More frivolous stuff about music, three notable anniversaries.  It’s also a sign of how varied my tastes, that I can like them all.  The first three links are to youtube videos.

Gilbert O’Sullivan’s “Alone Again (Naturally)” was released on February 18, 1972, fifty years ago.  It was a number one hit in numerous countries. It’s simultaneously one of the saddest yet most beautiful songs.  Back then, it was rare to hear a pop song openly ask, “if god exists, then why…?”

The Damned’s debut album “Damned Damned Damned” was released on February 18, 1977, forty-five years ago.  They were the first Punk Rock group to release a full album (yes, before the Sex Pistols).  The album still stands up after all this time, produced by Nick Lowe and contains several of the group’s best known songs.  Their performance on Craig Ferguson’s Late Show in 2008 was legendary.  The band still tours today, outliving all their contemporaries.

And it was forty years ago, February 19, 1982, that Ozzy Osbourne pissed off the entirety of the US by pissing on “the alamo” cenotaph, the sacred cow which glorifies racism, genocide, and massive failure of US government and military policy.

40 Years Ago: Ozzy Osbourne Arrested for Urinating on Alamo

Ozzy Osbourne didn’t wake up Feb. 19, 1982, and decide he was going to cause trouble that afternoon by pissing on a treasured national monument in San Antonio, Texas. He was simply going about his business, partying like a rock star, and after a few drinks too many he stumbled out in the street dressed in a dress owned by his future wife Sharon Osbourne (she had hidden his clothes to keep him from going out) and emptied his full bladder on the nearest statue he could find.

He had no idea he was standing at the city’s sacred 60-foot-high Cenotaph, located directly across from the Alamo building. Hell, he was barely in any condition to remember what city he was in, let alone where he was relieving himself. Contrary to popular belief, Ozzy didn’t technically pee on the Alamo building itself, he peed within the Alamo Plaza, and he chose a pretty bad place.

I sometimes wonder if Osbourne’s public urination was a distraction or continued excess.  It was only a month earlier, January 20, 1982, that he bit the head off a bat during a concert.