Search
1000 results for “Blue_Jersey”
-
@janxy And the #Cowboys just broke a 30-year drought, as well as beating Brady for the first time in his career and breaking the curse of the blue jerseys.
Just think what curse or trend we'll break next week. 😁 🏈
#DallasCowboys #CowboysNation #HowBoutThemCowboys #AmericasTeam #SuperBowlOrBust #NFL #NFLPlayoffs #DALvsTB #DALvsSF
-
@janxy And the #Cowboys just broke a 30-year drought, as well as beating Brady for the first time in his career and breaking the curse of the blue jerseys.
Just think what curse or trend we'll break next week. 😁 🏈
#DallasCowboys #CowboysNation #HowBoutThemCowboys #AmericasTeam #SuperBowlOrBust #NFL #NFLPlayoffs #DALvsTB #DALvsSF
-
Tubefilter: An experienced racing team is betting on cycling as YouTube’s next big sports craze. “When the 2026 Giro d’Italia kicks off on May 8, one of the competing teams will embark on a unique journey through the Italian countryside. In their magenta-and-blue jerseys, the Unibet Rose Rockets will be hard to miss — and the YouTube content they’ll film across their 2,150-mile will […]
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/02/28/tubefilter-an-experienced-racing-team-is-betting-on-cycling-as-youtubes-next-big-sports-craze/ -
#Hardik Pandya Gets Booed By Ahmedabad Crowd On MI Captaincy Debut Against Former Team Gujarat Titans; WATCH | Cricket News #TATAIPL #IPL24
#IPL24 # Mumbai Indians (MI) captain Hardik Pandya's face told the whole story during the toss before the IPL 2024 clash vs his old team Gujarat Titans (GT) at Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad. Last year, Pandya was leading GT, this year he is donning the blue jersey of MI. The crowe started booeing the new MI captain after…
-
Redis Launches Community Edition and Unveils Redis Stack 7.4
Redis 7.4 is here with Community Edition! New features include hash field expiration, vector data types, time series filters, and more.
-
Sonic Wellness Journey: Super Deep Brown Noise Spectrum For Focus Meditation and ADHD Relief
-
Here is the list:
1 - Auto Close Tags
2 - Auto Rename Tag
3 - Bracket Pair Colorizer
4 - Path Intellisense
5 - Npm Intellisense
6 - Settings Sync
7 - Color Highlight
8 - Debugger for Chrome
9 - Indent Rainbow
10 - htmltagwrap -
-
-
Do anyone here have experience with NextJS?
I need clarification on some topics I'm stuck with.
-
Front-end folks, does anyone know how I can get the CSS details like this?
Is this a specific tool or browser, I tried in Chrome but didn't reach to that.
-
Hey there,
I'm looking for a remote internship in front-end or an open-source project that needs a junior front-end dev.
I have experience with React and it's eco-system.
const mySkills = { React, Astro, Next.js }
Github: https://github.com/FairyPenguin
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/m-abd-aziz
-
And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.
Haruki Murakami
-
Signals look very promising.
In the last couple of months, I came across multiple blogs, videos, and sources talking about Signals -(Especially in the Angular eco-system)- and the performance benefits, but the question will they replace "Hooks" in React or even become 50-50 choice in the future when working with React?
Only time will tell.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SO8lBVWF2Y8
Signals from Preact Docs: https://preactjs.com/guide/v10/signals
-
WordPress 6.4 shipped with Preactjs and Preact signals.
credits: @marvinhagemeist
-
Author Spotlight: Black Sapphic Vampire Romance author Liza Wemakor
Liza Wemakor (she/they) is a writer and a Ph.D. candidate in UC Riverside’s English Department. Her fiction has been published in Strange Horizons, Anathema Magazine, Baffling Magazine, and elsewhere. Her debut novella, Loving Safoa, was published by Neon Hemlock Press in February 2024.
AUTHOR LINKS:
Website: www.lizawemakor.com
Instagram: @lizawemakor
Bluesky: @lizawemakor.bsky.socialBook Link: Loving Safoa (Neon Hemlock)
Book Elevator Pitch for readers/book clubs
If you enjoy paranormal romance with literary stylings, you will enjoy Loving Safoa!
Get a copy from Neon Hemlock.Your novella, Loving Safoa, is out now with Neon Hemlock. What were your main inspirations behind this sapphic vampire novella?
I wanted to write a vampire story that reflected underrepresented elements of my worldview. It seemed sensible to lean into Safoa’s experience of being an undocumented immigrant in the Western world across a long expanse of time, and to demonstrate how this extended period of uncertainty and precarity forces Safoa into survival mode. Meanwhile, she is also recovering from the trauma of being held captive by a sadistic colonizer for a number of years, as well as experiencing new kinds of freedom in New York, and eventually Maryland.
Cynthia, on the other hand, feels orphaned — she is navigating adulthood without her mother or any other parent, yet becoming a maternal figure to her students. She also feels a level of insecurity about her connection to her motherland, as a Ghanaian-American woman, and faces this head-on in her relationship with Safoa, who she imagines as a pure embodiment of African identity. Safoa and Cynthia’s lives are quite complex, and together they tell a story of diasporic reunification.
The novella features woven stories from different places and time periods, from 18th-19thC Ghana to a near-future Maryland. How did you decide what segments of these characters’ lives to include, and were there scenes and times that you played with but ultimately decided to cut?
I wanted to maintain a focus on Cynthia and Safoa’s romance, so I omitted some portions of their lives before they met; I may have explored more of those past moments in a longer project, like a novel, but a novella length felt right for this story. I wanted the passage of time to be a bit surreal, because it is surreal to have lives as long as Cynthia and Safoa’s. Time itself and the details of their lives are a blur.
I was seriously toying with showing glimpses of Safoa’s life in London — her lovers, and her brief skirmishes with other European predators. I would’ve emphasized how she was simultaneously powerful and vulnerable to exploitative people, which motivated her departure to the U.S. after a few decades. I didn’t include these scenes because Cynthia may have been lost in the larger narrative — there wouldn’t have been as much of a balanced representation of their lives, and Safoa would have taken over the story.
How does vampirism and the donor concept work in your novella, and is this based on any folklore?
I was very inspired by Jewelle Gomez’s approach to vampire networks in The Gilda Stories — vampire communities that are explicitly political, and whose politics have been informed by their previous experiences of being hurt, exploited, and truly loved.
I was also inspired by Octavia Butler’s approaches to both community and feeding in Fledgling. Shori depends upon a host of human companions and vampires while navigating a white supremacist vampire hierarchy. Shori’s companions also gain a lot from her presence, in a symbiotic fashion.
Tamara Jerée wrote beautifully about these dynamics in her Strange Horizons essay, “How to Make a Family: Queer Blood Bonds in Black Feminist Vampire Novels“.
There was a hint of Ghanaian folklore in the novella, though I took creative liberties. Safoa and a character named Yaba occasionally refer to the first vampire they met as ‘ɔbonsam’ — or a demonic entity. In some Ghanaian folklore, there are vampiric, humanoid creatures called ɔbonsam or sasabonsam that have very long hair, like Safoa does at some point, and live / feed on people in the forest. I didn’t opt to include other details like sharp teeth and bat-like features in my depiction of vampires. Tongue feeding was more fun for a smutty sapphic story.
At some point in my life I encountered myths related to the obayifo (another West African vampire) as well, and I took liberties with the factoid that they are phosphorescent, i.e. when Cynthia noticed a blue aura around Safoa’s body.
Can you tell us more about Cynthia – where did she come from, and what made you set her as a schoolteacher in the early 1990s at the start of this novella? How did you develop her character, her voice, and her desires (e.g. to be an “everlasting elder”)?
I am one of those people who insists on a vaguely-defined, somewhat secretive spirituality that undergirds my writing practices. In the spring of 2021, Cynthia and Safoa appeared to me almost effortlessly, and I was compelled to write about them. Not long before that, I’d gotten into the Ph.D. program I am at the end of now, and I started writing feverishly before my time and energy became more limited. Cynthia and Safoa were fascinating to me, and their chemistry was palpable; at times I blushed when writing and editing their sex scenes, because it felt like an intrusion upon their privacy.
Cynthia’s life resembles my life in some ways, but not all. I haven’t lost my mother, and she (Cynthia) has spent more of her life in New York City and Maryland than I have, but her anxieties about her authenticity as a Ghanaian diasporan and her interest in teaching certainly resonate with me. I am sure that some of my own subjectivity informed how I wrote Cynthia, though a lot of it was subconscious.
I had a moodboard for both Cynthia and Safoa, and Cynthia’s moodboard included images of the actresses Nicole Beharie and Moses Ingram, and the model Dede Mansro. I was interested in channeling not only the softness of their appearances, but the moodiness and subdued seductiveness they are able to convey.
Regarding the choice to begin in the 1990s: it was a perfect fit both aesthetically and politically. The 90s was a period of intense political maturation for educators, artists, and the general public. There was, especially for queer black people, queer people of color, a mingling of death and renewal — an increasing awareness of identity (and its constructedness) mingling with the optimism of entering a new millenium. The perfect setting for politically conscious vampires to come into themselves.
Can you tell us more about Safoa, the vampire, her Ghanaian roots, her relationship with tattoos and her place in her communities across time as a body artist, and how she came to be shaped on the page? What was the character development process like for her, and was there research involved to craft her journey from 1799 onwards – if so, what research did you do?
A pattern that is emerging in my answers to these questions is that I placed Cynthia and Safoa in historical moments that were hotbeds for social resistance. I wanted Safoa to live through multiple eras of Black and African resistance, and I wanted readers to see her putting in the work to pursue what she saw as her purpose in life, which was being a body artist from the beginning, and then evolved, through meeting Cynthia, to include more social pursuits.
In writing Safoa, I revisited a few books from a class I took in college about pre-colonial African history, and I read a few books and articles about West African empires and West African mythology. I also made an effort to research some of the geography (landscapes and flora) of West Africa, and brushed up my knowledge of some Twi terms and phrases, which I grew up hearing from my maternal family. Ultimately, only some of these details made it onto the page, because making the world feel lived in required me to look at these landscapes through Safoa’s eyes.
What research did you do for the different settings in the novella, and what sociopolitical/ideological projections were you going with for the development of your near-future Maryland setting to avoid it being a utopia/dystopia?
I wanted each of the major settings of the novella, 19th century West Africa, 1990s New York City, and 1990s / 21st century Maryland, to reflect major political movements of their time. Safoa’s time in the part of West Africa we now know as Ghana was inflected with rising anticolonial sentiments. New York City is and was sensational for the community organizing within its boroughs, though it was not without the risk of violence (see: the 2003 murder of Sakia Gunn in the nearby Newark, New Jersey). Like New York City, the DMV is and was a major locus of queer arts organizing (especially literary arts) and queer political organizing, which I aimed to reflect in Cynthia and Safoa’s commune involvements.
I wouldn’t say I was consciously avoiding the story being classified as a utopia or dystopia, and this defiance of categories came about because I had naturalistic inclinations in the writing of this novella. I wanted my writing to reflect how deeply traumatic and how stunningly gorgeous people can be. For the Maryland commune in particular, I wanted to hint at the fact that there were conflicts commune members had already worked through before Cynthia and Safoa arrived, and working through these conflicts laid the groundwork for Cynthia and Safoa to soar, as cooperative leaders in their new community.
Would you ever consider expanding upon the story of Cynthia and Safoa, perhaps in a connected story, and/or are you moving on to other projects (if so, what’s next?!)
I would love to write a short story or novelette focused on Safoa’s time in London / Europe, when the time seems right to do so. I’ve written several short stories that I’m proud of since Loving Safoa came out in 2024, and it’s just been a matter of finding the right magazine at the right time for the stories that haven’t been published yet. I also have a few short stories that are in partial states, that I am slowly finishing as my dissertation takes priority.
I also have a novel project that is half-drafted! The novel project follows a polarizing, and potentially revolutionary, celebrity musician.
Beyond my own fiction, I am a nonfiction editor and finance manager for Anathema Magazine, a venue dedicated to speculation fiction by and for queer people of color that is relaunching after a 3-year hiatus — yay!
Add Loving Safoa to GoodreadsLike This? Try These:
Author Spotlight: Vampire Fiction Author Lucius Valiant
Meet Lucius Valiant, a Danish-British author, and learn more about his series, The Thornhill Vampire Chronicles.
by cmrosensOctober 29, 2025February 3, 2026Author Spotlight: Vampire Fiction Author Talia Wall
Meet Talia Wall and her dystopian vampire series, ‘Until Equinox’ trilogy! Books 1&2 are out now, and Book 3 is coming soon.
by cmrosensOctober 8, 2025January 7, 2026Author Spotlight: Vampire Fiction Author Eule Grey
Meet Eule Grey (she/they), a Sculpture artist, disability activist, and disabled author of queer, sparkly books. We talk about disability and sapphic elements in their work.
by cmrosensJune 27, 2025January 7, 2026Author Spotlight: Horror & Vampire Fiction Author C. Lenz
C. Lenz is a Canadian author and scientist who lives with her wife Zoey in Hamilton, Ontario. In this spotlight interview, she discusses her monster-vampire slasher, Thyrst Festival.
by cmrosensApril 18, 2025February 3, 2026Author Spotlight: Vampire Fiction Author Frankie Sutton
Frankie Sutton writes paranormal and urban fantasy, and talks to us about her novel, Vampiric Crush.
by cmrosensFebruary 28, 2025January 7, 2026Author Spotlight: Queer SFF and Vampire Fiction Author H.S. Kallinger
Meet one of the authors from the Authors for Palestine event, H.S. Kallinger (he/they). Kallinger discusses his work, vampires, and what’s next for their queer Sci-Fi series.
by cmrosensJuly 31, 2024January 7, 2026 Subscribe to my newsletter to stay updated! I send newsletters around once a month. You can also subscribe to my site so you don't miss a post, but I also do a post round-up in my monthly newsletters, along with what I've been working on, what I've been reading, and what I've been watching. I will often update newsletter subscribers first with news, so stay ahead of the game with my announcements and discount codes, etc! #AuthorInterview #AuthorSpotlight #BlackAuthor #paranormalRomance #queerAuthor #sapphicBooks #vampireBooks -
“Labor Is Life” (U.S. Postal Service’s Labor Day Stamp, 1956, U.S. Library of Congress, public domain).
Bakers, blacksmiths, boatmen, butchers, carpenters, cabinetmakers, cigarmakers, coal miners, factory workers, farmers, gardeners, gold miners, iron workers, masons, quarry workers, teamsters, tombstone carvers. These were just a few of the diverse job titles held by the laborers who enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry during the American Civil War.
Many returned to their same occupations after the war ended while others found new pathways for their life journeys. Far too many were never able to return to the arms of their loved ones and still rest in marked or unmarked graves far from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
In honor of Labor Day, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers: One Civil War Regiment’s Story is proud to present this abridged list of blue-collar men and boys who served with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry between August 1861 and January 1866, as well as the names of two of the women associated with the regiment who made their own unforgettable marks on the world.
* Auchmuty, Samuel S. (First Lieutenant, Company D): A native of Duncannon, Perry County and veteran of the Mexican-American War who was employed as a carpenter during the early 1860s, Samuel Auchmuty responded to President Abraham Lincoln’s call for volunteers to defend the nation’s capital during the opening weeks of the American Civil War by enrolling as a first lieutenant with Company D of the newly-formed 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry on August 20, 1861; after completing his three-year term of enlistment, he was honorably discharged in September 1864 and returned home to Pennsylvania, where he resumed his work as a house carpenter and launched a successful contracting business that was responsible for building new business structures, churches, single-family homes, and schools, as well as renovating existing structures; he died in 1891, following a brief illness;
First Sergeant Christian S. Beard, circa 1863 (public domain).
* Beard, Christian Seiler (First Lieutenant, Company C): A twenty-seven-year-old, married carpenter residing in Williamsport, Lycoming County when President Abraham Lincoln called for seventy-five thousand volunteers to defend the nation’s capital, following the fall of Fort Sumter in mid-April 1865, Chistian S. Beard promptly enrolled for Civil War military service before that month was out as a private with Company D of the 11th Pennsylvania Volunteers; honorably discharged in July after completing his Three Months’ Service, he re-enlisted as a sergeant with Company C of the newly-formed 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers on August 19; after rising up through the ranks to become a first lieutenant, he was honorably discharged on Christmas Day, 1865, and returned home to his wife in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, where he continued to work as a carpenter; after having several children with his wife, he was widowed by her; remarried in 1884, he relocated with his wife and children to Pittsburgh, where he continued to work as a carpenter; ailing with heart and kidney disease, he died there on November 16, 1911 and was interred at that city’s Highwood Cemetery;
* Burke, Thomas (Sergeant, Company I): A first-generation American, Thomas Burke was a twenty-year-old cabinetmaker residing in Allentown at the dawn of the American Civil War; after enrolling for military service on the day that the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry was founded (August 5, 1861), he was officially mustered in as a private; from that point on, he continued to work his way up the ranks, receiving a promotion to corporal on September 19, 1864 and then to sergeant on July 11, 1865; honorably mustered out with his company in Charleston, South Carolina on December 25, 1865, he returned home to Lehigh County, where he married and began a family; sometime in early to mid-1871, he and his family migrated west to Iowa, settling in Anamosa, Jones County, where he was employed as a carpenter and contractor; he died at his home there on October 22, 1910 and was buried at that town’s Riverside Cemetery;
* Colvin, John Dorrance (Second Lieutenant, Company C): A native of Abington Township, Lackawanna County who was a farmer when he enlisted for Civil War military service on September 12, 1861, John D. Colvin transferred to the U.S. Army Signal Corps on October 13, 1863, and continued to serve with the Signal Corps for the duration of the war; employed as an engineer, post-war, he helped the Pacific Railroad to extend its service from Atchison, Kansas to Fort Kearney in Nebraska before returning home to Pennsylvania, where he married, began a family and resided with them in Olyphant and Carbondale before relocating with them to Parsons in Luzerne County, where he became a prominent civic leader and member of the school board; initially employed as a machinist, he went on to become superintendent of the Delaware & Hudson Coal company before taking a similar job with the Lehigh Valley Coal Company; the U.S. Postal Service’s postmaster of Parsons during the early 1890s, he died there on March 15, 1901 and was buried at the Hollenback Cemetery in Wilkes-Barre;
* Crownover, James (Sergeant, Company D): A twenty-three-year-old teamster residing in Blain, Perry County when he enrolled for Civil War military service on August 20, 1861, James Crownover rose up through the ranks of the 47th Pennsylvania from private to reach the rank of sergeant; wounded in the right shoulder and captured by Confederate troops during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864, he was marched to Camp Ford, near Tyler, Texas, the largest Confederate prison camp west of the Mississippi River, where he was held as a prisoner of war (POW) until he was released during a prisoner exchange on November 25, 1864; during captivity, he was commissioned, but not mustered as a second lieutenant; given medical treatment before he was returned to active duty, he was honorably discharged with his regiment in Charleston, South Carolina on December 25, 1865; after returning home, he found work at a tannery near Blain, married, began a family and then relocated with them to East Huntingdon Township, Westmoreland County, where he worked as a teamster; relocating with them to Braddock in Allegheny County after the turn of the century, he worked at a local mill there; he died in Allegheny County on July 18, 1903 and was buried at the Monongahela Cemetery in Braddock Hills;
Jacob Daub, circa 1862-1865 (carte de visite, Cooley & Beckett Photographers, Savannah, Georgia and Beaufort and Hilton Head, South Carolina, public domain).
