I was never a huge fan. I didn't even really hear about him until the late 1970s (what? I lived in DC. I listened to The Osmonds on records and Funk and/or Soul on the radio. BTW, Osmonds was being a preteen white girl; it's the Funk and/or Soul which was the DC signifier.). I saw the "Jazzing with Blue Jean" video in the movie theater when I ( Read more... )

Yesterday davesmusictank shared an article from Psychology Today, on how anti-intellectualism is killing America (and by America the authors mean the U.S ( Read more... )

It was on April 3 and it was a great day, well worth taking the time off. There were several fascinating talks, but the two pieces which gripped me by the throat and held me were The DC Youth Poetry Slam Team and singer-songwriter Be Steadwell. Steadwell's song had me in tears, and I do not cry easily at theater.

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I wish these had been up ( Read more... )

I haven't been around LJ much lately because I was having trouble getting to it on my home computer. It's doing fine right now, so I don't know what was up or where the fault lay.

I also haven't been around because I saw Kingsman: The Secret Service. Multiple times. I loved the movie on so very many levels, but especially all the shout outs ( Read more... )

A week or so ago, tediousandbrief mentioned the Falklands War in his lj, and it brought back memories for me. A blank front page on The Guardian (well, not entirely blank. Mostly though.), lots of references to "Argies," The International Herald Tribune being read by British people because the British press wasn't allowed to report accurately. (Found an ( Read more... )

Twenty-five years ago, the Berlin Wall came down. Less than ten years later, I made a remark about not having been back to Berlin since the wall came down and sunspiral's and roozle's eldest son, who was 11-ish, asked if the wall were medieval ( Read more... )

Did anyone know that there was a Steeleye Span album called Wintersmith done in cooperation with Terry Pratchett? I didn't. I found it at the British Amazon.

Last night I attended a lecture with performances by Robert Wyatt on George Gershwin's life and work. The information about his life was fairly pedestrian, but I learned a couple of new things. The first was that his jawline was irregular because he'd been kicked by a horse. The second was that the Lullaby for Strings pre-dates "Vi's Song" in ( Read more... )

Since I just put in the request for topics, I'm choosing my own today.

There is an article in today's Guardian about boredom, or, perhaps more accurately, about being bored by certain art forms within certain contexts. Opera is the particular form mentioned, but there's a certain branching out, both in the article and the comments to other things ( Read more... )

Many, many Marches ago (say 1977?), I was a teenager at an all girl's boarding school. We were told at chapel in the morning that anyone who had a free period at (sometime in the early afternoon) should come back to chapel.

The Duke's Men of Yale performed. It was my first time hearing that type of acapella, and my first time hearing Lulu's Back ( Read more... )