It's Fe-BREW-ary, folks!

What a month! Salvatore Bono died! Yeah! That's my own dark secret. I shared a first name with Sonny. In the pantheon of pop, Sonny Bono was an odd one to say the least. He had a great talent for spotting a hit and for adapting to the times. Yet, as Phil Spector said of him, Bono had monster hits and didn't know what he'd done.

Spector should know. Bono came up through Spector's wall-of-sound productions.

Maybe Sonny was just humble or maybe he had more perspective than Spector did. From the outside looking in, it seems as though the pop world must have meant much more to Spector than to Bono.

In the end, conservative Sonny found his best expression in politics and with a family, rather than in show biz. You get the feeling looking back that Sonny was one of pop's working stiffs. At the end of the day, he clocked out of the silly trappings of the scene.

Still, when you think about it, his songs touted family values from the beginning. I Got You, Babe -- a sort of poor man's Bob Dylan tune -- rings with "till death do us part" fervor. His own late '60s solo record indicted all sorts of social ills, including porn palaces.

It was probably the Italian in him, but I don't think Bob Guccione would agree.

Month of dread

February makes me shiver.

And I don't mean from the cold, but from dread.

I don't dread Valentine's Day, Presidents' Day or Black History Month. I don't even dread thinking about the Grammys.

However, it's fingernails on the blackboard time when I hear radio and TV announcers say "Feb-YOU-ary" like so many kindergarteners.

The torture continues from about the middle of January and well into March.

Now, in a world of grief and pain this is not much of a problem. Still, I can't help my automatic, teeth-gritting reaction. I want to ask these people, "Do you still say "lie-BERRY" when you mean "library"?

Children might have a hard time putting together that "br" combination in the middle of a word, but to me, an adult mispronouncing "Fe-BREW-ary" sounds like a simpleton.

If that's elitist -- so be it. I think English is a great language and sometimes we ought to bother to learn it and teach it.

After all, it's the little things that mean the most.

Copyright © 1998, Salvatore Caputo