A nightly pause from the news to give the reader/viewer a bit of classic entertainment.
An evening pause: The music is great, but I generally dislike these music videos that put the performers in some beautiful place that is also a place where it is absolutely impossible to record a performance. They then do lip synch and editing to hide the fact that the performance is faked. Ugh.
Still, as I said, the music is great, and the scenery is beautiful.
Hat tip Diane Zimmerman.
An evening pause: Another bit of cultural history from the 1960s. From the Youtube webpage:
Marilyn footage singing to JFK on his gala birthday bash on May 19th 1962. The running joke for the evening, as planned, was that Marilyn was late! it was planned that way for the event. Everything we see Marilyn do on stage was rehearsed right down to her arm movements and jumping up and down at the end of the song as we can see in the rehearsal photos before the event. so Marilyn did this spot on as planned.
Sadly, she would be dead by August, and Kennedy by November of the next year.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
An evening pause: Performed live on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1967. The costumes scream the late sixties.
Hat tip Diane Zimmerman.
An evening pause: Makes a nice contrast with yesterday’s evening pause.
Hat tip Robert Pratt of Pratt on Texas.
An evening pause: It has been six years since I posted Dire Straits performing this song, and that version is now gone on Youtube. Time to post it again, especially because this official music video focuses so nicely on the performance itself.
Hat tip Cotour.
An evening pause: Performed live on television, probably sometime in the 1970s.
Hat tip Diane Zimmerman.
An evening pause: Performed live on television in 1973. Back then, a song like this was entirely okay for a mainstream band to perform and mainstream TV show to air. Today, such songs are put into a “Christian music” ghetto, regardless of their quality.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
An evening pause: Performed by the BBC Concert Orchestra. I think this makes for a good way to start the weekend. If you have time, get the movie and watch it. One of the greatest ever made.
Hat tip Doug Johnson.
An evening pause: One of the most famous comedy routines ever written. From the 1945 film, The Naughty Nineties.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
An evening pause: The memory of this man and what he stood for and accomplished must not be forgotten, which is why I try to celebrate his memory each year with a tribute on his birthday. As I wrote in 2021,
[T]hough he freed the slaves, I think Lincoln’s most enduring contribution to American history, a contribution that now has sadly been lost, was his limitless good will for everyone, even to those who hated him and wished to kill him. Had he not been assassinated, American history might have been far better because Lincoln would have had the clout to ease the worst elements of Reconstruction, while forcing through reforms in the former southern slave states.
Those reforms did not happen until the civil rights movement of the 1960s, and are now being abandoned in the 2020s by black supremacists in the academic community who are imposing new racist Jim Crow laws nationwide, designed to favor blacks and other minorities.
Listen to the words of the first song, which was a Lincoln campaign song. He stood for freedom for all, and put his life on the line for that principle. From the pictures you can see the evolution of this kind-hearted but determined man from youth to mid-age, with all the troubles of the Civil War reflected in his face and mouth.
An evening pause: Performed live 1973 on the Midnight Special. A very fun group from the 1960s that also produced some beautiful songs (such as the second in this set).
Hat tip Judd Clark.
An evening pause: From the 1964 film, Mary Poppins. I post it to celebrate my birthday. I saw this movie in the theater that year, as an eleven-year-old, and its optimistic and hopeful look at existence has never left me, even now in these dark times. If only today’s adults would focus on teaching these same positive and hopeful lessons to their own children.
An evening pause: Some American history, when America considered fun important.
Hat tip Wayne DeVette.
An evening pause: This television performance from 1965 is lip-synched, but it appears the only live one available anywhere.
Hat tip Diane Zimmerman.
An evening pause: Sung at the funeral in December 2023 for Shane MacGowan, who wrote it.
Hat tip Altons Blevins.
An evening pause: Today is the 75th anniversary of the moment astonomers took the lens cap off the Hale Telescope at Palomar, what astronomers call “first light.” In honor of this anniversary, tonight’s evening pause is a somewhat well-done news piece produced by PBS in 1991, describing the state of ground-based astronomy at that time, which was actually another key moment in the history of astronomy. After decades of no advancement following the Hale telescope, the field was about to burst out with a whole new set of telescopes exceeding it significantly, based on new technologies. We today have become accustomed to those new telescopes, but in 1991 they were still incomplete or on the drawing board.
This was also after the launch of Hubble but before it was fixed, so this moment was also a somewhat dark time for astronomy in general. Watching this news piece gives you a sense of history, as seen by those living at that time. It also lets you see some good examples of the standard tropes of reporters as well as some astronomers. They always say this new telescope (whatever and whenever it is) is going to allow us to discover the entire history of the universe, even though it never can, and never will.
Hat tip Mike Nelson.
An evening pause: She is 15 years old, and has an interesting backstory. I have cued the video to begin at the song’s start, because you should judge her solely on her talent. If you replay from the start Rieu explains that backstory.
Hat tip Tom Donohue.
