I recall somewhere reading MI6 or something interrupted Forsyth's plan to overthrow Nguema of Eq Guinea, so he wrote the book to make lemonade. Then in the mid-00s a group of UK and South African mercenaries tried to overthrow Nguema and used Dogs of War as a guide.
Recently read both Forsyth and Stone's memoirs. Stone's is regularly quite lyrical
This reminds me of the book Bravo Two Zero, about an SAS patrol captured when entering Iraq in 1991. What surprised everyone who read the book was how haphazard the planning was. The unit did the planning themselves, and they had to go borrow stuff from other units.
In particular they wanted as many under-barrel grenade launchers as possible, and as much ammunition for them as possible. And night-vision goggles, if I remember correctly. So you had to wonder, "why didn't they just request these things?" The author Steven Mitchell (under the name Andy McNab) never addresses that.
Side note:
Only one man avoided capture. He later wrote his own book, called The One Who Got Away. The two books don't correlate. And from Wiki: "Michael Asher, a former soldier with the SAS, went to Iraq and traced in person the route of the patrol and interviewed local Iraqi witnesses to its actions; afterward, he alleged that much of Mitchell's Bravo Two Zero and Armstrong's The One That Got Away were fabrication."
Anyhow, the part about borrowing from other units seems to have been true.
Last year I read Day of the Jackyl and 90% was like a traveloge of southern France; our antihero, clad in a tailored linen suit, eats fois gras at a country inn while drinking fine wine from the proprietor's own celler. Then at the very end the detective shoots him.
See also, Le Carre's The Little Drummer Girl: A great premise, but it takes forever for anything to happen.
I would say that Stone and his group had a fairly significant influence on mixed-race funk/rock/jazz bands like Chicago, War, and Blood, Sweat, and Tears.
I would also suggest that some people seem to be able to function while on acid, coke, pot, or even heroin (e.g. all of the members of Zeppelin except Bonham, Keith and Mick, Eric Clapton, Lou Reed, the Allman Brothers, Miles Davis, et al.) It's likely that Sly was just one of those guys who couldn't cope with the coke.
You might also recall that, in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Kesey was always insisting that he and his buddies had to learn how to function while tripping, and obviously Sly never learned to function while high. I think I remember Duane Allman once telling a reporter that he always practiced stoned and drunk because that's how he was going to play live.
War was another group that doped and drank hard and died hard, too. The lived their lives like The Cisco Kid. "Cisco drank whiskey, Pancho drank the wine. Ay, yay, yay."
RE: Sly Stone. The music business is obviously a tough one to have any longevity in - having talent is good (but obviously not a prerequisite), but you have to withstand the availability of large amounts of money, women, drugs, and professional leeches that will try to rob you blind. The first three probably take out 90% of artists before they get a sustainable career going, but the last group are truly the most dangerous as you can in theory generate huge amounts of money for your output and find others have finagled you out of it. Pink Floyd (Have a Cigar) and Morrissey (Why Don't You Find Out For Yourself) write about that, and I believe the WSJ had a piece within the last year about how Live Nation rips off artists by requiring them to buy everything needed for a tour through their vendors and finance it through them as well.
A few weeks ago, Simon Mann passed away. In 2004 he did try to steal Equitorial Guinea (which badly needs stealing, it is hell on Earth). He was financed by a group of old boys in London, among which was Mark Thatcher, Margaret's son.
I think he wrote a book about it. There is another book,Wonga Coup, which is excellent.
I’d hardly say that Prince and Tom Petty “screwed up” because they died from opiates. First, although they died younger than they oughta have, they were 57 and 66, respectively, neither a “shooting star” in that way, as the old song puts it. Second, both had serious, painful medical problems, and weren’t simply taking drugs for fun or addiction, despite what they may or may not have done in the past. Prince was probably ill-served by his doctors. Petty was reportedly so far gone that death by fentanyl was a mercy
Both put on good shows that included a whole lot of jumping off risers over the years. I can imagine they inflicted a lot of long term joint pain on themselves in providing their audiences with good value for the ticket price.
