Midweek Market Watch: Wall Street Raider (A Guest Post by Dan Hansen)

GUEST BLOGGER Dan Hansen Shares 
His Enthusiasm for the Game Wall Street Raider

Wall art by Dan Hansen

I don't usually talk about things I like because they are nerdy, bizarre, or inappropriate. For instance, I'm obsessed with a computer game no-one has heard of called Wall Street Raider. It's a rare and minimal game of numbers and text fields...but it simulates 1500 companies. Every time you start the game you get these hysterical cynical dystopian quotes like:

"Criminal: a person with predatory instincts who has not sufficient capital to form a corporation." 
– Howard Scott

"A gold mine is a hole in the ground with a liar on top." – Mark Twain

"Respect, like love, is not something that can be earned – it must be bought and paid for." 
– Doc Snopes

"Practicing law is the opposite of having sex. Even when it's good, it's bad." 
– Mort Zuckerman

I find it fascinating that there really is no simulated stock market game out there besides this one. I always wondered if this was somehow intentional. Like maybe the market would get "too efficient" if this kind of stuff was downloadable for kids on the PS4. They'd be asking mom for a $25,000 ThinkOrSwim account instead of a college fund, causing concern amongst quants running blackbox algorithms for the head-scratching CEO's of major financial institutions playing arbitrage games with our oil and orange juice.

"Escape from Meaning" -- Dan Hansen

In Wall Street Raider you can do things like sell 500% naked call options while shorting 20% shares of a company during a market crash, completely wrecking it. You can create shell companies that create shell companies to leverage the crap out of your trading swagger. I decided to look into the creator Michael D. Jenkins today. What a Hunter S Thompsonesque weird rabbit hole it's uncovered on a cold December afternoon. He seems to be one heck of a genius. The guy has Degrees from various IVY league schools in accounting, tax Law, government, economics, finance, business. Not only this but the man has written a book under the pseudonym Doc Michael "Coyote" Snopes called "The Gonzo Chronicles." Double take. What?? Yep, a real Gonzo journalist who writes exactly like Thompson about his adventures in corrupt companies sailing the high seas of crony capitalism. What are the chances all this synchronicity lines up on me? I had to buy his Kindle book. Here's a sample of his writing:

"I wrote this because I think I have an important story to tell about my life and spiritual journey, and I want to tell it to someone other than the drug dealers, faith healers, winos, morticians, stock swindlers, and mercenaries who make up my immediate circle of friends. You may think that I am writing this from a small, nondescript building, surrounded by high walls in a quiet suburb, and that perhaps I am confined by a jacket with longer than usual sleeves, or restrained by certain medications. However, I can assure you that I am currently on the outside, able to come and go as I please, and that I am writing this of my own free will."

Yeah so I've been obsessively playing this guy's computer game for years Here's excerpts from a description on his amazon page:

"After buying his first PC in 1983, Jenkins quickly learned DOS programming, which he found to be highly addictive, and by 1986, as a hobby, had published a uniquely sophisticated and entertaining corporate finance/stock market game and simulation, "Wall Street Raider."".

"Sometimes hobbies become obsessions, and I never seem to run out of new wrinkles and ghoulish financial scenarios to add to this simulation, as well as inventing new ways to make it ever more realistic and difficult to win at, just like the real financial world," Jenkins says, although he earns little more than "beer money" from his small but fanatical following of fans of the game, in over 90 countries at last count."

RELATED LINKS
Read the full bio at amazon.
A visit with Dan Hansen.

Tech Tuesday: Super Bowl Social Analytics: Tide Wins and the Eagles Soar

For marketers, one major fascination with regard to the Internet is the massive quantities of data that they get to sift through. When you're on a sophisticated website like Amazon.com these days, your every move is tracked, analyzed, backtracked, dissected and anticipated. Smaller companies may not have the same level of sophistication as the big kids, but you can be sure that if a company is spending money online, they're paying attention to numbers of one kind or another.

The ability to measure activities in your own website is not that difficult, even if knowing what to do with that data is a bit more complicated. When it comes to the larger universe of Internet data though, there's a lot more info to scrape and crunch, and where do you find it?

Talkwalker, founded by Luxembourg Boy wunderkind Thibaut Britz, has emerged to offer its services to help companies get a handle on the effectiveness of their brand marketing activities. While it's fresh in our minds, let's take a look at some of the intriguing numbers surrounding this weekend's Super Bowl.

