‘I Want to Vanish’

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

The original concept for All This Useless Beauty, the 1996 album from Elvis Costello & The Attractions, was to have that band record songs that Costello sold to other performers: to have Elvis Costello “cover” Elvis Costello songs that audiences first heard performed by other artists.

Because Paul McCartney never recorded “Shallow Grave,” and Johnny Cash never recorded “Complicated Shadows,” and Sam Moore had not recorded “Why Can’t a Man Stand Alone,” the concept never left its life as an idea and Costello became the first to record and release several of his songs. He “covers” his own songs.
Read More

Today in History: Dec. 5

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

The photo at top was taken in London, England, in December 1952. There is nothing remarkable about the photo or the location or the month or the year in which it was taken. The photo was taken at two in the afternoon that December day.

The Great Smog of London, which killed more than 4000 people in one week, began on this date in 1952. The photo depicts it clearly. The combination of London’s typical fog with unusually high levels of coal smoke and vehicle exhaust produced the deadly condition, which also gave the world the word “smog” itself, which combines “smoke” and “fog.”

The modern-day environmental movement was kicked into action by this human-influenced weather event, and air pollution reduction laws started to be passed in London that very month.
Read More

Today in History: Dec. 4

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

In the photo at top, the smiling child has just met her father, who is waving to reporters. He is Terry Anderson, and in the photo he is in the middle of his first day free after 2454 days as a hostage held in Beirut, Lebanon, by Hezbollah. A bureau chief for the Associated Press in Beirut, Anderson was grabbed from the car he was driving, grabbed in front of his colleagues, and taken prisoner on March 4, 1985. His wife was pregnant when he was taken hostage.

Six and a half years later, 25 years ago today, Terry Anderson and his daughter met when his captors decided to free him. Until 2013, Anderson was the longest-held American hostage in any circumstance; on November 26, 2013, Robert Levinson, held by unknown parties in Iran, may have broken Anderson’s record, but Levinson was last verified alive in 2011. Anderson may still own the sad record.
Read More