* Daub, Jacob and William J. (Drummer Boy, Company A): A German immigrant as a child, Jacob Daub emigrated with his parents and younger brother, William, circa 1852; after settling in Easton, Northampton County, Pennsylvania, where his father found work as a stone mason, Jacob grew up to become a cigarmaker, and also became the first of the two brothers to enlist in the American Civil War; after enrolling at the age of sixteen, he was classified as a field musician and assigned to Company A as its drummer boy; his nineteen-year-old brother, William, a carpenter by 1865, followed him into the war when he enlisted as a private with the same company in February of that year; after the war ended, both returned home to Northampton County, where they married, had children and went on to live long, full lives; William eventually died at the age of eighty in 1928, followed by Jacob, who passed away in 1936, roughly two months before his ninety-first birthday;
* Detweiler, Charles C. (Private, Company A): Berks County native Charles Detweiler enrolled for Civil War military service on September 16, 1862; a carpenter who later became a farmer, he served with Company A until he was severely injured in the Battle of Cedar Creek, Virginia, October 19, 1864, when he sustained a musket ball wound to the middle of his thigh; treated at a Union Army hospital in Virginia before being transported to the Union’s Mower General Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he learned that the musket ball had damaged his femur and femoral arteries; following his wound-related death at Mower on March 12, 1865, he was buried at the Fairview Cemetery in Kutztown, Berks County;
* Diaz, John (Private, Company I): An immigrant from Spain’s Canary Islands, John Diaz emigrated sometime between 1862 and 1865 and settled in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he found work as a cigarmaker; on January 25, 1865, at the age of nineteen, he enlisted with the Union Army at a recruiting depot in Norristown, Montgomery County and served as a private with Company I of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry until it was mustered out on Christmas Day, 1865; following his return to Pennsylvania, he resumed work as a cigarmaker in Philadelphia, eventually launching his own cigarmaking firm, which became a family business as his sons became old enough to work for him; sometime between 1906 and 1910, he relocated with his wife and several of his children to Camden County, New Jersey, where he died on September 5, 1915;
James Downs (circa 1880s, public domain).
* Downs, James (Corporal, Company D): A twenty-three-year-old tanner residing in Blain, Perry County when he enrolled for Civil War military service on August 20, 1861, James Downs was captured by Confederate troops during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864 and marched to Camp Ford, near Tyler, Texas, the largest Confederate prison camp west of the Mississippi River; held there as a prisoner of war (POW) until he was released during a prisoner exchange on July 22, 1864, he received medical treatment and was subsequently returned to active duty; following his honorable discharge with his regiment in Charleston, South Carolina, on December 25, 1865, he returned home, married, began a family and relocated with his family to Phillipsburg, New Jersey; suffering from heart and kidney disease, and possibly also from post-traumatic stress disorder, rather than “insane” as physicians at the Pennsylvania Memorial Home in Brookville, Jefferson County, Pennsylvania had diagnosed him, he fell from a window at that home and died at there on September 16, 1921; he was subsequently interred in the Veterans’ Circle of the Brookville Cemetery;
* Eagle, Augustus (Second Lieutenant, Company F): A German immigrant as a teenager, Augustus Eagle arrived in America on June 23, 1855, two years after his brother, Frederick Eagle, had emigrated and made a life for himself in Catasauqua, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania; both men married and began families there, with Fred employed as a laborer and Gus employed by the Crane Iron Works; when President Abraham Lincoln issued his call for volunteers to defend the nation’s capital during the opening weeks of the American Civil War, both men enrolled for military service on August 21, 1861 as privates with Company F of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry; in 1862, Fred fell ill and was honorably discharged on a surgeon’s certificate of disability, but Gus continued to serve, rising up through the regiment’s enlisted and officers’ ranks; commissioned as a second lieutenant, he was honorably discharged on September 11, 1864, upon completion of his three-year term of service; post-war, Fred became a successful baker with real estate and personal property valued at $4,200 (roughly $155,750 in 2023 dollars) and died in Catasauqua in 1885, while Gus owned a successful restaurant in Whitehall Township before operating the Fairview Hotel, which became a popular spot for political gatherings; after suffering a series of strokes in 1902, Gus died at his home on August 17 and was buried at the Fairview Cemetery in West Catasauqua;
* Eisenbraun, Alfred (Drummer Boy, Company B): A tobacco stripper and first-generation American from Allentown, Lehigh County, fifteen-year-old Alfred Eisenbraun became the second “man” from the 47th Pennsylvania to die when he succumbed to complications from typhoid fever at the Kalorama Eruptive Fever Hospital in Georgetown, District of Columbia on October 26, 1861; he still rests at the U.S. Soldiers’ and Airmen’s Home Cemetery in Washington, D.C.;
* Fink, Aaron (Corporal, Company B): A shoemaker and native of Salisbury Township, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, Aaron Fink, grew up, began a family and established a successful small shoemaking business, first in Allentown and then in Mauch Chunk (now Jim Thorpe) in Carbon County; on August 20, 1861, he chose to respond to President Abraham Lincoln’s call for volunteers to help bring the American Civil War to a quick end when he enrolled for military service; shot in the right leg during the fighting at the Frampton Plantation during the Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina on October 22, 1862, he was treated at the Union Army’s hospital at Hilton Head, South Carolina, but died there from wound-related complications on November 5, 1862; initially buried near that hospital, his remains were later exhumed by Allentown undertaker Paul Balliet and returned to Pennsylvania for reinterment at that city’s Union-West End Cemetery;
* Fornwald, Reily M. (Corporal, Company G): Born in Heidelberg Township, Berks County, Reily Fornwald was raised there on his family’s farm near Stouchsberg; educated in his community’s common schools and then at Millersville State Normal School, he became a railroad worker before returning to farm life shortly before the dawn of the American Civil War; after enlisting for military service at the age of twenty on September 11, 1862, he was wounded in the head and groin by an exploding artillery shell during the Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina on October 22, 1862; stabilized on the battlefield before being transported to a field hospital for more advanced medical care, he spent four weeks recuperating before returning to active duty with his regiment; promoted to the rank of corporal on January 19, 1863, he continued to serve with his regiment until he was honorably discharged at Berryville, Virginia on September 18, 1864, upon expiration of his term of enlistment; after returning home, he spent four years operating a blast furnace for White & Ferguson in Robesonia, Berks County; he also married and began a family; sometime around 1870, he left that job to become an engine operator for Wright, Cook & Co. in Sheridan and then moved to a job as an engine operator for William M. Kauffman—a position he held for roughly a decade before securing employment as a shifting engineer with the Reading Railway Company at its yards in Reading; following his retirement in 1905, he and his wife settled in Robesonia, where he became involved in buying and selling real estate; following a severe fall in May 1925, during which he fractured a thigh bone, he died at the Homeopathic Hospital in Reading on June 1 and was buried at Robesonia’s Heidelberg Cemetery;
Captain Reuben Shatto Gardner, Company H, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, circa 1863 (public domain).
* Gardner, Reuben Shatto, John A. and Jacob S. R.: Natives of Perry County, Reuben Shatto Gardner and his brothers, John A. Gardner and Jacob S. R. Gardner, began their work lives as laborers; among the earliest responders to President Abraham Lincoln’s call to defend the nation’s capital, following the fall of Fort Sumter in mid-April 1861, Reuben was a twenty-five-year-old miller who resided in Newport, Perry County; after enlisting as a private with Company D of the 2nd Pennsylvania Volunteers on April 20, he was honorably mustered out after completing his term of service; he then re-upped for a three-year tour of duty, mustering in as a first sergeant with Company H of the newly-formed 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry; also enrolling with him that same day were his twenty-three-year-old and twenty-one-year-old brothers, John A. Gardner and Jacob S. R. Gardner; John officially mustered in at Camp Curtin in Harrisburg on September 18 (the day before Reuben arrived), while Jacob officially mustered in on September 19; both joined their brother’s company, entering at their respective ranks of corporal and private, but Jacob’s tenure was a short one; sickened by typhoid fever in late December 1861, he died at the 47th Pennsylvania’s regimental hospital at Camp Griffin, near Langley, Virginia on January 8, 1862; his remains were later returned to Perry County for burial at the Old Newport Cemetery; soldiering on, Reuben and John were transported with their regiment by ship to Fort Taylor in Key West, Florida and subsequently sent to South Carolina with their regiment and other Union troops; shot in the head and thigh during the Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina on October 22, 1862, Reuben was treated at the Union Army’s hospital at Hilton Head, South Carolina for an extended period of time, and then returned to active duty with his regiment; meanwhile, John was assigned with H Company and the men from Companies D, F and K to garrison Fort Jefferson in Florida’s Dry Tortugas; both brothers then continued to work their way up the regiment’s ranks, with John promoted to corporal on September 18, 1864 and Reuben ultimately commissioned as a captain and given command of Company H on February 16, 1865; both then returned home after honorably mustering out with the regiment in Charleston, South Carolina on Christmas Day, 1865; sometime around 1866 or 1867, Reuben and his wife migrated west, first to Elk River Station in Sherburne County, Minnesota and then to Stillwater, Washington County, before settling in the city of Minneapolis; through it all, he worked as a miller; Reuben and his family then relocated farther west, arriving in King County, Washington after the Great Seattle Fire of 1889; initially employed in the restaurant industry, Reuben later found work as a railroad conductor before prospecting for gold with son Edward in the western United States and British Columbia, Canada during the 1890s Gold Rush; employed as a U.S. Post Office clerk in charge of the money order and registry departments in Seattle from 1898 to 1902, Reuben died in Seattle at the age of sixty-eight on September 25, 1903 and was interred at that city’s Lakeview Cemetery; meanwhile, his brother John, who had resumed work as a fireman with the Pennsylvania Railroad after returning from the war, was widowed by his wife in 1872; after remarrying and welcoming the births of more children, he was severely injured on October 9, 1873 while working as a fireman on the Pacific Express for the Pennsylvania Railroad; unable to continue working as a fireman due to his amputated hand, he worked briefly as a railroad call messenger before launching his own transfer business in Harrisburg; after he was widowed by his ailing second wife, John was severely injured in a second accident in 1894 while loading his delivery wagon; still operating his business after the turn of the century, he remarried on January 3, 1900, but was widowed by his third wife when she died during a surgical procedure in 1911; he subsequently closed his business and relocated to the home of his daughter in the city of Reading, Berks County; four years later, he fell on an icy sidewalk and became bedfast; aged eighty and ailing from arteriosclerosis and lung congestion, he died at her home on February 20, 1918 and was buried at Reading’s Charles Evans Cemetery;
* Gethers, Bristor (Under-Cook, Company F): Born into slavery in South Carolina circa 1829, Bristor Gethers was married “by slave custom at Georgetown, S.C.” on the Pringle plantation in Georgetown sometime around 1847 to “Rachael Richardson” (alternate spelling “Rachel”); a field hand at the dawn of the Civil War, he was freed from chattel enslavement in 1862 by Union Army troops; he then enlisted as an “Under-Cook” with Company F of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry in Beaufort, South Carolina on October 5, 1862, and traveled with the regiment until October 4, 1865, when he was honorably discharged in Charleston, South Carolina upon completion of his three-year term of enlistment; at that point, he returned to Beaufort and resumed life with his wife and their son, Peter; a farmer, Bristor was ultimately disabled by ailments that were directly attributable to his Union Army tenure; awarded a U.S. Civil War Soldiers’ Pension, he lived out his days with his wife on Horse Island, South Carolina, and died on Horse Island, South Carolina on June 24 or 25, 1894; he was then laid to rest at a graveyard on Parris Island on June 26 of that same year;
* Gilbert, Edwin (Captain, Company F): A native of Northampton County and a carpenter residing in Catasauqua, Lehigh County at the dawn of the American Civil War, Edwin Gilbert enrolled as a corporal on August 21, 1861; after rising up through his regiment’s officer ranks, he was ultimately commissioned as a captain and placed in charge of his company on New Year’s Day, 1865, and then mustered out with his company in Charleston, South Carolina of Christmas of that same year; resuming his life with his wife and children in Lehigh County after the war, he continued to work as a carpenter; after suffering a stroke in late December 1893, he died on January 2, 1894 and was buried at the Fairview Cemetery in West Catasauqua;
Mrs. Caroline Bost and Martin L. Guth celebrated the anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln’s birthday with fellow Grand Army of the Republic and ladies auxiliary members in February 1933 (public domain).
* Guth, Martin Luther (Corporal, Company K): A native of Lehigh County and son of a farmer, Martin L. Guth was a seventeen-year-old laborer and resident of Guthsville in Whitehall Township at the dawn of the American Civil War; after enrolling for military service on September 26, 1862, he was officially mustered in as a corporal; he continued to serve with his regiment until he was honorably mustered out on October 1, 1865, upon expiration of his term of service; at some point during that service, he broke his leg—an injury that did not heal properly and plagued him for the remainer of his life; after returning home to the Lehigh Valley, he found work again as a laborer; married in 1883, he became the father of four children, one of whom was born in New Mexico and another who was born in California; he had moved his family west in search of work in the mining industry; documented as a “prospector” or “miner” records created in Nevada during that period, he was also documented on voter registration rolls of Butte City in Glenn County, California in August 1892; by 1900, he was living separately from his wife, who was residing in Bandon, Coos County, Oregon with their two children while he was residing at the Veterans’ Home of California in Yount Township, Napa County, California; subsequently admitted to the Mountain Branch of the network of U.S. National Homes for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers in Johnson City, Tennessee on February 11, 1912, his disabilities included an old compound fracture of his right leg with chronic ulceration, defective vision (right eye), chronic bronchitis, and arteriosclerosis; discharged on December 12, 1920, he was admitted to the U.S. National Soldiers’ Home in Leavenworth, Kansas on July 30, 1912, but discharged on September 29, 1913; by 1920, he was living alone on Fruitvale Avenue in the city of Oakland, California, but was remaining active with his local chapter of the Grand Army of the Republic as he rose through the leadership ranks of chapter, state and national G.A.R. organizations; after a long, adventure-filled life, he died on October 11, 1935, at the age of ninety-one, at the veterans’ home in San Francisco and was interred at the San Francisco National Cemetery (also known as the Presidio Cemetery);
Lieutenant Charles A. Hackman, Company G, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, circa 1864 (public domain).
* Hackman, Charles Abraham and Martin Henry (First Lieutenant and Sergeant, Company G): Natives of Rittersville, Lehigh County, Charles and Martin Hackman began their work lives as apprentices, with Charles employed by a carpenter and Martin employed by master coachmaker Jacob Graffin; members of the local militia unit known as the Allen Rifles, they were among the earliest responders to President Abraham Lincoln’s call to defend the nation’s capital, following the fall of Fort Sumter in mid-April 1861; both enlisted as privates with Company I of the 1st Pennsylvania Volunteers on April 20 and were honorably mustered out in July after completing their service; Charles then re-upped for a three-year tour of duty, mustering in as a sergeant with Company G of the newly-formed 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry; he then spent most of his early service in Virginia; meanwhile, his younger brother, Martin H. Hackman, who was employed as a coach trimmer in Lehigh County, re-enlisted for his own second tour of duty, as a private with Charles’ company, on January 8, 1862; working their way up the ranks, Charles was commissioned as a first lieutenant on June 18, 1863, while Martin was promoted to sergeant on April 26, 1864; Charles was then breveted as a captain on November 30, 1864 after having mustered out on November 5; Martin was then honorably discharged on January 8, 1865; initially employed, post-war, with the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad’s train car facility in Reading, Berks County, Charles was promoted to car inspector at the company’s Philadelphia facility in December 1866; he subsequently married, but had no children and was widowed in 1904; remarried, he remained in Philadelphia until the early 1900s, when he relocated to Allentown; Martin, who worked as a bricklayer in Allentown, did have children after marrying, but he, too, was widowed; also remarried, he became a manager at a rolling mill; ailing with pneumonia in early 1917, Charles was eighty-six years old when he died in Allentown on January 17; he was buried at Allentown’s Union-West End Cemetery, while his brother Martin was buried at the Nisky Hill Cemetery in Bethlehem, following his death in Bethlehem from a cerebral hemorrhage on December 14, 1921;
* Junker, George (Captain, Company K): A German immigrant as a young adult, George Junker emigrated sometime around the early 1850s and settled in Allentown, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, where he found employment as a marble worker and tombstone carver, and where he also joined the Allen Infantry, one of his adopted hometown’s three militia units; responding to U.S. President Abraham Lincoln’s call for volunteers to defend the nation’s capital during the opening weeks of the American Civil War, George enlisted with his fellow Allen Infantrymen, honorably completed his Three Months’ Service, and promptly began his own recruitment of men for an “all-German company” for the newly-formed 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry; commissioned as a captain with the 47th Pennsylvania, he was placed in charge of his men who became known as Company K; mortally wounded by a Confederate rifle shot during the Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina on October 22, 1862, he died from his wounds the next day at the Union Army’s division hospital at Hilton Head, South Carolina; his remains were returned to his family in Hazleton, Luzerne County for reburial at the Vine Street Cemetery;
* Kern, Samuel (Private, Company D): A native of Perry County who was employed as a farmer in Bloomfield, Perry County when he enrolled for Civil War military service on August 20, 1861, Samuel Kern was wounded and captured by Confederate troops during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864; marched to Camp Ford, near Tyler, Texas, the largest Confederate prison camp west of the Mississippi River, he was held there as a prisoner of war (POW) until he died from harsh treatment on June 12, 1864; buried somewhere on the grounds of that prison camp, his grave remains unidentified;
* Kosier, George (Captain, Company D): A native of Perry County and twenty-four-year-old carpenter residing in that county’s community of New Bloomfield at the dawn of the American Civil War, George Kosier became one of the earliest men from his county to respond to President Abraham Lincoln’s call for to defend the nation’s capital, following the fall of Fort-Sumter in mid-April 1861, when he enrolled for military service on April 20 as a corporal with Company D of the 2nd Pennsylvania Volunteers; honorably discharged in July after completing his Three Months’ Service, he re-enlisted as a first sergeant with Company D of the newly-formed 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry; joining him were his younger brothers, Jesse and William S. Kosier, aged nineteen and twenty-three, who were enrolled as privates with the same company; all three subsequently re-enlisted with their company at Fort Taylor in Key West, Florida in 1863; sadly, Jesse fell ill with pleurisy and died at the Union Army’s Field Hospital in Sandy Hook, Maryland on August 1864; initially buried at a cemetery in Weverton, Maryland, his remains were later exhumed and reinterred at the Antietam National Cemetery in Sharpsburg, Maryland; both George and William continued to serve with the regiment, with George continuing his rise up the ranks; commissioned as a captain, he was given command of Company D in early June 1865; both brothers were then honorably discharged with their regiment on Christmas Day, 1865; post-war, both men married and began families; William died in Pennsylvania sometime around 1879, but George went on to live a long full life; after settling in Ogle County, Illinois, where he was employed as a carpenter, he relocated with his family to Wright County, Iowa, where he built bridges; he died in Chicago on December 3, 1920 and was buried at that city’s Rosehill Cemetery;
Anna (Weiser) Leisenring (1851-1942) , circa 1914 (public domain).
* Leisenring, Annie (Weiser): The wife of Thomas B. Leisenring (Captain, Company G), Annie Leisenring was employed by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania as a factory inspector after the American Civil War; she became well known through newspaper accounts of her inspection visits and also became widely respected for her efforts to improve child labor laws statewide;
* Lowrey, Thomas (Corporal, Company E): An Irish immigrant as a young adult, Thomas Lowrey emigrated sometime around the late 1840s or early 1850s and settled in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, where he found work as a miner, married and began a family; responding to U.S. President Abraham Lincoln’s call for volunteers to defend the nation’s capital during the opening weeks of the American Civil War, Thomas enlisted with Company E of the 47th Pennsylvania on September 16, 1861; after completing his three-year term of enlistment, he was honorably discharged in September 1864 and returned home to Pennsylvania, where he resumed work as a coal miner near Shenandoah, Schuylkill County, and where he resided with his wife and children; after witnessing the dawn of a new century, he died in Shenandoah on January 11, 1906;
This image of Julia (Kuenher) Minnich, circa 1860s, is being presented here through the generosity of Chris Sapp and his family, and is being used with Mr. Sapp’s permission. This image may not be reproduced, repurposed, or shared with other websites without the permission of Chris Sapp.
