So we're having a nice pre-snowstorm dinner the other night, and Peggy comes out with this, a sentence that I am fairly certain has never been spoken in English before (I can guarantee that in Russian):
"Rachmaninoff looked like Barney Fife."
Well, there they are, folks, Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff, the great Russian composer, and Bernard Milton (possibly Oliver, possibly "P" Fife, depending on which "Andy of Mayberry" rerun you watch) on the right. I see a certain resemblance around the eyes.
Rachmaninoff (whose friends called him "Rocky") was sort of an American pop music composer, accidentally. Eric Carmen lifted the main melody for the second movement of of his Piano Concerto No. 2 for his hit record "All By Myself," and from his Symphony No. 2, the former Raspberry ripped off the third movement for his song "Never Gonna Fall In Love Again."
At the time he was "borrowing" the Russian's music, he thought those melodies were in the public domain. He thought wrong. And he had to pay the Rachmaninoff estate to make up for his misappropriation.
Barney Fife, whose friends called him "Barney," would not have countenanced the theft of intellectual property had he been on the Mayberry Crime Watch at the time. Eric Carmen may well have wound up in State Prison with the Hubacher Brothers if Barney had anything to do about it.
They sent a very nice Christmas card, didn't they?
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