Craig:
As you know Donald and I are incredibly excited about our trip to Scotland and our show there. Kawai is excited too, in fact he has dyed his hair plaid for the entire week. The fact that we are staying in the Angus MacClauddanum suite at the Westbury in London has only served to screw our anticipation up to a high whine. So imagine our surprise when, in the course of our readings, we discovered the following startling prediction!
In the 16th century A.D, the prophet Nostradamus wrote:
"Le chef de Londres par regne l'Americh
Erika Cheetham's translation:
L'isle de l'Escosse tempiera par gellee:
Roi Reb auront un si faux antechrist
Que les mettra trestous dans la meslee."
"The London premier through American power will burden the island of Scotland with a cold thing. Reb the King will have so dreadful an antichrist who will bring them all into troubles."
Erika Cheetham's comment:
"A most interesting quatrain. The premier of London at the time specified was Harold Macmillan who had a good relationship with America. It was during his office that Scotland was burdened with a cold thing (the Polaris submarines). Roi Reb sounds strange but links this even more firmly with another antichrist to come who will lead all of them, i.e., Britain and U.S.A. into trouble."
...or so Ms. Cheetham would have you believe. But - our intuition, honed by many years of intensive occult studies, told us that this translation was whack - thus we have commissioned noted occultist C. Cooper DeManis to reinterpret this passage in the light of what we now understand about Nostradamus, his writings, and the Art Crimes '96 tour of Western Europe. Here's what our man came up with:
"My numbers place these events some decades later, in fact, on a specific day, September 13, 1996 - a Friday the Thirteenth. This is, of course, the date of Steely Dan's first engagement in Scotland. That established, 'le chef de Londres' can only be a reference to Rob Dickins, Chairman of Warner Brothers UKl, who will be working hand-in-glove with Irving Azoff, chief of the Dan's home label in America, Revolution (formerly Giant) Records. In the adjusted translation Dickins 'will bless Scotland with a cool thing'.
This is an interpretation we can live with. Now we're talking hermeneutics.
'Reb the King' is obviously Nostradamus' cognomen for Elvis, the Dan being a kind of anti-Elvis. One might hope that, in order to avoid the predicted 'troubles', Dickins and Azoff will be working hard to see that all runs smoothly for the Dan in the British Isles".
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9/9/96