* Magill, Julia Ann (Kuehner Minnich): Widowed and the mother of a young son at the time that her husband, B Company’s Captain Edwin G. Minnich, was killed in battle during the American Civil War, Julia Ann (Kuehner) Minnich became a Union Army nurse at Harewood Hospital in Washington, D.C. during the war in order to keep a roof over her son’s head; she then spent the remainder of her life battling the U.S. Pension Bureau to receive and keep both the U.S. Civil War Widow’s Pension and U.S. Civil War Nurse’s Pension that she was entitled to under federal law; forced to go on working into her later years by poverty, she finally found work as a cook at a hotel in South Bethlehem; she died sometime after 1906;
* Menner, Edward W. (Second Lieutenant, Company E): A first-generation American who was a native of Easton, Northampton County, Edward Menner was a sixteen-year-old carpenter when he enrolled for Civil War military service on August 25, 1861; working his way up from private to second lieutenant before he was honorably discharged with his regiment in Charleston, South Carolina on Christmas Day, 1865, he was wounded in the left shoulder during the Battle of Cedar Creek, Virginia on October 19, 1864; after returning home to the Lehigh Valley, he secured employment as a hooker with the Bethlehem Iron Company (later known as Bethlehem Steel) on March 15, 1866; he married, begam a family and continued to work in the iron industry for much of his life; he died in Bethlehem on April 25, 1913 and was buried at that city’s Nisky Hill Cemetery;
* Miller, John Garber (Sergeant, Company D): A native of Ironville, Blair County, John G. Miller was a twenty-one-year-old laborer living in Duncannon, Perry County when he enrolled for Civil War military service on August 20, 1861; captured by Confederate troops during the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana on April 9, 1864 and marched to Camp Ford, near Tyler, Texas, the largest Confederate prison camp west of the Mississippi River, he was held there as a prisoner of war (POW) until he was released during a prisoner exchange on July 22, 1864; returned to active duty with his regiment after receiving medical treatment, he continued to serve until he was honorably discharged with the regiment in Charleston, South Carolina on December 25, 1865; after returning home, he married, began a family and relocated with his family to Philipsburg, Centre County, Pennsylvania, where he was employed as a teamster; returning to Blair County with his family, he resided with them in Logan Township before relocating with them again to Coalport, Clearfield County; suffering from heart disease, he died in Coalport on February 16, 1921 and was interred at the Coalport Cemetery;
Captain Theodore Mink, Company I, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers (circa 1870s-1880s, courtesy of Julian Burley; used with permission).
* Mink, Theodore (Captain, Company I): A native of Allentown, Lehigh County who was apprenticed as a coachmaker and then tried his hand as a whaler and blacksmith prior to the American Civil War, Thedore Mink became one of the “First Defenders” who responded to President Abraham Lincoln’s call for seventy-five thousand volunteers to defend the nation’s capital after the fall of Fort Sumter in mid-April 1861; after honorably completing his Three Months’ Service in July, he re-enlisted on August 5 as a sergeant with Company I of the newly-formed 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry; after steadily working his way up through the ranks, he was commissioned as a captain and placed in charge of his company on May 22, 1865; he continued to serve with his regiment until it was mustered out on Christmas Day, 1865; following his return to Pennsylvania, he was hired as a laborer with a circus troupe operated by Mike Lipman before finding longtime employment in advertising and then as head of the circus wardrobe for the Forepaugh Circus before he was promoted to management with the circus; felled by pneumonia during late 1889, he died in Philadelphia on January 7, 1890 and was interred in Allentown’s Union-West End Cemetery;
* Newman, Edward (Private, Company H): A German immigrant who left his homeland sometime around 1920, Edward Newman chose to settle in Allentown, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, where he found work as a baker; after enlisting for Civil War military service in August 1862, he mustered in as a private with Company I of the 127th Pennsylvania Volunteers and fought in the Battle of Fredericksburg from December 11-15 of that year; honorably mustered out with his regiment in May 1863, he re-enlisted on October 23, 1863 for a second tour of duty—but as a private with a different regiment—Company H of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers; he continued to serve with the 47th Pennsylvania until he was officially mustered out in Charleston, South Carolina on Christmas Day, 1865, he returned to Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, where he worked briefly as a baker; suffering from rheumatism that developed while the 47th Pennsylvania was stationed near Cedar Creek, Virginia during the fall of 1864, he was admitted to the network of U.S. Homes for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers at the Central Branch in Dayton, Montgomery County, Ohio on July 17, 1877; still unmarried and still living there in 1880, his health continued to decline; diagnosed with acute enteritis, he died there on January 22, 1886 and was buried at the Dayton National Cemetery;
Captain Daniel Oyster, Company C, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, circa 1864 (public domain).
* Oyster, Daniel (Captain, Company C): A native of Sunbury, Northumberland County who was employed as a machinist, Daniel Oyster became one of the earliest men from his county to respond to President Abraham Lincoln’s call to defend the nation’s capital, following the fall of Fort-Sumter in mid-April 1861, when he enrolled for Civil War military service on April 23 as a corporal with Company F of the 11th Pennsylvania Volunteers; honorably discharged in July after completing his Three Months’ Service, he re-enlisted as a first sergeant with Company C of the newly-formed 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers on August 19; his brother, John Oyster, subsequently followed him into the service, enrolling as a private with his company on November 20, 1863; after rising up through the ranks to become captain of his company, Daniel was shot in his left shoulder near Berryville, Virginia on September 5, 1864 and then shot in his right shoulder during the Battle of Cedar Creek on October 19; successfully treated by Union Army surgeons for both wounds, he was awarded a veteran’s furlough in order to continue his recuperation and returned home to Sunbury; he then returned to duty and was honorably discharged with his company on Christmas Day, 1865; post-discharge, he and his brother, John, returned home to Sunbury; Daniel continued to reside with their aging mother and was initially employed as a policeman, but was then forced by a war-related decline in his health to take less-taxing work as a railroad postal agent; his brother John, who was married, lived nearby and worked as a fireman, but died in Sunbury on April 20, 1899; employed as a bookkeeper after the turn of the century, Daniel never married and was ultimately admitted to the Southern Branch of the U.S. National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers in Hampton, Virginia, where he died on August 5, 1922—exactly sixty-one years to the day after the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry was founded; he was given a funeral with full military honors before being laid to rest in the officers’ section at the Arlington National Cemetery on August 11;
* Sauerwein, Thomas Franklin (First Sergeant, Company B): The son of a lock tender in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, Thomas Sauerwein was employed as a carpenter at the dawn of the American Civil War; following his enrollment for military service in Allentown, Lehigh County on August 20, 1861, he was officially mustered in as a private with Company B of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry; from that point on, he steadily worked his way up the ranks of the regiment, ultimately being promoted to first sergeant on New Year’s Day, 1865; following his honorable discharge with his company on Christmas Day of that same year, he returned home to the Lehigh Valley, where he found work as a carpenter, married and began a family; by 1880, he had moved his family west to Williamsport in Lycoming County, where he had found work as a machinist; employed as a leather roller with a tanning factory, he was promoted to a position as a leather finisher after the turn of the century, while his two sons worked as leather rollers in the same industry; he died in Williamsport on July 29, 1912 and was buried at the East Wildwood Cemetery in Loyalsock;
* Slayer, Joseph (Private, Company E; also known as “Dead Eye Dick” and “E. J. McMeeser”): A native of Philadelphia, Joseph Slayer was a nineteen-year-old miner residing in Willliams Township, Northampton County, Pennsylvania at the dawn of the American Civil War; after enrolling for military service in Easton, Northampton County on September 9, 1861, he was officially mustered in as a private with Company E of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers; he continued to serve with his company, re-enlisting as a private with Company E, under the name of Joseph Slayer, at Fort Jefferson in Florida’s Dry Tortugas on January 4, 1864; honorably mustered out with his company in Charleston, South Carolina on Christmas Day, 1865, he relocated to Zanesville, Ohio sometime after the war, where he joined the Grand Army of the Republic’s Hazlett Post No. 81; he may then have relocated briefly to St. Paul, Minnesota sometime around the 1870s or early 1880s, or may simply have had a child and grandchild living there, because newspaper reports of his death noted that he had been carrying a photograph of a toddler named Robert—a photo that had “To Grandpa” inscribed on it and indicated that the grandchild, Robert, was a resident of St. Paul in 1892; by the 1880s, Joseph had made it as far west as the Dakota Territory—but this was where his life’s journey took a strange twist; discarding the name he had used in the army (“Joseph Slayer”), he changed his name several times over the next several years, as if he were trying to shed his prior life and all of its associations; acquaintances he met in the southern part of the Dakota Territory during the early to mid-1880s knew him as “Dead Eye Dick” while others who met him after he had resettled in Bismarck, in the northern part of the Dakota Territory, knew him as “Eugene McMeeser” or “E. J. McMeeser” (alternate spelling: “McNeeser”); by the time that the federal government conducted its special census of Civil War veterans in June 1890, Joseph was so comfortable fusing parts of his old and new lives together that he was convincingly documented by an enumerator as “Eugene McMeeser,” a veteran who had served as a private with Company E of the 47th Pennsylvania Infantry from September 9, 1861 until January 11, 1866; in 1890, Joseph became a married man; documented as having rheumatism so severe that he was “at times confined at home,” he filed for a U.S. Civil War Pension from North Dakota on March 28, 1891—but he did so as “Joseph Slayer”—the name under which he had first enrolled for military service in Pennsylvania in 1861; ultimately awarded a pension—which would not have happened if federal officials had not been able to verify his identity and match it to his existing military service records, he was diagnosed with angina pectoris in 1904, but still managed to secure a U.S. patent for one of his inventions—a napkin holder; he died in Bismarck less than a month later, on January 12 or 13, 1905; found on the floor of his rented room, his death sparked a coroner’s inquest which revealed that he had been living under an assumed name; he was buried at Saint Mary’s Cemetery in Bismarck; the name “Joseph Slayer” was carved onto his military headstone;
* Snyder, Timothy (Corporal, Company C): A carpenter who was born in Rebuck, Northumberland County, Tim Snyder was employed as a carpenter and residing in the city of Sunbury in that county by the dawn of the American Civil War; after enlisting for military service as a private in August 1861, he was wounded twice in combat, once during the Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina (1862) and a second time, in the knee, during the Battle of Opequan, Virginia (1864), shortly after he had been promoted to the rank of corporal; he survived and returned to Pennsylvania, where he resumed work as a carpenter; after relocating to Schuylkill County, he settled in the community of Ashland; in 1870, he married Catharine Boyer and started a family with her; he continued to work as a carpenter in Schuylkill County until his untimely death in May 1889 and was laid to rest with military honors at the Brock Cemetery in Ashland; John Hartranft Snyder, his first son to survive infancy, grew up to become a co-founder of the Lavelle Telegraph and Telephone Company, while his second son to survive infancy, Timothy Grant Snyder, became a corporal in the United States Marine Corps during the Spanish-American War; stationed on the USS Buffalo as it visited Port Said, Egypt, he also served aboard Admiral George Dewey’s flagship, the USS Olympia, in 1899;
Drummer Boy William Williamson, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, Company A, circa 1863 (public domain).
* Williamson, William (Drummer, Company A): A farmer from Stockertown, Northampton County, William Williamson was documented by a mid-nineteenth-century federal census enumerator as an unmarried laborer who lived at the Easton home of Northampton County physician John Sandt, M.D.—an indication that William’s parents may have either died or were struggling so much financially during the 1850s and early 1860s that they had encouraged him to “leave the nest” and begin supporting himself, or had hired him out as an apprentice or indentured servant; like so many other young men from Northampton County, when President Abraham Lincoln issued his call for help to protect the nation’s capital from a likely invasion by Confederate States Army troops, he stepped forward, raised his hand, and stated the following:
I, William Williamson appointed a private in the Army of the United States, do solemnly swear, or affirm, that I will bear true allegiance to the United States of America, and that I will serve them honestly and faithfully against all their enemies or opposers whatsoever, and observe and obey the orders of the President of the United States, and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to the rules and articles for the government of the Armies of the United States.
Later in life, William Williamson became a champion for an older woman who had been struggling to convince officials of the federal government that she was worthy enough to be awarded a U.S. Civil War Mother’s Pension, after her son had died in service to the nation as a Union Army soldier.
Post-war, William Williamson found work at a slate quarry, married, began a family in Belfast, Northampton County, and lived to witness the dawn of a new century. Following his death at the age of sixty in Plainfield Township on June 17, 1901, he was laid to rest at the Belfast Union Cemetery.
Sources:
- “A Badge from Admiral Dewey and Schuylkill County” (announcements of Timothy Grant Snyder’s service on Admiral Dewey’s flagship). Reading, Pennsylvania: Reading Eagle: October 3, 1899 and November 21, 1899.
- Baptismal, census, marriage, military, death, and burial records of the Snyder family. Pennsylvania, California, Florida, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Nevada, Ohio, etc.: Snyder Family Archives, 1650-present; and in Historic Pennsylvania Church and Town Records (baptismal, marriage, death and burial records of various churches across Pennsylvania). Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1776-1918.
- Bates, Samuel P. History of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-5, vol. 1. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: B. Singerly, State Printer, 1869.
- James Crownover, James Downs and Samuel Kern, et. al., in Camp Ford Prison Records. Tyler, Texas: The Smith County Historical Society, 1864.
- Civil War Muster Rolls, 1861-1866 (47th Pennsylvania Infantry). Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State Archives.
- Civil War Veterans’ Card File, 1861-1866 (47th Pennsylvania Infantry). Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State Archives.
- Registers of Deaths of Volunteers, U.S. Army; Admissions Ledgers, U.S. National Homes for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers; federal burial ledgers, and national cemetery interment control forms, 1861-1935. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Office of the Adjutant General (Record Group 94), U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
- Schmidt, Lewis. A Civil War History of the 47th Regiment of Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers. Allentown, Pennsylvania: Self-published, 1986.
- U.S. Census Records, 1830-1930. Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
- U.S. Civil War Pension Records, 1862-1935. Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
#47thPennsylvania #47thPennsylvaniaInfantry #47thPennsylvaniaRegiment #47thPennsylvaniaVolunteers #47thRegimentPennsylvania #AlleghenyCounty #Allentown #America #AmericanCivilWar #AmericanHistory #ArlingtonNationalCemetery #Army #Ashland #Baker #Beaufort #BerksCounty #Bethlehem #Bismarck #BlackHistory #Blacksmith #Blain #BlairCounty #Boatman #bricklayer #Brookville #Butcher #Cabinetmaker #California #CampFord #canal #CarbonCounty #Carpenter #Catasauqua #CentreCounty #CharlesEvansCemetery #Charleston #Chicago #Cigarmaker #Circus #CivilWar #ClearfieldCounty #coachTrimmer #coachmaker #Coalport #CommonwealthOfPennsylvania #DakotaTerritory #Dayton #Duncannon #Easton #Factory #Farmer #fireman #firemen #FirstDefenders #FloridaAndSouthCarolina #ForepaughCircus #FortJefferson #FortTaylor #FruitvaleAvenue #Germany #goldProspecting #GoldRush #Hampton #Harrisburg #HiltonHead #History #Illinois #Immigrants #Immigration #Infantry #inspector #Iowa #Ireland #Irish #Iron #JeffersonCounty #JohnsonCity #Kansas #KeyWest #LaborDay #LaborDayWeekend #Laborers #Leavenworth #LehighCounty #LehighValley #lockTender #Louisiana #LuzerneCounty #LycomingCounty #Machinist #Maryland #Masons #Miner #Minnesota #NapaValley #Nebraska #Nevada #NewJersey #NewMexico #NorthDakota #NorthamptonCounty #NorthumberlandCounty #Nurses #Oakland #Ohio #Oregon #PacificExpress #PennsylvaniaHistory #PennsylvaniaInTheCivilWar #PennsylvaniaRailroad #PerryCounty #Philadelphia #Phillipsburg #Pittsburgh #Pocotaligo #POW #prisonerOfWar #Quarry #railroad #ReadingRailroad #Rittersville #Robesonia #rollingMill #SanFrancisco #SchuylkillCounty #Seattle #Shenandoah #ShenandoahValley #Slavery #SouthCarolina #StPaul #Sunbury #tanner #tannery #Teamsters #Tennessee #Texas #TheUnionArmy #Tyler #USMilitaryAndTheUnionArmy #USPostOffice #veteran #VeteranVolunteers #veterans #Virginia #Washington #WestwardMigration #Whaler #Williamsport #Zanesville
-
All Time Low, Mayday Parade & Taylor Acorn – Sporthall, Hamburg Germany
For this review we traveled to Hamburg in Germany for the first time to see Pop Punk band All Time Low, on their tour with support from Taylor Acorn and Mayday Parade, to promote their new album Everyone’s Talking.
We drove down to London Heathrow Airport and caught our flight Friday night where we arrived at a snowy Hamburg. After a good night’s rest we got up and explored Hamburg visiting the Speicherstadt which is the world’s largest warehouse complex and a UNESCO site, followed by a trip to Miniatur Wunderland which holds the largest model railway system in the world.
After a day of exploring it was time to hop onto the metro and make our way to the Sporthall for the gig. We got off the metro and followed the crowd to the venue, once inside we headed to the merch where they had a great selection for each band, Rex bought herself an All Time Low sweatshirt, we were a little disappointed their wernt any signed vinyl to add to our collection. We made our way to the bar to get drinks and a currywurst, we got served very fast and the drinks were served in All Time Low cups which was a nice touch.
We made our way to the arena to see the first support of the night Taylor Acorn, a pop punk artist from Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, who replaced The Paradox and Four Year Strong on the line up. We last saw her play when she supported Noahfinnce in Birmingham 2 years ago, you can read about that show here.
Taylor AcornTaylor opened up with ‘Poster Child’ and ‘I Think I’m In Love’ in front of a big crowd, she sounded amazing and a lot better than the last time we saw her when she was ill.
Taylor put on a great show with her high energy performance as she dances around and rocks out a lot which really gets the crowd warmed up. She played 8 songs during her set finishing with our favourites ‘Shapeshifting’ and ‘Psycho’, we really hope to see her play live again.
https://open.spotify.com/track/2u3HTlrmGMP9jQv17o6UCz?si=ysfreiUbRmezhPuXKmGjnQ
Mayday Parade
Once her set was finished we managed to grab a drink and another currywurst very easily and got down in time for the start of Mayday Parade a pop punk band from Tallahassee, Florida.Mayday parade opened up with ‘Under My Seater’, ‘Jersey’ and ‘I’d Hate to Be You When People Find Out What This Song Is About’ which got the crowd bouncing and continued the energy left by Taylor Acorn.
The pace slowed down a little bit when Derek Sanders (Lead Vocalist) brought out an acoustic guitar and performed ‘Piece of Your Heart’ he then went onto say, “With the world being fucked up, just a reminder to be nice to each other regardless of race, religion, gender etc” which got a massive cheer from the crowd.They finished their 10 song set performing ‘Black Cat’ and ‘Jamie All Over’ which got the biggest reaction from the crowd as everyone was bouncing and moshing too.
https://open.spotify.com/track/05qCCJQJiOwvPQBb7akf1R?si=53tvp0aWSHmBfr-gAvxouQ
After another short break it was time for the headliners All Time Low who are a pop punk band from Towson, Maryland, we last saw these play at the When We Were Young festival in Las Vegas which you can read about here.
All Time LowBefore they came out, ‘Mr. Blue Sky’ by Electric Light Orchestra played on the speakers which got everyone singing and dancing, once All Time Low got onto stage they received a massive cheer from the crowd as they opened up with big hits ‘SUCKERPUNCH’ and the classic ‘Weightless’ where we had our first crowd surfer.
They played ‘PMA’ and one of our favourites ‘Damned If I Do Ya (Damned If I Don’t), this was followed by Alex (Vocals & Guitar) & Jack (Lead Guitar), joking and messing around which continued throughout the show.
All Time Low performed ‘Remembering Sunday’ where Taylor Acorn came out to perform with them, which was a nice surprise, this followed by a live debut of ‘Everyone’s Taking’ which we thoroughly enjoyed.
All Time Low and Taylor AcornThey spoke about how grateful they were for everyone coming out to see them play as they had to upgrade the venue numerous times due to ticket demand which surprised them and thanked everyone for the support. They continued the show performing ‘Hate This Song’ which is a song they did with I Prevail and finished with ‘Monsters’ before leaving the stage.
For their encore they performed ‘The Weather’ with Derek Sanders, followed by two of their biggest hits ‘Lost in Stereo’ and ‘Dear Maria Count Me In’ where confetti cannons went off and completed their 22 song set with a bang!
