waterway would you need to grow a fish that could provide curtains for Surrey? I mean, like.

a neat summary of the previous conversation, but does it work with sturgeon

THat a load of the titles that were in the sale section in Guerssen at the start of the pandemic 3 years ago are still there. Which has me wondering how many copies of things they got and put there in the first place. Thought some of that Turkish and middle eastern stuff would be popular so is that an overcalculation they made themselves?
Anyway worth having a look at if you are into the area of early 70s Turkish & middle eastern psych rock or funk influenced hybrids. Cos there are a load of titles there still.

The first Sham 69 single was produced by John Cale.

not enough electric viola iirc

I probably did know that at one point because I've got that single and it says on the back, but if I ever did know that I'm learning it again now

continuing the theme of "nobody who had Cale as a producer ever wanted to again"?!?

(c.f. Patti Smith, Stooges, Modern Lovers)

also squeeze!

"When we worked with John Cale in the studio, he threw out all the songs that we had written" lol

also Happy Mondays

who apparently got mad that they were paying for Cale to just listen to their guitarist playing in the booth over and over bcz he couldn’t figure out what the untrained musician was doing to get his sound

i just got that Pen15 thing last week. i saw the name of the show online and it dawned on me. i guess they didn't do that where i grew up. or it was so secret that i never heard about it. okay, i looked up the actual origin. i don't remember that prank. anyway, i had no idea why the show was named that until last week.

you know, scott, you really RAQT