mick laBriola

The Canadian CHIME radio telescope deserves a prize as the best astronomical Easter egg collector of the past several years.

Recently, this unusual-looking instrument, located in the forested hills of southern British Columbia and known as the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment, added to its list of accomplishments by finding yet another Fast Radio Burst (FRB) source.  Many dozen FRBs have been uncovered since the first was found in 2007.  But despite this imposing collection, we still don’t know what these strange objects are.

Clearly, something taking place in the far depths of the cosmos is burping radio waves into space.  The fact that FRBs for which we know the distance are far away – millions or billions of light-years – indicates that whatever they are, they’re pretty rare.

Could they be the result of colliding black holes, or neutron star smashups?  These were attractive ideas when FRBs were first found because of the large amounts of energy such cosmic head-ons would release.  Sadly, they became less appealing once astronomers found FRB’s that burp more than once.  Black holes and neutron stars are reluctant to back up and slam into one another again.

So what are FRBs?  All sorts of explanations are floating through the academic atmosphere, including the suggestion that they could be signals from intelligent beings in a galaxy far, far away.  It’s been a persistent puzzle for a dozen years, but the latest CHIME FRB might put us on the path to finding a solution.

In particular, this discovery, genially named FRB 180916J0158+65 (its date of first observation and position on the sky), has several beguiling properties: (1) It repeats – only one of three FRBs with this helpful attribute.  Because it is seen again and again, astronomers can dedicate telescope time on large instruments to zero in on its precise location.  The repetion of FRB 180916 etc. is very regular, approximately 16.35 days – and after each of these bursts, it also shoots short radio emissions into space about once an hour for four days.  (2) The source of the FRB is about 500 million light-years’ distant.  That’s a fair piece.  Looking in this direction, we can see a face-on spiral galaxy, but precisely where in that galaxy the FRB is located is hard to determine.

Could it be that such radio bursts are caused by aliens trying to either get in touch or simply make their presence known?  Don’t bet on it.  The FRBs for which we know a distance are all over the sky – and are separated by billions of light-years.  That means that any alien memo instructing others to all make the same type of short transmissions to the cosmos would arrive  billions of years apart. A coordinated response seems … unlikely! And this is even aside from the fact that it’s impossible to put very much information in a short radio burst – Even less than you could stuff into a bottle thrown into the ocean.

But here’s the thing.  This FRB repeats every 16 days, and that suggests that something in orbit is causing its outbursts.  Maybe some exotic star encircling a black hole, or the reverse.  It could be that, much as the Rosetta Stone provided key information for decoding the hieroglyphics, this newest member of the cosmic bestiary may unlock an understanding of what FRBs actually are.

Kurt Donald Cobain (February 20, 1967 – April 5, 1994) was an American singer, songwriter, and musician, best known as the guitarist and frontman of the rock band Nirvana. Regarded as a Generation X icon, he is considered to be one of the most iconic and influential rock musicians in the history of alternative music.

Born in Aberdeen, Washington, Cobain formed the band Nirvana with Krist Novoselic and Aaron Burckhard in 1987 and established it as part of the Seattle music scene which later became known as grunge. After signing with major label DGC Records, Nirvana found global success with “Smells Like Teen Spirit” from their critically acclaimed second album Nevermind (1991). Following the success of Nevermind, Nirvana was labelled “the flagship band” of Generation X, and Cobain was hailed as “the spokesman of a generation”; however, Cobain resented this, believing his message and artistic vision had been misinterpreted by the public, with his personal problems often subject to media attention.

During the last years of his life, Cobain struggled with heroin addiction and chronic health problems such as depression. He also struggled with the personal and professional pressures of fame, and his marriage to musician Courtney Love. On April 8, 1994, Cobain was found dead at his home in Seattle at the age of 27; police concluded he had died on April 5 from a self-inflicted shotgun wound to his head.

