If not for Johnny Carson and Eva Gabor…Twister may not have been part of our culture.
In 1965 Reyn Guyer, of the Reynolds Guyer Agency of Design had been hired to do a promo display for a shoe polish company, and he was tinkering with colored polka dot paper for ideas. He was suddenly hit with inspiration for something much different…a board game where the pieces were people not plastic.
Reyn tested it with office workers who were divided into two teams and the game was called “Pretzel”. He showed it to 3M and they turned the game down.
Reyn took the game to the Milton Bradley Company in Springfield, MA where Mel Taft, the senior vice-president of R & D, chose “Pretzel” as the best of the eight-game ideas. Mel found there was a trademark problem, so he changed the game’s name to Twister, and Milton Bradley began to market Twister in 1966.
Milton Bradley’s competitors started to call the game “SEX IN A BOX” to destroy the game before it was marketed properly.
Milton Bradley discovered that stores were refusing to stock the game so they were going to pull it from the shelves. What they didn’t know was the public relations man they hired had made an arrangement to have the game played on The Tonight Show.
On May 3, 1966, Johnny Carson, the host of the show, was enticed by the “Twister” mat and demonstrated the game along with the beautiful Eva Gabor. That helped the game to say the least. Three million were sold the next year.
Twister was named “The Game of the Year” in 1967.
In 1985 Hasbro acquired the Milton Bradley Company, becoming Twister’s parent company. The Reyn Guyer Creative Group continues to work closely with Hasbro to develop and market new additions to the line of Twister products.
Great guitar lick and song. The song was based on an old blues song by Buddy Moss called Hey Lawdy Mama that Cream recorded. Eric Clapton took the lead vocal in this one. They reworked the song and the writing credits went to Felix Pappalardi, Gail Collins and Eric Clapton.
The song didn’t chart in the Billboard 100 but made it to #17 in the UK charts. A great classic Cream song.
When Cream performed the early version of this song as “Lawdy Mama,” Clapton and bass player Jack Bruce would share lead vocals. The band recorded both “Lawdy Mama” and “Strange Brew” at Atlantic Studios in New York on April 3, 1967. The band had spent the previous week in the city, performing daily at the “Music In The Fifth Dimension” show at the RKO Theater. These shows were organized by the influential disc jockey Murray the K, and provided great exposure for Cream in America. Other acts on the bill for some of these shows: The Who, Wilson Pickett and the Lovin’ Spoonful. Cream would complete the Disraeli Gears album when they returned to the United States the next month.
The lyrics refer to a female, which could mean drugs or be a more literal reference to a woman. Either way, she is “killing what’s inside of you.”
Cream had a very psychedelic sound, and this song was released in the Summer of Love, where it fit in quite well.
To craft “Strange Brew,” producer Felix Pappalardi added Eric Clapton’s vocal to a take of the band’s recording of “Lawdy Mama,” which appears as a bonus track on the 2004 re-release of Disraeli Gears, but didn’t make the original album. Jack Bruce wasn’t happy about this, especially since he wasn’t able to re-record his bassline. To keep the tenuous peace in the band during Cream’s reunion concerts in 2005, “Strange Brew” was omitted from their 19-song playlist, despite being one of their best known and loved songs.
Clapton got the idea for the album title after a roadie named Mick Turner told him about the derailleur gears on his bicycle. Derailleur, pronounced “Di-rail-yer,” are the kind of gears commonly found on 10-speed bikes. The roadie pronounced it “Disraeli,” which led to the title.
On Eric Clapton’s Crossroads boxed set, this is placed next to “Lawdy Mama,” the Blues song it is based on.
Strange Brew
Strange brew, kill what’s inside of you.
She’s a witch of trouble in electric blue, In her own mad mind she’s in love with you. With you. Now what you gonna do? Strange brew, kill what’s inside of you.
She’s some kind of demon messing in the glue. If you don’t watch out it’ll stick to you. To you. What kind of fool are you? Strange brew, kill what’s inside of you.
On a boat in the middle of a raging sea, She would make a scene for it all to be Ignored. And wouldn’t you be bored? Strange brew, kill what’s inside of you.