The fact that it was a great battle, a real nail biter that pit an underdog never-done-it-all Eagles team against the totally dominating, never-say-die Patriots, that squeezed blood pressure levels to the very last seconds of this super thrill-ride.... well, that kept people from turning the channel, so nearly every marketing exec was grateful people were still watching at the end. In short, there were plenty of stats to measure in the Battle of the Brands.

First, let's not forget that every football franchise is likewise a brand. The Eagles took the Vince Lombardi trophy. We all saw Monday's headlines. But who led the scoring when it came to social media mentions? Despite New England's dominance the past dozen years, the Philadelphia Eagles scored more than 50% more mentions than the Pats, 1.4 million to 804 thousand. For the record, hashtag SuperBowl scored 5.3 million mentions Sunday in the Big Three social media networks, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. (Courtesy Talkwalker.)

Star Power @ Halftime 
Evidently Justin Timberlake is a bigger sensation than I've realized. Timberlake had a million mentions, which was near 200K more that the Patriots. I guess that Halftime Show Selection Committee earned its stripes again this year.

A Global Event
As everyone knows, the Super Bowl has become an international event, as these Talkwalker stats affirm:
- Brazil - 186.8K mentions
- Mexico - 172.1K mentions
- UK - 147.7k mentions
- Canada - 129.1K mentions

Battle of the Brands

When all was said and done, if I were a gambling man I would have said Tide won this one. Sure enough, Talkwalker confirmed that Tide received 163.8K mentions during the Super Bowl. I loved what they did with their concept that if you see a clean white shirt, it's Tide. In fact, when the Persil ad came on near the end of the second quarter, I half thought that it was a clever Tide ad, that there would be a twist at the end, like an O Henry story. I'd never heard of Persil before, so maybe it was brilliant for them to have a Super Bowl ad and get the name out there. Maybe. I did check out their website and, yes, it is a real company that makes laundry detergent.

According to the data, the Mountain Dew & Doritos joint ad featuring a rap battle between Morgan Freeman, Peter Dinklage, and Missy Elliot was mentioned 115.1K times. Super-well done, it was hot. I mean, cool. I mean, you know what I mean.

I don't know what the numbers were for the Dodge Ram ad in which Vikings come all the way across the seas of time to their Viking in the Twin Cities. Upon arrival they see a sign that the Patriots and Eagles are playing, so they pull a U-Turn in their Ram pickup to head home. I'm sure everyone in Minnesota enjoyed it. I did. The Ram marketing team was clearly aiming for relevance. Unfortunately, their attempt with that Martin Luther King, Jr. speech hit a sour note. My immediate reaction was that this was not an appropriate appropriation, to use the Civil Rights leader to pitch trucks. Sure enough, Talkwalker data confirmed what my instincts told me. Of the 11.5 thousand mentions, most were negative. Here's but one example.
 
Trending #SelfieKid
In the middle of all the Halftime Show hoopla Justin Timberlake paused to have his pic taken in a young fan's selfie. The #SelfieKid hashtag had more than 11.4K seemingly instantaneous mentions.

* * * *
For what it's worth, I love Twitter as a social media tool. If you're not into Twitter, it might be because you don't really understand its power. Then again, that's another story. I say the same thing about Dylan.

Meantime, life goes on all around you. Engage it.

RELATED LINKS
Speaking of Numbers: Just How Big Was The Minnesota Super Bowl
Best and Worst Ads from Sunday's Big Game
Talkwalker Home Page

Local Art Seen: Karen Anderson's "Winter Woods" at Lakeside Gallery

Sign outside Lakeside Gallery on Saturday.

"When the weather outside is frightful..."

The warmth of an art gallery is so delightful, 

with refreshments and friends you know

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

Yes, the roads may have been a little slick, but sand trucks and snow plows were out so you really could get around. Karen Anderson's opening at the Lakeside Gallery made for a nice destination, and as is often the case the place was abuzz. Anderson is a watercolorist who does nature scenes. Birch trees seems to be a favorite of many artists that painter/proprietor Aaron Kloss represents, and Anderson is no exception. They abundance of birch is an exhilarating part of living here in the Northland, and like the Great Lake many artists draw inspiration from this. 

The walls are awash with local art here. 

