March 17th is Michael Ivins Birthday!
Let’s help Michael Ivins – aka @Tekkbot on Twitter – celebrate his birthday tomorrow by sending messages with the hashtag #HappyBirthdayMichael.
Michael Ivins is not just one of the founding members of The Flaming Lips, he is the band’s “quiet soul”… read more about that, and watch videos spotlighting Michael’s contributions to the group’s live sound here…
You may recall dozens of photos, original art works, video messages and song covers wishing Wayne Coyne a happy 50th birthday poured in between January 7th and January 12, 2011 to twitter.com/FutureHeartDay and here at psychexfutureheart.wordpress. They came from fans spanning five decades in age, in at least four different countries on three continents. On Wayne’s birthday, the video was uploaded at youtube.com/user/psychexfutureheart and tweeted at Wayne.
(Click here for the original “birthday video request” post explaining the project, here for the contributors list, and watch the finished video here). See a picture of Wayne watching the video and more about his big day, here (includes drag queens, weird gals, vikings, goats, bondage rabbits, a pig’s heart and karaoke – photos, videos and more)...
Join us in wishing Michael just as stupendous a day, via twitter:
In the meantime, here’s some songs to get in the birthday tweeting mood:
Leave it Ween to make a birthday song with birthday voicemail and tally it off with Pink Floyd’s “Echoes”…
“I’m happy, I’m happy/ You’re like a bird that will not be” – leave it to Sufjan to write these lyrics!
Sometimes Birthdays aren’t so happy though…
Twenty years ago Damon Albarn put it this way, “It’s my birthday… very strange day… go outside day/ sit in park day… what a pathetic day
I don’t like this day/ it makes me feel too small”
If you were born after the 1970s you probably don’t remember a January without Martin Luther King Jr. Day. In fact, it wasn’t observed until 1986 (after being signed into law by Ronald Reagan in 1983)!
Back in 1980 Stevie Wonder released “Happy Birthday” (on Hotter Than Hell) as a plea to make King’s birthday a national holiday. Likewise, the album’s liner design was dedicated to this cause, with pictures of King and an essay by Wonder about the effort to establish the day.
Regardless of the cause behind Stevie’s song, the refrain of “Happy Birthday” is universal enough to celebrate anybody’s big day…
Originally The Tune Weavers’ sole hit (in 1958), “Happy Happy Birthday Baby” has been covered by Wanda Jackson, Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson.
One of the most mysterious “birthday” songs is The Sugarcubes’ “Birthday”. Bjork explained, “It’s a story about a love affair between a five year old girl, a secret and a man who lives next door. The song’s called Birthday because it’s his fiftieth birthday, but not many people can figure that out of the lyrics ‘cos it’s more about the atmosphere around it and how they touch… I was always changing my mind about what the lyrics should be about. I had the atmosphere right from the start but not the facts. It finally ended up concentrating on this experience I remembered having as a little girl, among many other little girls’ experirnces. It’s like huge men, about fifty or so, affect little girls very erotically but nothing happens… nothing is done, just this very strong feeling. I picked on this subject to show that anything can affect you erotically; material, a tree, anything.”
Wait, wait… what’s that Bjork??? “Huge men affect little girls very erotically” – uh, OK then…
The Future Heart 