<\/p>\n
I hate lists, man.<\/p>\n
Back in my early \u201ccontent group\u201d days, we were encouraged to produce them in reams. Our goal: Yahoo! carousel promotion. \u201cTen Slow-Dance Standards for Dental Hygienists.\u201d \u201cFive Pre-Neil Peart Rush Songs Superior to Anything on \u2018Presto.’\u201d \u201cSeven Slayer Slashers for Your Grandma\u2019s Wake.\u201d Sometimes we\u2019d purposely leave entries out, so someone in a comment thread could chirp, \u201cWhat about \u2026 \u201d and spark discussion, resulting in \u201cengagement,\u201d \u201ceyeballs,\u201d whatever.<\/p>\n
Yet I must admit they\u2019re fun. Fun to read and, from a research standpoint, a blast to write. Though I always cringe at what I\u2019ve forgotten. In fact, this one\u2019s supposed to have four additional entries for a nice, round 10: Bob Dylan\u2019s \u201cHurricane,\u201d Gordon Lightfoot\u2019s \u201cThe Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,\u201d Don McLean\u2019s \u201cAmerican Pie\u201d and Randy Newman\u2019s \u201cLouisiana 1927.\u201d There are thousands more (Joni Mitchell\u2019s \u201cWoodstock\u201d! Camper van Beethoven\u2019s \u201cTania\u201d!), going back to the topical songs of the early 20th century.<\/p>\n
Alas, I ran out of room. It pains this unrepentant bloviator to bypass the SS Fitzgerald, and I apologize for its omission. That deserves a full story of its own.<\/p>\n
I hate lists, man.<\/p>\n
Despite a quiet demeanor, 16-year-old Brenda Ann Spencer was well acquainted with the San Diego police. Petty stuff, mostly, as the Patrick Henry High junior recalled. \u201cBut it never went to court,\u201d she claimed. \u201cI always got off.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a child, she\u2019d attended Cleveland Elementary. In her adolescence, she broke one of its windows. The school was a convenient target, as it sat across the street from her house.<\/p>\n
But shortly before 9 a.m. Monday, Jan. 29, 1979, Spencer told her father, Wallace, she didn\u2019t feel well and trained her gaze on the campus again, this time from her bedroom window with a semiautomatic .22 rifle.<\/p>\n
And for 15 or 20 minutes, she unleashed 15 rounds of gunfire, killing principal Burton Wragg and custodian Mike Suchar as they attempted to protect students. Eight children were hurt, as was responding officer Robert Robb.<\/p>\n
Spencer barricaded herself for roughly six hours, communicating with law enforcement and the press by telephone. In an interview with San Diego Tribune reporters, she explained her actions thusly: \u201cI don\u2019t like Mondays. This livens up the day.\u201d She then cut the conversation short with \u201cI have to go now. I shot a pig, I think, and I want to shoot more.\u201d<\/p>\n
That afternoon, she surrendered in her driveway and was taken to the city\u2019s juvenile center. Charges included two counts of murder and 10 counts of assault with intent to commit murder. She was tried as an adult and \u2013 a day after her 18th birthday in 1980 \u2013 received a life sentence. After a failed parole hearing (her seventh) this past February, Spencer, now 62, remains at the California Institution for Women in Chino.<\/p>\n
She remains notorious for both the heinousness of her crime and for a catchy No. 1 U.K. single written that year by Bob Geldof and Johnnie Fingers of The Boomtown Rats. Geldof recalled in late 1979 that as he watched the news zip across a radio station\u2019s telex, he was drawn to the girl\u2019s exchange with reporters. \u201c\u2018Tell me why\u2019 \/ \u2018I don\u2019t like Mondays’\u201d became the chorus\u2019 thrust. \u201cIt was the perfect senseless act,\u201d he explained to Smash Hits, \u201cand this was the perfect senseless reason for doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though the song\u2019s now regarded as classic, Geldof has expressed mortification that he contributed to the event\u2019s immortality. \u201cShe (Spencer) wrote me and said she was glad she\u2019d done it because I made her famous,\u201d he admitted in 2013, \u201cwhich is not a good thing to live with.\u201d<\/p>\n
In retrospect, it\u2019s ludicrous, but this actually happened. Note the startlingly bold headline on the Boston Evening Globe\u2019s front page: \u201c15 killed, 150 injured in North End explosion.\u201d (These were preliminary numbers, reported just hours after the incident.)\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
It began Wednesday, Jan. 15, 1919, during the Purity Distilling Company\u2019s lunch hour. A tank on the property holding 2 million gallons of molasses burst without warning, sending a foreign rumble through neighborhoods and releasing heavy syrup in waves for blocks. It destroyed buildings and homes (often tearing them from the earth), smashed cars and crippled anyone in its path. Twenty-one citizens lost their lives, many of whom were consumed as the molasses thickened, hindering rescue efforts. Some were shoved into Boston Harbor. Plenty went undiscovered for months.<\/p>\n