Like many artists, their reproduced pictures make great gift cards.

The guests on the right stand admiringly in front of Anderson's work.

The natural beauty of the region is compelling in any season.

The gallery has a wide range of gift items, locally made.

The title of Anderson's show is "Winter Woods."

Lakeside Gallery is located on Superior Street at 45th Avenue East. The door to the adjacent coffee shop is always open. Grab a cup of pick-me-up and enjoy the gallery. Anderson's show will be featured through the month of February.

Meantime, art goes all around you. Engage it.

Writer's Workshop: 20 Grand Openings

I've been listening to the Great Courses lecture series titled Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition, an 42-CD set with 84 half-hour lectures offering bite-sized overviews of many of the influential figures in literary history. Last night I finished the Tolstoy lecture on Anna Karenina, which opens with this classic first sentence: "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

Just last week I was thinking about the multitude of ways performers and song writers begin songs. The opening triggers a feel for what's to come, and carries you, or slams you, into the song itself. The crowd noise at the beginning of The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper conveys a sense of performance in which a curtain lifts and the opening chords tell us to get ready for the show.

Magical Mystery Tour begins with a trumpet fanfare of sorts and the voice of a conductor announcing it's time to roll up for the Mystery Tour, "step right this way." The last song on the album -- originally released as a single -- also begins with a trumpet fanfare, only this time its the French National Anthem, "La Marseillaise."

Think about all the ways that your favorite songs begin. Sometimes it's a bass line as in "Lady Madonna" and sometimes its a distinctive drum intro as in "Honky Tonk Women," or a male chorus as in "You Can't Always Get What You Want." When you hear the opening you know immediately, if you're familiar with the piece, where it is going to take you. Other songs with distinctive openings that came to mind for me included "Magic Bus" by The Who, "Layla" by Eric Clapton, "Pretty Woman" by Roy Orbison, and that twangy guitar that opens "Folsom Prison Blues" by Johnny Cash. An hundred more songs could be listed here and you probably have faves of your own you could share.

* * * * 

Twenty-five years ago, after being an extra in the film Iron Will (shot here in Duluth) I imagined becoming a Hollywood screenwriter and wrote or co-wrote a few screenplays and treatments. In learning how to write for the silver screen I watched the first ten minutes of what seemed like a hundred movies (from the library). It was a learning experience. My favorite was probably Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat. See how he tells the story, introducing one person at a time and developing the ten characters through mini-vignettes. Notice how the storyline is created when the tenth man climbs into the boat.

But alas, we're talking first lines of novels here. And we'd best get to it. Here are some first lines from my readings. Tale of Two Cities I read in ninth grade, so these are from a half century of reading.

1.

As I reflected on this theme the first one that came to mind was the opening line of Moby Dick
"Call me Ishmael." That's a three-word sentence that conveys much when you assemble all of it's associations. So direct.

2.
The next that came to mind for me was this classic opening line from Dickens' Tale of Two Cities: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

3.
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking 13.  (1984, George Orwell)

4.
You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain)

5.

Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested. (The Trial, Franz Kafka)

6.
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. (Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger)

7.
Mother died today. (The Stranger, Albert Camus)

8.
The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. (Neuromancer, William Gibson)

9.
All this happened, more or less. (Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut)

10.
I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story. (Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton)

* * * *

O.K. so that's ten. Plus there were ten songs, for my self-imposed target of 20.  One could easily make a list of first lines of songs that serve as setups, but this is as far as we'll go here. Writers -- whether playwrights, songwriters, poets or novelists -- have a lot of weight on their shoulders when trying to write a first sentence or first paragraph. Bloggers, too, think about this.

Some other time we'll look at endings. This time, though, I'll end with another grand opening, from one of my favorite stories, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, by C.S. Lewis: There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.

What's your favorite opening line?

Karen Anderson Opening, Magnolia Salon Kickoff and a Plug for Julie Deters

Painting by Karen Anderson. 

It's already February, so don't be alarmed by the weather. Spring is in sight. No matter that temps this past week hit 22 below on our thermometers.

This afternoon from 1:00 to 3:00 is the opening reception at Lakeside Gallery for Karen Anderson, featured artist for February. Karen's work is collectively called Winter Woods and features vibrant winter landscapes. “My efforts to observe and express our Northland winter’s enchantment inevitably stirs a reverence for it’s Creator," she explains. "I try to capture the soft warm glow of the winter sun and the bold calligraphy of the shadows on the snow. There is an abiding stillness in winter woods.”

