Cherry Blossom Festival

Cherry Blossom Festival, On March 27, 1912, Helen Taft, the wife of President William Howard Taft, and Viscountess Iwa Chinda, who was married to the Japanese ambassador to the United States, planted two cherry blossom trees in West Potomac Park, a green space on the banks of the Potomac River not far from the National Mall.

The next month, more trees were planted along the Tidal Basin and into Rock Creek Park, the vast urban park that stretches through the capital. Eighteen cherry trees were soon planted on the White House grounds.

This year, Washington will mark the 100th anniversary of those trees, some of which still exist, though most of the originals have died and been replaced. Their blossoming is celebrated annually with the National Cherry Blossom Festival, which is timed for late March, when the blooms are at their peak. This year the festival runs from March 20 to April 27. The peak, when 70 percent of the trees are covered in blossoms, is forecast for March 20-23.

But while the capital celebrates the centennial of the cherry blossom trees (they do not bear fruit), in fact the push to bring the delicate blossoms to Washington began much earlier.

A journalist and a government bureaucrat deserve the credit for what has become one of the signature aspects of the U.S. capital.

The journalist, Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore, was the first to sing the praises of the blossom of the sakura trees that she’d found in Tokyo. In 1885, she suggested to the U.S. Army superintendent of the Office of Public Buildings and Grounds that the trees be brought to the U.S. capital and planted. She repeated that suggestion to successive superintendents for years, without success.

The bureaucrat was David Fairchild, who would become a world renown botanist for his work in the Department of Agriculture’s Section of Foreign Seed and Plant Introduction, which dispatched “plant explorers” around the world to find new species to add diversity to the American landscape.

An avid botanist from his youth in Michigan and Kansas, Fairchild joined the section in 1889. In a career that lasted until 1933, he introduced more than 75,000 plants to the United States, including various species of oranges, mangos, dates, cotton and bamboo.

On a trip in 1902, he landed in Japan. Like Scidmore, he was smitten by the cherry blossom trees of Tokyo, with their small pink blossoms.

As a member of the Office of Plant Inspection, he had more luck raising the blossoms’ profile.

Milli Vanilli

Milli Vanilli, Milli Vanilli was a pop / dance music project formed by Frank Farian in Germany in 1988, led by Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus. The band’s debut album has achieved international success and earned them a Grammy Award for Best New Artist February 21, 1990 [1]. Milli Vanilli became one of the most popular pop artists in the 1980s and early 1990s. However, their success turned to infamy when their Grammy was revoked after it was revealed that the song in the folder are not the real voices of Morvan and Pilatus .

Material for the second album Milli Vanilli was published under the names of real singers, nicknamed “The Real Milli Vanilli. Morvan and Pilatus although later released an album using their real voice, it was a commercial failure. At the eve of a tour of potential return in 1998, ten years after the initial debut Milli Vanilli, Rob Pilatus was found dead in a Frankfurt hotel of an apparent drug overdose [2]. Fab Morvan then pursued a solo career with mixed results.

When Frank Farian developed the concept of Milli Vanilli, he chose to feature voice of Charles Shaw, John Davis, Brad Howell, and twin sisters Jodie and Linda Rocco, but he felt that the singers did not have a marketable image. He then recruited Robert Pilatus and Fabrice Morvan, two young models / dancers he found dancing in a dance club in Munich, in front of the law. Milli Vanilli’s debut album All or Nothing was released in Europe in mid-1988, with photos of Rob and Fab on the front and center of the album, but no mention of who actually sang the songs. The success of the record has attracted the attention of Arista Records who signed the duo. Arista removed several tracks from the original album, has added several new ones (including a new track written by Diane Warren, “Blame It on the Rain”), remixed many titles and renamed the album Girl You Know It’s True for into the U.S. market in early 1989.

This version of the album went six times platinum and led to the re-release of the title song, which reached number 2 on the Hot 100 in April this year and was certified platinum. (The song was a cover of a track Numarx published in 1987 on U.S. label Bluebird.) Discharge of the United Kingdom as the original album and the first remix album together as “2 X 2 “. Even greater commercial success followed, as the next pair of three singles “Baby Do not Forget My Number”, “Girl I’m Gonna Miss You” and “Blame It on the Rain” all hit number 1. A fifth and final single “all or nothing”, also made the Top 5 in early 1990 in a form which sampled the remixed “Keep On Movin ‘beat the UK soul act Soul II Soul. Milli Vanilli meteoric rise to pop music superstardom culminated with a Grammy Award for Best New Artist on February 22, 1990. [via wikipedia]

In 1986, the era of disco was over. The group disbanded, but members continued to tour with various line-ups. It was much later when I learned that Farrell was a facade. This growly voice we loved belonged to Frank Farian, German music producer who created the group and sang on recordings. Farrell, with at least one other woman singer, playback recordings and was singing on stage. Nobody cared in the 70s, but when Farian tried the same thing with “Milli Vanilli”plus later, there was uproar.