"We read Forsyth’s “The Emperor” about a tourist going marlin fishing in Mauritius the night before we went marlin fishing in Cabo San Lucas in 1985"
I sure hope that you and your dad got those Marlins stuffed and mounted. Those are amazing Hemingwayesque catches, and perhaps there's an interesting story of how you both landed your catches for the day. Perhaps one day you'll favor us with the story of how you both managed to land those amazing Marlins, Steve.
And in Cabo San Lucas, one of the most amazing places in all of North America. Awesome.
That was a serious and sincere question, Steve. I do hope that you both got those Marlins stuffed and mounted. Hemingway himself would be most pleased to view as well as hear the story of catching those fishes.
Led Zeppelin appealed to an affluent subset of 70s teens, tens of millions of them. Sly and the Family Stone didn't really have a big following. Like a lot of other groups like The Rascals, The Seekers and The Zombies, Sly and the Family Stone had a few big songs and fizzled. The Lovin' Spoonful, The Monkees and Herman's Hermits were bigger.
Led Zeppelin 70's fan base in the U.S. was mostly working class. The critics hated them and affluent teens were hipsters who liked the same stuff the critics liked, David Bowie & Lou Reed for instance. Over time the working class whites who have made it to senescence have piled away some dough and now are affluent but weren't then.
I think the newscaster on 10/10 WINS was having a bad day yesterday when he was rattling off the headlines. I first heard him say "Sly Stallone has died", followed by "Tramp gets trumpled..."
So now I realize I'll have to wait a bit longer for Sylvester Stallone's obituary.
The birthdates of Page and Plant are just two of many examples of why the Boomer range of 1946-64, so accepted as gospel truth across the socio-political spectrum needs to be questioned. Sly Stone too. Strauss and Howe are closer to the mark with 1943-60 but I think it's much easier to think of generations in terms of two decades apiece rather than the asymmetrical lengths and starting and end dates in the middle of decades.
Hence, The Greatest were born in the 1900's-10's, Silents were born in the 20's and 30's, Boomers in the 40's and 50's, GenX in the 60's and 70's, Millennials in the 80's and 90's, and Zoomers in the 2000's and 10's. Generations are generalities anyway with soft edges, and going by decades are as good generalizations as any of the others and more user-friendly.
Doesn't make much sense to me that the great majority of musicians who performed at Woodstock, plus The Beatles, Dylan, etc., should be considered part of the tail end of the Silents rather than the leading edge of the Boomers.
Was generation naming even done before the Boomers grew up? There really was a high birth rate '46-'64, after 15 years of lower, but they should have split us between early and late--maybe draft-eligible and not. Earlier, generations would have been separated by veterans of a major war.
I like your idea of splitting Boomers between those subject to the draft and those who weren’t. Since the draft ended in January of 1973 and had an upper age range of those who had student deferments of 22 and a lower age of 19, that would put the dividing line between 1951 (for those who went to college) and 1954.
Living under the cloud of the draft during the war in Nam definitely had an impact on men’s perspectives. I had two friends on my dorm floor my freshman year who both flunked out of engineering. They were both killed in Nam before the end of my sophomore year. I was ordered to report for a physical when the registrar’s office failed to send my credits to my draft board, an omission I quickly corrected.
December31, 1971 marked the end of my draft eligibility, with my lottery number about ten higher than the highest number taken. My outlook on and plans for life definitely changed that night.
My father, an only surviving child, turned 18 in Oct. 1945 and was drafted despite being in college. I'm sure my grandparents loved the Bomb even more than he did, though they didn't see much of him, as he spent the next 34 years in the Navy.
I recall somewhere reading MI6 or something interrupted Forsyth's plan to overthrow Nguema of Eq Guinea, so he wrote the book to make lemonade. Then in the mid-00s a group of UK and South African mercenaries tried to overthrow Nguema and used Dogs of War as a guide.
Recently read both Forsyth and Stone's memoirs. Stone's is regularly quite lyrical
This reminds me of the book Bravo Two Zero, about an SAS patrol captured when entering Iraq in 1991. What surprised everyone who read the book was how haphazard the planning was. The unit did the planning themselves, and they had to go borrow stuff from other units.
