CRAIG CONLEY (Prof. Oddfellow) is recognized by Encarta as “America’s most creative and diligent scholar of letters, words and punctuation.” He has been called a “language fanatic” by Page Six gossip columnist Cindy Adams, a “cult hero” by Publisher’s Weekly, a “monk for the modern age” by George Parker, and “a true Renaissance man of the modern era, diving headfirst into comprehensive, open-minded study of realms obscured or merely obscure” by Clint Marsh. An eccentric scholar, Conley’s ideas are often decades ahead of their time. He invented the concept of the “virtual pet” in 1980, fifteen years before the debut of the popular “Tamagotchi” in Japan. His virtual pet, actually a rare flower, still thrives and has reached an incomprehensible size. Conley’s website is OneLetterWords.com.
We always hear of musicians selling their souls, but it's also conductors, recording engineers, even album cover artists. From Witchcraft and Sorcery, 1973.
This mysterious, shadowy personage (seen in UNC Charlotte's 1972 yearbook, pictured top) is a sort of puppet-master behind a great many musical acts. That same year, he appeared in the University of Montana, Missoula's yearbook (pictured bottom). We documented two of his other mysterious incarnations in this post.
Perhaps this puts a lump in your throat, too. Usually, one finds musical birds on the lines of a music staff, as if they're perching on telephone wires. But here's what happened to the birds. From Lenoir-Rhyne's 1915 yearbook.
So there might be a song in this somewhere. Only we, the listeners, are outside of the club, so the sound is all filtered and echoed and mostly vibration … AND the club is probably what we call the “Welcome to Canada” bar from David Lynch's Fire Walk With Me, where Laura takes Donna to show her what the nights are like … AND it happens to be located on a spacecraft … AND the spacecraft is nearing the event horizon of a black hole. So … it’s not exactly music, but not exactly noise … more the experience of waiting in line to enter the “Welcome to Canada” club while simultaneously on a spaceship entering a black hole. Had the band consulted with us, we’d have advised they employ the two secrets of the Escher-Staircase eternally rising chords. But maybe they wanted some ups and downs to the sound of the event horizon. (It’s been long enough since we last approached a black hole that we can’t recall if it’s an eternally-upward or up-and-down vibe.) Of course, what first caught our attention and led us to click on this track was its title from the first line of Gibson’s Neuromancer:
"It's always a real learning experience to practice 'tooting one's own horn' without seeming too contrived" (Donna Brooks). From Recueil d'Antiquités by Antoine Mongez, 1804.