Musical Spheres of the Championship Years and 1991

Arguably the best overall team in the history of professional football in Washington, the 1991 Washington Redskins went 14-2 and won Super Bowl 26 beating Buffalo 37-24. 

The Year was a typical war and famine cavalcade. The Gulf War and the dissolution of the former Soviet Union were big headliners. 

The Mount Fuji Jazz Festival of 1991, the Frankfurt Jazz Festival, and the Bern Jazz Festival were among the year's Jazz Festivalia. Don't forget D.C.'s own Jazz Festival. When's the happening? August 28 thru September 1st. 

Here's Paul Carr and Sharon Clark two of the participants in this year's festival.

Some interesting hits from other genres:

Crazy by Seal

Urban Dance Squad --Deeper Shade of Soul

Silent Lucidity by Queensrÿche

Knockin on Heaven's Door by Guns N' Roses

Metallica Enter Sandman 

Some of the Flicks at the Movies then were:

The Doors

Silence of the Lambs 

Scenes from a Mall

La Femme Nikita 

Defending Your Life 

Truly Madly Deeply

City Slickers 

The Naked Gun 2.5: The Smell of Fear

Teaching the Band to Play

It was twenty years ago today. Sergeant Pepper taught the band play. 

Musing about supergroups and football. 

When you draft guys and bring them together for the first time it is a bit like supergrouping. You pick guys you think would be good together. Do some riffs. See what people can do in OTAs. Figure out what signature sounds the band will have. Then after OTAs and mini-camps, start writing some music scheming up the 2024 playbook.

Put the finishing touches on the concert material right after training camp. Hopefully go on a whirlwind tour during the season.

So when you try to evaluate the Washington Commanders it is to say the least a bit premature to make judgments. I don't think it is ever appropriate to judge guys. You put an artificial ceiling over their heads. That goes for everybody not just the young guys with their fluid brains and their virtual reality tutors. Even a veteran can surprise. And surprising football teams are a joy to behold.

Remember the Sgt. Pepper film where they put the Bee Gees and Peter Frampton together. Featuring the one and only Billy Shears, the central figure in the Paul is Dead alternate reality/conspiracy theory which was really the Beatles doing a Stanley Kubrick to create buzz. 

It was okay. But it wasn't the real Billy Shears was it? Billy was a Beatles creation, their attempt at Paperback Writing. The Beatles were creative geniuses. Never underestimate the extent of their playfullness.

I guess the equivalent of creating a phony narrative to sell records in football would be selling the defense on misdirection plays. Phony screens. Phony jets. Phony horror stories about bad practices. 

The worst supergroup I can think of would be the 2000 Washington Redskins, the 1999 Redskin version of Billy Shears. Snyder thought that was a supergroup. They sounded horrible.

I think the NFL banned phony injuries which must be the least enforceable rule they have because phony injuries are the go-to gimmick play at the end of games. Nobody throws a flag. 

Nobody threw a flag on Paul McCartney's phony injury. He's made millions and he's a Knight of the Realm.

Hopefully, Kingsbury and Whitt, like Lennon and McCartney, have a few good tunes up their sleeves getting this Commander Band ready to be a smash hit in 2024.

For now, the Coaches are teaching the band to play. It is mostly experimental music right now. But there is a glut of Commander Commentary. A ton of new people jawboning about Washington. 

I recommend the people on the sidebar for your edification and enjoyment.

 

Speaking of Bruce Dern

Adam Peters, the new Washington GM, does look a bit like Bruce Dern. If he is as good a GM as Dern is an actor, Washington will be in the Super Bowl one day. 

Dern would probably not appreciate a reference to him shooting John Wayne in the back. That role in The Cowboys probably epitomized his typecasting as the pucker faced psychopath. And he has a point. He had incredible range certainly more than Hollywood gave him credit for.

Here he is covering some of that ground:

Interview with Dick Cavett

Bruce Dern was a recurring presence on one of my favorite shows, The Big Valley. Even then you could see the depth he had. He had a chance to play some gray area guys on Big Valley. Bad but not entirely bad types. 

The Big Valley often featured good actors including Richard Dreyfuss and Diane Ladd who played Son and Mother in the 48th Episode "Boy Into Man". If you get a chance to catch that episode, you might mistake Ladd for Laura Dern, daughter of Diane Ladd and Bruce Dern. 

Bruce Dern can claim the distinction of having been punched in the face by the two biggest Stars of the Hollywood Western: John Wayne and Barbara Stanwyck.