Strange brew, strange brew, strange brew, strange brew. Strange brew, kill what’s inside of you
This song came off of the great Document album. With some REM songs it takes a few listens for me but this one… the first time was enough to know I really liked it. It was recorded in the Sound Emporium in Nashville, Tennessee. The song peaked at #69 in 1988. The song was inspired by Subterranean Homesick Blues by Bob Dylan and you can tell.
Michael Stipe said: “The words come from everywhere. I’m extremely aware of everything around me, whether I am in a sleeping state, awake, dream-state or just in day to day life. There’s a part in ‘It’s The End Of The World As We Know It’ that came from a dream where I was at Lester Bangs’ birthday party and I was the only person there whose initials weren’t L.B. So there was Lenny Bruce, Leonid Brezhnev, Leonard Bernstein… So that ended up in the song along with a lot of stuff I’d seen when I was flipping TV channels. It’s a collection of streams of consciousness.”
Stipe claims to have a lot of dreams about the end of the world, destroyed buildings and the like. His stream-of-consciousness writing style in this is very similar to the way a dream moves.
This started off as a song called “Bad Day,” and had lyrics decrying the politics of the Reagan administration. R.E.M. finally released “Bad Day” on their 2003 hits compilation album, In Time: The Best of R.E.M. 1988-2003.
When R.E.M. played this live, the audience reacted with a party vibe that threw off the band. They thought the apocalyptic lyrics would create a more subdued response.
Michael Stipe said that the lyrics were written to make people smile. The words he used tend to make your mouth smile when you speak them. >>
In the last verse, the line, “The other night I tripped at Knox” refers to Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, where the band had a night of fun.
This appears in the movies Dream A Little Dream, Independence Day, Tommy Boy and Chicken Little. >>
The government of the Soviet Union allowed this to appear on a 1990 Greenpeace album that was distributed there.
Billy Joel had a huge hit two years later when he used the rapid-vocal, stream of consciousness lyric style on “We Didn’t Start The Fire.”
This appeared in an episode of The Simpsons when Homer and Moe are fighting about Moe’s new bar. Homer opens his own bar in his garage and then lies to REM about why they are playing there. >>
Brett Anderson, lead singer of the all-girl band The Donnas, told Rolling Stone magazine that she is an “R.E.M. geek” and can recite all of the lyrics to the song.
It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)
That’s great, it starts with an earthquake Birds and snakes, and aeroplanes And Lenny Bruce is not afraid
Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn World serves its own needs, Don’t mis-serve your own needs Speed it up a notch, speed, grunt, no, strength, The ladder starts to clatter With a fear of height, down, height Wire in a fire, represent the seven games And a government for hire and a combat site Left her, wasn’t coming in a hurry With the Furies breathing down your neck
Team by team, reporters baffled, trumped, tethered, cropped Look at that low plane, fine, then Uh oh, overflow, population, common group But it’ll do, save yourself, serve yourself World serves its own needs, listen to your heart bleed Tell me with the Rapture and the reverent in the right, right You vitriolic, patriotic, slam fight, bright light Feeling pretty psyched
It’s the end of the world as we know it It’s the end of the world as we know it It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine
Six o’clock, T.V. hour, don’t get caught in foreign tower Slash and burn, return, listen to yourself churn Lock him in uniform, book burning, bloodletting Every motive escalate, automotive incinerate Light a candle, light a motive, step down, step down Watch your heel crush, crush, uh oh This means no fear, cavalier, renegade and steering clear A tournament, a tournament, a tournament of lies Offer me solutions, offer me alternatives and I decline
It’s the end of the world as we know it (I had some time alone) It’s the end of the world as we know it (I had some time alone) It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine (time I had some time alone) I feel fine (I feel fine)
It’s the end of the world as we know it (time I had some time alone) It’s the end of the world as we know it (time I had some time alone) It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine (time I had some time alone)
The other night I drifted nice continental drift divide Mountains sit in a line, Leonard Bernstein Leonid Brezhnev, Lenny Bruce and Lester Bangs Birthday party, cheesecake, jellybean, boom You symbiotic, patriotic, slam but neck, right, right
It’s the end of the world as we know it (time I had some time alone) It’s the end of the world as we know it (time I had some time alone) It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine (time I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it It’s the end of the world as we know it It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine (time I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it (time I had some time alone) It’s the end of the world as we know it (time I had some time alone) It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine (time I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it (time I had some time alone) It’s the end of the world as we know it (time I had some time alone) It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine (time I had some time alone)
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