Django Reinhardt

Jazz fans and gypsy music lovers adore Reinhardt, although the name isn’t familiar to many other music fans. Even so, he was a wildly inspirational musician who pioneered his own style of jazz that blended gypsy roots with jazz guitar. His music has since been featured on about a dozen movies, including The Matrix, L.A. Story, Chocolat and more.

Reinhardt started learning to play music as a boy, starting with the violin and then moving to the banjo and the guitar. When he was 18 though, tragedy struck. Django and his wife were living in a caravan where they sold imitation flowers made from celluloid and paper to supplement their meager income. When Reinhardt accidentally knocked down a candle on his way to bed, the caravan burst into flames, destroying all of his property and leaving him with first- and second-degree burns over the entire left side of his body.

As a result of the accident, his right leg and the 3^rd and 4^th fingers on his left hand were completely paralyzed. Doctors said he would have to get his leg amputated and that he would never play a string instrument again. But Reinhardt refused to get the surgery and within a year, he was able to walk with the use of a cane. While his fingers never recovered, the doctors were wrong about his music career as well.

As it happens, learning to play guitar again may have saved his life. Reinhardt ended up getting stuck in France during WWII and it was said that and handful of jazz-loving Nazis ensured his safety despite the fact that thousands of Gypsies were murdered under Nazi-occupied territories. To help protect himself further, he also developed a distinctively non-jazz sound to please the Nazis who, like the majority of their party, were adamantly against jazz.

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Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath

Interestingly, Django wasn’t just influential when it came to jazz musicians, he also played a major role in the creation of heavy metal. You might be asking yourself how in the world a gypsy jazz musician helped create one of the darkest genres around, but the answer isn’t in his sound, it’s in his story.

You see, guitarist Tony Iommi was talented, but he came from a poor, working-class family so he was forced to work at a sheet metal factory as a youngster, rather than chase his dreams of rock n’ roll stardom. Unfortunately, industrial factories aren’t the safest place for the hands of budding musicians. On his last day of work, Iommi severed the tips of the middle and ring fingers on his right hand. As a leftie, this meant his fretting hand was destroyed. Unsurprisingly, the teen was heart-broken and convinced this would be the end of his musical aspirations. However, his boss from the factory inspired Iommi to stick with his craft by bringing him a Django Reinhardt album and telling him about the jazz musician’s injury.

The inspiration worked like a charm and soon enough, Iommi was trying to remaster the guitar. At first he tried learning to play right-handed, but when that didn’t work, Iommi instead developed a few prosthetic fingertips using plastic covered in leather. Because his prosthetic fingers weren’t as tough as the real thing, Iommi started using lighter strings and detuning the strings so the tension would be lowered. To match Iommi’s sound, Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler did the same, and suddenly, the dark, deep sound of heavy metal was born solely as a technique to work around an injury.

Iommi’s technique was certainly successful. Aside from shaping the sound of a whole new music genre, he also went down in the history books as one of the most talented guitarists of all time, ranked 86^th on Rolling Stone’s “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time,” and number one in Guitar World’s “100 Greatest Metal Guitarists of All Time.”

Sources: Wikipedia and Mental Floss

Image via Adam Bielawski [Wikipedia]

Jerry Garcia

While Reinhardt and Iommi had to relearn their craft after losing a finger, Garcia started playing the guitar long after he lost a finger during a wood chopping incident that occurred when he was only four. Even so, he was inspired by Django to learn the banjo when he was in third grade. At 15, he got his first guitar and by 1960, Garcia was ready to start rocking the world with the Grateful Dead.

It wasn’t until 1986 that Jerry would face his greatest musical challenge yet. After suffering from drug use, a poor diet and a weight problem, Garcia collapsed into a diabetic coma that lasted for five full days. The coma had a dramatic effect on him, forcing him to relearn some of his most basic motor skills, which meant he had to completely relearn to play guitar. Fortunately, Jerry was dedicated to his own recovery and was able to play again after only a few months. He was even able to tour with the Dead and the Jerry Garcia Band later that year.

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Image via Carl Lender [Wikipedia]

Chet Baker

Even if you aren’t familiar with jazz, you’ve probably at least heard of legendary trumpeter Chet Baker. Baker was a talented musician and quickly garnered a strong following in the jazz community. But, unfortunately, like many jazz musicians, he eventually became addicted to heroin. His addiction almost ended up destroying his career, too, when he was savagely beaten in 1966 trying to get some drugs after a gig in San Francisco. When I say “savagely beaten,” I don’t just mean a black eye and a few sore ribs, I mean they essentially destroyed his livelihood by knocking out all of his front teeth.

For the next few years, Baker was stuck having to take odd jobs like pumping gas. All the while he worked to relearn to play the trumpet with his new dentures. If you’ve never played a woodwind or brass instrument, this might not seem all that difficult, but the reality is that these instruments require a precise use of the lips, teeth and facial muscles to be able to create a distinctive sound. With all new dentures and a whole new set of scars on his lips and cheeks, it took eight years for Baker to relearn to play the trumpet. In the meanwhile, he was able to play the flugelhorn in a West Coast Jazz style, but that certainly wasn’t his strong point and most jazz fans tend to overlook this point in his career.

