John Prine - RIP

When did I first find out about John Prine?  A long time ago...... and I saw him just once, at the Royal Festival Hall with Iris De Ment.  What a great song writer, what fun, what tears, what life in his songs.

You don't know him?  Get on over to youtube and listen to a few tracks.

Click here for a favourite of me and Mr Mac:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMwsv-rzbZU

Music - Collecting and Disposing of same! 1. A little touch of Schmilsson in the Night

 I'm on a roll!  I'm sorting out and disposing of things I no longer want and this includes music.  Collecting stuff for so many years, I find there are lots of albums (vinyl and CD) that I no longer want to listen to.  Many of these were bought when I was running 4 quiz nights a year in a place I worked.  They were great compilation albums for quiz rounds like "Name the Intro"  "Where does this guitar riff come from?" and so on.  But I don't need them now, and most can be had for a few quid on the Internet - so I am sending them to the charity shop and maybe someone else will find pleasure in them and the charity shop will make money.

But guess what I found?  I found that I don't like noise but I do like music!!

I like, in no particular order, a good voice, or a good interpreter of a song, or a brilliant musician, or a brilliant tune, or clever lyrics; and I got to thinking about desert island discs..... which records I would take?  But it's hard to break down the music you love into ten only, especially when the entire album is a stroke of genius.

Here's one I have come back to again, and again - A Little Touch Of Schmilsson In The Night - Harry Nilsson.  I can't choose a track - I'd have to take the whole album.  It was never a best seller, yet here it is, wonderful as ever and one of my forever favourites.  When someone asked Michael Buble why he kept singing "old" songs, he told them that they were not old, just good.  That's how I feel about  Nilsson's interpretations on here.  Go on, give it a listen.

And then, you might like to listen to another couple of albums -

Borderline - Ry Cooder (completely different but just as wonderful)
Mi Tierra - Gloria Estevan (and never mind that it's sung in Cuban Spanish... just open your ears).

I think I'll make this a regular post - and you can always suggest albums to me - I will listen and comment, honestly!)

A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night - Harry Nilsson

• 

  
  

We've had a makeover in our living room, which meant furniture was removed, stuff was stored in the dining room, and decisions were made about what to keep, what to sell, what to send to the charity shop.  The vinyl is up a a shelf in the dining room. Will we replace them with CDs?  Get them re-recorded onto CD?  Will we just download the stuff we like?  Later, later for that decision.

Now to put the CDs in their new home...... and a real chance to have a listening session and see what the classics of the collection will be.  And the first one is:

I have just replayed A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night - Harry Nilsson which I have loved from the first time I heard it. Arrangements of mostly old standards (It had to be you; What'll I do; As time goes by), it reminds me of a good time in my life (not that it hasn't been mostly good!) and I am never getting rid of this one!

Every track is linked by an intro that "mentions" one of the other classics on the album, although not necessarily the next one you will hear.  A couple of little jokes in the words of songs, too;  it's just glorious.  Are you an old sentimentalist?  Very young with no experience of the standards of the 1930s?  Someone like me who just loves a song with wonderful words?  If you don't have this album, give yourself a treat.  Available for not much money, and I can almost guarantee you will play it many times and find yourself falling in love with the late, great Nilsson.

Rap? Hell Yeh!

My treat for you.     Just a little rap about Walter Raleigh.  Pardon?   Just a little rap about Walter Raleigh!

This is from a comedy show performed by Living Spit called Virgin on the Ridiculous.  And yes, if you have not guessed yet, it's about Queen Elizabeth I.  When Walter Raleigh comes back from America with a Bloomingdales bag full of goodies for the queen, you know you are in for a treat!

La Traviata - English National Opera's latest venture (with curtains)

I always find that new dramatisations of old favourites will have supporters and naysayers.  In my time, I have been amazed, enchanted, shocked, delighted and sometimes disappointed in new productions of plays, films, and in this case, operas.  I was so lucky to have lived in London in the 1980's and to have had the friendship of an opera lover who introduced me to the medium.  Up until then I loved the arias,  had seen Joseph Losey's film of Don Giovanni, and one Puccini opera (The Girl of the Golden West ) but little else.  The first production he pursuaded me to attend was a (now defunct) Opera Factory production which featured the god Eros, roller-skating through a forest of green helium balloons - and I was hooked. Follow that with all three of Mozart's Da Ponte operas by the same opera company - Cosi Fan Tutte, The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovani and that was it, a glutton who couldn't wait for the next one.  So avante guarde is not new to me, nor disliked.

But now living some way off, and having to do 2 hours plus on the train to get up to the city, I want to be entertained when I get there.  So it was with anticipation that I went up to see the new production of La Traviata - the story of the tart with the heart, who leaves her life of endless parties and affairs with rich men to live in love and contentment with the man who really loves her.

Look out for the gorgeous Corrine Winters as Violetta, a small waisted, big voiced American soprano.  She'll go far. There wasn't a bad voice in the other major parts either, so it should have been a delight, right?

The set comprised one kitchen chair and several banks of thin red curtains.  When the curtains opened after the overture, we saw a chair, and a set of curtains.  Puzzling perhaps, but let's get on with the action.  People came, people went, they fought their way through the curtains singing, flouncing, playing cards, and certainly doing the best they could under the circumstances.  But when those around you in the audience start to titter at members of the cast trying to find the openings in the damned curtains, you loose the plot.  I found myself looking for the next error, rather than concentrating on the voices - and it should not have been like that.  Finally, the death scene.  As there was no furniture, there was no bed for Violetta to die on, and she was forced therefore to die a gunslinger's death.  You know, the one where he's shot but won't lie down?  I really felt for her, and I also felt that it was so unnecessary, given that I had seen so many brilliant productions where strange things happened (the production of Don Giovanni where I couldn't believe they weren't actually having sex, the Cosi Fan Tutti where Despina got tangled in a deck chair, and kept singing, delightfully, all through the aria) - oh do shut up, I am in danger of boring the readership!
Suffice it to say that the audience cheered the singers and booed the director.  All I can say is

Too Many Curtains!

An Evening with Danny Kaye -1981 Part 1

Got a couple of hours to spare?  Its raining, or you are awake at 2.00 am?  Just go to YouTube and type in the above.  Danny Kaye conducting the New York Philharmonic in 1981, when Zubin Mater was the conductor and director.  It was a fund raising concert, and full of fun and some lovely music too.  So you have to keep on clicking for the next segment?  There are 17 segments - its the whole concert.  You have time for this one.  I loved every minute and it finishes with a John Philip Sousa march that will have you cheering!  Lovely way to (not) waste a little time.