\u201c[F]or a radius of some 200 to 250 feet,\u201d the Globe reported, \u201cthere was a scene of great wreckage, while the shouts and the screams of the dying rent the air. For the first quarter of an hour, pandemonium reigned.\u201d<\/p>\n
That furor continued as investigators worked to determine responsibility. The United States Industrial Alcohol Company, which had purchased the distillery a year earlier, blamed anarchists. The real answer didn\u2019t come for another six years, when the firm \u2013 whose responsible tank split in structural failure \u2013 was ordered via class-action lawsuit to shed $628,000 (more than $12.3 million in 2025) to victims\u2019 families. A pungently sweet odor, it\u2019s claimed, haunted the area for decades.<\/p>\n
Nearly a century passed before The Dead Milkmen \u2013 responsible for \u201cPunk Rock Girl\u201d and \u201cBeach Party Vietnam,\u201d among others \u2013 visited the disaster on their 2014 album, \u201cPretty Music for Pretty People.\u201d Their \u201cGreat Boston Molasses Flood,\u201d however, isn\u2019t a straight retelling, as its early 20th century voice \u2013 essayed by frontman Rodney Linderman (Rodney Anonymous to you, friend) \u2013 namedrops the Dresden Dolls, a duo that wouldn\u2019t exist for another 80 years, and references Puopolo Park, where the tank once stood. \u201cBut I haven\u2019t got time to think of that now,\u201d Linderman sings, resigned to his thick fate, \u201cSweet, sticky death is headed my way.\u201d<\/p>\n
This rock \u2018n\u2019 roll incident\u2019s about as decades-spanning-ly world-famous as it gets, yet only about 2,000 people experienced what happened on Saturday, Dec. 4, 1971. Also, unlike almost every other entry here, the musicians in question lived through it, too.<\/p>\n
Many assume Deep Purple played that night at the Casino de Montreux in Montreux, Switzerland. No, the members had chosen the venue as a location to record their sixth album, its third with vocalist Ian Gillan. In 1997, bassist Roger Glover recalled the building\u2019s ideal acoustics and, even better, its availability for a month. They just had to wait for Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention to split after a matinee performance so they could unload their equipment and get to work.<\/p>\n
All were present at the afternoon show. Zappa\u2019s band neared its set\u2019s completion, chugging through a \u201cKing Kong\u201d encore. Keyboardist Don Preston stopped an ascending run suddenly as someone yelled, \u201cFire!\u201d then appended a music-related joke, \u201cArthur Brown, in person,\u201d referring to the artist and his 1968 hit of the same title. \u201cCalmly go towards the exits, ladies and gentlemen,\u201d Zappa instructed as everyone abandoned ship.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
The ensuing exit, though audibly semi-frantic, went off without a hitch. No injuries or deaths were reported. One would imagine a minimal disaster from the scene\u2019s tenor. However, this was not so. The blaze was massive, swallowing the casino right off the Lake Geneva shoreline. The Mothers lost everything they\u2019d left behind.<\/p>\n
Outside, Glover watched the structure die slowly. He continued observing, mesmerized, from his hotel. \u201cAs I looked out through the large glass windows \u2026 in the dying afternoon light,\u201d he wrote, \u201cI could see a huge pall of black smoke from the doomed building stretching high up and out over the placid blue surface of Lake Geneva.\u201d So, the title wrote itself.<\/p>\n
Deep Purple convened later to begin what became 1972\u2019s \u201cMachine Head\u201d at the Pavillon (now the Petit Palais), also in Montreux. During an evening session, then-guitarist Ritchie Blackmore debuted a reverse-Beethoven riff he called \u201cTitle No. 1,\u201d inviting his bandmates to jam around him. Their volume proved too much for the surrounding tranquility, forcing everyone to retreat to another local spot, the H\u00f4tel des Alpes-Grand H\u00f4tel, to continue working.<\/p>\n
Here, \u201cSmoke on the Water\u201d was truly born, with its mentions of \u201cfunky Claude\u201d (assistant casino director\/band friend Claude Nobs, who did help concertgoers escape) and \u201csome stupid with a flare gun,\u201d identified later that month as 22-year-old Czech refugee Zdenek Spicka, who allegedly fled the scene after firing his device toward the ceiling. He\u2019s never been apprehended.<\/p>\n
(Stripped of music, \u201cSmoke\u201d contains a second Zappa reference: Gillan\u2019s \u201cBreak a leg, Frank,\u201d recognizing injuries the frontman suffered at London\u2019s Rainbow six days after the Montreux fire, canceling the remainder of his European tour.)<\/p>\n
The lost casino was rebuilt, reopening in 1975. Deep Purple perseveres, too, following infinite lineup changes. (Blackmore\u2019s more than 30 years gone.) And the band still goes down to Montreux to unpack its meatiest groove.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe last time we were there,\u201d Glover told the Guardian\u2019s Ray Simpson in August, \u201csigns by the lake read, \u2018No smoking on the water,\u2019 and four jets released smoke over the water as we played. That felt very emotional, but I never get tired of playing the song. Someone once said it\u2019s like having a button that you press to make the audience go nuts.\u201d<\/p>\n