Indeed there's something dramatic about the play of light and shadows on winter snow. The other night our brilliant full moon cast a remarkable midnight glow over our freshly blanketed landscape, more like a white sheet than a quilt.

The Report from Magnolia Salon

Emily (L) and Glenn (R) acknowledging Yvette's contributions
toward making the Magnolia Salon a reality.

Earlier this week we wrote about the upcoming launch of the Magnolia Salon not really knowing what to really expect. The vision had been outlined, but it wasn't till we arrived would we see whether this was something would get up and go.

Sure enough, one could readily surmise by the cars lining the street that something was up. Good heavens, we were lucky to have a seat. When we entered the Oldenburg House we were met by a roomful of people enthusiastically chattering away. The positive vibe was palpable. At a certain point in time Glenn and Emily, our Oldenburg House hosts, welcomed us and then introduced Yvette, an entrepreneur who this past year opened the Magnolia Cafe in Carlton. Magnolia Salon was spun from discussions and dream-weaving by Emily and Yvette, in part stimulated by the scene from Midnight In Paris where Gil goes back in time and finds himself in the company of Gertrude Stein and her own Paris salon, a meeting place for the like of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Picasso and other notable figures.

Yvette expressed appreciation for our having stepped out to be part of the opening, stating that their vision was for Magnolia Salon to be "a way to bring people together, to gather, to meet, to talk and build community."

Since this was the first night, there was open discussion about the best way to make this work. Some expressed that the current format might make it hard for people to mix and a number of ideas were shared on how to make it easier to interact with others. One of the overarching aims of the Salon is to find ways to spark creativity in daily life.

In addition to building community, the Magnolia Salon features soup and sandwiches, libations and sweets. I liked what Emily said a lot, though, that they were desirous to discover "what this old house wants to happen here."

Upcoming weeks (this will be a weekly event on Thursdays through the end of May) will include music and a variety of speakers with the aim of taking a deeper dive into things we've all thought about in our isolated ways.

There were quite a few people involved with music and teaching. Next Thursday they're slated to devote the evening to an inside look at what takes place in preparation for a jazz performance. Next Friday they will be Cookin' at the O. Thursday, the team will be tuning up, working out intros, outros and all the rest. Check in at 6:00 p.m. Thursday next week and make yourself at home.

Julie Deters Fun(d) Raiser
March 3 there will be a Fun(d) Raiser for cancer-survivor Julie Deters, whom we met at the Magnolia Salon last night. This special event has a surprise twist. Instead of seeking assistance with medical bills she is seeking to raise funds to get certification as a Registered Yoga Teacher so she can give back to the community. The event is March 3 at Peace Church. Her aim is to gain more skills to help people who have experienced trauma in their lives.

Meantime, life goes on all around you. Get into it. 

Dylan's "Who Killed Davey Moore?" Triggers Thoughts About Football Violence

This past week I watched the Bob Dylan documentary The Other Side of the Mirror, which captures his performances from 1963 to 1965 at the Newport Folk Festival. I found the power of his song "Who Killed Davey Moore" to be quite arresting, the refrain each time delivered with pointed power.

For those unfamiliar with the backstory, Davey Moore was a champion featherweight boxer who died after a fight with an upcoming Cuban boxer named Sugar Ramos in March, 1963. The incident triggered debates about the morality of boxing. Folksinger Phil Ochs wrote a song titled "Davey Moore" that criticized the sport of boxing and the people involved. Dylan's version took the song to a different level. Recorded but never released on vinyl, it was included in his Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991 in 1991. His October 1964 performance appears on his Bootleg Series Vol. 6: Bob Dylan Live 1964, Concert at Philharmonic Hall, released in 2004. I found the Newport Folk Festival version on YouTube, though it may get removed for copyright reasons by the time you read this.

THE GRONKOWSKI HIT
I'd already been thinking again about the violence inflicted in many professional sports, triggered in part by the hit Rob Gronkowski took in the AFC playoff game two weeks ago. Gronkowski doesn't blame Barry Church for slamming into him helmet to helmet. It's part of the game. But some questions still hang out there, which we will get to in a sec.

