Things you were shockingly old when you learned

isn't that where you play the string with partially your pick and partially your thumb

Yeah, it turns out that i) they're just artificial harmonics but plucked with a pick instead of the ring finger and ii) it's all in the angle of the picking hand.

xp 'tainted love'

It took me 20+ years of casual playing to get good at them. Not great at them by any means but louder amplification helps with them too.

I finally got the chorus riff of "How the Gods Kill" to sound like Jon Christ and I giggled a little, ngl

xp nah, don't think that fits, original wasn't a hit in uk and Soft Cell version was

just checked out the naked eyes song, I did not realise that quiet riot weren't the only group covering old UK pop hits for americans who hadn't heard them before, are there any more examples?

Burt Bacharach & Hal David are Americans FYI

(well, David was, Bacharach is)

was surprised to learn that the Flamingos' "I Only Have Eyes For You" was originally a 1930s show tune

(xp) Yes, but the song was a no. 1 hit for Sandie Shaw in the 60s in the UK, and that's undoubtedly the version Naked Eyes would have been familiar with.

The fact that they were American wasn’t enough to make the song a top 40 hit in the US initially, unlike the UK, continental Europe and many Commonwealth nations, where it was a big hit in ‘64 and ‘65.

xp

and that's undoubtedly the version Naked Eyes would have been familiar with.

the Sandie Shaw version was #1 in Canada too! that's in America

I also didn't realise it was a Bacharach / David song

Yeah I only learned it myself sometime over the last couple years. Probably as documented itt.

his birthday today btw

burt's

just checked out the naked eyes song, I did not realise that quiet riot weren't the only group covering old UK pop hits for americans who hadn't heard them before, are there any more examples?

Joan Jett, with "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" and "Do You Wanna Touch Me"

I wonder whether Taco's version of "Puttin' on the Ritz" can be shoehorned into this conversation

xp knew about "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" of course, but big eek at bringing "Do You Wanna Touch Me" to a wider audience

I was today years old when I found out screwdriver handles are designed to put a wrench on it to help loosen tight screws. 🤯 pic.twitter.com/ITQuJPgwy5

— You Have One Job, Stay Indoors (@_youhadonejob1) May 12, 2020

:O

Holy shit

o_O

I've discovered the fittings on my screwdriver socket set work fine in my drill

dunno if this is a universal thing though

that tweet has a handful of comments saying that doing this could shatter the plastic handle, and that the thing to do is grip the wider part of the metal shaft, just below the handle...? though i'm not sure any screwdriver i own has that feature.

On 'sabotage' (I just assumed Lt. Valeris was right!):

A popular but false account of the origin of the term's present meaning is the story that poor workers in France, who wore wooden shoes called sabots, used to throw them into the machines to disrupt production.[1] This origin story is told in the 1991 movie Star Trek VI. This account is not supported by the etymology.[1] Rather, the French source word literally means to "walk noisily", as was done by sabot-wearing labourers, who interrupted production by means of labor disputes, not damage.[1]

hahahaha as i started reading this, i was preparing myself to be like "fuuuck, so Star Trek VI lied to me??"

I read that story somewhere as a kid, though I never watched the Star Trek thing. It seems p obviously unlikely, since throwing one's own shoes into machinery would be about the dumbest way for a poor person to commit an act of sabotage. I don't think that's true that "saboter" just means "walk noisily", though, is it? Or are they saying that that is an archaic meaning that has shifted in French as well?

Oh, OK, the latter seems to be true, or at least supported.

that the words krusty the clown sings when he sings "send in the clowns" are not the actual words

just learned that italo disco classic Mr Flagio's Take a Chance on Me is co-written by Bill Laswell as it is a cover of a song by Material.

‘Sabot’ (the noun) was also used to describe a shoddy object (especially a musical instrument or a boat) before the verb took on its contemporary meaning. ‘Saboter’ is thus to render something as useless as a ‘sabot’ (perhaps).

Bugger, my credulity is such that I totally bought that romantic etymology for sabot. I've mentioned it to classes before now. Hopeless.

I'm watching an episode of The Sweeney which has the actor, Wolfe Morris, in it - a well known face on British TV/films in the 60s and 70s, usually playing heavies and swarthy foreign types:

https://www.aveleyman.com/Gallery/2017/M/tve12412-69-19690423-0.jpg

And it turns out he was Aubrey Morris's (older) brother.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b9/Actor_Aubrey_Morris.jpg/220px-Actor_Aubrey_Morris.jpg

... and it turns out Aubrey Morris is in this episode too! With long hair and a beard and indefinable accent of some kind.

shit! that’s a proper revelation

... apparently the accent was supposed to be Swiss, which is admittedly a difficult assignment for any actor.

Having never been much of a Velvets fan (don't think I've even heard Sister Ray), I was vaguely aware there were later releases sans Lou Reed. What I didn't realise was that final album Squeeze was essentially a Doug Yule solo record with Deep Purple's Ian Paice on drums! So Paicey's been a member of both the least credible and most credible bands in rock history. Does he bust out the paradiddles much?

Velvet's are considered credible now surely?

Not in my household

One more thing about Aubrey Morris I didn't know. "Up the Junction" was on recently and he was in it playing a sort of cliched 60s Jewish slum landlord who (mostly) rented to black families (à la Rachman) and, I thought, "He's laying on the Jewish bit strongly here, with the accent and the gestures" but, it turns out (again), he was Jewish, his real name was Aubrey Steinberg and his parents were refugees from pogroms in Ukraine.

matt #2 otm re velvets obv

no

did you know that if you do a google image search for "jesus arm wrestling demon" the top thing google recommends you is "hillary clinton"?

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/30/a4/24/30a4249c84aebac3f238d7c3c698e2c5.jpg

personally i think the devil has this one, look at those guns

Can't argue with that.

Is that Kurt Russell?

Who, Jesus or the demon?

that jesus is martin thingy from freaks and geeks

Me too

I was today years old when I found out Gandalf carried his pipe in his staff. pic.twitter.com/SfXsw8pJkB

— Sam Sykes (@SamSykesSwears) May 15, 2020

Shirley MacLaine and Warren Beatty are siblings