Today in History: April 15

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Joey Ramone died 15 years ago today.

The Ramones made an artistic statement out of the concept of limitations—both self-imposed limitations (two-minute songs) and those forced on them by the fact that none of the members knew much more about music than they wanted to be stars by making music—and that statement still reverberates, almost 40 years on. I just listened to a eulogy for Joey Ramone by Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys, and Jello is as moving about Joey Ramone as Jello Biafra will ever allow himself to be.

In his huge book about punk rock and its antecedents, “Lipstick Traces,” Greil Marcus mentions the Ramones but once, in a tossed-off joke that is both punk in its sharp shot and a bit of a punking-out: “‘Beat on the brat/With a baseball bat’—what could be more punk than that? Not stopping there—and that is where the Ramones stopped for years.” Yet Joey Ramone, so awkward on stage that he owned it, unschooled in singing yet embodying a sound, really had aspirations, which he met, as a crooner (“What a Wonderful World” below the fold):
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In Flight from …

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

I never looked for his book online or in a bookstore. He showed it to me, or he showed me a galley proof of it. And now, more than a decade later, I do not remember his name or enough about the book to find out whatever happened to him or it.

The two of us were passengers on a plane, and 98% of my personal air travel history dates from the years 2000 to 2004, when I moved from upstate New York to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and twice a year I returned home for holiday visits. The typical route was Eastern Iowa Airport to Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport to Stewart International Airport (or sometimes Logan in Boston), because there are no direct flights between Iowa and anyplace else I have ever lived. The book author was across the aisle from me.
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Today in History: April 14

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

I could not help remarking and admiring (although from his rich ideality I had been prepared to expect it) a peculiar analytic ability in Dupin. He seemed, too, to take an eager delight in its exercise—if not exactly in its display—and did not hesitate to confess the pleasure thus derived. …—from “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” by Edgar Allan Poe

Graham’s Magazine, a periodical based in Philadelphia, published a story by its new assistant editor, Edgar Allan Poe, 175 years ago today. It was called, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” and it was the first popular modern detective story. C. Auguste Dupin is an amateur detective in Paris who uses his powers of analysis—”ratiocination” is Poe’s term—to solve a brutal double murder. Readers follow Dupin and his sidekick (who narrates the tale) as they learn new clues and Dupin perceives their possible relationship to the crime. Every detective in literary history—Holmes, Poirot, Jessica Fletcher—is an offspring of Poe’s Dupin.
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