What’s in a name?

While playing on the Internet this weekend I came across an article about where musicians got their stage names. I decided to share this with some of you because it is part trivia and part music history, so why not. I haven’t listed them all but I did put the well-known artists.

Bono
Born: Paul David Hewson
Supposedly named after a Dublin hearing-aid shop called Bono Vox – Latin for “good voice.” His U2 bandmate the Edge got his own nickname from either his sharp facial features or his fearlessness of heights, depending on which version you believe.

Snoop Dogg
Born: Cordozar Calvin Broadus Jr.
Dogg was nicknamed “Snoopy” by his mom for his love of the “Peanuts” comic strip. If the original Snoopy was, in fact, a little bit gangsta, “Doggystyle,” we presume, was not quite what Charles Schulz had in mind.

Marilyn Manson
Born: Brian Hugh Warner
Marilyn Manson combined Marilyn Monroe with Charles Manson, of course. His bandmate Twiggy Ramirez (Jeordie White) combined the names of the slender ‘60s fashion icon and the serial killer Richard Ramirez. Most of the various band members have taken similarly titillating monikers – Daisy Berkowitz, Madonna Wayne Gacy, Gidget Gein…

Tina Turner
Born: Annie Mae Bullock
Tina Turner got the last name, of course, by marrying her bandleader, Ike Turner. But he also changed the soul queen's given name as well, appropriately yet obliquely inspired by his fandom of comic-book wildwoman Sheena, Queen of the Jungle.

Billy Idol
Born: William Michael Albert Broad
A teacher once marked a report card for young Bill with the comment, “William is idle.” After his career went multi-platinum in the 1980s, this textbook bad boy fell off the map, going 12 album-less years before a 2005 comeback. Once again, Billy was, in fact, idle.

Elton John
Born: Reginald Kenneth Dwight
Sir Reg's early band was Bluesology, featuring saxophonist Elton Dean and frontman Long John Baldry. In 1972, he legally changed his name to Elton Hercules John, despite never having shared a band with any Hercules.

Macy Gray
Born: Natalie Renee McIntyre
There’s Macy Gray, and then there’s Macy Gray the neo-soul singer. The latter pinched her stage name wholesale from a man who lived in her Canton, Ohio, neighborhood. No word on whether Mr. Gray ever mistakenly received any of his namesake neighbor’s royalty checks in the mail.

Sting
Born: Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner
Playing in a jazz band, the young Gordo once wore a black-and-yellow striped shirt that made him look like a bumblebee. “My children call me Sting, my mother calls me Sting,” he once joked, after being addressed by his given name. “Who is this Gordon character?”

Moby
Born: Richard Melville Hall
Childhood nickname bestowed by his parents; Richie’s great-great-grand-uncle was ‘Moby-Dick’ author Herman Melville. Sadly, this connection to the great whale tale had nothing to do with Moby’s brief stint in the band Flipper.

Iggy Pop
Born: James Newell Osterberg Jr.
His first high school band was called the Iguanas, earning Iggy Pop another colorful nickname – the Rock Iguana. Unhappily credited as Iggy Stooge on the Stooge’s first few records.

Dusty Springfield
Born: Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O’Brien
Let’s say you start a group with your brother called the Springfields, he adopts the moniker Tom Springfield – and you’re Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien. Suffice to say it didn't take a lot of arm-twisting for Dusty – a childhood nickname – to change her surname as well.

Bo Diddley
Born: Ellas Otha Bates
Bo Diddley might’ve swiped his lyrical stage name from a variety of sources. A diddley bow is a homemade, one-stringed instrument often used by sharecroppers. Maybe more to the point for this master of the good-natured put-down is the old-timey insult: “That ain’t bo diddley.”

Freddie Mercury
Born: Farrokh Bulsara
Born in Zanzibar to a Zoroastrian family of Indian descent, the man who would be Queen began calling himself Freddie while at boarding school near Bombay, where he started a band called the Hectics.

Johnny Rotten
Born: John Joseph Lydon
The head Sex Pistol is said to have earned his nickname through the dubious distinction of his prematurely decaying teeth. Rotten’s nickname for his pal John Simon Ritchie was dentally inspired, too – “Sid Vicious” was borrowed from a particularly nippy pet hamster.

Flea
Born: Michael Peter Balzary
Like Sting, another product of the Flying Pest school of rock nicknames. The Red Hot Chili Pepper’s stage name was bestowed for his high-strung nature by high school buddy Anthony Kiedis on a ski trip.

Elvis Costello
Born: Declan Patrick McManus
Originally performed as D.P. Costello, using his great-grandmother’s surname (not inspired by the American comedian Lou Costello). Costello later took his manager’s advice and adopted the first name Elvis. Further confusing the matter, he legally added Aloysius to his given name in the ‘80s.

