Hey Joe, let’s play guitar...
QUESTION Did film star Joe Pesci play in a band with Jimi Hendrix?
YES, Joe Pesci and Jimi Hendrix did play in the same band, but not at the same time. Joseph Frank Pesci was born on February 9, 1943, in Newark, New Jersey, and as a child acted in local radio dramas. At ten he was already singing and dancing on the live TV variety show Star Time Kids.
In 1962, he had a brief stint with the twist band Joey Dee & The Starliters. They were regulars at the Peppermint Lounge, a famous club on 45th Street in New York City.
In 1961, they released their tribute to the club, The Peppermint Twist, which went to No 1 in the U.S. A young Joe Pesci is featured dancing the twist in an early TV recording of the song recorded at the Peppermint Lounge. He later played guitar during some of their gigs, but did not feature on sound recordings.
In 1966, Jimi Hendrix (then Jimmy James) played a few gigs for Joey Dee & The Starliters. Hendrix was guitarist for a number of bands, including New Yorkbased R&B outfit, Curtis Knight and the Squires and the Isley Brothers.
According to Joey Dee: ‘He (Hendrix) showed up at my house for a try-out with just an electric guitar. I had sound equipment in the garage, and he plugged his guitar into an amp. After he played for 30 seconds, I said: “You’re hired.”’
Pesci subsequently went solo, recording the album Little Joe Sure Can Sing under the stage name Joe Ritchie, which featured a number of cover songs such as Got To Get You Into My Life and Fixing A Hole by The Beatles and To Love Somebody by the Bee Gees.
Hendrix, on the other hand, died aged 27 in a hotel room in Notting Hill, London.
In 1989, in an attempt to cash in on the success of the character Pesci played in the film My Cousin Vinny, he released a comic album called Vincent Laguardia Gambini Sings Just For You, featuring songs such as Yo Cousin Vinny, Wise Guy and Robbie Hood. Tim Marshall, Bridgnorth, Shropshire.
QUESTION Why does sub rosa (‘under the rose’) mean ‘in secret’?
IT’S said Harpocrates, the Greek god of silence, found Venus making love, and Cupid bribed him to keep quiet by giving him the first rose ever created.
The legend might have been inspired by what the Greeks thought was a picture of Horus, the Egyptian god of silence seated under a rose with a finger at his lips. In fact, the rose was a lotus and the infant Horus was merely sucking his finger.
Cupid is often portrayed as the son of Venus and war god Mars. According to other sources, Cupid (as Eros) arose out of Chaos, along with Tartarus and Earth, making him one of the oldest gods.
Thus the rose came to be the emblem of silence and ever since a rose carved on the ceilings of dining and drawing rooms where diplomats gathered enjoined all present to observe secrecy about any matter discussed sub rosa, or ‘under the rose’. A similar phrase was sub vino sub rosa
est — ‘What is said under the influence of wine is secret’ — a reminder that things revealed by tongues made loose with wine were not to be repeated.
John Buxton, Chesterfield, Derbys.
QUESTION What are the origins of the separatist movement in Catalonia?
IN THE ninth century, Wilfred the Hairy, Count of Barcelona, united four Catalan feudal counties. This eventually became Catalonia, an independent region with its own language, laws and customs. In 1150, the marriage of Petronilia, Queen of Aragon, and Ramon Berenguer IV, Count of Barcelona, formed a dynasty. Their son Alfonso II became King of Aragon, ruling Aragon and Catalonia, though Catalan autonomy stayed intact.
In 1359, the Generalitat of Catalonia was established with a president and aone of Europe’s earliest parliaments.
In 1469, King Ferdinand of Aragon married Queen Isabella of Castile y Lyon, uniting the two major crowns of the Iberian peninsula, leaving Portugal in the west, the Muslim caliphate of Granada in the south and the Kingdom of Navarre in the north. Navarre and Granada were then conquered by Isabella and Ferdinand.
Throughout, Catalonia retained considerable selfautonomy, with its own political institutions, courts and laws.
This lasted until the reign of Bourbon Philip V, King of Spain from 1700 to 1746. The War of the Spanish Succession saw a rival claimant to the throne in Philip of France. The Catalans backed the wrong side and were defeated in 1714.
Subsequent kings tried to impose the Spanish language and laws on the region, but they abandoned their attempts in 1931 and restored the Generalitat (the national Catalan government).
During the Spanish Civil War, General Franco took control, killing 3,500 people and forcing more into exile. Catalonian separatists were suppressed, Catalan president Lluis Companys was shot for dissent in 1940 and Castilian Spanish was the only language allowed in law.
The region was granted some autonomy in 1977, when democracy returned, but calls for complete independence grew steadily until July 2010, when the Constitutional Court in Madrid overruled part of the 2006 autonomy statute, stating there was no legal basis for recognising Catalonia as a nation.
The economic crisis has only served to magnify calls for Catalan independence as the wealthy Barcelona region is seen as propping up the poorer rest of Spain.
George B. Shriver, Manchester.
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