Yes - it is true. There are musical conspiracies and hoaxes in the 20th century. We abound in conspiracies and hoaxes, so why wouldn't there be musical ones.
We all are familiar with the most famous hoax of them all - Paul is Dead. What are the others? The other really big one is Elvis Lives!
I hadn't realized there was a conspiracy that the Beatles, the Stones and Bob Dylan formed a secret supergroup
"In October 1969, rock critic Greil Marcus wrote (under a false name) an album review for the magazine Rolling Stone. Credited to “The Masked Marauders”, this record was apparently a studio jam featuring John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan and Mick Jagger and released anonymously because the artists were all under contract to different labels. It was all hogwash, of course and a spoof of the bloated “supergroups” of the time. This didn’t stop the editors of the mag from hiring musicians to actually record the songs and release them as an album."
There are other "conspiracies" but they seem lame - clones, who wrote what song, who did or didn't play on their albums and so on.
Before our time of popular culture with radio and newsprint abounding, musical conspiracies were uncommon. I went to Wikipedia - a great source - and found a lack of conspiracy theories relating to music. I guess there are so many others, that the musical ones are less significant.
In fact, there are so many conspiracies, that Wikipedia lists them by subject area - e.g medicine, science and technology, sports. There is no entry for music. There is an entry for fandom, celebrity relationships and shipping (that's where fans believe fictional characters or real-life celebrities are in a relationship).
Paul is dead seemed silly at the time to me, along with Elvis Lives. There is such strange stuff out there as part of the every-day. I wonder how many people could possibly believe these two hoaxes. A 2014 article from NPR says that 50 percent of Americans believe in at least one conspiracy theory.
I stay with my own theory - that musical conspiracies are the stuff of fluff!
This house is unusual in its architecture. I will be missing the Buffalo Garden Walk next weekend, like many people on this side of the border. Here's the famous Harry Potter house/garden. It is one of the favourite gardens.
How did I miss the word Pottermore? Isn't it perfect?
"Pottermore Ltd. is the digital publishing, e-commerce, entertainment, and news company from J. K. Rowling and is a global digital publisher of Harry Potter and the Wizarding World. It offers news, features, and articles as well as new and previously unreleased writing by J. K. Rowling."
It is now wizardingworld.com and it announced that on September 28th a bronze statue depicting Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter was placed outside at London's Leicester Square. Is that a better possibility of current statues on display are about?
At wizardingworld, there are all kinds of activities to engage in - voting for your favourite fan-created costume design, the Romance Festival TLSQ - TLSQ stands for time-limited side quest. It is open to year 6 players. All kinds of things I haven't attended to for the many years Harry Potter has been about - I think it is 20 years next year.
On the other hand, I am familiar with the Niagara Falls Showcase greenhouse display each season. This is the summer scene at the Niagara Falls Showcase greenhouse last week - it was wonderful this year. The attendance was down about 90% according to one of the maintenance workers. The working greenhouses are full of Chrysthemums, trained in various ways for the display to come. No flowers were out yet, so I expect the display to be at the end of October into November.
At yesterday's Grimsby Festival of Arts meeting, we were in agreement that Harry Potter activities would be popular with the children.
I found the pottermore.com site and then the harrypotter-games.net - these are big, commercial sites. So I moved on to the trivia and quiz sites.
Finally I checked out Harry Potter Party Supplies and Harry Potter party games. There are 31 ways to throw the ultimate Harry Potter Birthday Party according buzzfeed.com - a fun article.
Are there Harry Potter jokes? There are lots of Harry Potter jokes:
On a scale from one to ten, how obsessed with Harry Potter are you? About nine and three quarters.
Why did Professor Snape stand in the middle of the road? So you'll never know which side he's on.
What do you call a Hufflepuff with one brain cell? Gifted. What do you call a Hufflepuff with two brain cells? Pregnant.
How many Muggles does it take to screw in a lightbulb? One. It is the only thing they are good for.
(We could start on Lord of the Rings jokes: What do you call a hobbit party? A little get together. )
Today's pictures are colour interpretations of tree bark and come from the landscape of Pasadena. I wanted to create a sense of precious stones and metals.