Who\u2019s Kenneth? Who knows? Newsman Dan Rather doesn\u2019t, though he remembers the incident all too well.<\/p>\n
He was in Manhattan at the time \u2014 Saturday night, Oct. 4, 1986 \u2014 walking home from dinner shortly before 11 p.m. At Park Avenue and 88th Street, a man eventually identified as William Tager (two \u201cwell-dressed\u201d suspects were originally reported, but nothing is known of the second) approached him and loudly demanded, \u201cKenneth, what is the frequency?\u201d Rather, of course, gave him the only reply possible, either \u201cYou have the wrong guy\u201d or \u201cI don\u2019t know what you\u2019re talking about,\u201d depending on which account you read.<\/p>\n
This resulted in a violent pummeling that sent the CBS anchor fleeing into a nearby building. Tager and his apparent accomplice pursued him into the lobby, where they renewed both the attack and question, \u201cKenneth, what is the frequency?\u201d A doorman and building superintendent, neither named Kenneth, came to the rescue.<\/p>\n
The strange event\u2019s motivation was still mysterious when it inspired R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe to write \u201cWhat\u2019s the Frequency, Kenneth?,\u201d the first single from 1994\u2019s \u201cMonster.\u201d He described its central character in a 2021 Mental Floss retrospective as a \u201cguy who\u2019s desperately trying to understand what motivates the younger generation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rather wasn\u2019t one of those types, telling Entertainment Weekly upon the track\u2019s release, \u201cI like it. Tune in to R.E.M., Kenneth.\u201d In good spirits, he performed it with the band on Thursday, June 22, 1995, for a hopelessly discordant Madison Square Garden soundcheck.<\/p>\n
With the song\u2019s popularity and the passage of time, the story became something of an urban legend. That is, until The New York Times\u2019 Frank Bruni uncovered more details in 1997, like Tager\u2019s name and his responsibility for the shooting death of NBC stagehand Campbell Theron Montgomery three years earlier. According to Bruni, Tager believed he was receiving messages from news broadcasts, hence his questions about frequencies. He received a 12\u00bd- to 25-year sentence for manslaughter and was released in 2010.<\/p>\n
Kenneth\u2019s fate and whereabouts remain unknown.<\/p>\n
On Saturday, Jan. 18, 1984, Zevon must have been eager to catch his friend, World Boxing Association lightweight champion Ray \u201cBoom Boom\u201d Mancini, as he faced Bobby Chacon for the title that night at the new Lawlor Events Center in Reno. (Zevon likely did not attend the match but watched it live on HBO.)<\/p>\n
Both fighters had courted controversy. The previous year, the World Boxing Council had snatched Chacon\u2019s junior lightweight belt \u2013 which he\u2019d himself taken from Rafael \u201cBazooka\u201d Lim\u00f3n in December 1982 \u2013 when he declined to face rising contender Hector \u201cMacho\u201d Comacho. That body, therefore, did not recognize his brutal 12-round May 1983 decision over Cornelius Boza-Edwards, leaving Chacon with nothing but a win to wrap around his waist. Three months later, Camacho won the suddenly vacant title over, yup, Lim\u00f3n. Meanwhile, Chacon leapt to the lightweight division.<\/p>\n
As per Zevon\u2019s song, defending titlist Mancini had met South Korea\u2019s Duk Koo Kim on Saturday, Nov. 13, 1982, at Las Vegas\u2019 Caesars Palace. Horrifically, a 14th-round technical knockout sent the challenger to Desert Springs Hospital, where, following three hours of brain surgery, he became dependent on a respirator. Four days later, Kim died, becoming the fourth boxer killed that year after in-ring activity. Mancini\u2019s brazen \u201cSomeone should have stopped the fight and told me it was him\u201d riposte was entirely a Zevon creation. He was, in truth, stricken and contrite, telling an AP reporter, \u201cI\u2019m very saddened, very sorry it had to happen. It hurts bad to know you\u2019re a part of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Chacon-Mancini bout was scheduled for 15 rounds. Despite immense crowd support, however, Chacon lasted just three \u2013 not because he was knocked out, but because referee Richard Steele, who\u2019d monitored the bloody Chacon\/Boza-Edwards clash as well, stepped between flurries of wild fists and declared Mancini the winner. Fans doused the venue in loud disapproval, as some had paid $200 for a main event shorter than a \u201cDiff\u2019rent Strokes\u201d episode. So Zevon\u2019s \u201cHurry home early \/ hurry on home\u201d imploration can be taken two ways: as anticipatory excitement or as warning of a coming fracas that, like life itself, is all too brief.<\/p>\n
This is my favorite: an event quietly significant to just two people yet universal enough to mean everything.<\/p>\n