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Image via Michiel Hendryckx [Wikipedia]

Rick Allen of Def Leppard

Rick Allen joined Def Leppard at exactly the right time. As soon as he joined the band, he was immediately opening for AC/DC and within a few months, he helped them record and release their first album, On Through the Night. Unfortunately, only a few years into his new musical career, he was involved in a serious auto accident on his way to a New Year’s Eve party. Allen’s Corvette flipped and while his girlfriend came out of the accident without any major injuries, Allen wasn’t so lucky. Because he wasn’t wearing his seat belt properly, Allen thrown from the vehicle and his left arm was severed.

The first person at the scene was a nurse who knew just what to do and the couple was quickly rushed to a hospital. Because the response was so quick, Allen’s arm was able to be reattached. It had to be removed later. though. due to a serious infection. Allen thought this was the end of his career and he began to suffer from major depression.

After seeing the pain of his friend and band mate, Def Leppard’s lead singer, Joe Elliot, was inspired to help Allen work around his loss. The pair soon met with a few engineers and designed a drum set that could be operated with only one arm and both feet. Pretty soon Allen was back on the road again and recording with the band.

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Image via Weatherman90 [Wikipedia]

In the end, these stories are great sources of inspiration, not only in showing what we are capable of overcoming in the face of adversity, but also in illustrating just how powerful friendship can be when it comes to recovering from an injury. Without help from his brother, Django Reinhardt never would have learned to play again. If Iommi’s boss had not introducing him to Reinhardt’s music, he may never have been inspired to play again. Without Joe Elliot, Allen may not have bothered trying to come up with a drum system that could be operated by pedals. Essentially, if you don’t have good friends and family, you’d better have some darn good disability insurance, because you might never be inspired to recover after a serious accident.

I don’t know about you guys, but I have a serious girl-crush on Tina Fey. It’s hard not to when the woman in question is unbelievably talented, smart, funny and beautiful. That’s why I’m so happy to get to write this Neatorama article about one of my biggest idols, who will be celebrating her forty-first birthday today. So for all you other SNL and 30 Rock fans, please join me in wishing Tina Fey a very happy birthday by enjoying these fascinating facts about one of the world’s most influential women (and that’s not just me speaking, see fact #7 for more details).

Image via David Shankbone [Flickr]

1) She Didn’t Start Out As “Tina”

Liz Lemon’s first name is actually Ms. Fey’s real first name. “Tina” was actually born Elizabeth Stamatina Fey. To be fair, at least Tina isn’t a complete stage name, it’s just not her real first name. In case you’ve ever wondered, she was born to a brokerage employee of Greek descent and a university grant proposal writer of German and Scottish descent.

2) She Has One Scary Scar Story

If you’ve ever looked closely enough at one of her movies or shows, you may have noticed that Tina has a fairly large scar on the left side of her cheek. While she refuses to talk about it, her husband finally revealed the story during a 2009 interview with Vanity Fair –and the story is a little terrifying.

According to Tina’s husband, she was playing in the front yard of her house when she was five years old and someone randomly came by and slashed her face with a razor. It happened so fast that when it happened, she thought someone marked her with a pen.

Tina says she doesn’t like to talk about the incident because she doesn’t want to seem like she is exploiting the trauma for attention. She’s also said that talking about it upsets her parents.

If you watch 30 Rock (or pretty much any of her work), you’ll notice the show overwhelmingly features her standing with her right side to the camera –that’s why.

Image via Vivanista1 [Flickr]

3) She Fell in Love With Comedy At An Early Age

As a youngster, Tina’s parents let her watch all kinds of classic comedy television including Monty Python, the Marx Brothers and The Honeymooners. Her dad was such a big fan of The Honeymooners that he refused to let her watch The Flintstones because they were a rip off of the show.

Funnily enough, she even watched two of the shows that she would later work on, SNL and Second City Television (although Tina would only appear on the stage version of The Second City, not the television program, which was cancelled before she joined the improv group).

By middle school, she had already decided that she wanted to be involved with comedy when she grew up.

4) SNL Wasn’t Her First Notable Comedy Troupe

For those of you that haven’t heard of The Second City, it was a popular improv group in Chicago where many SNL alumni got their start, including John Belushi, John Candy, Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Gilda Radner. Tina Fey joined their ranks when she moved to Chicago after graduating from the University of Virginia with a bachelors in drama.

She took night classes with the group while working at the front desk of a YMCA to pay. Eventually, she was asked to join the cast of the improve troupe in 1994, where she performed eight shows a week for two years straight.

Second City didn’t only give her the big break she needed to get into SNL, it also introduced her to Jeff Richmond (above), a fellow actor and her future husband. He also moved to SNL (as a member of the music team) and after eight years of dating, the couple was married in a Greek Orthodox ceremony in 2001.