We really enjoyed the show as we got treated to 40 songs throughout the night even though we would’ve loved to have heard ‘Kids In The Dark’. We followed the crowd out and got the metro back to the hotel, where we got a good night’s sleep so we could explore more of Hamburg the next day before we flew home. The next day we climbed the tower of St Michael’s Church to see amazing views on a snowy Hamburg,l followed by a chocolate experience at Chocoversum which we highly recommend.
https://open.spotify.com/track/0JJP0IS4w0fJx01EcrfkDe?si=M0fTr-y7QwSBGHyNNp76Ww
All rights to the songs in this review are retained by the relevant artists and this site claims no rights over them.
St. Jimmy and Rex 🖤☠️
#AllTimeLow #Blog #Blogging #liveMusic #MaydayParade #MusicReview #Photography #rock #TaylorAcorn #Writing -
All Time Low, Mayday Parade & Taylor Acorn – Sporthall, Hamburg Germany
For this review we traveled to Hamburg in Germany for the first time to see Pop Punk band All Time Low, on their tour with support from Taylor Acorn and Mayday Parade, to promote their new album Everyone’s Talking.
We drove down to London Heathrow Airport and caught our flight Friday night where we arrived at a snowy Hamburg. After a good night’s rest we got up and explored Hamburg visiting the Speicherstadt which is the world’s largest warehouse complex and a UNESCO site, followed by a trip to Miniatur Wunderland which holds the largest model railway system in the world.
After a day of exploring it was time to hop onto the metro and make our way to the Sporthall for the gig. We got off the metro and followed the crowd to the venue, once inside we headed to the merch where they had a great selection for each band, Rex bought herself an All Time Low sweatshirt, we were a little disappointed their wernt any signed vinyl to add to our collection. We made our way to the bar to get drinks and a currywurst, we got served very fast and the drinks were served in All Time Low cups which was a nice touch.
We made our way to the arena to see the first support of the night Taylor Acorn, a pop punk artist from Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, who replaced The Paradox and Four Year Strong on the line up. We last saw her play when she supported Noahfinnce in Birmingham 2 years ago, you can read about that show here.
Taylor AcornTaylor opened up with ‘Poster Child’ and ‘I Think I’m In Love’ in front of a big crowd, she sounded amazing and a lot better than the last time we saw her when she was ill.
Taylor put on a great show with her high energy performance as she dances around and rocks out a lot which really gets the crowd warmed up. She played 8 songs during her set finishing with our favourites ‘Shapeshifting’ and ‘Psycho’, we really hope to see her play live again.
https://open.spotify.com/track/2u3HTlrmGMP9jQv17o6UCz?si=ysfreiUbRmezhPuXKmGjnQ
Mayday Parade
Once her set was finished we managed to grab a drink and another currywurst very easily and got down in time for the start of Mayday Parade a pop punk band from Tallahassee, Florida.Mayday parade opened up with ‘Under My Seater’, ‘Jersey’ and ‘I’d Hate to Be You When People Find Out What This Song Is About’ which got the crowd bouncing and continued the energy left by Taylor Acorn.
The pace slowed down a little bit when Derek Sanders (Lead Vocalist) brought out an acoustic guitar and performed ‘Piece of Your Heart’ he then went onto say, “With the world being fucked up, just a reminder to be nice to each other regardless of race, religion, gender etc” which got a massive cheer from the crowd.They finished their 10 song set performing ‘Black Cat’ and ‘Jamie All Over’ which got the biggest reaction from the crowd as everyone was bouncing and moshing too.
https://open.spotify.com/track/05qCCJQJiOwvPQBb7akf1R?si=53tvp0aWSHmBfr-gAvxouQ
After another short break it was time for the headliners All Time Low who are a pop punk band from Towson, Maryland, we last saw these play at the When We Were Young festival in Las Vegas which you can read about here.
All Time LowBefore they came out, ‘Mr. Blue Sky’ by Electric Light Orchestra played on the speakers which got everyone singing and dancing, once All Time Low got onto stage they received a massive cheer from the crowd as they opened up with big hits ‘SUCKERPUNCH’ and the classic ‘Weightless’ where we had our first crowd surfer.
They played ‘PMA’ and one of our favourites ‘Damned If I Do Ya (Damned If I Don’t), this was followed by Alex (Vocals & Guitar) & Jack (Lead Guitar), joking and messing around which continued throughout the show.
All Time Low performed ‘Remembering Sunday’ where Taylor Acorn came out to perform with them, which was a nice surprise, this followed by a live debut of ‘Everyone’s Taking’ which we thoroughly enjoyed.
All Time Low and Taylor AcornThey spoke about how grateful they were for everyone coming out to see them play as they had to upgrade the venue numerous times due to ticket demand which surprised them and thanked everyone for the support. They continued the show performing ‘Hate This Song’ which is a song they did with I Prevail and finished with ‘Monsters’ before leaving the stage.
For their encore they performed ‘The Weather’ with Derek Sanders, followed by two of their biggest hits ‘Lost in Stereo’ and ‘Dear Maria Count Me In’ where confetti cannons went off and completed their 22 song set with a bang!
We really enjoyed the show as we got treated to 40 songs throughout the night even though we would’ve loved to have heard ‘Kids In The Dark’. We followed the crowd out and got the metro back to the hotel, where we got a good night’s sleep so we could explore more of Hamburg the next day before we flew home. The next day we climbed the tower of St Michael’s Church to see amazing views on a snowy Hamburg,l followed by a chocolate experience at Chocoversum which we highly recommend.
https://open.spotify.com/track/0JJP0IS4w0fJx01EcrfkDe?si=M0fTr-y7QwSBGHyNNp76Ww
All rights to the songs in this review are retained by the relevant artists and this site claims no rights over them.
St. Jimmy and Rex 🖤☠️
#AllTimeLow #Blog #Blogging #liveMusic #MaydayParade #MusicReview #Photography #rock #TaylorAcorn #Writing -
All Time Low, Mayday Parade & Taylor Acorn – Sporthall, Hamburg Germany
For this review we traveled to Hamburg in Germany for the first time to see Pop Punk band All Time Low, on their tour with support from Taylor Acorn and Mayday Parade, to promote their new album Everyone’s Talking.
We drove down to London Heathrow Airport and caught our flight Friday night where we arrived at a snowy Hamburg. After a good night’s rest we got up and explored Hamburg visiting the Speicherstadt which is the world’s largest warehouse complex and a UNESCO site, followed by a trip to Miniatur Wunderland which holds the largest model railway system in the world.
After a day of exploring it was time to hop onto the metro and make our way to the Sporthall for the gig. We got off the metro and followed the crowd to the venue, once inside we headed to the merch where they had a great selection for each band, Rex bought herself an All Time Low sweatshirt, we were a little disappointed their wernt any signed vinyl to add to our collection. We made our way to the bar to get drinks and a currywurst, we got served very fast and the drinks were served in All Time Low cups which was a nice touch.
We made our way to the arena to see the first support of the night Taylor Acorn, a pop punk artist from Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, who replaced The Paradox and Four Year Strong on the line up. We last saw her play when she supported Noahfinnce in Birmingham 2 years ago, you can read about that show here.
Taylor AcornTaylor opened up with ‘Poster Child’ and ‘I Think I’m In Love’ in front of a big crowd, she sounded amazing and a lot better than the last time we saw her when she was ill.
Taylor put on a great show with her high energy performance as she dances around and rocks out a lot which really gets the crowd warmed up. She played 8 songs during her set finishing with our favourites ‘Shapeshifting’ and ‘Psycho’, we really hope to see her play live again.
https://open.spotify.com/track/2u3HTlrmGMP9jQv17o6UCz?si=ysfreiUbRmezhPuXKmGjnQ
Mayday Parade
Once her set was finished we managed to grab a drink and another currywurst very easily and got down in time for the start of Mayday Parade a pop punk band from Tallahassee, Florida.Mayday parade opened up with ‘Under My Seater’, ‘Jersey’ and ‘I’d Hate to Be You When People Find Out What This Song Is About’ which got the crowd bouncing and continued the energy left by Taylor Acorn.
The pace slowed down a little bit when Derek Sanders (Lead Vocalist) brought out an acoustic guitar and performed ‘Piece of Your Heart’ he then went onto say, “With the world being fucked up, just a reminder to be nice to each other regardless of race, religion, gender etc” which got a massive cheer from the crowd.They finished their 10 song set performing ‘Black Cat’ and ‘Jamie All Over’ which got the biggest reaction from the crowd as everyone was bouncing and moshing too.
https://open.spotify.com/track/05qCCJQJiOwvPQBb7akf1R?si=53tvp0aWSHmBfr-gAvxouQ
After another short break it was time for the headliners All Time Low who are a pop punk band from Towson, Maryland, we last saw these play at the When We Were Young festival in Las Vegas which you can read about here.
All Time LowBefore they came out, ‘Mr. Blue Sky’ by Electric Light Orchestra played on the speakers which got everyone singing and dancing, once All Time Low got onto stage they received a massive cheer from the crowd as they opened up with big hits ‘SUCKERPUNCH’ and the classic ‘Weightless’ where we had our first crowd surfer.
They played ‘PMA’ and one of our favourites ‘Damned If I Do Ya (Damned If I Don’t), this was followed by Alex (Vocals & Guitar) & Jack (Lead Guitar), joking and messing around which continued throughout the show.
All Time Low performed ‘Remembering Sunday’ where Taylor Acorn came out to perform with them, which was a nice surprise, this followed by a live debut of ‘Everyone’s Taking’ which we thoroughly enjoyed.
All Time Low and Taylor AcornThey spoke about how grateful they were for everyone coming out to see them play as they had to upgrade the venue numerous times due to ticket demand which surprised them and thanked everyone for the support. They continued the show performing ‘Hate This Song’ which is a song they did with I Prevail and finished with ‘Monsters’ before leaving the stage.
For their encore they performed ‘The Weather’ with Derek Sanders, followed by two of their biggest hits ‘Lost in Stereo’ and ‘Dear Maria Count Me In’ where confetti cannons went off and completed their 22 song set with a bang!
We really enjoyed the show as we got treated to 40 songs throughout the night even though we would’ve loved to have heard ‘Kids In The Dark’. We followed the crowd out and got the metro back to the hotel, where we got a good night’s sleep so we could explore more of Hamburg the next day before we flew home. The next day we climbed the tower of St Michael’s Church to see amazing views on a snowy Hamburg,l followed by a chocolate experience at Chocoversum which we highly recommend.
https://open.spotify.com/track/0JJP0IS4w0fJx01EcrfkDe?si=M0fTr-y7QwSBGHyNNp76Ww
All rights to the songs in this review are retained by the relevant artists and this site claims no rights over them.
St. Jimmy and Rex 🖤☠️
#AllTimeLow #Blog #Blogging #liveMusic #MaydayParade #MusicReview #Photography #rock #TaylorAcorn #Writing -
All Time Low, Mayday Parade & Taylor Acorn – Sporthall, Hamburg Germany
For this review we traveled to Hamburg in Germany for the first time to see Pop Punk band All Time Low, on their tour with support from Taylor Acorn and Mayday Parade, to promote their new album Everyone’s Talking.
We drove down to London Heathrow Airport and caught our flight Friday night where we arrived at a snowy Hamburg. After a good night’s rest we got up and explored Hamburg visiting the Speicherstadt which is the world’s largest warehouse complex and a UNESCO site, followed by a trip to Miniatur Wunderland which holds the largest model railway system in the world.
After a day of exploring it was time to hop onto the metro and make our way to the Sporthall for the gig. We got off the metro and followed the crowd to the venue, once inside we headed to the merch where they had a great selection for each band, Rex bought herself an All Time Low sweatshirt, we were a little disappointed their wernt any signed vinyl to add to our collection. We made our way to the bar to get drinks and a currywurst, we got served very fast and the drinks were served in All Time Low cups which was a nice touch.
We made our way to the arena to see the first support of the night Taylor Acorn, a pop punk artist from Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, who replaced The Paradox and Four Year Strong on the line up. We last saw her play when she supported Noahfinnce in Birmingham 2 years ago, you can read about that show here.
Taylor AcornTaylor opened up with ‘Poster Child’ and ‘I Think I’m In Love’ in front of a big crowd, she sounded amazing and a lot better than the last time we saw her when she was ill.
Taylor put on a great show with her high energy performance as she dances around and rocks out a lot which really gets the crowd warmed up. She played 8 songs during her set finishing with our favourites ‘Shapeshifting’ and ‘Psycho’, we really hope to see her play live again.
https://open.spotify.com/track/2u3HTlrmGMP9jQv17o6UCz?si=ysfreiUbRmezhPuXKmGjnQ
Mayday Parade
Once her set was finished we managed to grab a drink and another currywurst very easily and got down in time for the start of Mayday Parade a pop punk band from Tallahassee, Florida.Mayday parade opened up with ‘Under My Seater’, ‘Jersey’ and ‘I’d Hate to Be You When People Find Out What This Song Is About’ which got the crowd bouncing and continued the energy left by Taylor Acorn.
The pace slowed down a little bit when Derek Sanders (Lead Vocalist) brought out an acoustic guitar and performed ‘Piece of Your Heart’ he then went onto say, “With the world being fucked up, just a reminder to be nice to each other regardless of race, religion, gender etc” which got a massive cheer from the crowd.They finished their 10 song set performing ‘Black Cat’ and ‘Jamie All Over’ which got the biggest reaction from the crowd as everyone was bouncing and moshing too.
https://open.spotify.com/track/05qCCJQJiOwvPQBb7akf1R?si=53tvp0aWSHmBfr-gAvxouQ
After another short break it was time for the headliners All Time Low who are a pop punk band from Towson, Maryland, we last saw these play at the When We Were Young festival in Las Vegas which you can read about here.
All Time LowBefore they came out, ‘Mr. Blue Sky’ by Electric Light Orchestra played on the speakers which got everyone singing and dancing, once All Time Low got onto stage they received a massive cheer from the crowd as they opened up with big hits ‘SUCKERPUNCH’ and the classic ‘Weightless’ where we had our first crowd surfer.
They played ‘PMA’ and one of our favourites ‘Damned If I Do Ya (Damned If I Don’t), this was followed by Alex (Vocals & Guitar) & Jack (Lead Guitar), joking and messing around which continued throughout the show.
All Time Low performed ‘Remembering Sunday’ where Taylor Acorn came out to perform with them, which was a nice surprise, this followed by a live debut of ‘Everyone’s Taking’ which we thoroughly enjoyed.
All Time Low and Taylor AcornThey spoke about how grateful they were for everyone coming out to see them play as they had to upgrade the venue numerous times due to ticket demand which surprised them and thanked everyone for the support. They continued the show performing ‘Hate This Song’ which is a song they did with I Prevail and finished with ‘Monsters’ before leaving the stage.
For their encore they performed ‘The Weather’ with Derek Sanders, followed by two of their biggest hits ‘Lost in Stereo’ and ‘Dear Maria Count Me In’ where confetti cannons went off and completed their 22 song set with a bang!
We really enjoyed the show as we got treated to 40 songs throughout the night even though we would’ve loved to have heard ‘Kids In The Dark’. We followed the crowd out and got the metro back to the hotel, where we got a good night’s sleep so we could explore more of Hamburg the next day before we flew home. The next day we climbed the tower of St Michael’s Church to see amazing views on a snowy Hamburg,l followed by a chocolate experience at Chocoversum which we highly recommend.
https://open.spotify.com/track/0JJP0IS4w0fJx01EcrfkDe?si=M0fTr-y7QwSBGHyNNp76Ww
All rights to the songs in this review are retained by the relevant artists and this site claims no rights over them.
St. Jimmy and Rex 🖤☠️
#AllTimeLow #Blog #Blogging #liveMusic #MaydayParade #MusicReview #Photography #rock #TaylorAcorn #Writing -
All Time Low, Mayday Parade & Taylor Acorn – Sporthall, Hamburg Germany
For this review we traveled to Hamburg in Germany for the first time to see Pop Punk band All Time Low, on their tour with support from Taylor Acorn and Mayday Parade, to promote their new album Everyone’s Talking.
We drove down to London Heathrow Airport and caught our flight Friday night where we arrived at a snowy Hamburg. After a good night’s rest we got up and explored Hamburg visiting the Speicherstadt which is the world’s largest warehouse complex and a UNESCO site, followed by a trip to Miniatur Wunderland which holds the largest model railway system in the world.
After a day of exploring it was time to hop onto the metro and make our way to the Sporthall for the gig. We got off the metro and followed the crowd to the venue, once inside we headed to the merch where they had a great selection for each band, Rex bought herself an All Time Low sweatshirt, we were a little disappointed their wernt any signed vinyl to add to our collection. We made our way to the bar to get drinks and a currywurst, we got served very fast and the drinks were served in All Time Low cups which was a nice touch.
We made our way to the arena to see the first support of the night Taylor Acorn, a pop punk artist from Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, who replaced The Paradox and Four Year Strong on the line up. We last saw her play when she supported Noahfinnce in Birmingham 2 years ago, you can read about that show here.
Taylor AcornTaylor opened up with ‘Poster Child’ and ‘I Think I’m In Love’ in front of a big crowd, she sounded amazing and a lot better than the last time we saw her when she was ill.
Taylor put on a great show with her high energy performance as she dances around and rocks out a lot which really gets the crowd warmed up. She played 8 songs during her set finishing with our favourites ‘Shapeshifting’ and ‘Psycho’, we really hope to see her play live again.
https://open.spotify.com/track/2u3HTlrmGMP9jQv17o6UCz?si=ysfreiUbRmezhPuXKmGjnQ
Mayday Parade
Once her set was finished we managed to grab a drink and another currywurst very easily and got down in time for the start of Mayday Parade a pop punk band from Tallahassee, Florida.Mayday parade opened up with ‘Under My Seater’, ‘Jersey’ and ‘I’d Hate to Be You When People Find Out What This Song Is About’ which got the crowd bouncing and continued the energy left by Taylor Acorn.
The pace slowed down a little bit when Derek Sanders (Lead Vocalist) brought out an acoustic guitar and performed ‘Piece of Your Heart’ he then went onto say, “With the world being fucked up, just a reminder to be nice to each other regardless of race, religion, gender etc” which got a massive cheer from the crowd.They finished their 10 song set performing ‘Black Cat’ and ‘Jamie All Over’ which got the biggest reaction from the crowd as everyone was bouncing and moshing too.
https://open.spotify.com/track/05qCCJQJiOwvPQBb7akf1R?si=53tvp0aWSHmBfr-gAvxouQ
After another short break it was time for the headliners All Time Low who are a pop punk band from Towson, Maryland, we last saw these play at the When We Were Young festival in Las Vegas which you can read about here.
All Time LowBefore they came out, ‘Mr. Blue Sky’ by Electric Light Orchestra played on the speakers which got everyone singing and dancing, once All Time Low got onto stage they received a massive cheer from the crowd as they opened up with big hits ‘SUCKERPUNCH’ and the classic ‘Weightless’ where we had our first crowd surfer.
They played ‘PMA’ and one of our favourites ‘Damned If I Do Ya (Damned If I Don’t), this was followed by Alex (Vocals & Guitar) & Jack (Lead Guitar), joking and messing around which continued throughout the show.
All Time Low performed ‘Remembering Sunday’ where Taylor Acorn came out to perform with them, which was a nice surprise, this followed by a live debut of ‘Everyone’s Taking’ which we thoroughly enjoyed.
All Time Low and Taylor AcornThey spoke about how grateful they were for everyone coming out to see them play as they had to upgrade the venue numerous times due to ticket demand which surprised them and thanked everyone for the support. They continued the show performing ‘Hate This Song’ which is a song they did with I Prevail and finished with ‘Monsters’ before leaving the stage.
For their encore they performed ‘The Weather’ with Derek Sanders, followed by two of their biggest hits ‘Lost in Stereo’ and ‘Dear Maria Count Me In’ where confetti cannons went off and completed their 22 song set with a bang!