Cobain was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, along with Nirvana bandmates Dave Grohl and Novoselic, in their first year of eligibility in 2014. In 2003, David Fricke of Rolling Stone ranked him the 12th greatest guitarist of all time. He was ranked 7th by MTV in the “22 Greatest Voices in Music”. In 2006, he was placed 20th by Hit Parader on their list of the “100 Greatest Metal Singers of All Time”.

Cobain was born at Grays Harbor Hospital in Aberdeen, Washington on February 20, 1967, the son of waitress Wendy Elizabeth (née Fradenburg; born 1948) and automotive mechanic Donald Leland Cobain (born 1946).

Buffy Sainte-Marie, CC (born Beverly Sainte-Marie, c. February 20, 1941) is an Indigenous Canadian–American singer-songwriter, musician, Oscar-winning composer, visual artist, educator, pacifist, and social activist. Throughout her career in all of these areas, her work has focused on issues facing Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Her singing and writing repertoire also includes subjects of love, war, religion, and mysticism. She has won recognition, awards and honours for her music as well as her work in education and social activism.

In 1983, Buffy Sainte-Marie became the first indigenous person to win an Oscar. Her song “Up Where We Belong“, co-written for the film An Officer and a Gentleman, won both the Academy Award for Best Original Song at the 55th Academy Awards and the Golden Globe for Best Original Song.

In 1997, she founded the Cradleboard Teaching Project, an educational curriculum devoted to better understanding Native Americans.

Buffy Sainte-Marie was born in 1941 on the Piapot 75 reserve in the Qu’Appelle Valley, Saskatchewan, Canada. She was abandoned as an infant and was then adopted by Albert and Winifred Sainte-Marie, a Wakefield, Massachusetts couple of Mi’kmaq descent. She attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, earning degrees in teaching and Oriental philosophy and graduating in the top ten of her class.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuviRPq6a5s

Nancy Sue Wilson (February 20, 1937 – December 13, 2018) was an American singer whose career spanned over five decades, from the mid-1950s until her retirement in the early 2010s. She was especially notable for her single “(You Don’t Know) How Glad I Am” and her version of the standard “Guess Who I Saw Today“. Wilson recorded more than 70 albums and won three Grammy Awards for her work. During her performing career, Wilson was labeled a singer of blues, jazz, R&B, pop, and soul; a “consummate actress”; and “the complete entertainer”. The title she preferred, however, was “song stylist”. She received many nicknames including “Sweet Nancy”, “The Baby”, “Fancy Miss Nancy” and “The Girl With the Honey-Coated Voice”.

Nancy Sue Wilson was born on February 20, 1937, in Chillicothe, Ohio, the first of six children of Olden Wilson, an iron foundry worker, and Lillian Ryan, a maid. Wilson’s father would buy records to listen to at home. At an early age Wilson heard recordings from Billy Eckstine, Nat King Cole, and Jimmy Scott with Lionel Hampton‘s Big Band. Wilson says: “The juke joint down on the block had a great jukebox and there I heard Dinah Washington, Ruth Brown, LaVerne Baker, Little Esther“. Wilson became aware of her talent while singing in church choirs, imitating singers as a young child, and performing in her grandmother’s house during summer visits. By the age of four, she knew she would eventually become a singer.

Oscar Marcelo Alemán (February 20, 1909 – October 14, 1980) was an Argentine jazz guitarist, singer, and dancer. He is widely recognized in his country and abroad as one of the best jazz performers, and as an influential artist.

Alemán was born in Machagai, Chaco Province, in Northern Argentina. He was the fourth child of seven born to pianist Marcela Pereira, a native Argentine, and Jorge Alemán Morales, who played guitar in a folk quartet with his children Carlos, Juan, and Jorgelina.

At the age of six, Alemán joined the family ensemble, the Moreira Sextet, and played the cavaquinho, a Brazilian ukulele, before taking up the guitar.The group travelled to Buenos Aires to perform at the Parque Japonés, Nuevo Theater, and at the Luna Park. Later they toured in Brazil.

