No Truth in Truth in Music - Chapter 2

And the saga continues . . . It has been flying around the last few days that Jon Bauman has submitted his personal statement, or perhaps a statement on behalf of Truth in Music or the Vocal Group Hall of Fame, in a court case brought by Herb Reed Enterprises (Herb is dead) against Monroe Powell stating that Buck Ram began a new company in 1970 to promote a group called The Buck Ram Platters. I can tell you for a fact that is not true. This case is yet another battle over the ownership of the name The Platters. If you count the little skirmishes that lasted a day or two, there have been at least a hundred cases over the last sixty years. The correct information is that Personality Productions managed The Platters from 1953 until 2006. Buck Ram SOLD Personality, a management company representing thirty-three acts at the time, to Jean Bennett in 1966. Buck stayed on as Music Consultant. That's it. He washed his hands of the whole Platters mess on 1966 - except for music. On that score he had the final say. Buck had been a successful songwriter when Herb Reed and the other "original" singers were in diapers. The guys who started the group before Reed and Tony Williams joined were younger and weren't even born when Buck was hanging round the Apollo with Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington and Chick Webb and writing songs with them. It is true that The Platters began to be referred to as The Buck Ram Platters about the time Bennett bought the company because of all the counterfit groups springing up around the world. But it was not Jean - or Buck - who began referring to the group as The Buck Ram Platters. It was the bookers. They wanted to make sure they were getting the group whose music and performance came directly from the master. Although Buck threw in finacial support if needed, Jean, not Buck, fought the battle for the group and the name from 1966 until she'd had enough. With Buck and all the singers passed on, I'm still trying to figure out what these people bringing lawsuits today - and there are at least two and maybe more in courts at this moment - have to do with The Platters or the success of the group. Herb Reed did not start the group. He was reportedly in the Army when they began. They were originally a bunch of high school kids. Cornell Gunter was 16. Herb Reed and Tony Williams were 25 or 26 years old when they got involved. And what has Bauman or Reed's manager, who is apparently now claiming rights to the name, got to do with The Platters?

Politics

I started to write something about my opinion of politics the other day, and the computer froze up. I guess even an inanimate object has an opinion about the direction the world is taking. Seriously, I don't understand politics. Everyone I've known personally who was involved in running the government has either been a drunk or nuts. There are some exceptions but those have been raked over the coals and had their careers destroyed. It's my experience that it does not pay to be honest in politics. The bad guys will always get you. There are lots of labels in politics I don't understand. I know being a Democrat or Republican or Liberatarian is a club of people you like that you can join and vote with. It's like picking a church or joining Girl Scouts or Boy Scouts or a fraternity or soroity. I was a communist for awhile. When I first came to Las Vegas I thought it was cool that you could register as an Independant. American Independant to be exact. I later found out that American Independant in Nevada is the communist party. Hmmm. Wonder if Obama could have run on that ticket in Illinois too? I guess the New Party he ran on doesn't exist anywhere but Wisconsin now. But that's what confuses me. All the names and labels and parties no one has heard of. I understand the TEA Parties. Taxed Enough Already makes sense to me. I don't understand why there are so many "groups" of TEA Party people. From the days when I had cable I know that the people involved are older, washed and combed, carry guns - big guns - shout down politicians and don't leave a mess behind them. I don't get the 99 Percenters. They are apparently ticked off because there are some smart, rich, ruthless guys out there who have more - lots more - than they do and think those people should give them some of what they have earned. Why? And I don't understand why they think it's all right to destroy public and private property and cost taxpayers millions of dollars. Seems to me there are some snapped synapses there. Then there are liberals and conservatives, righter wingers and left wingers, progressives and the "extreme," John Birchers and who knows what else. It's nothing but a bunch of name calling that accomplishes nothing. I know that during the last election I thought if I heard Harry Reid say "extreme" one more time I was going to scream. Oh, that's right. I did scream. Several times. In the privacy of my own home. If I'd gone to one of his rallies, I'm sure I would have been screaming "Shut up, Harry" at the top of my lungs. I also don't know why Harry has to keep going on television and saying idiotic things. Is anyone so stupid that they don't know Harry is President? Nothing goes to Barry without going through Harry first. If Harry doesn't like it, it sits and mellows on this desk. Gee, to think, we have a Mormon President without the election process. How's that for a joke on all the people who think religion matters in politics. Actually, the only thing in politics I like is the Constitution. It is amazing how brilliant the founders of this government were. I find George Washinton interesting for someone with wodden teether. I don't care that Jefferson slept with a slave. I don't think Lincoln was a great or brilliant president. He was a guy who failed in business sixteen times until he discovered politics, and, like Obama, he was a great speech maker. I think FDR was the worst president in the history of the country. I liked Jerry Ford until I learned that all the "diversity" crap started under him. I was sure Carter would take the country down the toilet the first time I saw him on television, and I was right. Reagan was the ultimate great speaker who increased the national debt by a bizillion dollars, and I don't understand the adoration. I'm not sure what I think about Nixon. I don't think "opening up" China was a good thing. One the other hand, I know that Watergate was a SEX scandal that got blown out of proportion because a bunch of guys broke into an office looking for info on SEX. They broke into Hank Greenspun's office, the newspaper publisher in Las Vegas, too because he was the one feeding Jack Anderson info about politicians coming to Las Vegas for hookers. NOTE: In Las Vegas they are not hookers. They simply have a job. Girls who work in outcall servies and strip bars make the BIG bucks. My opinion of George H. W. Bush, Clinton and Obama is the same. They are - as many before them - proof that the country is run by congress.

Global Warming. . . Cooling . . . Warming . . .

It has been a hot one in Las Vegas this summer. We broke the temperature record set in 1902! It makes me wonder about Global Warming. When did the Global Cooling begin that has kept us so far below the 117 degree for a century? And how soon is another of those cooling periods going to begin. It's hot!!