Category: The Evening Pause
A nightly pause from the news to give the reader/viewer a bit of classic entertainment.
Mucking about off-hours in San Francisco, California
An evening pause: Hat tip Edward Thelen, who writes, “A brief tour of the Jeremiah O’Brien engine room (an operational Liberty Ship) and other San Francisco sights. The narrator mentions the degaussing coils that they started to use on ships during WWII to prevent magnetic mines from sinking them. The slight of hand is especially good; I think I figured it out. There was a time, before the 1980s, when the passengers helped to turn the cable cars.”
I like these comments by the videographer at his youtube website: “This WW2 Liberty ship only took 50 days to build! Vid includes random shots between getting pissed on by a homeless dude and avoiding that guy wearing nothing but a gold sequined sock.” Well, no one should be surprised. This is in fascist California.
Santo & Johnny – Sleep Walk
An evening pause: The song should immediately be familiar, though I doubt most people today will know of the performers who wrote it.
Hat tip Jim Mallamace, who writes, “This performance is from 1959, an era when performers wore ties to show respect to their audience. One must wonder how performers show respect to their audience, these days–or even if it’s an issue.”
Jimmy Roberts – A House With Love In It
An evening pause: Granted, it is hokey 1960s television staging, but the song and performance are nice.
Hat tip Edward Thelen.
A Memorial Day remembrance
Doris Day – Young at Heart
The Muffs – Don’t Pick on Me
An evening pause: What makes this music video appealing is the cartoon, which recreates the style of Hollywood’s early 1930s black & white cartoons.
Hat tip Jim Mallamace.
As always, I welcome suggestions for Evening Pauses. If you think you have something and have not emailed me any suggestions previously, mention in a comment that you want to suggest something. Do not post the link to the video. I will contact you myself.
How to land a space shuttle
An evening pause: This talk was given in October 2016, so the speaker, Bret Copeland, readily admits with great humor that he is describing something that no longer happens. Nonetheless, there will come a time when this will be done again, by vehicles better made and more often used. It is important to know how it was done.
Hat tip Edward Thelen.
Nat King Cole – But Not For Me
An evening pause: Performed in 1957 on Cole’s short-lived television show. Originally written by George and Ira Gershwin for their 1930 Broadway musical, Girl Crazy, which also made Ginger Rogers a star.
Hat tip Jim Mallamace.
Julie Feeney – Love is a Tricky Thing
Patty Loveless – The Boys Are Back In Town
Why are these 32 symbols found in caves all over Europe?
An evening pause: The speaker is paleoanthropologist Genevieve von Petzinger, who has focused on compiling a database of the various symbols used by prehistoric cave artists, and suspects, because there are surprisingly so few symbols over a very long time period, that they represent the first glimmers of abstract writing, in a very primitive form.
Hat tip Jim Mallamace.
Juice Newton – Angel in the Morning
Beethoven – Turkish March
An evening pause: Arranged for 8 (!) pianos. From the youtube webpage:
2 successive performances of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Turkish March from “Die Ruinen von Athen”, arranged by Richard Blackford for 8 pianos. Played by Gina Bachauer, Jorge Bolet, Jeanne-Marie Darré, Alicia De Larrocha, John Lill, Radu Lupu, Garrick Ohlsson and Bálint Vázsonyi at a Gargantuan Pianistic Extravaganza in London, 1974.
Please note that the 2nd performance is NOT a shredding video – these great pianists were actually playing what you hear!
Hat tip Jim Mallamace.
Nana Mouskouri – La Paloma
Percy Shelley – Ozymandias
An evening pause: For tonight, a poem, one that I think all politicians should consider deeply as they try to establish their “legacy.”
Hat tip Jim Mallamace.
Nina Simone – To Love Somebody
Kim Wilde – Kids in America
Ray Bethell – Good Stuff
An evening pause: “How does a person deal with the unfairness of life? The only way you can do it is face it, head on.”
Ray Bethell – Romancing The Wind
An evening pause: The music is the Flower Duet from the opera Lakme by Léo Delibes. Tomorrow’s evening pause will be a magnificent short documentary about this man and how he came to kite flying. And I wonder if you can guess what he had done for a living.
Hat tip Edward Thelen.
Gilbert & Sullivan – Three Little Maids
An evening pause: From the movie Topsy-Turvy (2000), Shirley Henderson, Dorothy Atkinson and Cathy Sara singing. The movie is about the creation of Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Mikado. Not surprisingly, the best scenes in the movie are the scenes where they perform songs from the operetta, such as this 2010 evening pause.
Hat tip Jim Mallamace.
Nancy Sinatra – Sugar Town
An evening pause: I usually dislike most music videos because of their cliches and fakery, preferring live performances instead. However, this 1967 Nancy Sinatra music video, from the very early days of such things, is so simple it doesn’t bother me that much. In a sense, it even highlights the music.
Hat tip t-dub.
Serena Ryder – Racing In The Street
The Bangles – Walk Like An Egyptian
Elton John – Rocket Man
An evening pause: Hat tip Sayomara. This pause is slightly different, and is really two-for-one. The background music is Elton John’s “Rocket Man,” but the visuals are of SpaceX’s future spaceport site at Boca Chica beach near Brownsville, Texas. Apparently someone used a drone to fly over the site and videotaped it. As Sayomara noted, this “shows how far away this site is from being usable.”
Winny Jessica Setiawan, Sheila Permatasaka, and BEBOP Light Orchestra – Something Stupid
An evening pause: Performed during a wedding reception, December 2012, in Jakarta, Indonesia.
Hat tip Edward Thelen.
Pietro Mascagni – Preludio Cavalleria Rusticana
An evening pause: Hat tip Jim Mallamace, who wrote, “Pietro Mascagni’s ‘Cavalleria Rusticana’ is often translated as ‘Country Ways.’ His opera departed from those of his day in that his characters were not of the nobility. He portrayed the lives and struggles of ordinary people. The performance is by the Gaetano Donizetti Symphonic Orchestra of Gessate and conducted by Pierangelo Pelucchi.”
Rod Stewart – When You Wish Upon a Star
Salt N Pepa – Whattaman
Crystal Gayle & Muppets – River Road
An evening pause: As I have said before, it is very important to be silly once in awhile.
Hat tip Edward Thelen.