After watching the film about Dylan at Newport I was moved to want to find the song again online. The website I found it at did something interesting. In boxing each round is three minutes, so they had the tenth and final round of the Moore-Ramos fight playing in the margin while the song was being sung through streaming media. It added a dimension to the song. Davey Moore was standing when the fight ended, wobbly, apparently not aware that he would soon be dead.

TEAM SPIRIT
IN 2016 the Duluth Art Institute displayed a exhibition titled Team Spirit featuring thought-provoking work by Jen Dietrich and her former student Robb Quisling, now himself an art teacher. One portion of the exhibit addressed the issue of concussions in football, a hot topic at the time, an issue that had come under journalist scrutiny after San Diego Chargers' Junior Seau's 2012 suicide. This is an especially interesting and thought-provoking set of pieces with some clever juxtapositions.

At issue was the long-term consequences of repeated concussions. Brain scans and modern medicine are showing us what most anyone knows who has heard the slurred language of an old boxer.

THE SONG ITSELF

The song's construction is in the classic form of many folk songs. In "The Times They Are A-Changin'" each verse is directed to a different audience and how they might best respond because "the times they are a-changin'. The first first is general, "Come gather 'round people." In the second Dylan talks to writers and critics, in the third he addresses political leaders and in the fourth he speaks to parents whose children are responding to the times with the final verse being a summing up.

Likewise, in a variation of the form, "Hard Rain" begins with the question, "Where have you been my blue-eyed son?" The son lists all the places, and is then asked in successive verses, "What did you see?" and "What did you hear?" and "Who did you meet?" culminating in the question, "What'll you do now?"  In the end, the narrator sings, "And I'll know my song well before I start singing, It's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard rain's a gonna fall."

And so we turn to Who Killed Davey Moore, which is a reconfigured variation on the format of Who Killed Cock Robin, with more elaboration. In Dylan's song each of the constituencies is asked, "Who killed Davey Moore, why an what's the reason for?" In other words, who is responsible. First the referee gives his defense, then the crowd, his manager, the gambling man, the sportswriter and finally, the man who laid him low.

Here are the lyrics.

Who Killed Davey Moore?

Who killed Davey Moore,

Why an' what's the reason for?

"Not I, " says the referee,
"Don't point your finger at me.
I could've stopped it in the eighth
An' maybe kept him from his fate,
But the crowd would've booed, I'm sure,
At not gettin' their money's worth.
It's too bad he had to go,
But there was a pressure on me too, you know.
It wasn't me that made him fall.
No, you can't blame me at all."

Who killed Davey Moore,
Why an' what's the reason for?

"Not us, " says the angry crowd,
Whose screams filled the arena loud.
"It's too bad he died that night
But we just like to see a fight.
We didn't mean for him t' meet his death,
We just meant to see some sweat,
There ain't nothing wrong in that.
It wasn't us that made him fall.
No, you can't blame us at all."

Who killed Davey Moore,
Why an' what's the reason for?

"Not me, " says his manager,
Puffing on a big cigar.
"It's hard to say, it's hard to tell,
I always thought that he was well.
It's too bad for his wife an' kids he's dead,
But if he was sick, he should've said.
It wasn't me that made him fall.
No, you can't blame me at all."

Who killed Davey Moore,
Why an' what's the reason for?

"Not me, " says the gambling man,
With his ticket stub still in his hand.
"It wasn't me that knocked him down,
My hands never touched him none.
I didn't commit no ugly sin,
Anyway, I put money on him to win.
It wasn't me that made him fall.
No, you can't blame me at all."

Who killed Davey Moore,
Why an' what's the reason for?

"Not me, " says the boxing writer,
Pounding print on his old typewriter,
Sayin', "Boxing ain't to blame,
There's just as much danger in a football game."
Sayin', "Fist fighting is here to stay,
It's just the old American way.
It wasn't me that made him fall.
No, you can't blame me at all."

Who killed Davey Moore,
Why an' what's the reason for?

"Not me, " says the man whose fists
Laid him low in a cloud of mist,
Who came here from Cuba's door
Where boxing ain't allowed no more.
"I hit him, yes, it's true,
But that's what I am paid to do.
Don't say 'murder, ' don't say 'kill.'
It was destiny, it was God's will."
Who killed Davey Moore,
Why an' what's the reason for?