Shortly before the 1975 holidays, singer\/songwriter Dan Fogelberg, three albums into his all-too-short career, visited his hometown of Peoria, Ill. That Christmas Eve, in pursuit of whipped cream for Irish coffee, he drove from his parents\u2019 house to the nearby Convenience Food Mart, one of the few open stores, at the corner of Frye Avenue and Prospect Road. There, he encountered the former Jill Anderson, an ex-girlfriend and Woodruff High School classmate. She was there for eggnog. They hugged. They talked. They got what they needed, then split a six-pack of Olympia outside in her car.<\/p>\n
Over the next two hours, these 1969 Woodruff graduates swapped plenty of still-fresh stories. Those long, young nights on Grandview Drive, the Illinois River carved through trees. There he once sat with guitar and pen, pulling verses into melodies, some of which resurfaced, finessed, in his work. The baked cookies, the traveled countryside. The moment when they parted, he to Urbana, her to Macomb. Then to the permanent split, when he headed west to become a soft-rock king. She went to Chicago, found a teaching job and got married.<\/p>\n
It was a beautiful, bittersweet, but uneasy reunion, all careful truth and emotion. Adulthood had intervened, chased by uncertainty. She wasn\u2019t happy; he didn\u2019t like the traveling that came with the musician\u2019s life. Their talk even ended with cinematic flourish: Fogelberg bade farewell, then stepped from her car as drifting snow melted to rain. (As he later said, this was no metaphor but the actual weather.)<\/p>\n
The woman may have sometimes revisited this chance meeting. But like all memories, she pushed it back. Life, right? Five years later \u2013 first husband in the rearview \u2013 the remarried Jill Greulich listened to her car radio one morning and heard a new song in a familiar voice: \u201cMet my old lover in the grocery store \/ The snow was falling Christmas Eve.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSame Old Lang Syne\u201d was largely true, she recalled, though a few details were different. For instance, her eyes weren\u2019t blue but green; however, \u201cblue\u201d rhymed better with \u201cgratitude\u201d in the song\u2019s next line. Also, her ex taught P.E. and knew nothing about architecture. And honestly, the market hardly qualified as a \u201cgrocery store.\u201d It\u2019s one of three small shops in a plaza, about the size of a 7-Eleven.<\/p>\n
Fogelberg and Greulich largely kept this memory between them. She spoke little of her involvement until he died in December 2007. Then she confessed, in an interview about the song, to the Peoria Journal Star. Another revisit came in 2020, for \u201cLang Syne\u2019s\u201d 40th anniversary, and in 2021, for what would have been Fogelberg\u2019s 70th year. \u201cI\u2019ll always have a special place in my heart for Dan,\u201d she said. \u201cDan would be a very special person to me, even without that song.\u201d<\/p>\n
Peoria seems to feel the same way. If you drive down Prospect past the old Central Illinois Appliances building and the Get the Funk Out Laundromat, you can see what\u2019s now called Short Stop Food & Liquors right there at Prospect and Frye. Cars out front, purses spilled inside. At the light, head left on Frye to Abington, which becomes the Honorary Fogelberg Parkway.<\/p>\n
And if you happen to be near the T.F. Erhart Company on Morton, take a right into Riverfront Park. Get out of your car and walk toward the Illinois River, where the artist himself took inspiration. Gaze upon the Dan Fogelberg Memorial. His words are written in stone.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.phoenixnewtimes.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I hate lists, man. Back in my early \u201ccontent group\u201d days, we were encouraged to produce them in reams. Our goal: Yahoo! carousel promotion. \u201cTen Slow-Dance Standards for Dental Hygienists.\u201d \u201cFive Pre-Neil Peart Rush Songs Superior to Anything on \u2018Presto.’\u201d \u201cSeven Slayer Slashers for Your Grandma\u2019s Wake.\u201d Sometimes we\u2019d purposely leave entries out, so someone […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2060989,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[42328],"class_list":["post-2060988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-lists"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/6-songs-inspired-by-tragic-newsworthy-events.webp.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2060988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2060988"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2060988\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2060990,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2060988\/revisions\/2060990"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2060989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2060988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2060988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2060988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}