Category: The Evening Pause
A nightly pause from the news to give the reader/viewer a bit of classic entertainment.
The Haunting
An evening pause: Once again, for Halloween, this short but truly unnerving scene from Robert Wise’s The Haunting (1963), based on the story by Shirley Jackson. Captures what everyone imagines it would be like to sleep in a haunted house. And with no special effects at all.
Shirley Bassey – Two songs
An evening pause: From a 1964 music video, Shirley Bassey sings two songs, Cole Porter’s “I get a kick out of you,” followed by Ben King’s “I who have nothing.”
The Beatles performing Shakespeare
An evening pause: In honor of Shakespeare’s 400th birthday in 1964, the Beatles performed this short excerpt from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. How else could you see John Lennon dressed as a girl?
Arcade Fire – Sprawl II (mountains beyond mountains)
The Grateful Dead – Mountains of the Moon
A really big Tesla coil
The Hastings College Choir – Home on the Range
An evening pause: This beautiful rendition brings new life to a classic American song that sadly has become so familiar most people won’t listen to it any longer.
Ultimate caption fail
Round house in Brazil
Kate Rusby – Let me be
NASA satellite falls on car
Beauty and the Beast – Tale as Old as Time
Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros – Home
An evening pause: Having finally arrived in Tucson after four and a half days of driving, this song seemed most appropriate. I had previously posted a version taped live in a radio studio. Here they perform “Home” on television for Letterman. The energy is still infectious.
As they say,
Ah home!
Yes we are home!
Home is wherever there is you!”
Gerry & The Pacemakers – Ferry Cross The Mersey
An evening pause: From 1965, the Top of the Pops show. I’ve always liked this song, “Ferry Cross the Mersey,” but it is also fun to watch early television, with the band attempting to simulate playing to the original recording, while the kids on the dance fall make believe they’re dancing as they repeatedly sneak peaks at the cameras.
North Cliffs collapse in Cornwall
An evening pause: The collapse of a entire cliff side in Cornwall. You can see the aftermath two weeks later here.
Three Redneck Tenors – Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony
Andrea Bocelli & Sarah Brightman – Time To Say Goodbye
An evening pause: As Diane and I head west today for our new life in Arizona, this song seems especially fitting.
The Look of Love
Hugh Laurie – All you gotta do is . . .
Placido Domingo – Furusato (My Country Home)
An evening pause: From a concert performed in Japan on April 10, 2011, only a month after the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Stay for the end, to see the audience’s response.
Gillian Welch & David Rawlings – Red Clay Halo
The story of Columbus’s voyage, in Lego animation
Richard Kiley – The Impossible Dream
An evening pause: How about something uplifting? Sung by Richard Kiley, the man who created the role.
The Wave in the Paria Vanyon Vermillion Cliffs Wilderness Area, Arizona
An evening pause: Taking a walk through the Wave in the Paria Vanyon Vermillion Cliffs Wilderness Area, Arizona.
Chain reaction
An evening pause: “A grid of over 300 wooden matches is lit from one corner.” No sound, but you’ll watch anyway. There is something about a fire that compels us to watch.
Neil Diamond – Coming to America
An evening pause: The video is a bit too darkly lit, but the chemistry of the audience with Neil Diamond’s singing is enthralling. “Today!”
Beethoven — second movement, Fifth Symphony, performed by NBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Arturo Toscanini
An evening pause: This March 22, 1952 television performance of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony from Carnegie Hall by the NBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Arturo Toscanini, was probably the most remembered by the generation of our parents. I show the second movement, because it happens to be my favorite. Listen as the opening theme returns several times during the piece, only changing the last time into something even more beautiful.
Watching Toscanini as he conducts is fascinating as well.
The Ten Tenors – Bohemian Rhapsody
Shawn Colvin – I don’t know why
An evening pause: Shawn Colvin, at the 1988 Philadelphia Folk Festival, early in her career, singing one of her early hits.