Lyrics by Bob Dylan

As I watched a 22-year-old Bob Dylan perform this song, his manner of singing it and the power of the lyrics pummeled me like a flurry of punches. And I thought about each of the players in the song-saga: the referees, the fans, the coaches, the gamblers, the sportswriters and the defensive players who specialized in hard hits.

The verse on gamblers is interesting when you think about how Jimmy the Greek, a Las Vegas odds-maker, was embedded in the coverage on Monday Night Football for so many years. Howard Cosell's last book stated that a quarter of a trillion dollars was bet on football each year. That was a long time ago now, and may be half a trillion. Ever wonder how all those casinos were built in Vegas and Atlantic City?

A line from Ronnie Lott's book Total Impact came to mind when I thought about this song. Lott was a defensive safety who specialized in hard hits. Like many defenders their aim was to make receivers scared before they ever touched the ball because they were about to be slain. Lott wrote that as he hit an opponent "my eyes close, roll back into my head . . . snot sprays out of my nostrils, covering my mouth and cheeks." Slam, bam.

It was this kind of football that sportswriters like to see, so long as no one ended up in the hospital. But over time, players were indeed ending up in the hospital. At least eight have ended up in the morgue.

Here's the song.

I wanted to re-write this as follows...

Who Killed Junior Seau? Why is football a Sacred Cow?
or
Who Killed Junior Seau and what's the NFL doin' now?

If the Gronkowski hit were only an anomaly I suppose my concerns would then be less relevant. I know that this week's biggest NFL discussion topic had to do with what is or isn't a catch when a receiver fails to have control after hitting the ground. The rules need better defining so the refs get their calls right.

RELATED LINKS
An article about the Davey Moore fight. 
NFL Players who have died by suicide.

Disclaimer: I grew up watching football on TV and playing football every day after school. We didn't wear pads or helmets and I never saw a concussion. A kid broke his leg once, and there were a few sprained ankles, but the game entertained primarily because of the strategy and finesse, the skills utilized. We were active and it kept us healthy.

EdNote: Top of page illustration by Ed Newman

Throwback Thursday: It's Another Winter Dance Party, 59 Years Since 1959

His birth name was Charles Hardin Holley, and the gift he gave the world was a sense of the joy of life. Music was his method. At sweet 16 his career as a performer was underway. Six years later it was over.

It was his mother who nicknamed him Buddy, saying that his birth name was a bit big for the lad. Music was part of his life at an early age, his parents more than supportive of his ambitions, as demonstrated by a letter to the editor that they wrote in defense of rock 'n roll.

Holly formed a band as soon as he graduated high school and was soon opening for national gigs that came through town. His bandmate said that the night they opened for Elvis Presley in 1955 was a turning point for the skinny guy with horn-rimmed glasses and a love for making music. He wrote and recorded his first hit with the Crickets in 1957. "That'll Be The Day" was the first of 7 hits that climbed the Pop 40 charts. The song hit #1 just 500 days before his untimely death.

Trivia: What Buddy Holly song became the Rolling Stones' first top ten hit? (see end of this blog post.)

It's been 59 years since ’59 when Buddy Holly and the Winter Dance Party graced the stage of the Duluth Armory! Join us to relive the energy of that cold night with Todd Eckart and His Band, one of Duluth's many talented performers. Kick back and enjoy the music or shake a leg to the timeless tunes of Holly and early rock ’n roll!

WHO: TODD ECKART AND HIS BAND with special guests the Superior Ballroom Dance Studio

WHEN: Sunday Feb 11th from 6:30 to 9:30 (doors open at 6:00)

WHAT: A TRIBUTE TO THE MUSIC OF BUDDY HOLLY AND THE LATE 50’s

WHERE: Grandma’s Sports Garden

TICKETS: Tickets are $15 in advance, $20 at the door, and are available at Electric Fetus or online at Eventbrite.

The evening is a fundraiser for the Armory Arts & Music Center and its Music Resource Center program. There will be a silent auction, dance demonstration, dance contest, and prizes for best 50’s attire.

Special thanks to event sponsors, WIPFLI and Grandma’s Sports Garden.

RELATED LINKS
Jim Heffernan shares memories of Buddy Holly.
Details of the Winter Dance Party Tour of 1959.
Details from the first portion of this blog post came from Biography.
Trivia Answer: "Not Fade Away"