Image via Nick Step [Flickr]

5) She Didn’t Start Off Acting At SNL

While still working with Second City, Tina started submitting scripts to Saturday Night Live at the request of former-Second-City-performer-turned-SNL-writer Adam McKay. She was soon picked up as a writer in 1997. She wasn’t even on the show until 1998, when she appeared as an extra in one of the sketches. When she saw herself on TV, she didn’t like how she looked, so she went on a diet and lost 30 pounds. She continued to write during this period and was even promoted to the position of head writer in 1999 –making her the first female head writer on the show.

After thinning down significantly, Tina started appearing in sketches in 2000, eventually becoming a co-anchor with Jimmy Fallon on the Weekend Update segment, which is where her acting talents really started to get her noticed. After Jimmy Fallon left the show, Amy Poehler took over in his place, making it the first time in the show’s history that two women co-anchored the segment. She stayed with the show for two more years before leaving to work on 30 Rock.

6) 30 Rock Wasn’t Originally Intended to Be Auto-Biographical

When Tina first created the pilot for the show in 2002, 30 Rock was supposed to be a behind the scenes sitcom based around a cable news show. It wasn’t until NBC rejected her first attempt that Tina based the show around her experience as the head writer of a sketch-comedy show. While this pilot was accepted in 2003, the show was still put on hold until Tina finished her work with SNL, which lasted until 2006.

7) She’s Kind Of A Big Deal

Most actors and writers are considered lucky to win even a few awards for their work, but Tina Fey has won tons of them. She’s gotten seven Emmys, three Golden Globes, four Screen Actors Guild Awards, four Writer’s Guild of America Awards, one Comedy Award, one Teen Choice Award and she’s been nominated for countless others.

Entertainment Weekly named her one of their Entertainers of the Year in 2001 and 2007, and as number five in their 2009 15 Entertainers of the 2000’s list. In 2008, the Associated Press voted her the AP Entertainer of the Year as the performer with the greatest impact on culture and entertainment. The New York Post named her as one of New York’s 50 Most Powerful Women and Time named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in both 2007 and 2009. She also was the youngest recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, and has been named three times as one of Forbes’ 100 Most Powerful Celebrities.

As if all that weren’t enough, Tina will be getting her own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame some time this year.

Image via Capital M [Flickr]

She’s Undeniably Sexy.

Despite all of the 30 Rock jokes about how unattractive Liz Lemon is, there’s no denying that most of the world thinks Tina Fey is one hot milf. And she’s got the awards to prove it. In 2002, she was number 80 in Maxim’s Hot 100 List. In 2003, 2007, 2008 and 2009 she was named one of People’s Most Beautiful People. Lesbian-oriented website AfterEllen.com put her in seventh in their 2007 Hot 100 List and in 2008, she was ranked in first place on their list.

9) Her Daughter Starred In Her Own Meme

Tina Fey isn’t a stage mom and it seems unlikely that her daughter, Alice Zenobia, will appear on the big or small screens any time soon, but that didn’t stop her little girl from becoming the star or her own internet meme. The whole thing started when a paparazzi photo of Tina and Alice made its way onto the internet. Alice’s adorable swagger in the picture made her an instant star as Redditers started captioning the pic and Photoshopping Alice into other pictures. See more here and here.

Since Tina just announced that she is pregnant with her second child, it’s hard not to wonder if her new bundle of joy will ever end up making the internet rounds like little Alice has.

Image via Reddit

10) She Has No Intention of Slowing Down

To be fair, if you know much about Tina Fey, you probably know this. Although she is going to take a short break from work because she’s pregnant, she’s still got a busy schedule. 30 Rock is scheduled for another season in January 2012, she’s still busy promoting her book, Bossypants, which just came out and and she only recently hosted SNL. With so much going on for her, it’s impossible to say how much she’ll accomplish in the next few years.

Sources: Wikipedia #1, #2, #3, IMDB

Got any good Tina trivia I’ve left out? Just want to share your love for the media mogul? Feel free to share your contributions in the comments.

Canine musical freestyle returns to the TV show Britain’s Got Talent! Tina and her dog Chandi put on quite a show. -via Buzzfeed

Previously at Neatorama: Carolyn Scott and the amazing Rookie.

Imagine having a stroke, a severe brain injury or a tumor and suddenly waking up one day to find you’ve developed artistic talents to rival Picasso. It sounds impossible, but the brain is a mysterious organ, and sometimes, damage causes it to rewire itself in ways that reveal new talents even in people who could barely doodle a stick figure. From the engineer on disability who became a sought-after digital artist after a stroke to a woman whose dementia spurred remarkable creative output, these 10 artists were all transformed by neurological trauma or disorders.

Pictured is Alison Silva, who chose not to have a brain tumor removed because it improved her painting talent. Link -via Buzzfeed

This egg shell art is truly stunning. InventorSpot has more pictures of these lovely, detailed art pieces by artist Ron Cheruka.

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This crochet coral reef is amazing. It’s actually an attempted replica of the Great Barrier Reef. The variety of textures and colors is as full as those in the reef itself. It took years to make, which can be easily recognized just by the look of it.

“Vast in scale, collective in construction, exquisitely detailed, the Crochet Reef is an unprecedented, hybridic, handicraft invocation of a natural wonder that has become, in itself, a new kind of wonder spawned from tens of thousands of hours of labor.”

Link Via Boing Boing