Just Eat the Damn Peach

The Mean Kitty Song: "Hey, Little Sparta"

This is a work of sheer genius:

Best Music Video Ever: I Feeeeeel 'Lucas with the Lid Off" (Directed by Michel Gondry)

I probably haven't mentioned several thousand times, but I am not a fan of music videos---I mean the contrived sort you see on video stations-- in general.  In general, as I've said, they tend more often than not to ruin the song for me.  They're never quite what I imagined.  Sometimes the director's sense of whimsy ruins the song forever.  At You Tube, Cap'n Fix comments:

An excellent music video that aired briefly on MTV in 1994 and soon became largely forgotten. This one was filmed in B&W to produce an old-timey ambience that works very well with the ragtime sound. Pay close attention to the continuity. The whole video was filmed with a steadycam, in one continuous shot...an unbelievably difficult task that only someone like Michel Gondry could pull off. This catchy vid is no longer in production and a rare treat to find, wherever it happens to bubble up ;-)

Savin All My Love for You: Fats Waller

Fats Waller, one of my husband's heroes, just before he died (1943) at the age of 39.  He died of pneumonia on a train.  Fats Waller plus a lovely singer named Myra Johnson in a mock catfight; what could be better?   I couldn't find out much about Myra Johnson, beyond the fact (I got this from a book of my jazz-loving husband's) that she recorded with Boyd Senter and his band in 1938.  She recorded two sides.  That's all I could learn.. 

Anyway, here's one of the great jazz classics:

Remembering Enigma

No, this isn't the title of an avant-garde film or an HBO Series about the mysterious love child of two rival politiicans, now even more mysteriously translated into a higher state of being and appearing as her own ghost to reconcile them.  I refer to the Nineties Band.

Back in the early Nineties, everyone was listening to Michael Cretu's Enigma.  I started thinking of them while viewing/listening to all of Callas I could find on You Tube.

As so often is the case, the video for "Callas Went Away" doesn't match up at all well with the images that the music put in my head.  You may feel differently. 

I do love the way they've worked Callas's voice into the song itself (an aria from Werther, which sounds completely different against this background music.)...Anyway, I had the image whenever I listened to it of her driving off in her carriage (because of the hoof sounds) while, say, petals blew in the wind.  You know, all pink, white, rose, red, and gold infusing heavenly blue: a metaphor for the death of a great diva.  This is quite different from what I imagined.

"Callas Went Away" isn't the best known song on the album:  I suspect  "Mea Culpa" and "The Principles of Lust" are better known, not to mention Sadeness.  Both helped bring about a revival of interest in Gregorian Chanting.  (But it's just not the same without the background effects of Enigma...)

This band's definitely worth looking into if you're too young (or too old) to remember when their music was everywhere.  I recommend pouring a glass of wine and listening to the entire album in a darkened room.

CROSS-POSTED FROM THE FLATLAND CHRONICLES

Iconic Carmens: A Study in Variations on a Theme

[CROSS-POSTED FROM THE FLATLAND CHRONICLES] I'm not comparing the technical proficiency of these singers and do not intend to comment.  Everyone has an iconic Carmen.  These are some different conceptions of her.  Back in the day when I hoped to make myself a singer, I wanted so badly to grow up to be her.  I had the idea of playing her with wit rather than the smouldering, half-threatening seductiveness that is usually her lot.

However, speaking of seductive....opera doesn't get any grander than this:  Callas singing anything at all.  I not only love her voice; I love the way her face changes into Carmen's the minute she starts singing.  But her voice is not the voice of the True Carmen as I secretly conceive her.  Callas's voice is too pure, like liquid light.  I admit that she really puts across the sexual intensity.  I don't know.  It's pretty damn compelling.

Carmen's ought to be rich and rough, like certain types of red wine.  She's a virago.  She's got an almost masculine sensuality.  That's why poor Don Jose has no chance against alpha dog Escamillo, the bullfighter.

Frankly, Lori-Kaye Miller's voice is more in line with my idea of Carmen's.  I like a lot more mezzo in Carmen's soprano.  And there's that slightly ragged edge.  Je l'adore!!!

On the other hand, here's a very seductive version featuring Julia Migenes, though (speaking as a mere viewer of this one scene), I'd prefer a more highly-colored set.  This is like Carmen as imagined by Miles Crane: all beige everywhere:  ecru, wheat, ivory, etc. etc.  Meh. 

Romanian soprano Angele Gheorghia sings it.  She's extremely beautiful in that "old Hollywood"  way.  It's not because she's Romanian, but something about her hungry expression as she sings that suggests to me a new permutation on an old theme:  Vampire Carmen.  That would be awesome....Say she first turns Don Jose into a vampire and then he stakes her at the end.... Anyway, a beautiful voice and a beautiful singer and another great version.

Random Link O' the Day: FilterMusic.com (Internet Radio)

I know there are a lot of music resources out there, but this site's really good....See it now.   I like listening to jazz as background when I work and this is a great selection....

A Tribute to the Memphis Jug Band. You Heard Me: 'Jug Band'

Man, I love the Memphis Jug Band.  And thanks to the wondrous Yazoo Records I was able to buy a recording of their music.

One of my friends who claims to be able to do "past lives" readings says I was African-American back in the days of the early Twentieth Century.  Maybe it's so because nothing gives me the faux (or are they?) flashbacks known as deja vu like the real, raw musical stylings of the gutbucket/barrelhouse period.  I'm talking about early blues, not jazz.  It's exactly the combination of diffidence and detachment, of moan and resignation that hits me where I live, as they used to say. 

Love Yazoo.  Love it. 

And I really enjoy this---a contemporary tribute by  a band called Snakehead Run to the original Memphis players' "KC Moan", though without jugs and washboards, alas:

CROSS-POSTED IN THE FLATLAND CHRONICLES

'The HMS Yakko'

The Animaniacs perform some of Gilbert & Sullivan's Greatest Hits; a new generation learns an updated version of "I am the Very Model of a Modern Major General" (which Aaron Sorkin subsequenty attempted with considerably less success)...I am as certain as I can be after a gap of many years that the wee, belligerent pirate is directly based on one of the illustration's to one of Gilbert's poems.  "Though I be a pirate swine, still I have to draw the line/And I will not push you overboard!"  Can I hear you say, "Arrr!!"?

Dame Tiri Ke Kanawa Sings Mozart

In my younger days, I studied music and specifically capital-V Voice.  Yes, my friends, at the age of 15, while other girls dreamed of being rock stars (not too many credible women back in those days except Janis, who was already long gone), I wanted to be Beverly Sills.  Alas, I lacked only the voice and the ear.  I wasn't even, I'm afraid, a particularly gifted amateur.  Even so, it was a very good thing for me since I learned what kids today seem not to be taught:  aspiration and enthusiasm and even discipline are no substitute for talent.  Over and over I saw others more gifted than I win the competitions, the important roles in performances, and the big solos.  I can't think of any better training for life than successive demanding and disappointing auditions with judges generally more tactful but no less ruthless than, say, the infamous Simon Cowell (who---I confess---I've seen in action only once, and by accident). 

I got a lot out of it.  Through my adolescent ventures into territory where I simply didn't have the talent to stake a claim, I learned the  joysof participating in the production of a great work of art and also the relief of letting go of the desire to be center stage.