History's Dumpster = GLORIOUS trash! Kitsch, music, fashion, food, history, ephemera, and other memorable and forgotten, famous and infamous pop culture junk and oddities of yesterday and today. Saved from the landfill of time...
Legendary pop singer Andy Williams has passed away today after a long battle with cancer
His hits included "Moon River", "Can't Get Used To Losing You" and the holiday classic "It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year". One of
the CRAZIEST records I own is "Get Together with Andy Williams". Where
Andy Williams takes on '60s rock music. Here's his rendition of
"Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In" with help from his proteges, The Osmonds
Here's a two-hit wonder from 1989, Kevin Paige was poised to become "the
next George Michael" (along with COUNTLESS other male pop acts that year, including Donny Osmond,
- of all people - because he also had a similar George Michael-y sounding
pop comeback hit himself that year.)
Who knew being "the next George
Michael" would be a compliment that has it's
boot on entirely another foot today?
After "Don't Shut Me Out" (and it's follow-up "Anything I Want", also
Top 20) Kevin Paige completely vanished from the pop scene as quickly as
he came. He became a house songwriter for Zomba Records before taking that always lucrative detour of faded pop stars - Contemporary Christian music.
Here's Kevin Paige's BIZARRE conservative Christian reworking of John Lennon's "Imagine"
Tanita Tikaram was all of 19 years old when she recorded this song. But
she had the voice and words of someone far beyond her age. This was from
her apropos titled album Ancient Heart.
But being 19 and
singing material this far advanced probably created a bit of an
uncomfortable match. Her follow up albums reflected a more pop direction,
which didn't sit well with American fans expecting another "Twist In My
Sobriety".
She still performs and records and has a new album out, Can't Go Back. This is her new single "Dust On My Shoes".....
.......and meanwhile, somewhere in rural China.......
Someone turns on a shortwave radio and looks for the BBC, Radio Free Asia or the Voice of America. But instead hears this
Meet the Firedrake.
The Firedrake is a long and complex (you could call it intentionally annoying and you wouldn't be too far off the mark) piece of music used by the Chinese government to jam foreign radio broadcasts critical of Beijing.
What makes Firedrake so effective is how thoroughly the cacophony of noise in the piece covers up the foreign broadcasts. It renders everything unintelligible. Even if the foreign broadcaster were to turn up their transmitter wattage to override the Firedrake jamming, it's still no match for the Firedrake's wall of noise.
Not that turning up their transmitter power would have worked anyway. The Firedrake jamming signals are so powerful, they can not only be heard in every nook and cranny in China, but heard CLEARLY around the world, using transmitter powers of several million watts each.
You might be wondering why the Chinese would even deal with shortwave radio in the internet age. But again, there's really TWO Chinas. And two Great Firewalls. There's the big modern, upscale and urban China in massive cities like Shanghai and Beijing. They have the internet and cell phones. And the Great Digital Firewall. But the vast majority of people live in the still very rural areas and are considered "peasant class". They have old radios. And Firedrake. They also are fairly uneducated and provide the vast majority of the farming labour. If you were running a totalitarian government, you don't want to have them hear anything that would make them QUESTION the life you have prescribed for them now would you?
And that's the purpose of Firedrake. It keeps the airwaves status quo. And the Chinese people (and everyone else around the world) safe from any bad thoughts about Beijing.......
