From the category archives:

Entertainment

Weekly Treat

February 1, 2010

Stormy weather
Don’t know why, there’s no sun up in the sky … has been the lament for far too many weeks, and not only here in Rome. So here for your delectation is Ivie Anderson fronting the Duke Ellington Orchestra in a 1933? recording of Stormy Weather. There’s also a video on YouTube of a [...]

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Weekly Treat

January 25, 2010

Corn Grinding, Haiti
Hard to know where to break into this story. I had it all lined up for last week, and then came the earthquake in Haiti and “sensitivity” got the better of me, so I pulled it. Then I read up more about Harold Courlander, the man who recorded it. He seems to [...]

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Spartan

January 11, 2010

Luigi turned me on to David Mamet’s Spartan, in a discussion of what was worth watching on TV these days I loved it. Not just for the violence, which is considerable and effective. Not just for the secret service procedurals, which are everywhere these days and which for all I know are having the same [...]

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Weekly Treat

January 11, 2010

The Weight
I had thought, when I started this series, that there would be at least one song in each of the Sounds to Grow On episodes that would be worth singling out; that hasn’t been the case. I’m not saying that there won’t be more Folkways tracks in future, only that nothing in the past [...]

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Weekly Treat

December 21, 2009

Saint James Progress
One song, 20 versions, and there are probably lots more. The Unfortunate Rake (programme 3) is to date the most informative programme I’ve heard in the CKUA Radio series Sounds to Grow On. Sure, I knew The Saint James Infirmary and Streets of Laredo, but I’d never thought of the connections [...]

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Weekly Treat

December 14, 2009

The Blues
Program 14 of CKUA’s radio series Sounds to Grow On was built around a radio programme broadcast on WFMT Chicago in 1957. The astonishing Studs Terkel broadcast on WFMT from 1952 to 1997, and Folkways Records turned one of the programmes he made into the album Blues with Big Bill Broonzy, Sonny [...]

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Weekly Treat

December 7, 2009

Two Good Men
Sacco and Vanzetti are two names that any vaguely left-leaning person will recognize. Come to that, maybe right-leaning ones will too. Their story is simple; known anarchists, they were framed for a murder that “they almost surely didn’t commit,” according to Entertainment Weekly, which skirts the issue nicely. After seven years on [...]

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Weekly Treat

November 30, 2009

Plains of old Nebrasky-o
Program 8 Broadsides in the Sounds to Grow On series contained some wonderful songs, and some terrible ones (Song for Patty, anyone?). Some early Bob Dylan, some early Bob Dylan wannabees, some glorious others. But how could I resist a song that starts
In school I learned of men who died by [...]

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Weekly Treat

November 23, 2009

Stormy Monday
“Everything is word of mouth,” said the Famous Writer, as I asked him for a recommendation. Which is a good reason to start something I’ve been meaning to do for a long time. Michael Asch has been presenting a series on CKUA Radio, in Canada (and everywhere else) built around the recordings his father [...]

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It’s sappy, but it works

November 9, 2009

My hardback copy (16th printing) of Mastering the Art … was bought so that I wouldn’t have to contend with the stains on the paperback when I wanted to read rather than cook. So when Julie and Julia was released earlier in the summer, I was sniffy. Julia’s story was pretty darned interesting. Why gussy [...]

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Jane Austen sings the Blues

September 11, 2009

This I got to hear.

Bruce Stovel championed Jane Austen studies and blues music with equal measures of expertise and passion. The outpouring of affection at the celebration of Bruce’s life and at a subsequent musical tribute inspired the plan for a book that would celebrate Bruce as teacher, Austen scholar, and blues aficionado. Jane Austen [...]

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Beedee squared: what’s not to like?

April 29, 2009

Curse you, Magnum, for crashing my columns, but hey, worth it.

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Gor blimey, eh-oop and begorrah bejasus, go on, go on. Aaargh.

April 27, 2009

What with The Wire done and dusted and an occasional hole in our evening entertainment, I sought out Burn Notice and we gave it a little watch. It’s likable enough escapist nonsense (although I figured out who done it and why for the pilot pretty quickly) and could grow on one. But one thing is [...]

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Rock salt & nails

February 24, 2009

I was going to post a link to this video of John Martyn at Cropredy when I heard the sad news, but the truth is, it doesn’t do anyone justice.
So listen to the version John Martyn did with Levon Helm instead.
And as an aside, why does Bob Dylan’s similarly-paced version sound merely plodding, while Martyn [...]

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I hate Duncan Hull

February 6, 2009

Because he pointed me to this video.
And now I’m being sucked into a vortex of appalling “scientific” music videos. Alas, the “making” video to accompany that wonderful effort above doesn’t give any of the details I truly want. are those all employees of the company? How many have PhDs. Is it a loving parody, or [...]

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Is it rolling Van?

May 29, 2008

Blue Girl found Crazy Love. Go. Watch. Listen. Tell me: is Bob singing along, or  what?

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I feel my black eyepatch calling me

May 6, 2008

Screw Grant McCracken and his hoity-toity, head-in-the-clouds, ivory-towered objections. I want to see Eddie Izzard and Minnie Driver in a TV series. But I probably never will.

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Oh my dog. Juggling Steve Reich

March 28, 2008

Yesterday’s 50 x 100 x 50 post sent me spiraling down the rabbit’s hole of the intertubes, where far and away the most mesmerizing thing was this:

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Balls in the air

March 27, 2008

Enough with the melancholia accusations. This morning’s TedTalk put me in an entirely different frame of mind. Juggling! I love juggling. The Raspyni Brothers are so web 2.0! and funny with it. The best I’ve ever seen live were the Gandinis, ages ago at the Edinburgh Festival. The very notion of slo-mo juggling, the [...]

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It is if I say it is

March 26, 2008

The Squeeze found this, and she’s right; it is wonderful.
The gorilla totally knocks me dead. But is it Art? Of course not.

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Sing it like it is

January 7, 2008

Over at The Viscount LaCarte’s place, I find a video of a guy I didn’t know — Tom Russell — singing a song I didn’t know — Who’s gonna build your wall? No surprise in the fact that I didn’t know either. The surprises are that it seems to have escaped the vast mass of [...]

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Dear God

June 27, 2007

Don’t let this happen to anyone you love. No matter how good they may once have been.
Medicated to the gills, suffering from short man’s disease, thinning hair and a pathological need to be noticed, psychologically damaged from his father’s suicide, his mother’s coldness and his young son’s death and, oh yeah, armed to the [...]

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Revelations

March 1, 2007

Over at Neddie’s, in the comments, no less, I come across this:
joel hanes said…
What most companies think of as branding,
we users think of as wasting our time
and maybe as insulting our intelligence.
David Weinberger
“Get Over It!”
[...]

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Stand up and be counted

October 5, 2006

Interesting times on the [tag]atheism[/tag] front. [tag]Martin Amis[/tag] is on top form in a wonderful essay called The Age of Horrorism. I can’t possibly do it justice, and wouldn’t dare to précis, so just go and read. (Part two and Part three.) Then there’s [tag]Richard Dawkins[/tag]‘ new book The God Delusion. I have not yet [...]

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