In particular they wanted as many under-barrel grenade launchers as possible, and as much ammunition for them as possible. And night-vision goggles, if I remember correctly. So you had to wonder, "why didn't they just request these things?" The author Steven Mitchell (under the name Andy McNab) never addresses that.
Side note:
Only one man avoided capture. He later wrote his own book, called The One Who Got Away. The two books don't correlate. And from Wiki: "Michael Asher, a former soldier with the SAS, went to Iraq and traced in person the route of the patrol and interviewed local Iraqi witnesses to its actions; afterward, he alleged that much of Mitchell's Bravo Two Zero and Armstrong's The One That Got Away were fabrication."
Anyhow, the part about borrowing from other units seems to have been true.
"The Yanks, God bless them, had plenty of kit".
Last year I read Day of the Jackyl and 90% was like a traveloge of southern France; our antihero, clad in a tailored linen suit, eats fois gras at a country inn while drinking fine wine from the proprietor's own celler. Then at the very end the detective shoots him.
See also, Le Carre's The Little Drummer Girl: A great premise, but it takes forever for anything to happen.
I would say that Stone and his group had a fairly significant influence on mixed-race funk/rock/jazz bands like Chicago, War, and Blood, Sweat, and Tears.
I would also suggest that some people seem to be able to function while on acid, coke, pot, or even heroin (e.g. all of the members of Zeppelin except Bonham, Keith and Mick, Eric Clapton, Lou Reed, the Allman Brothers, Miles Davis, et al.) It's likely that Sly was just one of those guys who couldn't cope with the coke.
You might also recall that, in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Kesey was always insisting that he and his buddies had to learn how to function while tripping, and obviously Sly never learned to function while high. I think I remember Duane Allman once telling a reporter that he always practiced stoned and drunk because that's how he was going to play live.
War was another group that doped and drank hard and died hard, too. The lived their lives like The Cisco Kid. "Cisco drank whiskey, Pancho drank the wine. Ay, yay, yay."
RE: Sly Stone. The music business is obviously a tough one to have any longevity in - having talent is good (but obviously not a prerequisite), but you have to withstand the availability of large amounts of money, women, drugs, and professional leeches that will try to rob you blind. The first three probably take out 90% of artists before they get a sustainable career going, but the last group are truly the most dangerous as you can in theory generate huge amounts of money for your output and find others have finagled you out of it. Pink Floyd (Have a Cigar) and Morrissey (Why Don't You Find Out For Yourself) write about that, and I believe the WSJ had a piece within the last year about how Live Nation rips off artists by requiring them to buy everything needed for a tour through their vendors and finance it through them as well.
A few weeks ago, Simon Mann passed away. In 2004 he did try to steal Equitorial Guinea (which badly needs stealing, it is hell on Earth). He was financed by a group of old boys in London, among which was Mark Thatcher, Margaret's son.
I think he wrote a book about it. There is another book,Wonga Coup, which is excellent.
I’d hardly say that Prince and Tom Petty “screwed up” because they died from opiates. First, although they died younger than they oughta have, they were 57 and 66, respectively, neither a “shooting star” in that way, as the old song puts it. Second, both had serious, painful medical problems, and weren’t simply taking drugs for fun or addiction, despite what they may or may not have done in the past. Prince was probably ill-served by his doctors. Petty was reportedly so far gone that death by fentanyl was a mercy
Both put on good shows that included a whole lot of jumping off risers over the years. I can imagine they inflicted a lot of long term joint pain on themselves in providing their audiences with good value for the ticket price.
Prince should have had his high heels made from rubber, though he probably weighed less than his guitar.
82 is quite old for a black man.
Independent of that it’s very old for someone with the pretty chaotic lifestyle he led.
I had the full Mandela Effect going on in thinking Sly Stone had died at the end of the 70s.
Berry Gordy is still alive at 95 though and has outlived most of the Motown stable who were all younger than him.
"No Comebacks" is the best English-language, short-story book I've ever read.