Alice Cooper
Born: Vincent Furnier
Original band the Spiders switched their name to Alice Cooper, conjured, according to the record company, through a Ouija board encounter with a medieval witch of the same name. In 1974, Furnier legally adopted the name, keeping it for his solo career.

Meat Loaf
Born: Marvin Lee Aday
The “Bat Out of Hell” blockbuster’s first band was called Meat Loaf Soul; he debuted, oddly, with Motown, as half of a duet called Stoney and Meat Loaf. Recently changed his given first name, which no one knew anyway, to Michael.

Not quite the most wonderful time of year – but it sure is close

When I first got into football two years ago – my gateway sport into all things sports related – I found at the end of the season as the Super Bowl approached my friends groaning about what a terrible life they would lead once football wasn’t there every week.
Following the first season I bought into this mentality that football reigned and everything else was filler until the preseason came around. My sports brain went into a comatose state until August when fantasy football talk started up again and the gridiron game was back in full swing. It’s funny how the people you call friends and rely on most for pertinent information regarding your personal life can be so horribly wrong.
There is so much to look forward to following the post-season of football, which I have fully taken advantage of this year.
The Super Bowl came and went on February 3 but that was not the end of sports as we know it for early 2008. By this time, basketball and hockey are in full swing with many fans starting to get an idea of what the playoffs will hold and a few teams wondering whether a post-season will present itself depending on how close the competition is in their conference – which has been compelling for the Western Conference.
March continues basketball and hockey action but sprinkles in college athletics as the NCAA Tournament – more appropriately known as March Madness – begins. Although it isn’t until the middle of the month when the tournament starts, there are plenty of conference tournaments deciding the fate of several teams on the cusp of receiving a ranking high enough to be selected. Even teams not making March Madness still find their way into the less popular event – the National Invitation Tournament.
The end of March and beginning of April is the time when sports fans are bombarded with action as March Madness is in full swing, professional basketball and hockey are still going strong and the baseball season starts up.
I’ve always found baseball to be a slow sport, especially when watching it on television, but I now appreciate it as a thinking game. The players in the infield and outfield and the runners on base are sort of pawns in a chess game between the pitcher and batter.
It is quite enthralling to see a runner in scoring position with two out and sweating it out as the pitcher has to either strike out the batter or force him to put the ball in play where a defenseman can get an easy out.
Another joy of April is that’s when the playoffs for basketball and hockey start. The Dallas Stars have shown they will be a force to be reckoned with and we can only hope the same for the Dallas Mavericks as they take us on a rollercoaster of emotions since losing the 2005-2006 NBA finals to Miami.
A sport some find boring but I recently learned to enjoy watching – or I should say re-learned to enjoy watching – is tennis. My friends and I took up the sport recently as a way to get some exercise and enjoy the night air at our local park. This isn’t my first foray into the world of tennis however. My mom used to watch tennis a lot when I was a kid and I remember having to suffer through the sport when all I really wanted was the television so I could watch a cartoon or play a video game.
With the Davis Cup being played out throughout the year, the quarterfinals were held this past weekend. The French Open is scheduled for May and June with Wimbledon following in June and July.
Golf fans can also get excited during the month of April because the Masters gets under way, giving everyone their first chance to see Tiger Woods attempt to dominate the field, which did not happen this year. As a true fan of many sports I spent much of my weekend wondering how Tiger was doing and who the leader was – due to being out of town camping I had no access to this information until Sunday. I spent the final day flipping between the Masters, the Texas Rangers and the Davis Cup Quarterfinals.
By the way, to the guy who says he is a golf fan but would rather go fishing or find something else to do if Tiger isn’t in the hunt on the final day of a tournament, that isn’t a real fan of the sport. That means you are a Tiger Woods fan, not a golf fan.
For those of you who complain about the absence of football this time of year, I say get over it and enjoy the surplus of sports that is offered. You are missing out on some seriously great action.