We really enjoyed the show as we got treated to 40 songs throughout the night even though we would’ve loved to have heard ‘Kids In The Dark’. We followed the crowd out and got the metro back to the hotel, where we got a good night’s sleep so we could explore more of Hamburg the next day before we flew home. The next day we climbed the tower of St Michael’s Church to see amazing views on a snowy Hamburg,l followed by a chocolate experience at Chocoversum which we highly recommend.
https://open.spotify.com/track/0JJP0IS4w0fJx01EcrfkDe?si=M0fTr-y7QwSBGHyNNp76Ww
All rights to the songs in this review are retained by the relevant artists and this site claims no rights over them.
St. Jimmy and Rex 🖤☠️
#AllTimeLow #Blog #Blogging #liveMusic #MaydayParade #MusicReview #Photography #rock #TaylorAcorn #Writing -
The thread about Asa Wass & Son; the rags-to-riches rag-and-bone men of Victorian Edinburgh
This thread was originally written and published in January 2020.
There was for many years a Steptoe-like institution in Fountainbridge by the name of Asa Wass & Son Ltd. Asa is a biblical Hebrew name and Wass an ancient Anglo-Norman surname, most common in Asa’s time in the Midlands of England. According to my Dad, who grew up in nearby Dalry in the 1950s, the correct local pronunciation is “Azzy Woz“. There is an old Edinburgh tongue-twister which goes;
ASA WASS & SON Ltd. Licensed. Registered.Izzy Azzy A’ways Iz, or Izzy Azzy Woz?
Asa Wass tongue-twister, source, (Is He as He Always is, or is He As He Was / Asa Wass?)Asa Wass was born in Morley, Yorkshire in 1833 to Judith and Stephen Wass, a carpenter and moulder. According to the 1851 census, when he was 18, he was trained in his father’s trade. He married Hannah Hirst in Dewsbury, Yorkshire, in 1858 when he was 25 and she 24. They moved to Edinburgh and their first daughter, Elizabeth, was born here in 1859 within the year. More children followed; Judith Ann (Judith was the name of both Asa and Hannah’s mothers) in 1861; Clara in 1866; Thomas Henry in 1868; John Arthur in 1871; Sarah Hannah in 1874.
The “Mapping Jewish life in Edinburgh” publication by the The Research Network in Jewish Studies at Edinburgh University lists the Wasses as Jewish, and indeed Asa and Hannah are names from Hebrew. However, Asa’s mother was baptised into the Wesleyan Methodist Church; he and his siblings were baptised into the Church of England and Asa and Hannah were married in a civil ceremony, so I am not sure on the basis for this assertion. The Wass family are buried under a Celtic cross but I suppose that might just be fashion!
In 1861, the family was resident in the humble surroundings of the Old Town at 235 Cowgate (at the foot of Blair Street), with Asa’s occupation being rag merchant. They are first advertised in Edinburgh in the 1863 Post Office Directory as being at 4 St. Leonard Street, which was the family home, and the shop and yard were now at 260 Cowgate. so we can make an assumption that they are not living and trading in the same place. The entry in the PO Directory is also a symbol of success as it means that they can afford to pay for the listing.
Cowgate by James Skene, 1817. 235 Canongate was in this range of buildings, about in the middle of the illustration. Little would have changed between the time this sketch was made and the Wass family living here. © Edinburgh City LibrariesIn 1871 the Wass family residence and the business itself are moved to 63 Fountainbridge, where they are listing themselves as “woollen rag merchants“. This was on the corner of Lothian Road and Early Grey Street, so a prime position to trade from. In 1878, Asa Wass (“Broker, Fountainbridge“) his wife and his manager James Erskine were found guilty at the Burgh Court of contravening the Brokers Act for purchasing “three small quantities of old hair without being in possession of the necessary licence“. Each was fined £1 with the option of 3 days imprisonment instead. Despite this curious brush with the law they obviously prosper, as within ten years the business has moved to a much larger premises in a yard at 161 Fountainbridge and the family are at Spyfield Cottage in Colinton. They have a shop unit that occupies 153-159 and 163 Fountainbridge and at number 161 is the pend given access to their yard.
1944 OS Town Plan showing 161 Fountainbridge through the pend. WM = Weighing Machine. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of ScotlandThe same census that places them here also records only 12 Wasses in Scotland, all in Midlothian and 9 of them being Asa, his wife and his children. They are still living in Colinton in the 1891 in the census, by which time there are an entire 16 Wasses in Scotland. Asa’s occupation is still recorded as being the humble-sounding “Rag, Rope, Paper and Metal Merchant“. However we begin to get a real sense of his success in business; the family had a live-in servant, Margaret Catcher, with them in Colinton and the PO Directory lists a house in town at 17 Leamington Terrace, as good a neighbourhood then as it is now. In 1893, Asa Wass was given permission by the Dean of Guild Court to erect stores at his yard at 161 Fountainbridge.
The photograph that I have found of Asa Wass shows a dignified, respectable-looking Victorian gentleman, clearly somebody who was doing well in life. Edinburgh had a big glue & gelatine manufactory near Fountainbride at Cox’s in Gorgie which demanded bones and skins and both the rivers of the Esk and Water of Leith supported a paper industry who made use of copious quantities of linen rags in their process. A central clearing house, the General Rag Warehouse, had been established in the city as early as 1793 to act as a middle-man between the paper makers and the individual collectors of rags. Rags would be sorted into one of five different categories; Superfine, Fine, Blue, Second and Grey, before being sold, and there was a big premium for the better quality. There was a ready demand in the city for Asa’s skins, bones and rags and he obviously made a lot out of these.
Asa Wass, from Ancestry.comHe passed away aged 66 in on November 10th 1898 at the family home at 11 Morningside Park, a very respectable address. His funeral was held on Monday 14th at 3PM at the Dean Cemetery – not where you neccesarily expect to find a rag-and-bone man buried. Asa left an estate worth about £160,000 in today’s money. All the evidence points to him having done very well out of his trade. Hannah Wass continued to live at Morningside Park and died there in 1911.
Wass family gravestone in the Dean Cemetery in EdinburghOn the death of Asa, his eldest son Thomas Henry takes over the running of the business, although the properties are is in his mother’s name and it remains known as Asa Wass & Son. However the following year the entire business is listed for sale, and the year after a shop that they used in Rose Street is also sold. By the 1915 valuation rolls the business and proprietor of 161 Fountainbridge are Asa Wass & Son Ltd, but with Thomas Henry in charge. He lived in a pleasant house at 6 Merchiston Grove and died in 1922 at an even larger and more pleasant one at 3 Midmar Avenue, leaving an estate worth at least £400k in today’s money. His son was also Thomas Henry, known as Harry, but I am not clear if he took over from his father. There is a photo of the Wass nag and cart in 1925, by which point Asa has not been around for nearly a quarter of a century, his son too has died, but it still trades under their name and reputation.
Wass Horse & Cart in 1925. CC-By-NC Edinburgh CollectedIn 1941, Asa Wass & Son Ltd. occupies 161, 169 and 177 Fountainbridge, telephone number 21544. By this time, they are the only bone merchants listed “in the book” in Edinburgh. The are also listed under rag merchants and metal merchants and have taken out a not insubstantial advert. Business is clearly still prosperous and the local paper and glue industries still have a use for the wares of Asa Wass & Son Ltd. and of course wartime Britain could not get enough scrap metal.
Asa Wass & Son advert in the 1940-41 PO DirectoryThe business ceased trading and was abandoned in the early 1960s, by this time it had traded for longer under the Asa Wass & Son name for longer than either Asa himself was involved. The yard became a haunt for local children to play in and there are some photos from this period here; http://www.edinphoto.org.uk/0_B/0_buildings_-_asa_wass_yard.htm. The whole area was very run down and was swept away in the early 1970s when Scottish & Newcastle relocated the Fountain Brewery there (from over the road) .
Asa and Hannah’s eldest daughter, Elizabeth, moved to Devonshire on her marriage and when she died in 1934 was recorded as living at a house called Dunedin Crediton, one wonders if this was some sort of family joke about the source of the family’s wealth. Her younger brother, John Arthur Wass, was confined to the Crichton Institution for Lunatics in Dumfries in June 1890 around the age of 19, far from home. This is another indication of the family’s wealth; this was the best sort of place money could afford to send somebody with a mental health condition at this time. He was discharged around a year later, but is admitted to the Aberdeen Royal Asylum in 1895. In 1899 he is transferred to the Dundee Asylum, from where he escapes in November of that year.
John Arthur Wass’s admission to Dundee Asylum in 1899. NRS MC2/478John Arthur was a private patient (i.e. he or his family were wealthy enough to pay), and was suffering from moral insanity (“madness consisting in a morbid perversion of the natural feelings, affections, inclinations, temper, habits, moral dispositions, and natural impulses, without any remarkable disorder or defect of the interest or knowing and reasoning faculties, and particularly without any insane illusion or hallucinations“) according to his Notice of Admission to Dundee in 1899. After his escape he emigrates to the US in 1901 (I am not clear if he was ever “recaptured”) and here he settles down, marries and becomes a poultryman, in Monmouth, New Jersey. By 1915 he was living in New York as a landscape gardener and by 1920 was a sculptor. I sincerely hope he found peace here after the torment of his years in Victorian asylums.
Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.
If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.Explore Threadinburgh by map:
Travelers' Map is loading...
If you see this after your page is loaded completely, leafletJS files are missing.These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.
NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.
#Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret -
Saunders and Felagund’s Top Ten(ish) of 2024
By Dr. A.N. Grier
Saunders
Rather than delve into the not-so-good parts of a rollercoaster 2024, which had its share of rough circumstances, I’m using this rare soapbox moment to focus on the positives of another action-packed year of metal. Celebrating ten years of writing at Angry Metal Guy was an achievement that crept up. All these years later I remain beyond stoked and privileged to still be contributing in a small way as the blog has snowballed into the juggernaut it is today.
Unfortunately, I haven’t quite fulfilled my writing productivity goals in 2024. However, even when motivation slips, it still gives me great satisfaction to have a platform to share my thoughts and opinions on the music I love. I cannot match the writing chops or word smithery of our most esteemed scribes. However, honing my craft within my own abilities and drawing inspiration from the excellence of my fellow writers continues to motivate me and hopefully steer listeners toward some great music.
While it may not compete with some of the top-shelf individual years over the past decade, 2024 featured a lot of top-shelf stuff across a multitude of genres sprawled over the heavy spectrum. As per usual, the plethora of releases was overwhelming and again I stumble into the end-of-year chaos with a hefty list of stuff I need to check out or spend more time with. Nevertheless, from the numerous albums, I spent quality time with throughout the year, I eventually arrived at the releases that mattered the most to me, with many gems to no doubt uncover in the end-of-year wash-up. This is probably one of the more eclectic lists I’ve cultivated during my time here. Not sure exactly why that was the case, but a year of fluctuating, uneasy shifts on personal and professional fronts perhaps contributed to the more diverse listening rotation.
To wrap up, a heartfelt thank you to our beloved readership for making this all worthwhile and to all my colleagues/writing buddies and general crew of awesome people comprising the ever-expanding blog. Also shout-out to my list buddy Felagund, here’s hoping our combined powers partially align or otherwise complement and provide some listening inspiration. Lastly, a special heads-up to Angry Metal Guy, Steel Druhm, and the rest of the AMG editors and brains trust for whipping us all into order and doing the behind-the-scenes heavy lifting to keep this great thing chugging along. Cheers.
#ish: Anciients // Beyond the Reach of the Sun – Personal dramas, line-up shuffles, and an extended stint away from the studio failed to hamper the triumphant return of Canada’s progressive-stoner-sludge heavyweights Anciients. Beyond the Reach of the Sun marks a strong return that expands the band’s songwriting vision through a standout collection of ambitious, heavily prog-leaning cuts. Loaded with dazzling guitar work and gripping songwriting, Beyond the Reach of the Sun finds the band recalibrating and hitting their songwriting straps without compromising the genre-splicing traits and character they formed across their first couple of albums. It is not a perfect album by any means, with some niggling elements rearing their head, mostly via the way of some bloat, sequencing issues, and a flat production job. But with songs of the outstanding quality of “Despoiled,” “Is it Your God,” and “The Torch” leading the way, the album’s issues fail to extinguish my overall enthusiasm.
#10. Madder Mortem // Old Eyes New Heart – I came to veteran Norwegian progressive metal outfit Madder Mortem late in the game, just as they appeared to be hitting modern-era career peaks via Red in Tooth and Claw, and most recent album, 2018’s Marrow. Six long years in the wilderness and Madder Mortem return without missing a beat, continuing to pump out expressive, powerfully composed jams of their trademark mix of Goth-tinged progressive/alt metal. Although I enjoyed the album from the outset, if anything it has grown in stature since its early year release. The album’s subtleties and bevy of emotion-charged hooks bury deeper into the brain upon repeat doses. The tough period the band endured prior to the unleashing of Old Eyes New Heart is reflected in the album’s raw, potent swell of emotions and overall depth. This is further reflected in the diverse nature of the colorful songwriting, swinging from bluesy, melancholic restraint (“Cold Hard Rain”), pop-infected prog (‘Here and Now”) to urgent, dramatic, and infectious rock powerhouses (“The Head That Wears the Crown,” “Towers”).
#9. Opeth // The Last Will and Testament – As a longtime Opeth fanboy, it is a cool feeling to be genuinely enthused about a new LP, nearly three decades since their underrated Orchid debut. All the pre-release buzz centered on the return of Åkerfeldt’s famed death growls. While certainly a cool and unexpected touch, the fourteenth album The Last Will and Testament is not merely a nostalgic throwback to the band’s glory days. Instead, Opeth fuses those quirky, vintage prog tools from their modern-era material and fuses them into an intricate concept album that is a significant step up from the past couple of uneven efforts and easily their best work since at least 2014’s Pale Communion. Dazzling musicianship, jazzy licks, and inventively crafted, yet notably more focused and concise writing marked an album that features better production and tighter, punchier songs than the band has written in a while. It is also Opeth’s heaviest, most riff-centric release in many moons. Despite the trademark melancholic moods and darker shades, it also sounds as if the band is having real fun, reinforced by the abundance of bouncy, infectious riffs, shreddy solos, and boisterous grooves littering the album. Likely would have earned higher honors with time, as I still feel there is much more to discover.
#8. Oceans of Slumber // Where Gods Fear to Speak – Previously enjoyed the idea of Texan progressive metal powerhouse Oceans of Slumber, more than the execution and finished product. In particular, 2016’s Winter has grown in stature over the years. Yet for much of their career, it has felt like a case of incredible talent and potential not fully realized. That changed on Where Gods Fear to Speak, arguably the band’s most complete, consistent, and hook-laden release. When I felt the prog itch throughout 2024, Where Gods Fear to Speak was often the go-to. An album of lush, moody, drama-filled compositions, deftly contrasting soaring melodies, and skyscraping hooks with muscular riffage and heftier bouts of aggression, the writing is tighter and more compelling than previous efforts. Cammie Beverly’s scene-stealing vocals may take center stage, but this is very much a complete effort, where the rich soundscapes, brooding atmospheres, and technical musicianship shine brightly. Loaded with killer jams, including stirring highlights, “Don’t Come Back from Hell Empty Handed,” “Wish,” and “Poem of Ecstasy,” Where Gods Fear to Speak finally finds Oceans of Slumber firing on all cylinders.
#7. Pyrrhon // Exhaust – In theory, Pyrrhon should be one of my favorite bands. I used to eat up all manner of skronky, dissonant, and abrasive extreme metal. Perhaps my thirst for the weirder, experimental forms of death metal and dissonance has softened over the years. However, while largely enjoying Pyrrhon’s career up to this point, Exhaust feels like the album I have been waiting for the band to deliver. Exhaust dropped unexpectedly and that element of surprise flowed through another oddball, deranged platter of wildly inventive, chaotic, yet oddly accessible (in Pyrrhon terms) extreme metal. From cautious, challenging early listens, I found myself increasingly compelled to revisit Exhaust on a regular basis, marveling at its flexible, fractured songwriting, nimble musicianship, and raw hardcore punk edge infiltrating the dissonant, experimental death metal at the core of the Pyrrhon experience. Gritty production, perfectly unhinged vocal performance from Doug Moore, and occasional burst of groove and shred of accessibility punctuating the chaos (“First as Tragedy, Then as Farce,” “Strange Pains,” “Stress Fractures”) lend the album a refreshingly addictive edge to counterbalance its abrasive, challenging angles.
#6. Replicant // Infinite Mortality – New Jersey’s Replicant previously exhibited their brawny, yet brainy mix of gnarled dissonance, technicality, and knuckle-dragging street grooves to powerful effect. However, third album Infinite Mortality levelled the playing field as the band upped their game to elite levels of controlled chaos, while the writing remained challenging yet strangely accessible and memorable. In spirit, the ugly mix of harshness, discordance, and headbangable blockbuster grooves reminds me of the great Ion Dissonance. Meanwhile, the contrasting blend of unorthodox melody, jagged dissonance, and stuttering, complex song structures come together with cohesion and blunt force, punctuated by the occasional warped solo. Like a harsh, harrowing soundtrack to a bleak dystopian future, Infinite Mortality is a mean, chunky, technical, and deliciously primal slab of advanced disso-tech-death excellence.
#5. Noxis // Violence Inherent in the System – Notably death metal in 2024 was dominated by brutal, dissonant varieties, designed to scramble brains and challenge minds while battering the listener into submission. Refreshingly, unheralded surprise packet Noxis unloaded a killer debut LP to savor. Drawing from an array of old-school influences and ’90s touchstones without ever aping one particular band or style, Noxis unleashed a nostalgic yet unique death metal platter. Managing to at once sound raw and unclean, technical and brutal, thrashy and proggy, sharp and refined, Noxis blaze their way craftily through memorable, riff-infested wastelands with unbridled aggression, speed, and finesse, rubber-stamped by some exceptional bass work. Remnants of the classic Floridian scene mingle with powerful influences, including early Cryptopsy, later-era Death, Atheist, and Cannibal Corpse, resulting in a finished product that sounds fresh and vital, while containing an endearing, workmanlike old-school charm. It works a treat, and the top-notch and frequently inventive writing reveals impressive depth and character that rewards repeat listens.
#4. Dissimulator // Lower Form Resistance – There are some serviceable, enjoyable thrash-aligned albums in 2024, but one stood head and shoulders above the competition. Comprised of a grizzled bunch of underground Canadian musicians hellbent on fusing advanced technical thrash assaults with sick old-school death-thrash, a fuckton of killer riffs, quirky vocoder action, and razor-sharp hooks, Lower Form Resistance has consistently provided an adrenaline-filled shot of thrash when needing that specific fix. Dissimulator rewires thrash in intricate and intriguing ways, giving me the same giddy rush as past experiences with the likes of Capharnaum, Vhol, and Revocation. Excited to hear what these dudes conjure up next. In the meantime, Lower Form Resistance will continue to keep my thrash cogs oiled through potent bangers like “Warped,” “Automoil & Robotoil,” and “Hyperline Underflow.”
#3. Huntsmen // The Dry Land – After somehow sleeping on 2018 debut American Scrap and subsequently their apparent sophomore slumping second album, I finally righted my wrongs by delving into the strange and wildly unique woodlands of Chicago metal troupe Huntsmen and their phenomenal third LP, The Dry Land. A raw, rustic, and emotionally striking explosion of genre-bending excellence, where blackened sludge, doom, post, prog, folk, and Americana influences coalesce into an intoxicating and frequently thrilling musical formula, rich in detail and emotion. The skilled genre mashing is cohesive and genuine, loaded with surprises, structural twists, dramatic ebbs and flows, deep burrowing hooks, and contrasting vocal trade-offs to seal the deal on a remarkable album. Despite only a small handful of songs comprising the album (six in total), Huntsmen make every moment count, from blazing longer numbers with stunning contrasts and peaks (“This, Our Gospel,” “In Time, All things”) to plaintive folk dusted rock (“Lean Times”), through to the stunningly moving, compact power of “Rain.” Huntsmen occupy a unique space in the metalverse.
