Interesting tidbit from an article in today's New York Times about the director of the Baghdad Museum, which today sits full of treasures but empty of visitors (it remains closed to the public). During the days of Saddam, the director Donny George, who was a Ba'th Party member, used to play in a Deep Purple cover band called 99 Percent (as in 99% perfect). The income he earned from the band helped tide him over. (Plus it must have been great fun to pound out "Smoke on the Water" near the banks of the Tigris.)
The other thing I liked about the story is that Mr. George used to get out of Ba'th Party meetings (which no doubt were frequent and endless) by going off on digs at all of Iraq's thousands of archaeological sites.
Tags: archaeology, Deep Purple, Iraq
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