Outside Lands

Outside Lands, SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) – A weekend of music inside the Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. But the festival outside the lands is to create chaotic traffic in the neighborhood surrounding the park.

Polo Fields in Golden Gate Park quickly filled with concert-goers on land outside Saturday morning. While the mood was festive, park outside the Sunset and Richmond districts, traffic is reduced to a crawl especially in Fulton and Lincoln.

Many of these cars full of subscribers are trying to find parking in the car already congested neighborhoods.

“We’ve had people asking us if we can park on the access roads throughout the day. Unfortunately, you get towed in this neighborhood if you park in someone’s driveway, so it’s a problem,” said Marissa residents Chavarria Richmond District.

Other residents say the crowd expected 100 people this weekend really is not much.

“Not so loud, not as many people driving and on the street. This is probably three times the amount of traffic it receives on a normal weekend,” said Richmond District resident Elliot Gittleman.

James Connor said that the increase in traffic is not a problem. In fact, her helped her garage sale.

“Everything is very quiet, traffic has been pretty good. No problems here,” he said.

Many of the attendees apparently got the message that parking would be difficult. One by one people dropped taxi on the way to the park and Muni buses were filled to overflowing.

Muni increased its service with the rescheduling of its pilots to coincide with the crowds, especially after the concert lets out tonight.

“We know we’re going to have to add extra service after the concert and that’s what we do,” Muni spokesman Paul Rose said.

That’s good news for Chavarria. She said that Muni service last year after the concert was too slow.

“After the concert, everyone is stuck waiting for public transport. What happens is all concert goers hanging in their beer hall. It’s really a nuisance,” he said.

The developers said they’re going to be good neighbors, have two skid trails ready to tow vehicles that park illegally. The festival will continue tomorrow.

(Copyright ©2010 KGO-TV/DT. All Rights Reserved.)

Abbey Lincoln

Abbey Lincoln, Abbey Lincoln jazz vocalist and talented author in the 60s his career altered by the then-controversial cause of civil rights, died on Saturday in New York. He was 80.

A native of Chicago, Lincoln was also a noted actress who worked with Sidney Poitier in the 1968 comedy, “For Love of Ivy,” in which she played a girl who was looking for career advancement. She also appeared in many television programs in the 70s.

But Lincoln left his most indelible mark on jazz, mainly as a vocalist in a subtle, stately and intense ultimately, who worked with great form. Influenced by Billie Holiday, who played with the dynamic and sang behind the beat of the song when warranted, the addition of sensuality and depth of knowledge to the lyrics.

In 1960, she and drummer Max Roach, who would become her husband two years later, he recorded “We insist! Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite” with lyrics by Oscar Brown and accompanied by Roach, Coleman Hawkins and others, Lincoln sang oppression faced by generations of African Americans and the continuing struggle for freedom and opportunity, their actions ranging from moaning as if in anguish to the strong vocal flights. He was far from standard fare for jazz artists. In ’61, he released “Straight Ahead” in which she fronted a combo that included Roach, Hawkins, EricDolphy and Mal Waldron. For recording, wrote lyrics to “Blue Monk Thelonious Monk.”

For much of the ’70s and in the last 80 years, Lincoln has not recorded much, but in the ’90s, re-emerged as a unique interpreter of the song and began a series of albums of Jean-Philippe Allard that jazz mixing rules, the re-imagined occasional pop melody, and above all, his compositions. In ’97, he released his final masterpiece of the period, “Abbey Sings Abbey”, which served its membership arrangements minimized, not unlike the class and then used by Cassandra Wilson, for whom he served as a influence. She revisited “Blue Monk” as an acoustic blues offering “and is supposed to be Love” with a touch of country and sang “Bird Alone”, which started with StanGetz a decade ago as a jazz ballad, like a drunk The baleful lament. She delivered what may be his most moving, “Throw It Away,” accompanied by a nylon string guitar and accordion, voice, tired perhaps more than ever affected.

“Abbey Sings Abbey” was his last album of new material released during his lifetime. A box, “Over the years,” was published earlier this year. Like “We insist!” Y “Abbey Sings Abbey”, the set of 37 songs is a testament to a woman of many talents who voluntarily became the joy and pain of life into art for the benefit of those who heard and felt her song.

Listen to Lincoln to perform “Throw It Away.”

Brady Smith

Brady Smith:The actor Brady Smith (pictured) could be one of the happiest men on earth these days after welcoming her daughter with actress Tiffani Thiessen. She called Harper, and learned that it is healthy and well!

Smith has appeared on various television programs like “ER” Charmed, “Comeback, JAG and CSI Miami, among others. Although he has not had an important role in any of the series that many people would remember his face. Brady 39, and Thiessen, 36, married in 2005.

Congratulations to the couple!