What's In a Name?

CALE MORRISON FLADAGER - The history of a name…

Many people ask for the roots of “the name” when a child is born. The names we chosen have great meaning for us personally:

First giving respect to the Fladager male lineage having a middle name beginning with “M”. Grandpa Fladager had Mobel Martin, dad has Fergus Meredith, I have Jay Michael and now Cale has Cale Morrison.

Second, we liked that each of the middle names of the Fladager males has the “next vowel” of the educational a,e,i,o, u pattern as the second letter: as above Martin, Meredith, Michael, and now Morrison… implying I guess, that the next generation will have to deal with a Mu as the first 2 letters… good luck with that Cale!

Next, there are 7 letters between the “F” and an “M” for Fergus and Mobel. Then there are 4 letters between the “F” and “J” for Fergus and Jay. The pattern continues as there are 7 letters between the “C” for Cale and the ”J” for Jay. Implying again that Cale will have to deal with his child having a four letter away pattern making it a first name beginning with a “G”.

With all of this said, I can just see this grandchild of mine, Geoffrey Muckler Fladager or perhaps Geraldine Muffy Fladager!

Ok, we’ve gone too far now! The actual name references are found below! Pay attention to each of the italicized words as they are what drew us to these names.


Thirty-seven years have passed since the breakup of the Velvet Underground. For most of that time, it has been hard to imagine what rock and roll would be like if the band had never existed. In popular music, as in almost everything else, success is usually about arithmetic. You’re only as big as the cumulative weight of your numbers: chart figures, concert attendance, press hurrahs, and your record label’s after-tax profits. Therefore, in the mid – and late 60’s, by every accepted measure of the time, the Velvet Underground were a most remarkable failure.
From 1965 – 1970, the Velvet Underground recorded four studio albums – none of which cracked the top 100. When the band broke up in 1970, they were tired, broke and barely mourned, remembered mostly for their brief heyday as protégés of the pop-art superstar Andy Warhol. However, the Velvets changed rock & roll in spectacular and fundamental ways. The original line-up which featured guitarist and vocalist Lou Reed, bassist, pianist and viola player John Cale, guitarist Sterling Morrison and drummer Maureen Tucker liberated music from the parochial enthusiasms of teenage innocence, setting contentious but enduring standards for white noise and narrative realism in popular music. Producer / artist Brian Eno remarked that, “hardly anyone bought the group’s records when they first came out, but those who did went on to form their own bands”. They directly influenced legends such as David Bowie, Roxy Music, Patti Smith, Talking Heads, Iggy Pop, Joy Division, R.E.M., U2, Henry Rollins, Nirvana and Sonic Youth.
Sterling Morrison stated, “We never had an agenda for success”. They only goal was the power of possibility achieved through the willful exploitation of tension in the most real and brutally honest way. Andy Warhol mused that the, “Velvets were great because they didn’t try to make it slick and smooth and ruin it”. It was all real, sincere, aboveboard and they were exactly as they seemed to be.
John Cale, born in Garnant Wales, is a classically trained pianist and viola player. As a young student at Goldsmith College of Art in London he wrote his first symphonies and won the prestigious Leonard Bernstein Scholarship in Modern Composition as selected by Aaron Copeland. However, his love of the avant-garde drew him to New York to the dada-ist Fluxus movement and LaMonte Young’s proto-minimalist performing group. Cale combined his classical talent with his ability to use discord, silence and feedback to define the Velvet Underground art-rock sound.
Sterling Morrison was also classically trained as a trumpet player but was drawn to the freedom of the guitar at an early age. He attained a Ph. D. in medieval studies and taught English literature at various universities. Sterling's guitar playing was key for a group used to backbeats and blues. Rhythmically, he was all angles, adding a jagged edge to a rounded rock & roll style. John Cale said of his friend that, “He was always unpretentious, he had a thirst for knowledge, a pride in his children and a deeply impressive dignity as he struggled through and succumbed to his illness (non-Hodgkin's lymphoma).
Beyond influencing us musically, these men define the ability to look at the world differently and see it for what it could be. This is tremendously appealing to us as parents. We highly value the ability to function successfully in society while understanding all of the nuances that made the success attainable. We admire the ability to look beyond the obvious and see things for how they really are, break them apart, provide discord and rearrange things for others to see differently as well. At the same time these men also represent the utmost of respect and humility. No success came without work, none without praise and gratitude and none without love and the best of intentions.
What’s in a name…