#2. Borknagar // Fall – I have a slightly odd history with Norwegian legends Borknagar. I recall being taken by their excellent 2012 album Urd, yet oddly enough I didn’t extend my listening beyond that isolated release. Things changed with 2019’s True North, a typically solid offering that inspired my explorations of portions of their vast and consistently engaging catalog. The twelfth album Fall marks their first album since True North and again features an outstanding line-up of talents, including founding mastermind Øystein Brun, multi-talented keyboardist/clean vocalist Lars Nedland, and ace up their sleeve bass/vocal powerhouse ICS Vortex. Fall smacks of a veteran band not merely content to coast on their laurels but rather carve freshly creative trajectories for their now signature blend of epic prog, triumphant Viking, and icy black metal to thrive. An extra shot of old-school blackened aggression and fuller production boosted an album of consistently high quality. Fall became a true all-occasions album in 2024; often uplifting me when I felt down or giving me a punchy charge when the need arose. Wall-to-wall prime cuts feature, headlined by the storming “Summits,” moody earworm, “The Wild Lingers”, and the striking, epic shimmer of “Moon.” Stalwarts still operating at the top of their game.
#1. Counting Hours // The Wishing Tomb – Not since Fvneral Fvkk’s remarkable Carnal Confessions debut has a doom album struck as hard as the second platter of sadboi misery perpetrated by Finland’s excellent Counting Hours. While doom and its death-doom companion may not always dominate my listening habits, when an album does hit that sweet spot, it usually leaves a profound impact. Few forms of metal generate the emotional resonance of quality doom and Counting Hours tears at the heartstrings through a riveting collection of gorgeously played and executed death-doom ditties, spearheaded by former members of the hugely underrated Rapture. Ilpo Paasela backs up the stellar musicianship, superb guitar work, and tight, addictive songwriting with a stunning mix of emotively raw, stately cleans and rugged death growls. The whole package packs an emotional wallop, yet its soulful edge and hopelessly addictive hooks and sing-along moments prevent a drop too deeply into depressive waters, as such earwormy gems as “Timeless Ones,” “All That Blooms (Needs to Die),” and “Starlit / Lifeless” attest. The Wishing Tomb is an epic album to lose yourself in.
Honorable Mentions:
- Blood Incantation // Absolute Elsewhere – Did I overrate Absolute Elsewhere? Possibly. Is it overhyped? Absolutely. Yet Blood Incantation remains a brave, adventurous band and Absolute Elsewhere represents a welcome return to form from these gifted, star-gazing space cadets. A flawed but effective fusing of their death metal roots with an increased focus on ’70s-inspired progressive rock and trippy psych flourishes.
- 200 Stab Wounds // Manual Manic Procedures – I barely took notice of Cleveland’s 200 Stab Wounds debut LP, but sophomore album Manual Manic Procedures provided one of the real surprise packets in 2024. It very nearly cracked the main list sheerly through heavy rotation. A meaty, adrenaline-charged shot of muscular death into the veins.
- Ripped to Shreds // Sanshi – Another reliably awesome slab of old-school death from Andrew Lee and co. Increasingly shreddy, extravagant solo work and a grindier edge powered one of their best albums yet.
- Nails // Every Bridge Burning – Nails is back and that is a great thing. New line-up, the same mode of short, sharp, blast-your-skin-off aggression, head-caving grooves, and hate-filled energy.
- Unhallowed Deliverance // Of Spectre and Strife – A pleasant surprise and one of the best debut albums in 2024. German tech-slam-brutal death juggernaut Unhallowed Deliverance knocked it out of the park with limited subtlety but a heap of talent, creativity, and songwriting smarts.
- Wormed // Omegon – With Ulcerate’s latest release not quite hitting me on the intense level of others, and having run out of time to properly digest and rank the obvious high-quality new Defeated Sanity, Wormed’s long-awaited return gave me my fix of calculated brutality via futuristic, slammy, technical brutal death executed in typically warped, mind-blowing fashion.
- Khirki // Κυκεώνας – Following up an impressive, well-received debut LP is no easy feat. Kenstrosity steered many of us from the AMG community onto Greek band Khirki’s Κτηνωδία debut in 2021, so I eagerly anticipated Khirki’s return for the second go around. The resulting album met expectations through a fiery, passionate, and eclectic mix of metal, rock, and traditional Greek folk.
- Sergeant Thunderhoof // The Ghost of Badon Hill – A late-year list shaker, underappreciated UK psych-prog-stoner outfit Sergeant Thunderhoof unleased a more restrained, psych-enhanced, and introspective album, showing signs of being a genuine grower since its November release, despite not quite hitting the irresistible highs of 2022’s This Sceptred Veil.
Disappointments o’ the Year:
- Several highly anticipated albums did not quite land the killer blows I was hoping for. Respectable to very good albums, but I expected better from Vola (admittedly a grower), Caligula’s Horse, Ihsahn, and especially Zeal and Ardor.
Non-Metal Picks:
- St Vincent, SIR, Michael Kiwanuka, Allie X, MGMT
Song ‘o the Year:
- Counting Hours – “Timeless Ones”
There were any number of standouts and potential Song o’ the Year candidates that could have nabbed top honors, including several counterparts from Counting Hours’ spectacular sophomore album. In the end, I settled on the (proper) album opener of my album of the year, as the tune that really hooked me initially from an album that captivated my soul. A rich, emotive piece of dark, melodic death-doom with superlative guitar melodies and a chorus for the ages. Honorable mention to Huntsmen’s “Rain.”
Felgund
I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of living in interesting times. But as that wizened sage, Gandalf so wisely reminds us: “So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”
So what have I been doing with the time that has been given? A fair amount, as it turns out. 2024 has certainly been a tumultuous year for our small family. On the one hand, the business that I launched in 2023 has been chugging along for well over a year and a half now, and I think I’m far enough along in the process that I feel (at least somewhat) comfortable calling it a success. The baby that we brought home from the hospital is now, inexplicably, a whip-smart 7-year-old. My wife’s career continues to blossom as she continues to moonlight as my business manager. Things are good.
And yet 2024 also proved to be harder than I’d ever imagined. My dad died back in April, an experience that remains both devastating and surreal. He’d had multiple sclerosis for well over a decade, and as I’m sure many of you know, MS is a grasping, grinding petty little disease. But for as much as it stole, it proved incapable of taking away who my father was; it couldn’t quite make off with what made him him. He was my best friend before his diagnosis, and he remained my best friend up until that impossible evening in a hospital room in early April. Truth be told, he’s still my best friend, only now he’s free to walk wherever I see fit to imagine him.
Despite my best efforts, I realized pretty quickly you can’t capture a life in a few paragraphs. I couldn’t do it in his eulogy, and I certainly won’t attempt to do so on a heavy metal blog. But I will share this:
My dad was a carpenter by trade and an artist by choice; he was a fisherman and a cook; he was a handyman, a builder, a designer, and a writer; he taught himself how to play guitar, and he’s perhaps the singular reason why I’m writing for this website today. Because while he wasn’t a fan of metal himself, he instilled in me not only a love for music, but an interest in the process; in the people who create it, the minds that shape it, and the passion that births it.
He played in countless bands in his youth, and I can think of no better way to honor his memory than by sharing some of his music with you all. With Steel’s blessing, I’m embedding a two-song demo (“A Place in Time” and “Street Legal”) ripped from a cassette my old man recorded in the late 80s, so apologies in advance for the questionable quality. He composed both the music and lyrics, played guitar and bass, and sang on both tracks, which were devised when he was perhaps at his Rush fanboy peak. It’s been a delight and a balm hearing his voice again, captured as it was in a moment when he was young, vibrant, and doing what he loved.
So here we are. Despite (or perhaps because of) this, I managed to consume a fair amount of metal this year. And while I was far less productive as a writer than I’d hoped and I wasn’t able to listen to as much as I originally planned, I discovered a plethora of new music here on AMG that soothed what Neil Peart once referred to as his “baby soul.” And surprisingly, I found much of that solace in the discordant, the dissonant, and the off-kilter, as the list below probably reflects. But more importantly, I found compassion, support, and understanding amongst the writing staff here. And while they may not know it, I will be forever thankful for the folks who showed me such boundless kindness during a year that felt decidedly unkind. Thank you, my friends.
Now let’s get to to it. Here are my top ten(ish) albums of 2024.
#(ish). Beaten to Death // Sunrise Over Rigor Mortis – It almost feels like cheating to place an 18-minute album in my Top 10(ish), but here we are. 2024 proved to be a year where my interest in grind and grind-adjacent acts expanded, and this “ish” is the result. While I wasn’t aware of Beaten to Death prior to this release, I was quickly swept away by Sunrise Over Rigor Mortis’ ability to bludgeon its idiosyncratic way into my brain and coil there like the most glorious of infections. Beaten to Death has delivered a concise helping of grinding goodness, with crispy prog edges and a schmear of off-kilter humor. Back catalog, here I come!
#10. Sleepytime Gorilla Museum // Of the Last Human Being – Gardenstale’s gushing review of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum’s fourth album Of the Last Human Being was a tough endorsement to ignore, as was an invocation of Diablo Swing Orchestra. So I threw caution to the wind and leaped headlong into this experimental maelstrom. And I’m so happy I did. Don’t let the runtime dissuade you; Of the Last Human Being doesn’t feel nearly as long as it is, and over that relatively brief timespan, you’re provided with a front-row seat to the aural equivalent of perhaps the most fun kind of performance art. Hard-edged riffs, off-kilter instrumentation, ominous theatrics interlaced with beautiful, sparse melodies, and all capped off by the deranged croons of chief carnival barker Nils Frykdahl. If I’d spent more time with this record it may have placed higher, but as it is, I’m happy it’s making an appearance at the number 10 spot.
#9. Sur Austru // Datura Strǎhiarelor – Despite Twelve underrating this album, I suppose I should commend him for introducing me to Sur Austru in the first place. This Romanian outfit’s third full-length Datura Strǎhiarelor is a potent blend of rumbling, blackened fury, and melodic folk metal, with plenty of flute work, orchestration, choral elements, and plaintive keys thrown in. And, while the gruff, chanting growls might rub some listeners the wrong way, it was this aspect more than any other that first grabbed my attention, and proceeded to keep it. And while I haven’t a clue what the vocalists are shouting at me, the tone and placement in the mix feels just right, especially for this brand of folk-infused black metal. Such is the strength of Sur Austru that this album began as my “ish” before eventually working its way to ninth. Mightly bold of them.
#8. Necrowretch // Swords of Dajjal – Some of the entries on this list were either late discoveries or took some time before they got their dirty little hooks in me. Necrowretch’s Swords of Dajjal was not one of them. As soon as I spun it back in February, it was love at first listen. Swords of Dajjal focuses on the greater deceiver in Islamic mythology, and explores that tradition through the use of ferocious blackened death metal (with perhaps a dollop or two of thrash thrown in). Although, as Carcharodon rightly pointed out in his review, the “blackened” part is doing most of the heavy lifting here. And that’s not a bad thing, as Necrowretch is more than adept at crafting memorable hooks and an engaging atmosphere without sacrificing heft or freneticism. Swords of Dajjal is an unmitigated success, and my only real gripe is that Necrowretch dropped a new platter so early in the year that it may go overlooked on too many end-of-year lists.
#7. The Vision Bleak // Weird Tales – Grier and I may not see eye to eye on music, but what can I say? The man knows his way around gothic metal. So when he awarded a 4.0 to Weird Tales back in April, what was I to do? If you said wait several months before bothering to press play, you’re correct. But folks, I may have been late to the party, but it’s a rager nonetheless. The Vision Bleak has produced an emotive, memorable, downright heart-wrenching concept album; one that is both lush and harsh, both achingly melodic and morosely heavy. Weird Tales isn’t my usual cup of tea, but The Vision Bleak has rejected my assertion by doing what many similar acts appear incapable of doing: cohesively balancing “gothic” and “metal” without lessening the impact of either. A well-earned addition, indeed.
#6. Stenched // Purulence Gushing from the Coffin – While Rots-giving may have been tarnished by a less-than-stellar release from Rotpit back in November, I’ve moved on since then, and am now proudly celebrating Stenched-mas. The Manly n’ Mighty Steel reviewed this one-man grimy death outfit last month, and even though I was still smarting from my failed attempt to poach Purulence Gushing from the Coffin for myself, I can’t in good conscience deny how hard this globular mass of funerary muck rips. From the first track to the last, you’ll be rocking a near-permanent stank face, and you can’t blame that solely on the fungal miasma wafting from your speakers. The truth is, Stenched has delivered a masterclass in riff-heavy, moss-encrusted death metal; the kind that’s perfect to drag your knuckles to. Purulence Gushing from the Coffin is the exact kind of no-frills, all-guts death metal I needed in 2024, and that’s why it’s sitting pretty at 6.
#5. Aklash // Reincarnation – How are we already at the Top Five? And what better way to kick off this most treasured of positions than with the melodic black metal stylings of Aklash on their fourth album Reincarnation? Aklash received a solid write-up in June’s Stuck in the Filter by our very own Kenstrosity, and their most recent outing has continued to climb higher and higher on my list the more I’ve spun it. Part black metal, part progressive metal, part trad metal (epic choruses included), Reincarnation packs a wallop in just a short 37 minutes. overflowing with varied instrumentation and keen lyrical chops, grandiose in scope and medieval in tone, yet more personal than it has any right to be, Aklash is firing on all cylinders here, and, as such, is perfectly suited for anyone’s top 5.
#4. Devenial Verdict // Blessing of Despair – And, just like that, more death metal rears its ugly head. I’m still surprised at how high up Devenial Verdict’s sophomore album landed on my list, primarily because their 2022 debut Ash Blind failed to connect. But Blessing of Despair seems to have arrived just in time for my increasing flirtation with the cruel mistress that is dissodeath. As such, I found myself utterly taken with Devenial Verdict’s latest, overflowing as it is with equally heavy doses of discordant ferocity and mournful melodicism. And while Blessing of Despair is an undeniably heavy record, it makes sure to leave plenty of room for quieter moments, where slower sections and sparse instrumentation have room to bloom and breathe. This approach not only results in a wonderfully balanced album but ensures the bludgeoning that’s sure to follow is all the more impactful. Consider me reformed.
#3. Aborted // Vault of Horrors – I’m fairly certain that any death metal fan worth their salt is legally required to include the latest Aborted release on their end-of-year list. Over 25 years and 12 albums into their carnal career, these death metal titans need no introduction. Blood-drenched, gore-soaked, and happily grindy, Aborted are in a league all their own, and it shows on Vault of Horrors. The music remains tight and explosive, building a menacing atmosphere that pervades only the stickiest of grindhouse theaters. Besides, with songs dedicated to classics like Return of the Living Dead, Hellraiser, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, how could I do anything other than include this gem of an album in my top 3? I for one welcome our horror-themed overlords.
#2. Noxis // Violence Inherent in the System – What began as a random pick from the promo sump by one Kenstrosity quickly rose to become a favorite of the death metal maniacs (those with good taste, anyway) on the AMG staff. Now, more importantly, it’s nabbed the second-highest honor on my year-end list. Noxis’ first full-length album Violence Inherent in the System sounds like the product of a much more experienced band. The songwriting is top-notch, the performances are big and bold without being overwrought, and the sticky riffs stay wedged in your mind long after the album ends. And yet for all of its bombast, Noxis is still able to infuse their debut with oodles of atmosphere, not to mention a level of balance between death metal orthodoxy and fresh bells and whistles (and horns) that would make even Thanos grimace in jealousy. Special attention must also be paid to Joe Lowrie’s snare tone and Dave Kirsch’s godlike bass performance.
#1. Pyrrhon // Exhaust – I suppose I was always destined to end up here, I just didn’t know it right away. Pyrrhon’s fifth full-length Exhaust didn’t initially grab me the way some of my other entries did. However, on repeat spins, I found myself falling deeper and deeper into its frenetic, dissonant embrace, discovering both nuances and subtleties amidst the proggy cacophony. On an album that thoroughly explores the universal theme of exhaustion, be it physical, mental, social, or economic, Pyrrhon’s brand of noise-tinged death metal feels like the ideal tool with which to scrawl their livid manifesto. But what truly sets Exhaust apart is its unrelenting groove, stoked by Pyrrhon’s inventive capacity to not only feature but to uplift its unique brand of melodicism amidst the unrelenting maelstrom. It’s hard to overstate just how critical this aspect is to Exhaust’s success, especially since it would have been so easy to excise. But Exhaust’s manic ferocity, which swerves jerks, hops, and heaves, is all the better for it. And while its charms were initially lost on me, I found it easier and easier to finally succumb to its tremulous tendrils. Any record with that kind of staying power (not to mention a theme so applicable to my own experiences this past year) has more than earned my top spot for 2024.
Honorable Mentions:
- Defeated Sanity // Chronicles of Lunacy – Defeated Sanity is a brutal tech death stalwart at this point, and now seven albums in, Chronicles of Lunacy only further cements that status. Chronicles of Lunacy provides the listener with track after aggressively intricate track exploring lunacy in its many forms, but the real treat here is Lille Gruber’s masterful performance on the drums.
- Full of Hell // Coagulated Bliss – while I don’t think I’ve become a complete grind convert, albums like Full of Hell’s Coagulated Bliss and Beaten to Death’s Sunrise Over Rigor Mortis certainly set me on the path to one day become a proud proselytizer. You can’t deny Coagulated Bliss’ infectious groove and whirlwind pace, although I agree with the Dolphin’s rating adjustment.
- Undeath // More Insane – no, it’s not as good as It’s Time…to Rise from the Grave, and there’s no reason to pretend that it is. Nor does it need to be. While More Insane may not reach the lofty heights of its predecessor, it still showcases an Undeath doing what it does best, while also hinting at an undeniable ability to evolve into an even sharper, more fetid OSDM beast.
- 200 Stab Wounds // Manual Manic Procedures – while I wasn’t entirely kind in my review of 200 Stab Wounds’ debut, Mark Z suggested I take their follow-up Manual Manic Procedures for a spin, and I’m glad I did. It’s clear they’ve grown as artists, and their sophomore effort reflects that heightened maturity. Keep stabbing on, your crazy diamonds!
- Mamaleek // Vida Blue – I’m confident this album captures what it would sound like if Tom Waits listened to too much Ashenspire before leaving for the recording studio. Long, difficult, and bold, I found myself returning again and again to Vida Blue no matter how challenging I found the experience. While this album didn’t make my top 10, I’m convinced a future Mamaleek release will.
Song o’ the Year:
- Noxis – ”Skullcrushing Defilement”
This song goes hard. Exceptionally hard. In truth, there are any number of tunes from Violence Inherent in the System that fit the “Song o’ the Year” bill, but I had to give the edge to “Skullcrushing Defilement.” Not only does it begin with an absolutely searing bass solo, but it sets the stage for the four-string onslaught that’s to come. There’s a noticeable Cannibal Corpse influence that I can’t help but love here, alongside heaping doses of maniacal melodicism, turbocharged technicality, and an earworm chorus to boot. Abandon all cervical spines, ye who enter here.
#200StabWounds #2024 #Aborted #Aklash #AllieX #Anciients #Archspire #Atheist #BeatenToDeath #BlogPosts #BloodIncantation #Borknagar #CaligulaSHorse #CannibalCorpse #Capharnaum #CountingHours #Crytopsy #Death #DefeatedSanity #DevenialVerdict #DiabloSwingOrchestra #Dissimulator #Dissonance #FullOfHell #FvneralFvkk #Huntsmen #Ihsahn #Khirki #Lists #MadderMortem #Mamaleek #MGMT #MichaelKiwanuka #Nails #Necrowretch #Noxis #OceansOfSlumber #Opeth #Pyrrhon #Rapture #Replicant #Revocation #RippedToShreds #Rotpit #SaundersAndFelagundSTopTenIshOf2024 #SergeantThunderfoot #SIR #SleepytimeGorillaMuseum #StVincent #Stenched #SurAustru #TheVisionBleak #TomWaits #Ulcerate #Undeath #UnhallowedDeliverance #Vhöl #Wormed #ZealAndArdor
-
Health insurers and organizations literally bribe pediatricians to give your baby 25 vaccine doses before 3 years of age
#antiScience #BigGovt #BigPharma #corruption #health #incompetence #medicalScience #mindControlHealth insurers and organizations literally bribe pediatricians to give your baby 25 vaccine doses before 3 years of age.
For example, pediatricians in the 3-million-person Health Net network receive a $2,500 bonus for each baby receiving 25 vaccine doses by 2.5 years of age.