Alemán was orphaned at age of ten when his mother died and his father committed suicide. He sustained himself by working sporadically as a dancer and musician on the streets of Santos, Brazil. When he saved enough money, he bought a guitar and started to play professionally at party venues in a duo called Los Lobos with his friend, Brazilian guitarist Gastón Bueno Lobo. The duo moved to Buenos Aires in 1925 to work under contract for the comedian Pablo Palitos. In Buenos Aires, they formed a trio with violinist Elvino Vardaro. They added tango to their repertoire and recorded with Agustín Magaldi. They later played with Carlos Gardel and Enrique Santos Discépolo.

Identifying which type of galaxy UGC 12591 is difficult — featured on the lower left, it has dark dust lanes like a spiral galaxy but a large diffuse bulge of stars like a lenticular. Surprisingly observations show that UGC 12591 spins at about 480 km/sec, almost twice as fast as our Milky Way, and the fastest rotation rate yet measured. The mass needed to hold together a galaxy spinning this fast is several times the mass of our Milky Way Galaxy. Progenitor scenarios for UGC 12591 include slow growth by accreting ambient matter, or rapid growth through a recent galaxy collision or collisions — future observations may tell. The light we see today from UGC 12591 left about 400 million years ago, when trees were first developing on Earth. 400 million ly distance.

David Murray (born February 19, 1955) is an American jazz musician who plays tenor saxophone and bass clarinet mainly. He has recorded prolifically for many record labels since the mid-1970s.

Murray was born in Oakland, California, USA He was initially influenced by free jazz musicians such as Albert Ayler and Archie Shepp. He gradually evolved a more diverse style in his playing and compositions. Murray set himself apart from most tenor players of his generation by not taking John Coltrane as his model, choosing instead to incorporate elements of mainstream players Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster and Paul Gonsalves into his mature style. Despite this, he recorded a tribute to Coltrane, Octet Plays Trane, in 1999. He played a set with the Grateful Dead at a show on September 22, 1993, at Madison Square Garden in New York City. His 1996 tribute to the Grateful Dead, Dark Star, was also critically well received.

Murray was a founding member of the World Saxophone Quartet with Oliver Lake, Julius Hemphill and Hamiet Bluiett. He has recorded or performed with musicians such as Henry Threadgill, James Blood Ulmer, Olu Dara, Tani Tabbal, Butch Morris, Donal Fox, McCoy Tyner, Elvin Jones, Sunny Murray (no relation), Ed Blackwell, Johnny Dyani, Fred Hopkins, and Steve McCall. David Murray’s use of the circular breathing technique has enabled him to play astonishingly long phrases.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hxi2uWtiYAI

William “Smokey” Robinson Jr. (born February 19, 1940) is an American singer, songwriter, record producer, and former record executive. Robinson was the founder and frontman of the Motown vocal group the Miracles, for which he was also chief songwriter and producer. Robinson led the group from its 1955 origins as “the Five Chimes” until 1972, when he announced a retirement from the group to focus on his role as Motown’s vice president. However, Robinson returned to the music industry as a solo artist the following year. Following the sale of Motown Records in 1988, Robinson left the company in 1990.

Robinson was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987, and was awarded the 2016 Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for his lifetime contributions to popular music.

Smokey Robinson was born to an African-American father and a mother of African-American and French ancestry into a poor family in the North Endarea of Detroit, Michigan, United States. His uncle Claude gave him the nickname “Smokey Joe” when he was a child. He attended Northern High School, where he was above average academically and a keen athlete, though his main interest was music and he formed a doo-wop group named the Five Chimes. At one point, he and Aretha Franklin lived several houses from each other on Belmont; he once said he knew Franklin since she was about five.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6t9wecgyB5g

Louis “Kid Shots” Madison (19 February 1899, New Orleans – September 1948, New Orleans) was an American jazz cornetist. Madison was born in New Orleans on 19 February 1899. He studied cornet under David Jones, Louis Dumaine, and Joe Howard. In 1915, he was the drummer in the Colored Waif’s Home band with Louis Armstrong. In 1923, he played second cornet with the Tuxedo Brass Band. During the 1930s, he played with the WPA brass band. In the 1940s, he played with the New Orleans Eureka Brass Band. In January 1948, Madison suffered from a stroke and died eight months later.

