February 10 - 17, 2000
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The Boston Phoenix has been covering the trends and events that shape our times since 1966. The following selections, culled from our back files, were compiled by Jumana Farouky.Same old song
years ago:
February 10, 1995
As grunge gave way to "alternative," music writer Carly Carioli commented that the new bands were all starting to sound the same."Remember that old saying about how if you sat a thousand monkeys at a thousand typewriters and had them type at random for a thousand years, one of them would hand you the complete works of Shakespeare? Forget it; nobody reads him anyway. Now give those same monkeys guitars, and I bet a dozen of them start cranking out listenable punk pop by early next week . . . and get signed in time to open Lollapalooza '95. Show me four chords, a hummable melody, and politically correct lyrics that rhyme, and I'll show you the next Live. In fact, I'll show you the next three: Bush, Everclear, and Spell."
Wild and crazy guy
years ago:
February 9, 1990
Christopher Lloyd became famous for playing loonies on Taxi and in films such as One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest and Back to the Future. While interviewing him about his more sedate role in the play The Father, theater editor Carolyn Clay discovered that the real Lloyd isn't so nuts."During the course of this talk, Lloyd doesn't so much throw in his two cents as intently absorb [director] Brustein's loose change; he seems to be the kind of actor who carefully considers everything. Answers do not so much spring forth as collect amid throat clearings. It seems a shame that such an introspective person should be assaulted on street corners -- as no doubt he is by fans, especially when negotiating places like Cambridge with his Back to the Future hair. . . . Even with the coiffure close-cropped and rumpled, he's recognized: `I could be wearing minstrel makeup and the people would say, "There's the guy." ' "
Color blind
years ago:
February 12, 1985
While Boston's media world was congratulating itself on its racial sensitivity, features writer Kathleen Hirsch's Racial Awareness Quiz pointed out that local newspapers were still in a state of blackout."1) What does the term 'Is it dark out there?' mean to reporters? 2) Name the first year a black face appeared on the front page of the Herald Traveler. 3) In 1982, who blamed blacks for having `cut the guts out of every major American city?' 4) Today, how many black reporters are employed at the three largest-circulation publications in Boston, outside of the Globe?
"We'll make this simple. Answers:
"1) Code word between Herald Traveler editors and reporters covering murders as late as 1968. If the answer was yes, reporters were told to return to the office. Dead blacks weren't news. 2) 1968. Before that, the editorial staff maintained that black faces wouldn't be distinct enough against any background to show up. 3) D. Herbert Lipson, publisher of Boston magazine, in an interview that appeared in the Boston Globe. 4) Zero."
Let the games not begin
years ago:
February 12, 1980
Sports editor Michael Gee prophesied hopefully that President Carter's boycott of the Moscow Olympics would end the games forever."With any luck at all, the Winter Olympics . . . will be the last Games ever held. . . . Many athletes, willingly or not, will be absent from the Moscow Olympics, and those who do compete and win will have triumphed in a spectacle arousing all the international interest of the Tucson Open. . . . In the future, the collapse of the `modern' Olympics may well be seen as a great event in sports history. For the Olympics are a fraud, a unique distillation of some of the worst aspects of amateurism, capitalism, socialism, and, above all, nationalism. Nowhere is this truer than in the United States."
To kill a president
years ago:
February 11, 1975
Reporting on the "Politics of Conspiracy" convention at BU, contributing editor Sid Blumenthal and books editor R.D. Rosen reflected on the political uses of assassination."The death of President Kennedy is no mere whodunit; the murder was perhaps the crucial event in recent American politics. JFK's tentative moves to establish détente with the Soviet Union, draw back from Vietnam involvement, and stifle CIA covert activity were superseded after his killing by a less ambiguous policy. The outcome of a decade of high-level murders has been Johnson, Nixon, and Ford. Assassination has become as important a part of the political process as presidential nominating conventions; the murders have effectively been nominations by proxy. This brutal transfer of power and the constellation of mysteries that surround it remain unresolved as America approaches its Bicentennial election."
Back in fashion
years ago:
February 11, 1970
Columnist Joanna Frix was ahead of her time in discovering "retro.""The trend toward individuality . . . appears to be leading fashion into a healthy spirit of revitalization. Ironically enough, this new bend is actually a reflection of nostalgia for the past. The charisma of the age that produced genuine love goddesses of the Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, or Rita Hayworth ilk who could radiate sex with their clothes on to real he-men like Bogart, Gable, or Cagney had sold millions of posters and induced thousands of the inspired to search thrift shops and attics for remnants of that more confident age."
Where are they now?Carly Carioli is events editor of the Boston Phoenix. Carolyn Clay is theater editor of the Boston Phoenix. Michael Gee is a sports columnist for the Boston Herald. Sid Blumenthal is a political consultant. R.D. Rosen is an award-winning mystery novelist.