"We read Forsyth’s “The Emperor” about a tourist going marlin fishing in Mauritius the night before we went marlin fishing in Cabo San Lucas in 1985"
I sure hope that you and your dad got those Marlins stuffed and mounted. Those are amazing Hemingwayesque catches, and perhaps there's an interesting story of how you both landed your catches for the day. Perhaps one day you'll favor us with the story of how you both managed to land those amazing Marlins, Steve.
And in Cabo San Lucas, one of the most amazing places in all of North America. Awesome.
That was a serious and sincere question, Steve. I do hope that you both got those Marlins stuffed and mounted. Hemingway himself would be most pleased to view as well as hear the story of catching those fishes.
Led Zeppelin appealed to an affluent subset of 70s teens, tens of millions of them. Sly and the Family Stone didn't really have a big following. Like a lot of other groups like The Rascals, The Seekers and The Zombies, Sly and the Family Stone had a few big songs and fizzled. The Lovin' Spoonful, The Monkees and Herman's Hermits were bigger.
Led Zeppelin 70's fan base in the U.S. was mostly working class. The critics hated them and affluent teens were hipsters who liked the same stuff the critics liked, David Bowie & Lou Reed for instance. Over time the working class whites who have made it to senescence have piled away some dough and now are affluent but weren't then.
Herman's Hermits? Seriously? They were popular for a few years in the mid-60's British Invasion and then fell off the map.
Sly and the Family Stone fell very fast as well.
NOTICING- Why do musicians use drugs at high rates compared to other professions?
I think the newscaster on 10/10 WINS was having a bad day yesterday when he was rattling off the headlines. I first heard him say "Sly Stallone has died", followed by "Tramp gets trumpled..."
So now I realize I'll have to wait a bit longer for Sylvester Stallone's obituary.
The birthdates of Page and Plant are just two of many examples of why the Boomer range of 1946-64, so accepted as gospel truth across the socio-political spectrum needs to be questioned. Sly Stone too. Strauss and Howe are closer to the mark with 1943-60 but I think it's much easier to think of generations in terms of two decades apiece rather than the asymmetrical lengths and starting and end dates in the middle of decades.
Hence, The Greatest were born in the 1900's-10's, Silents were born in the 20's and 30's, Boomers in the 40's and 50's, GenX in the 60's and 70's, Millennials in the 80's and 90's, and Zoomers in the 2000's and 10's. Generations are generalities anyway with soft edges, and going by decades are as good generalizations as any of the others and more user-friendly.
Doesn't make much sense to me that the great majority of musicians who performed at Woodstock, plus The Beatles, Dylan, etc., should be considered part of the tail end of the Silents rather than the leading edge of the Boomers.
Was generation naming even done before the Boomers grew up? There really was a high birth rate '46-'64, after 15 years of lower, but they should have split us between early and late--maybe draft-eligible and not. Earlier, generations would have been separated by veterans of a major war.
I like your idea of splitting Boomers between those subject to the draft and those who weren’t. Since the draft ended in January of 1973 and had an upper age range of those who had student deferments of 22 and a lower age of 19, that would put the dividing line between 1951 (for those who went to college) and 1954.
Living under the cloud of the draft during the war in Nam definitely had an impact on men’s perspectives. I had two friends on my dorm floor my freshman year who both flunked out of engineering. They were both killed in Nam before the end of my sophomore year. I was ordered to report for a physical when the registrar’s office failed to send my credits to my draft board, an omission I quickly corrected.
December31, 1971 marked the end of my draft eligibility, with my lottery number about ten higher than the highest number taken. My outlook on and plans for life definitely changed that night.
My father, an only surviving child, turned 18 in Oct. 1945 and was drafted despite being in college. I'm sure my grandparents loved the Bomb even more than he did, though they didn't see much of him, as he spent the next 34 years in the Navy.
I don't think Eisenhower went about talking about the 90s Generation- Hitler, DeGaulle, Franco and Babe Ruth.
Generations are about shared cultural experiences, not birthrates.
True, but the Boomers and their following Birth Dearth are about to bankrupt the government. Sorry.
Just asking our host one fisherman to another- Did you catch those swordfish? Excellent fish.