Jacques de Saint-Luc (baptized 19 September 1616 – ca. 1710) was a Walloon lutenist and composer.

Saint-Luc was born in Ath in 1616; nothing is known about his early years. In 1639 he was invited to become a musician at the court in Brussels, and two years later he had his portrait painted by Gerard Seghers. He moved to Paris in the mid- or late 1640s, but returned to Brussels in October 1647. He evidently spent the next few decades in Brussels, marrying in 1658. An important correspondent of Saint-Luc’s from these years was Constantijn Huygens. In August 1684 Saint-Luc was still living in Brussels, but nothing is known of his whereabouts during the next 16 years: the next mention of him is from 1700, when he visited Berlin on the occasion of the marriage of Prince Frederick of Hesse-Cassel and Princess Louise Dorothea of Prussia. He apparently traveled to Berlin from Vienna, where, according to contemporary sources, he was employed by Prince Eugene of Savoy. Saint-Luc was still alive in 1707 and 1708, when he published some of his compositions in Amsterdam; his date of death is unknown.

The long lifetime of at least 94 years aroused suspicions. And indeed, the booklet to a CD issued in 2018 (by Evangelina Mascardi, http://www.musiqueenwallonie.be/, booklet text obviously not available online) proposes that some of the music attributed to Jacques was in fact composed by his son Laurent (born an baptised in Bruxelles in 1669).

More than 200 pieces by Saint-Luc survive, and show that he was one of the most prominent lutenists of his time. Although he was influenced by French composers (Ennemond Gaultier, Denis Gaultier, Charles Mouton, and others) and adopted their scheme of grouping pieces into suites, he only used the characteristic French style brisé in his preludes.

Scores of baby stars shrouded by dust are revealed in this infrared image of the star-forming region NGC 2174, as seen by NASAs Spitzer Space Telescope. Some of the clouds in the region resemble the face of a monkey in visible-light images, hence the nebula’s nickname: the “Monkey Head.” However, in infrared images such as this, the monkey disappears. That’s because different clouds are highlighted in infrared and visible-light images.

Found in the northern reaches of the constellation Orion, NGC 2174 is located around 6,400 light-years away. Columns of dust, slightly to the right of center in the image, are being carved out of the dust by radiation and stellar winds from the hottest young stars recently born in the area.

Spitzers infrared view provides us with a preview of the next clusters of stars that will be born in the coming millennia. The reddish spots of light scattered through the darker filaments are infant stars swaddled by blankets of warm dust. The warm dust glows brightly at infrared wavelengths. Eventually, these stars will pop out of their dusty envelopes and their light will carve away at the dust clouds surrounding them.

In this image, infrared wavelengths have been assigned visible colors we see with our eyes. Light with a wavelength of 3.5 microns is shown in blue, 8.0 microns is green, and 24 microns in red. The greens show the organic molecules in the dust clouds, illuminated by starlight. Reds are caused by the thermal radiation emitted from the very hottest areas of dust.

Areas around the edges that were not observed by Spitzer have been filled in using infrared observations from NASAs Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE.

Veronica “Randy” Crawford (born February 18, 1952, Macon, Georgia) is an American jazz and R&B singer. She has been more successful in Europe than in the United States, where she has not entered the Billboard Hot 100 as a solo artist. Her only appearance on the Hot 100 chart was in 1979 as a guest vocalist on The Crusaders‘s top 40 hit “Street Life”. She has had five Top 20 hits in the UK, including her 1980 number 2 hit, “One Day I’ll Fly Away“, as well as six UK Top 10 albums. Despite her American nationality, she won Best British Female Solo Artist in recognition of her popularity in the UK at the 1982 Brit Awards. In the late 2000s she received her first two Grammy Award nominations.