A paralegal at my firm quickly found 27 additional examples of insurers and providers from across the country offering such bribes. See list below.
It is amazing that even pediatricians need to be bribed to inject these products.
How do you think this affects how pediatricians treat parents during “well-check” visits?
EXAMPLES: Inland Empire Health Plan (IEHP)-https://providerservices.iehp.org/content/dam/provider-services-rd/en/documents/providers/p4p–prop-56–gemt/hospital-p4p/2025/20250109%20-%20FINAL%202025%20Hospital_P4P_Program%20Guide.pdfEmpire; Inland Empire Health Plan (IEHP)- https://providerservices.iehp.org/content/dam/provider-services-rd/en/documents/providers/p4p–prop-56–gemt/global-quality-program/2026/20260413%20-%20Final%202026%20Global%20Quality%20P4P%20PCP%20Program%20Guide.pdf; Health Plan (IEHP)-https://providerservices.iehp.org/content/dam/provider-services-rd/en/documents/providers/p4p–prop-56–gemt/ob-p4p/2025/20250110%20-%20FINAL_2025_OB_P4P_Program%20Guide.pdf; Inland Empire Health Plan (IEHP)- https://providerservices.iehp.org/content/dam/provider-services-rd/en/documents/providers/p4p–prop-56–gemt/global-quality-program/2026/20260413%20-%20Final%202026%20Global%20Quality%20P4P%20PCP%20Program%20Guide.pdf; Inland Empire Health Plan (IEHP)- https://providerservices.iehp.org/content/dam/provider-services-rd/en/documents/providers/p4p–prop-56–gemt/p4p—urgent-care/20251215%20-%20Final_2026%20Urgent%20Care%20Guide.pdf; Partnership HealthPlan of California- https://partnershiphp.org/Providers/Quality/Documents/QIP%202025/2026PCPQIPMeasureSpecifications.pdf#:~:text=Incentives%20are%20%0Abased%20on%20meeting%20specific%20performance%20thresholds%20in%20measures%20that%20address%20the%20above%20areas; Passport by Molina Healthcare- https://molinamarketplace.com/members/nv/en-us/-/media/Molina/PublicWebsite/PDF/members/ky/en-us/Medicaid/2026VaccineVABFlyer_R.ashx; Eastern Oregon Coordinated Care Organization (EOCCO)- https://eocco.com/news/Current/Childhood-Immunization-Incentive-Program; Central California Alliance for Health- https://thealliance.health/wp-content/uploads/2026-Care-Based-Incentive-CBI-workbook.pdf; California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS)- https://dhcs.ca.gov/services/Documents/CY-2025-Quality-Withhold-and-Incentive-Methodology-Document.pdf; Blue Shield of California- https://blueshieldca.com/content/dam/bsca/en/provider/docs/2023/June/PRV_Primary-Care-Fee-For-Service-Plus-Program-Overview.pdf; Molina Healthcare (Apple Health / Medicaid)- https://molinahealthcare.com/members/wa/en-us/-/media/Molina/PublicWebsite/PDF/members/wa/en-us/Medicaid/Member-Rewards-Program/Flu-Incentive-Flyer_EN_FNL_R_508c.ashx; McLaren Health Plan- https://mclarenhealthplan.org/Uploads/Public/Documents/HealthPlan/documents/Provider%20Forms/PCP-Incentive-Program.pdf; McLaren Health Plan- https://mclarenhealthplan.org/Uploads/Public/Documents/HealthPlan/documents/Healthy-Child-Immunization-Incentive.pdf; Molina Healthcare (Apple Health / Medicaid)- https://molinahealthcare.com/members/wa/en-us/-/media/Molina/PublicWebsite/PDF/members/wa/en-us/Medicaid/Member-Rewards-Program/2026-Molina-Member-Rewards-Flyer_Child_EN_FNL_R_508c.ashx; New Jersey Department of Health – https://nj.gov/health/cd/documents/imm_requirements/hot_shots_welcome_packet.pdf; Partnership for Maternal and Child Health of Northern New Jersey / New Jersey Department of Health- https://eastamwelltownship.com/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Item/1227?fileID=20313; Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina (Healthy Blue)- https://healthybluenc.com/medicaid/extras/healthy-rewards; AmeriHealth Caritas North Carolina- https://amerihealthcaritasnc.com/member/benefits/carecard; Carolina Complete Health- https://carolinacompletehealth.com/members/medicaid/benefits-services/healthy-rewards-program.html; Aetna Better Health of Illinois- https://aetnabetterhealth.com/illinois-medicaid/rewards-program.html; APhA Foundation/American Pharmacists Association- https://aphafoundation.org/post/apha-foundation-announces-2025-2026-incentive-grant-recipients; Kern Health Systems- https://res.cloudinary.com/dpmykpsih/image/upload/kern-site-353/media/011c263f1fc54936a1daad22bc376243/p4p_2026-binder_final-12026.pdf; Oklahoma Complete Health- https://oklahomacompletehealth.com/providers/quality-improvement/participation-in-qi-.html#:~:text=Childhood%20Immunization%20Status%20%28PDF%29%0A%0AImmunizations%20for%20Adolescents%20%28PDF%29; Setra Health Plans- https://sentarahealthplans.com/en/members/medicaid/earning-your-medicaid-member-incentives#:~:text=The%20Healthy%20Incentives%20Program%20rewards%20you%20with%20up%20to%20%2450%20in%20gift%20cards%20per%20year%20for%20completing%20certain%20wellness%20exams%20and%20services; AmeriHealth Caritas- https://p1.amerihealthcaritasdc.com/content/dam/amerihealth-caritas/acdc/pdf/provider/forms/2025/2025-provider-incentive-cpt-code-campaign-child-immunization-status.pdf.coredownload.inline.pdf; Health Net (Health Net of California, Inc. / Health Net Community Solutions, Inc.)-https://providerlibrary.healthnetcalifornia.com/news/26-367-earn–2-500-for-closing-cis-10-immunization-care-gaps–my.html; Peach State Health Pla- https://pshpgeorgia.com/content/dam/centene/peachstate/pdfs/2026%20Medicaid%20P4P%20Incentive%20PPT_FINAL_R.pdf
-
Health insurers and organizations literally bribe pediatricians to give your baby 25 vaccine doses before 3 years of age — Aaron Siri
Health insurers and organizations literally bribe pediatricians to give your baby 25 vaccine doses before 3 years of age.
For example, pediatricians in the 3-million-person Health Net network receive a $2,500 bonus for each baby receiving 25 vaccine doses by 2.5 years of age.
A paralegal at my firm quickly found 27 additional examples of insurers and providers from across the country offering such bribes. See list below.
It is amazing that even pediatricians need to be bribed to inject these products.
How do you think this affects how pediatricians treat parents during “well-check” visits?
EXAMPLES: Inland Empire Health Plan (IEHP)-https://providerservices.iehp.org/content/dam/provider-services-rd/en/documents/providers/p4p–prop-56–gemt/hospital-p4p/2025/20250109%20-%20FINAL%202025%20Hospital_P4P_Program%20Guide.pdfEmpire; Inland Empire Health Plan (IEHP)- https://providerservices.iehp.org/content/dam/provider-services-rd/en/documents/providers/p4p–prop-56–gemt/global-quality-program/2026/20260413%20-%20Final%202026%20Global%20Quality%20P4P%20PCP%20Program%20Guide.pdf; Health Plan (IEHP)-https://providerservices.iehp.org/content/dam/provider-services-rd/en/documents/providers/p4p–prop-56–gemt/ob-p4p/2025/20250110%20-%20FINAL_2025_OB_P4P_Program%20Guide.pdf; Inland Empire Health Plan (IEHP)- https://providerservices.iehp.org/content/dam/provider-services-rd/en/documents/providers/p4p–prop-56–gemt/global-quality-program/2026/20260413%20-%20Final%202026%20Global%20Quality%20P4P%20PCP%20Program%20Guide.pdf; Inland Empire Health Plan (IEHP)- https://providerservices.iehp.org/content/dam/provider-services-rd/en/documents/providers/p4p–prop-56–gemt/p4p—urgent-care/20251215%20-%20Final_2026%20Urgent%20Care%20Guide.pdf; Partnership HealthPlan of California- https://partnershiphp.org/Providers/Quality/Documents/QIP%202025/2026PCPQIPMeasureSpecifications.pdf#:~:text=Incentives%20are%20%0Abased%20on%20meeting%20specific%20performance%20thresholds%20in%20measures%20that%20address%20the%20above%20areas; Passport by Molina Healthcare- https://molinamarketplace.com/members/nv/en-us/-/media/Molina/PublicWebsite/PDF/members/ky/en-us/Medicaid/2026VaccineVABFlyer_R.ashx; Eastern Oregon Coordinated Care Organization (EOCCO)- https://eocco.com/news/Current/Childhood-Immunization-Incentive-Program; Central California Alliance for Health- https://thealliance.health/wp-content/uploads/2026-Care-Based-Incentive-CBI-workbook.pdf; California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS)- https://dhcs.ca.gov/services/Documents/CY-2025-Quality-Withhold-and-Incentive-Methodology-Document.pdf; Blue Shield of California- https://blueshieldca.com/content/dam/bsca/en/provider/docs/2023/June/PRV_Primary-Care-Fee-For-Service-Plus-Program-Overview.pdf; Molina Healthcare (Apple Health / Medicaid)- https://molinahealthcare.com/members/wa/en-us/-/media/Molina/PublicWebsite/PDF/members/wa/en-us/Medicaid/Member-Rewards-Program/Flu-Incentive-Flyer_EN_FNL_R_508c.ashx; McLaren Health Plan- https://mclarenhealthplan.org/Uploads/Public/Documents/HealthPlan/documents/Provider%20Forms/PCP-Incentive-Program.pdf; McLaren Health Plan- https://mclarenhealthplan.org/Uploads/Public/Documents/HealthPlan/documents/Healthy-Child-Immunization-Incentive.pdf; Molina Healthcare (Apple Health / Medicaid)- https://molinahealthcare.com/members/wa/en-us/-/media/Molina/PublicWebsite/PDF/members/wa/en-us/Medicaid/Member-Rewards-Program/2026-Molina-Member-Rewards-Flyer_Child_EN_FNL_R_508c.ashx; New Jersey Department of Health – https://nj.gov/health/cd/documents/imm_requirements/hot_shots_welcome_packet.pdf; Partnership for Maternal and Child Health of Northern New Jersey / New Jersey Department of Health- https://eastamwelltownship.com/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Item/1227?fileID=20313; Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina (Healthy Blue)- https://healthybluenc.com/medicaid/extras/healthy-rewards; AmeriHealth Caritas North Carolina- https://amerihealthcaritasnc.com/member/benefits/carecard; Carolina Complete Health- https://carolinacompletehealth.com/members/medicaid/benefits-services/healthy-rewards-program.html; Aetna Better Health of Illinois- https://aetnabetterhealth.com/illinois-medicaid/rewards-program.html; APhA Foundation/American Pharmacists Association- https://aphafoundation.org/post/apha-foundation-announces-2025-2026-incentive-grant-recipients; Kern Health Systems- https://res.cloudinary.com/dpmykpsih/image/upload/kern-site-353/media/011c263f1fc54936a1daad22bc376243/p4p_2026-binder_final-12026.pdf; Oklahoma Complete Health- https://oklahomacompletehealth.com/providers/quality-improvement/participation-in-qi-.html#:~:text=Childhood%20Immunization%20Status%20%28PDF%29%0A%0AImmunizations%20for%20Adolescents%20%28PDF%29; Setra Health Plans- https://sentarahealthplans.com/en/members/medicaid/earning-your-medicaid-member-incentives#:~:text=The%20Healthy%20Incentives%20Program%20rewards%20you%20with%20up%20to%20%2450%20in%20gift%20cards%20per%20year%20for%20completing%20certain%20wellness%20exams%20and%20services; AmeriHealth Caritas- https://p1.amerihealthcaritasdc.com/content/dam/amerihealth-caritas/acdc/pdf/provider/forms/2025/2025-provider-incentive-cpt-code-campaign-child-immunization-status.pdf.coredownload.inline.pdf; Health Net (Health Net of California, Inc. / Health Net Community Solutions, Inc.)-https://providerlibrary.healthnetcalifornia.com/news/26-367-earn–2-500-for-closing-cis-10-immunization-care-gaps–my.html; Peach State Health Pla- https://pshpgeorgia.com/content/dam/centene/peachstate/pdfs/2026%20Medicaid%20P4P%20Incentive%20PPT_FINAL_R.pdf
__________
UPDATE: A typical rebuttal of the claim that health insurers are bribing doctors to vax as many children as possible is that insurers are acting in the children’s best interest; and this is solidly proved because mass vaxxing is also in the insurers best interest. The claim is that by vaccinating as many children as they can, insurers are keeping them healthy while also saving money themselves as insurers will be required to pay fewer claims for healthier children. This rebuttal is completely false and based on a misunderstanding of how insurance works. Insurers make more money the sicker their customers are. Here’s why that is so. Under Obamacare, insurers are given 20% of covered medical expenses to manage their part of the system. In any one year, insurers do try to minimize their payouts. And this is where the misunderstanding or deliberate fraud in the rebuttal lies. In any one year, insurers always minimize payouts on established policies. But over more than one year, insurers always make more money the more medical costs go up. Under Obamacare 20% of $100 dollars of medical expenses is $20. If costs go up 10x, 20% of $1,000 is $200. The amount of work for insurers to manage those costs is the same. So, it is always in insurers’ best interests for medical costs go up over the years and not down. ABN
#abn #antiScience #BigGovt #BigPharma #corruption #health #incompetence #medicalScience #mindControl -
Health insurers and organizations literally bribe pediatricians to give your baby 25 vaccine doses before 3 years of age
#antiScience #BigGovt #BigPharma #corruption #health #incompetence #medicalScience #mindControlHealth insurers and organizations literally bribe pediatricians to give your baby 25 vaccine doses before 3 years of age.
For example, pediatricians in the 3-million-person Health Net network receive a $2,500 bonus for each baby receiving 25 vaccine doses by 2.5 years of age.
A paralegal at my firm quickly found 27 additional examples of insurers and providers from across the country offering such bribes. See list below.
It is amazing that even pediatricians need to be bribed to inject these products.
How do you think this affects how pediatricians treat parents during “well-check” visits?
EXAMPLES: Inland Empire Health Plan (IEHP)-https://providerservices.iehp.org/content/dam/provider-services-rd/en/documents/providers/p4p–prop-56–gemt/hospital-p4p/2025/20250109%20-%20FINAL%202025%20Hospital_P4P_Program%20Guide.pdfEmpire; Inland Empire Health Plan (IEHP)- https://providerservices.iehp.org/content/dam/provider-services-rd/en/documents/providers/p4p–prop-56–gemt/global-quality-program/2026/20260413%20-%20Final%202026%20Global%20Quality%20P4P%20PCP%20Program%20Guide.pdf; Health Plan (IEHP)-https://providerservices.iehp.org/content/dam/provider-services-rd/en/documents/providers/p4p–prop-56–gemt/ob-p4p/2025/20250110%20-%20FINAL_2025_OB_P4P_Program%20Guide.pdf; Inland Empire Health Plan (IEHP)- https://providerservices.iehp.org/content/dam/provider-services-rd/en/documents/providers/p4p–prop-56–gemt/global-quality-program/2026/20260413%20-%20Final%202026%20Global%20Quality%20P4P%20PCP%20Program%20Guide.pdf; Inland Empire Health Plan (IEHP)- https://providerservices.iehp.org/content/dam/provider-services-rd/en/documents/providers/p4p–prop-56–gemt/p4p—urgent-care/20251215%20-%20Final_2026%20Urgent%20Care%20Guide.pdf; Partnership HealthPlan of California- https://partnershiphp.org/Providers/Quality/Documents/QIP%202025/2026PCPQIPMeasureSpecifications.pdf#:~:text=Incentives%20are%20%0Abased%20on%20meeting%20specific%20performance%20thresholds%20in%20measures%20that%20address%20the%20above%20areas; Passport by Molina Healthcare- https://molinamarketplace.com/members/nv/en-us/-/media/Molina/PublicWebsite/PDF/members/ky/en-us/Medicaid/2026VaccineVABFlyer_R.ashx; Eastern Oregon Coordinated Care Organization (EOCCO)- https://eocco.com/news/Current/Childhood-Immunization-Incentive-Program; Central California Alliance for Health- https://thealliance.health/wp-content/uploads/2026-Care-Based-Incentive-CBI-workbook.pdf; California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS)- https://dhcs.ca.gov/services/Documents/CY-2025-Quality-Withhold-and-Incentive-Methodology-Document.pdf; Blue Shield of California- https://blueshieldca.com/content/dam/bsca/en/provider/docs/2023/June/PRV_Primary-Care-Fee-For-Service-Plus-Program-Overview.pdf; Molina Healthcare (Apple Health / Medicaid)- https://molinahealthcare.com/members/wa/en-us/-/media/Molina/PublicWebsite/PDF/members/wa/en-us/Medicaid/Member-Rewards-Program/Flu-Incentive-Flyer_EN_FNL_R_508c.ashx; McLaren Health Plan- https://mclarenhealthplan.org/Uploads/Public/Documents/HealthPlan/documents/Provider%20Forms/PCP-Incentive-Program.pdf; McLaren Health Plan- https://mclarenhealthplan.org/Uploads/Public/Documents/HealthPlan/documents/Healthy-Child-Immunization-Incentive.pdf; Molina Healthcare (Apple Health / Medicaid)- https://molinahealthcare.com/members/wa/en-us/-/media/Molina/PublicWebsite/PDF/members/wa/en-us/Medicaid/Member-Rewards-Program/2026-Molina-Member-Rewards-Flyer_Child_EN_FNL_R_508c.ashx; New Jersey Department of Health – https://nj.gov/health/cd/documents/imm_requirements/hot_shots_welcome_packet.pdf; Partnership for Maternal and Child Health of Northern New Jersey / New Jersey Department of Health- https://eastamwelltownship.com/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Item/1227?fileID=20313; Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina (Healthy Blue)- https://healthybluenc.com/medicaid/extras/healthy-rewards; AmeriHealth Caritas North Carolina- https://amerihealthcaritasnc.com/member/benefits/carecard; Carolina Complete Health- https://carolinacompletehealth.com/members/medicaid/benefits-services/healthy-rewards-program.html; Aetna Better Health of Illinois- https://aetnabetterhealth.com/illinois-medicaid/rewards-program.html; APhA Foundation/American Pharmacists Association- https://aphafoundation.org/post/apha-foundation-announces-2025-2026-incentive-grant-recipients; Kern Health Systems- https://res.cloudinary.com/dpmykpsih/image/upload/kern-site-353/media/011c263f1fc54936a1daad22bc376243/p4p_2026-binder_final-12026.pdf; Oklahoma Complete Health- https://oklahomacompletehealth.com/providers/quality-improvement/participation-in-qi-.html#:~:text=Childhood%20Immunization%20Status%20%28PDF%29%0A%0AImmunizations%20for%20Adolescents%20%28PDF%29; Setra Health Plans- https://sentarahealthplans.com/en/members/medicaid/earning-your-medicaid-member-incentives#:~:text=The%20Healthy%20Incentives%20Program%20rewards%20you%20with%20up%20to%20%2450%20in%20gift%20cards%20per%20year%20for%20completing%20certain%20wellness%20exams%20and%20services; AmeriHealth Caritas- https://p1.amerihealthcaritasdc.com/content/dam/amerihealth-caritas/acdc/pdf/provider/forms/2025/2025-provider-incentive-cpt-code-campaign-child-immunization-status.pdf.coredownload.inline.pdf; Health Net (Health Net of California, Inc. / Health Net Community Solutions, Inc.)-https://providerlibrary.healthnetcalifornia.com/news/26-367-earn–2-500-for-closing-cis-10-immunization-care-gaps–my.html; Peach State Health Pla- https://pshpgeorgia.com/content/dam/centene/peachstate/pdfs/2026%20Medicaid%20P4P%20Incentive%20PPT_FINAL_R.pdf
-
TomWaitsAWeek | Tom Waits – Rain Dogs (1985, US)
Today’s spotlight is on number 315 on The List, and the second in our #TomWaitsAWeek feature. Fun fact: Rain Dogs album was the most repeated submission when we were first compiling The List, with something like 5+ people submitting it at the same time;[1] CliftonR was the first to get in their vote, so they get the attribution. I’m going to apologize right off that bat to those 5+ people and anyone else who knows how great this album is – while Rain Dogs absolutely deserves its own dedicated and lengthy spotlight, it essentially shares this one with the 4 albums that preceded it and the 3 that came after. For that matter, each album mentioned here deserves its own spotlight. Alas, more Waits is better than less, so let’s not wait any longer and dig in…
Yesterday’s listening schedule[2] for #TomWaitsAWeek included some huge shifts in Tom Waits’ sound and life. Foreign Affairs (1977) and Blue Valentine (1978) are perhaps not too far away from the preceding Small Change, albeit with amped up cinematic vibes, more strings, the first swapping of the piano for an electric guitar, and the first appearance (in “$29.00”) of what will become Waits’ signature drunk howl (thanks to satsuma for that phrase!). Foreign Affairs is also the first album that makes me picture the eyes closed/eyebrows raised/can’t lose face Waits often pulls while singing, though I’m sure it was there in the earlier albums (if not the recording, then definitely the live performances). Then, with Heartattack and Vine (1980), suddenly we are in electric guitar-based R&B territory, the sound seeming to move from a bar corner to a proper stage. But, perhaps most importantly, we catch a completely smitten Waits singing a seemingly non-Waits lyric – “sha-la-la-la-la-la”, in “Jersey Girl”. The girl? One Kathleen Brennan, who would impact Waits and his sound immensely, from one wonderful day forward.