Keeping Watch On Stupid People

There is a movie out called “Idiocracy” with a premise that rivals a Beavis and Butthead episode, but it stars Luke Wilson so I suggest you take a peek at it sometime. The reason I bring the movie up is because the plot –– which involves two average humans being frozen for 500 years and waking up to find stupid people have overpopulated –– makes me think that, given enough time, we might turn out like this.
The idea is that the uneducated have nothing to divert their attention and end up breeding an exuberant amount of children. As intelligent folks on the planet focus on their careers instead of procreating, the result is their group diminishes to nothing.
I love to people watch. I consider it a sport. In college I would go to the clubs in town –– I use the term club loosely since I was living in Nacogdoches –– and enjoy the sights around me as guys attempted to find a mate to take home at the end of the night and the girls aggressively dodged most advances made toward them.
By the end of my five lovely collegiate years I had even turned into a professional “people watching” sportscaster, mocking the knuckleheads with my cousin with a play-by-play of the potential hook-ups throughout the night; the “riffing” conversations performed rivaled the best Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes.
The time spent honing my skills as a “people watching” broadcaster has stayed with me over the years. I still pay attention to what is happening around me –– often ignoring the people I am with in the process –– in order to observe the morons who come in and out of my life.
Now I’ll bring these two differing topics together.
Just recently, while walking my dog, I noticed a young man drive into a gas station parking lot across the street, his vehicle’s windows rolled down.
It was hard to not be aware of this guy coming my way due to the fact that his music was at full blast and the bass meter was set at about a +11.
I heard him coming from seven blocks away.
I couldn’t tell you what song was playing but I assure you it wasn’t my cup of tea. It was loud, it had no melody and the lead singer screamed a lot.
Why is it that when the guys – and it mostly is guys – who do this choose heavy rock that makes nobody happy or hardcore rap that doesn’t censor the language?
Why do we never hear Bob Dylan or the Beatles blaring at deafening volumes?
I’m thinking about buying a Michael Bolton or Kenny G album for just these types of instances.
When some punk pulls up next to me at a stop light with loud music coming from his car I will pop in some “How am I Supposed to Live Without You.”
See what that does for the guy’s listening pleasure.
Moral: The next time you roll down your car window and think about blasting whatever song you’re into at that time, consider this: from the outside of your car it isn’t that cool. It’s kind of the same as peeling away in a parking lot or stop sign.

Ennis Dentist Takes Plea Bargain

City Commissioner Stephen Durbin pleaded guilty Monday in a settlement agreement and will be placed on five years deferred adjudication, the maximum length of probation available for his crime of improper photography or video recording.
The plea bargain was reached between the County and District Attorney’s Office and the defendant after a request was made in affidavits signed by all eight of his victims, asking for deferred adjudication. As per the victims’ request, the plea bargain agreement requires Durbin to attend sex offender counseling at his own expense, his work and home computers be monitored for improper material and he be responsible for paying up to $1,000 in counseling expenses for the victims.
Durbin was indicted by an Ellis County Grand Jury on Nov. 26, 2007, on three counts of improper photography or video recording, a state jail felony. County and District Attorney Joe Grubbs said his office was ready to proceed to a jury trial, but after extensive meetings with the victims to ensure their wishes were met an offer was made to Durbin for the probation.
“When you have victims who have specific requests you have to weigh that in,” Grubbs said following Monday’s court hearing.
Grubbs also said it was important that the victims feel the criminal justice system provide them with a sense of satisfaction and justice for the trauma and violation they have suffered.
Durbin’s criminal case was resolved only a few weeks after a related civil case was settled. On March 19 at a 10-hour mediation, Durbin’s former employees received an undisclosed amount of compensation. The victims’ attorney Clay Jenkins said nothing in the terms of the settlement in the civil case affected the criminal case or its resolution.
“My clients are satisfied with the outcome and are appreciative of the hard work and support of District Attorney Joe Grubbs, Chief Felony Prosecutor Don Maxfield and Assistant District Attorney Lindy Tober, who remained in close contact with these women throughout this ordeal,” Jenkins said in a press release. “I am proud of my eight clients for standing up against Dr. Durbin’s abuse.”
City Attorney Toby Mash said with Durbin pleading guilty and taking the plea bargain, the City Commission could vote the Ward 5 Commissioner off the board. However, since Durbin has not filed for re-election and his term ends in May it is most likely the City will just let his term end and the unopposed former Ennis Police Chief Dale Holt will then take Durbin’s place.
Durbin turned himself in to authorities Aug. 18, 2007, after a warrant was issued for his arrest on a charge of improper photography or video recording.
The affidavit for the arrest warrant issued by Judge Bill Woody’s office reported a complainant contacted Ennis Police Chief John Erisman advising one of Durbin’s female employees had found a wireless color video camera hidden in the changing room of his office at 400 W. Ennis Ave. The report stated the camera was used to film the female staff while they were changing clothes.
The affidavit also states the employees later confronted Durbin about the camera and filming and recorded his admission to the crime on a digital audio recording. Det. Sgt. Mike Hopson confirmed police have the audio recording in custody.
If all conditions of the probation are met, Durbin is eligible to request an order of non-disclosure that would prevent criminal justice agencies from allowing his original arrest warrant or information from the court proceedings to be disclosed.