Crawford first performed at club gigs from Cincinnati to Saint-Tropez, but made her name in mid 1970s in New York, where she sang with jazzmen George Benson and Cannonball Adderley. She signed with Columbia Records and released her first single, “Knock On Wood” / “If You Say the Word” in 1972. Adderley invited her to sing on his album, Big Man: The Legend Of John Henry (1975). During a brief tenure at Columbia Records, Crawford recorded “Don’t Get Caught in Love’s Triangle”. She is also one of the vocalists on Fred Wesley & The Horny Horns – A Blow For Me, A Toot To You (1977).

In 1978, Crawford sang vocals on “Hoping Love Will Last”, the opening song on side two of Please Don’t Touch!, which was the second solo album by the former Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett.

She led R&B veterans the Crusaders on the transatlantic hit “Street Life” (1979). A specially re-recorded version was featured in the soundtrack for the films Sharky’s Machine and Jackie Brown, and appeared in commercials in the early 2000s. She later recorded for Warner Bros. Records. Crawford was named the ‘Most Outstanding Performer’ at the 1980 Tokyo Music Festival. Crawford also recorded the love theme (“People Alone”) for the film soundtrack of The Competition on MCA Records in 1980.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0jCm4gMtVA

Buddy Cage (February 18, 1946 – February 5, 2020) was an American pedal steel guitarist, best known as a longtime member of the New Riders of the Purple Sage.

Popular both as a performer and session musician, he played with many bands and recording artists, including Anne Murray, Bob Dylan, Brewer & Shipley, David Bromberg, and the Zen Tricksters.

Buddy Cage learned to play pedal steel guitar at a young age. By the mid-1960s he was working as a professional musician, both onstage and as a session player for the Arc Records label.When the folk music duo of Ian and Sylvia decided to go electric in 1969, he joined their band, known as the Great Speckled Bird. Great Speckled Bird was part of the Festival Express concert tour in 1970. From 1969 to 1972, Cage also recorded four albums with Anne Murray, and one album with Brewer & Shipley.

It was on the Festival Express tour that the New Riders of the Purple Sage became acquainted with Cage. The New Riders were a psychedelic influenced country rock band that had been founded by Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead, along with John Dawson and David Nelson. The New Riders and the Dead would perform concerts together, with Garcia playing pedal steel for the New Riders, then playing electric guitar and singing with the Dead.

Irma Thomas (born February 18, 1941) is an American singer from New Orleans. She is known as the “Soul Queen of New Orleans”.

Thomas is a contemporary of Aretha Franklin and Etta James, but never experienced their level of commercial success. In 2007, she won the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Blues Album for After the Rain, her first Grammy in a career spanning over 50 years.

Born Irma Lee, in Ponchatoula, Louisiana, United States, as a teenager she sang with a Baptist church choir. She auditioned for Specialty Recordsat the age of 13. By the time she was 19, she had been married twice and had four children. Keeping her second ex-husband’s surname, she worked as a waitress in New Orleans, occasionally singing with bandleader Tommy Ridgley, who helped her land a record deal with the local Ron label. Her first single, “Don’t Mess with My Man”, was released in late 1959, and reached number 22 on the US Billboard R&B chart.

De De Pierce (February 18, 1904 – November 23, 1973) was an American jazz trumpeter and cornetist. He is best remembered for the songs “Peanut Vendor” and “Dippermouth Blues”, both with Billie Pierce.

Pierce was born Joseph De Lacroix Pierce in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. Pierce’s first gig was with Arnold Dupas in New Orleans in 1924. During his time playing in city nightclubs, he met Billie Pierce, who became his wife as well as a musical companion; the two were the house band at the Luthjens Dance Hall from the 1930s through the 1950s. They released several albums together but stopped performing in the middle of the 1950s due to illness, which left De De Pierce blind. By 1959 they had returned to performing, and De De Pierce toured with Ida Cox and played with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, before further health problems ended his career. He died in November 1973, at the age of 69.