Waits wrote Heartattack and Vine while taking a break from writing the soundtrack for Francis Ford Coppola’s One from the Heart (1981), on the set of which he re-met Brennan, who he had first met while filming Sylvester Stallone’s Paradise Alley (1978; Waits’ film debut). It apparently was love at second sight – the two were engaged within a week, and married the month before Heartattack was released.
Waits has apparently said of Brennan that he didn’t just marry a wife, but also a record collection. Brennan introduced Waits to a bunch of new music, perhaps the most influential to his own evolving sound being Captain Beefheart and composer Harry Partch (who made his own instruments). With the life changes and Brennan’s encouragement, Waits also changed managers and producers – to himself and Brennan – and used the opportunity to, essentially, reinvent himself. Thus we have the absolute masterpiece that is Swordfishtrombones (1983), the first of Waits’ experimental era – the first Waits’ album to not feature saxophone, the first to have marimba (and various eclectic instruments), and, really, the first to have music that finally seems to live in the same postal code as the vocals. It’s weird, it’s whacky, it’s what most now likely consider pure Waits. It should be in every record collection, and should have it’s own full blog (like, an entire blog, not just a blog post) dissecting every second of it. Also, it was released on my day of birth, which gives it extra bonus points from me.
Swordfishtrombones is the beginning of a loose trilogy of albums, the second of which is technically the subject of this spotlight (and our first album in today’s listening schedule): Rain Dogs. While continuing along the lines of Swordfishtrombones plus adding in the plethora of new influences and experiences that came with Waits’ and Brennan’s move to New York City (including Waits’ growing filmography), Rain Dogs also brings back in all the best things of the pre-Brennan albums (including some of that country rock twang from Closing Time, in “Blind Love”). It’s a ‘best of’ bag of Waits’ tricks, if you will, but notably less whisky-soaked. The result is a couple of surprisingly rather radio-friendly tunes (well, alternative radio, at any rate) including “Hang Down Your Head” (the first tune co-written with Brennan), as well as some cinema-friendly tunes, with songs from the album bookending the soundtrack for Jim Jarmusch’s Down by Law (1986; which Waits also starred in). And, another super duper (not really) important thing that really stands out, to me at least: end-of-song FADE OUTS. Perhaps they were in previous Waits albums, but for some reason these are the first I recall, enough to point out, lol. Anyway, and again, it deserves more than the cursory glance here, so be sure to give it a few spins and gather your own thoughts about it. Whether it was the fade outs, the film cred, or just people knowing what’s what, it’s not hard to see why this album made and continues to make a number of lists, including the “official” 1001 list.
Following Rain Dogs, we get Franks Wild Years (1987), the last in the trilogy and thus another album in a similar vein. This album continues the story of one Frank, first seen in Swordfishtrombones‘ track of the same name (well, with the grammatically correct apostrophe), via songs first written (some co-written by Brennan) for a play. The real standout for me on this album – and, as far as I can remember, my first introduction to Waits – is the spectacular “Way Down in the Hole”, which was used/covered for The Wire‘s theme song. My advice? Get the entire trilogy and listen to all of them in a row, a few times over, as their own separate #TomWaitsAWeek. And then, for bonus marks, check out all the cover versions done for The Wire, if you haven’t already. For myself, I haven’t yet devoted enough time to Franks, so I’m planning on getting a lot more spins in soon.
The last two albums on our listening schedule today carry on the experimentation of the Sword/Rain/Franks trilogy, albeit with different vibes. On Bone Machine (1992), perhaps it’s because of the title but I can’t help but hear some Pixies vibes, also some Leonard Cohen vibes (“Black Wings”) – in other words, there’s a LOT of different stuff going on in this one. Again, it deserves it’s own spotlight, and more than a quick spin. And then, The Black Rider (1993) is another play-to-album collection of songs, the play in question co-written by none other than William S. Burroughs and directed by Robert Wilson (perhaps known by many as Philip Glass’ collaborator on Einstein on the Beach). Waits will very soon again collaborate with Wilson on what becomes Alice and Blood Money (both 2002).
Alice is the third and last Waits album we have in The List, and is one of the albums in tomorrow’s listening schedule (along with Blood Money). Because I’m only human I won’t have its spotlight ready prior to listening, but we’ll meet back here on Friday to discuss it, and cap off our #TomWaitsAWeek.
Until then, I hope you don’t have to wait to listen to more Waits!
[1]Apologies for the wishy-washy data, but I only tracked the first time an album was submitted, so this is going off my shoddy memory of how many times I replied “already added!” to people. I do remember with certainty that SpaceAce was one of those people, btw.
[2]For those wanting to listen through the discography with us, here’s what is left in the schedule, of studio albums plus the Orphans box set (any live/soundtrack/etc. albums are extracurricular!): Wednesday – Rain Dogs, Franks Wild Years, Bone Machine, The Black Rider; Thursday – Mule Variations, Alice, Blood Money, Real Gone; Friday – Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards, Bad as Me#1001OtherAlbums #1980s #experimental #experimentalRock #KathleenBrennan #ListenToThis #musicDiscovery #Musodon #TomWaits #TomWaitsAWeek
-
TomWaitsAWeek | Tom Waits – Rain Dogs (1985, US)
Today’s spotlight is on number 315 on The List, and the second in our #TomWaitsAWeek feature. Fun fact: Rain Dogs album was the most repeated submission when we were first compiling The List, with something like 5+ people submitting it at the same time;[1] CliftonR was the first to get in their vote, so they get the attribution. I’m going to apologize right off that bat to those 5+ people and anyone else who knows how great this album is – while Rain Dogs absolutely deserves its own dedicated and lengthy spotlight, it essentially shares this one with the 4 albums that preceded it and the 3 that came after. For that matter, each album mentioned here deserves its own spotlight. Alas, more Waits is better than less, so let’s not wait any longer and dig in…
Yesterday’s listening schedule[2] for #TomWaitsAWeek included some huge shifts in Tom Waits’ sound and life. Foreign Affairs (1977) and Blue Valentine (1978) are perhaps not too far away from the preceding Small Change, albeit with amped up cinematic vibes, more strings, the first swapping of the piano for an electric guitar, and the first appearance (in “$29.00”) of what will become Waits’ signature drunk howl (thanks to satsuma for that phrase!). Foreign Affairs is also the first album that makes me picture the eyes closed/eyebrows raised/can’t lose face Waits often pulls while singing, though I’m sure it was there in the earlier albums (if not the recording, then definitely the live performances). Then, with Heartattack and Vine (1980), suddenly we are in electric guitar-based R&B territory, the sound seeming to move from a bar corner to a proper stage. But, perhaps most importantly, we catch a completely smitten Waits singing a seemingly non-Waits lyric – “sha-la-la-la-la-la”, in “Jersey Girl”. The girl? One Kathleen Brennan, who would impact Waits and his sound immensely, from one wonderful day forward.
Waits wrote Heartattack and Vine while taking a break from writing the soundtrack for Francis Ford Coppola’s One from the Heart (1981), on the set of which he re-met Brennan, who he had first met while filming Sylvester Stallone’s Paradise Alley (1978; Waits’ film debut). It apparently was love at second sight – the two were engaged within a week, and married the month before Heartattack was released.
Waits has apparently said of Brennan that he didn’t just marry a wife, but also a record collection. Brennan introduced Waits to a bunch of new music, perhaps the most influential to his own evolving sound being Captain Beefheart and composer Harry Partch (who made his own instruments). With the life changes and Brennan’s encouragement, Waits also changed managers and producers – to himself and Brennan – and used the opportunity to, essentially, reinvent himself. Thus we have the absolute masterpiece that is Swordfishtrombones (1983), the first of Waits’ experimental era – the first Waits’ album to not feature saxophone, the first to have marimba (and various eclectic instruments), and, really, the first to have music that finally seems to live in the same postal code as the vocals. It’s weird, it’s whacky, it’s what most now likely consider pure Waits. It should be in every record collection, and should have it’s own full blog (like, an entire blog, not just a blog post) dissecting every second of it. Also, it was released on my day of birth, which gives it extra bonus points from me.
Swordfishtrombones is the beginning of a loose trilogy of albums, the second of which is technically the subject of this spotlight (and our first album in today’s listening schedule): Rain Dogs. While continuing along the lines of Swordfishtrombones plus adding in the plethora of new influences and experiences that came with Waits’ and Brennan’s move to New York City (including Waits’ growing filmography), Rain Dogs also brings back in all the best things of the pre-Brennan albums (including some of that country rock twang from Closing Time, in “Blind Love”). It’s a ‘best of’ bag of Waits’ tricks, if you will, but notably less whisky-soaked. The result is a couple of surprisingly rather radio-friendly tunes (well, alternative radio, at any rate) including “Hang Down Your Head” (the first tune co-written with Brennan), as well as some cinema-friendly tunes, with songs from the album bookending the soundtrack for Jim Jarmusch’s Down by Law (1986; which Waits also starred in). And, another super duper (not really) important thing that really stands out, to me at least: end-of-song FADE OUTS. Perhaps they were in previous Waits albums, but for some reason these are the first I recall, enough to point out, lol. Anyway, and again, it deserves more than the cursory glance here, so be sure to give it a few spins and gather your own thoughts about it. Whether it was the fade outs, the film cred, or just people knowing what’s what, it’s not hard to see why this album made and continues to make a number of lists, including the “official” 1001 list.
Following Rain Dogs, we get Franks Wild Years (1987), the last in the trilogy and thus another album in a similar vein. This album continues the story of one Frank, first seen in Swordfishtrombones‘ track of the same name (well, with the grammatically correct apostrophe), via songs first written (some co-written by Brennan) for a play. The real standout for me on this album – and, as far as I can remember, my first introduction to Waits – is the spectacular “Way Down in the Hole”, which was used/covered for The Wire‘s theme song. My advice? Get the entire trilogy and listen to all of them in a row, a few times over, as their own separate #TomWaitsAWeek. And then, for bonus marks, check out all the cover versions done for The Wire, if you haven’t already. For myself, I haven’t yet devoted enough time to Franks, so I’m planning on getting a lot more spins in soon.
The last two albums on our listening schedule today carry on the experimentation of the Sword/Rain/Franks trilogy, albeit with different vibes. On Bone Machine (1992), perhaps it’s because of the title but I can’t help but hear some Pixies vibes, also some Leonard Cohen vibes (“Black Wings”) – in other words, there’s a LOT of different stuff going on in this one. Again, it deserves it’s own spotlight, and more than a quick spin. And then, The Black Rider (1993) is another play-to-album collection of songs, the play in question co-written by none other than William S. Burroughs and directed by Robert Wilson (perhaps known by many as Philip Glass’ collaborator on Einstein on the Beach). Waits will very soon again collaborate with Wilson on what becomes Alice and Blood Money (both 2002).
Alice is the third and last Waits album we have in The List, and is one of the albums in tomorrow’s listening schedule (along with Blood Money). Because I’m only human I won’t have its spotlight ready prior to listening, but we’ll meet back here on Friday to discuss it, and cap off our #TomWaitsAWeek.
Until then, I hope you don’t have to wait to listen to more Waits!
[1]Apologies for the wishy-washy data, but I only tracked the first time an album was submitted, so this is going off my shoddy memory of how many times I replied “already added!” to people. I do remember with certainty that SpaceAce was one of those people, btw.
[2]For those wanting to listen through the discography with us, here’s what is left in the schedule, of studio albums plus the Orphans box set (any live/soundtrack/etc. albums are extracurricular!): Wednesday – Rain Dogs, Franks Wild Years, Bone Machine, The Black Rider; Thursday – Mule Variations, Alice, Blood Money, Real Gone; Friday – Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards, Bad as Me#1001OtherAlbums #1980s #experimental #experimentalRock #KathleenBrennan #ListenToThis #musicDiscovery #Musodon #TomWaits #TomWaitsAWeek
-
TomWaitsAWeek | Tom Waits – Rain Dogs (1985, US)
Today’s spotlight is on number 315 on The List, and the second in our #TomWaitsAWeek feature. Fun fact: Rain Dogs album was the most repeated submission when we were first compiling The List, with something like 5+ people submitting it at the same time;1 CliftonR was the first to get in their vote, so they get the attribution. I’m going to apologize right off that bat to those 5+ people and anyone else who knows how great this album is – while Rain Dogs absolutely deserves its own dedicated and lengthy spotlight, it essentially shares this one with the 4 albums that preceded it and the 3 that came after. For that matter, each album mentioned here deserves its own spotlight. Alas, more Waits is better than less, so let’s not wait any longer and dig in…
Yesterday’s listening schedule2 for #TomWaitsAWeek included some huge shifts in Tom Waits’ sound and life. Foreign Affairs (1977) and Blue Valentine (1978) are perhaps not too far away from the preceding Small Change, albeit with amped up cinematic vibes, more strings, the first swapping of the piano for an electric guitar, and the first appearance (in “$29.00”) of what will become Waits’ signature drunk howl (thanks to satsuma for that phrase!). Foreign Affairs is also the first album that makes me picture the eyes closed/eyebrows raised/can’t lose face Waits often pulls while singing, though I’m sure it was there in the earlier albums (if not the recording, then definitely the live performances). Then, with Heartattack and Vine (1980), suddenly we are in electric guitar-based R&B territory, the sound seeming to move from a bar corner to a proper stage. But, perhaps most importantly, we catch a completely smitten Waits singing a seemingly non-Waits lyric – “sha-la-la-la-la-la”, in “Jersey Girl”. The girl? One Kathleen Brennan, who would impact Waits and his sound immensely, from one wonderful day forward.
Waits wrote Heartattack and Vine while taking a break from writing the soundtrack for Francis Ford Coppola’s One from the Heart (1981), on the set of which he re-met Brennan, who he had first met while filming Sylvester Stallone’s Paradise Alley (1978; Waits’ film debut). It apparently was love at second sight – the two were engaged within a week, and married the month before Heartattack was released.
Waits has apparently said of Brennan that he didn’t just marry a wife, but also a record collection. Brennan introduced Waits to a bunch of new music, perhaps the most influential to his own evolving sound being Captain Beefheart and composer Harry Partch (who made his own instruments). With the life changes and Brennan’s encouragement, Waits also changed managers and producers – to himself and Brennan – and used the opportunity to, essentially, reinvent himself. Thus we have the absolute masterpiece that is Swordfishtrombones (1983), the first of Waits’ experimental era – the first Waits’ album to not feature saxophone, the first to have marimba (and various eclectic instruments), and, really, the first to have music that finally seems to live in the same postal code as the vocals. It’s weird, it’s whacky, it’s what most now likely consider pure Waits. It should be in every record collection, and should have it’s own full blog (like, an entire blog, not just a blog post) dissecting every second of it. Also, it was released on my day of birth, which gives it extra bonus points from me.
Swordfishtrombones is the beginning of a loose trilogy of albums, the second of which is technically the subject of this spotlight (and our first album in today’s listening schedule): Rain Dogs. While continuing along the lines of Swordfishtrombones plus adding in the plethora of new influences and experiences that came with Waits’ and Brennan’s move to New York City (including Waits’ growing filmography), Rain Dogs also brings back in all the best things of the pre-Brennan albums (including some of that country rock twang from Closing Time, in “Blind Love”). It’s a ‘best of’ bag of Waits’ tricks, if you will, minus the whisky. The result is a couple of surprisingly rather radio-friendly tunes (well, alternative radio, at any rate) including “Hang Down Your Head” (the first tune co-written with Brennan), as well as some cinema-friendly tunes, with songs from the album bookending the soundtrack for Jim Jarmusch’s Down by Law (1986; which Waits also starred in). And, another super duper (not really) important thing that really stands out, to me at least: end-of-song FADE OUTS. Perhaps they were in previous Waits albums, but for some reason these are the first I recall, enough to point out, lol. Anyway, and again, it deserves more than the cursory glance here, so be sure to give it a few spins and gather your own thoughts about it. Whether it was the fadeouts, the film cred, or just people knowing what’s what, it’s not hard to see why this album made and continues to make a number of lists, including the “official” 1001 list.
Following Rain Dogs, we get Franks Wild Years (1987), the last in the trilogy and thus another album in a similar vein. This album continues the story of one Frank, first seen in Swordfishtrombones‘ track of the same name (well, with the grammatically correct apostrophe), via songs first written (some co-written by Brennan) for a play. The real standout for me on this album – and, as far as I can remember, my first introduction to Waits – is the spectacular “Way Down in the Hole”, which was used/covered for The Wire‘s theme song. My advice? Get the entire trilogy and listen to all of them in a row, a few times over, as their own separate #TomWaitsAWeek. And then, for bonus marks, check out all the cover versions done for The Wire, if you haven’t already. For myself, I haven’t yet devoted enough time to this Franks, so I’m planning on getting a lot more spins in soon.
The last two albums on our listening schedule today carry on the experimentation of the Sword/Rain/Franks trilogy, albeit with different vibes. On Bone Machine (1992), perhaps it’s because of the title but I can’t help but hear some Pixies vibes, also some Leonard Cohen vibes (“Black Wings”) – in other words, there’s a LOT of different stuff going on in this one. Again, it deserves it’s own spotlight, and more than a quick spin. And then, The Black Rider (1993) is another play-to-album collection of songs, the play in question co-written by none other than William S. Burroughs and directed by Robert Wilson (perhaps known by many as Philip Glass’ collaborator on Einstein on the Beach). Waits will very soon again collaborate with Wilson on what becomes two of the albums in tomorrow’s listening schedule, Alice and Blood Money (both 2002).
Alice is part of tomorrow’s listening schedule, and is the third Waits album we have in The List. Because I’m only human I won’t have its spotlight ready prior to listening, but we’ll meet back here on Friday to discuss it, and cap off our #TomWaitsAWeek.
Until then, I hope you don’t have to wait to listen to more Waits!
1Apologies for the wishy-washy data, but I only tracked the first time an album was submitted, so this is going off my shoddy memory of how many times I replied “already added!” to people. I do remember with certainty that SpaceAce was one of those people, btw.
2For those wanting to listen through the discography with us, here’s what is left in the schedule, of studio albums plus the Orphans box set (any live/soundtrack/etc. albums are extracurricular!): Wednesday – Rain Dogs, Franks Wild Years, Bone Machine, The Black Rider; Thursday – Mule Variations, Alice, Blood Money, Real Gone; Friday – Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards, Bad as Me#1001OtherAlbums #1980s #experimental #experimentalRock #KathleenBrennan #ListenToThis #musicDiscovery #Musodon #TomWaits #TomWaitsAWeek