Category: The Evening Pause
A nightly pause from the news to give the reader/viewer a bit of classic entertainment.
William Zeitler – Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy
Landing an F-15 with only one wing
Michael Jackson – Smooth Criminal
An evening pause: Played on an instrument which the website calls L’orgue de barbarie. To me it resembles a glorified organ grinder, except that it plays a wide range of midi-type sounds. Very clever. And it succeeds in making a Michael Jackson song sound interesting to me, for the first time!
Hat tip Rocco E.
Olivia Newton-John & Bob Hope – Silver Bells
An evening pause: As we move into the heart of the Christmas season, this piece from the 1974 Bob Hope Christmas Special will allow us to remember a time when the idea was to express some good cheer and good will, not whine about oppression because someone said something we didn’t like or agree with. Note that a few of Hope’s jokes at the beginning are very time sensitive, as this was aired just after the 1974 elections where the Republicans got badly beaten. Hope, who was Republican, still had no problem cracking jokes at his own party’s expense.
Hat tip Danae.
The King’s Singers – Greensleeves
How to land on a carrier with a missing front wheel
An evening pause: With his front nose gear refusing to deploy, the pilot describes how he still safely landed his Harrier jet on an aircraft carrier.
Hat tip Phill Oltmann
Gabriella Quevedo – 7 Years
An evening pause: A lovely pleasant piece of music, arranged by her from a piece written by Lukas Graham.
Kurt Nilsen – Walking In The Air
An evening pause: From the film The Snowman (1982), music by Howard Blake. Hat tip Danae for suggesting the song.
National Youth Orchestra of the USA – Simple Gifts
An evening pause: From Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring and performed during a seven city tour in China in 2015. The orchestra is privately funded and is part of a program by Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute for training young musicians ages 16–19.
Hat tip Danae. Stay till the end for a nice and clever surprise.
Roosevelt’s speech responding to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor
An evening pause: On this anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, we should listen to President Franklin Roosevelt’s entire speech to Congress on December 8, 1941. He came before Congress to ask them to declare war on Japan.
For those of us who remember President George Bush’s speech after 9/11, the differences are striking. Bush aimed his ire at one element in the Islamic world, al-Qaeda, while ignoring their numerous allies in Iran, Gaza, the West Bank, and elsewhere. He also made it clear that the military would be asked to do the work, not the entire nation. “Be ready,” he told them, while suggesting to everyone else that they need do nothing themselves to join in the battle. Bush did not demand a nationwide commitment. In essence, he asked Americans to just continue shopping.
Roosevelt instead said this: “No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people will win through to absolute victory. I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost, but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us.”
The entire nation was now at war, and the goal was total victory so that Japan would never be able to do it again. For the next three and a half years that was the goal. And not just against Japan. The goal was to destroy Japan as well as all of its fascists allies. And to do it as fast as possible.
Had Bush responded to 9/11 as Roosevelt had to Pearl Harbor, the nation would have not just invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, it would have continued into Syria, Pakistan, and then Iran. In addition, there would have been no gentle treatment of Saudi Arabia. They are as complacent in the Islamic War against the west as is Iran, and must either change, or be changed wholly.
Instead, Bush gave us a weak and partial victory that accomplished nothing, and allowed more violence and terrorism to raise its ugly head again, aided and encouraged by the even weaker and wimpier leadership of Barack Obama (illustrated by his own absurdly weak speech just yesterday). The result has been the attacks in France, Benghazi, and California, and increased violence in Israel, Iraq, and Syria. And the rise of a terrorist nation called the Islamic State.
Anyway, watch and see how a real leader responds to evil:
Richard Galliano Tangaria Quarter – Autumn Leaves
An evening pause: Listening to this I almost feel I am a child again at a wedding or bar mitzvah, with my parents’ generation on a crowded dance floor dancing to this kind of soft music. A fitting way to begin the Christmas season.
Hat tip to Danae.
U.S. Navy Midshipmen – Naptown Funk
An evening pause: It ain’t Anchors Aweigh, but the passion is the same. Wholly produced and performed by Navy midshipmen on the streets of Annapolis, with a zero budget.
Hat tip Tom Biggar.
Loggins & Messina – Watching the River Run, House at Pooh Corner, Danny’s Boy
An evening pause: I am usually terrible at remembering the names of songs and the pop singers who sing them, so there are many pop songs that I know and really like that I have no idea what they are named or who performed them. Thus, though I have been very familiar with the name of Loggins & Messina, I never knew these were their songs until I saw this very nice clip of a live concert they put on in 2005. And what impressed me most about this particular performance was their focus on creating good music.
Hat tip Danae.
Hope and Cagney dancing
An evening pause: From the 1955 Bob Hope film, The Seven Little Foys, with James Cagney playing George M. Cohan. Neither man is remembered for their dancing, but from this scene you wouldn’t know it.
Hat tip Tom Biggar.
John Williams – Flying theme from ET
An evening pause: I have always thought Steven Spielberg’s E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) to be incredibly over-rated, poorly edited, shallow with a predictable script, and not very interesting. Why the public went mad for it in 1982 always baffled me. Nonetheless, Williams’ score was and is magnificent, and a listen here might explain that madness somewhat.
Hat tip Danae.
The United Kingdom Ukulele orchestra – Tubular Bells
An evening pause: There are no bells here, nor tubes, but it sounds right nonetheless.
Hat tip Danae.
Aaron Copland – “The Promise of Living” from The Tender Land
An evening pause, posted early for Thanksgiving: I posted this for Thanksgiving back in 2012. It is worth watching and singing again, in these terrible times. The hope of America will always live on, even when America is gone. Ordinary people want freedom, love, family, and the right to live their lives as they wish, without harming others, so they can bring in “the blessings of harvest,” whatever that harvest might be. It must be our goal to allow that to happen, and to stop those that wish to prevent it.
The promise of living
With hope and thanksgiving,,,
Tommy Emmanuel, John Jorgenson, Pedro Javier González – Sultans of Swing
Oldest known footage of New York City
An evening pause: Having left Brooklyn last night, let’s take a look at what New York City looked like to the first documentary filmmakers. I myself am struck by two things immediately: First, how much the city really still looks like this. The buildings might have changed, but New York is still crowded, packed with buildings and people. Second, how much change also occurred in a very short time. The streets went from horses and carriages to street cars to automobiles in just a few decades, quickly, and with relatively little difficulty. Today such changes are hard, slow, and very expensive, mostly because of the introduction of an unending number of regulations.
Gene Pitney – Last Chance To Turn Around
An evening pause: This 1950s song, which many think is titled “Last Exit to Brooklyn,” actually has no connection to the 1950s book with that title. As noted at the youtube webpage, “Maybe Hubert Selby, the book’s author objected or Gene didn’t want to confuse people since they are unconnected.” Thus, the different title.
Hat tip Diane Zimmerman.
The Pacific Crest Trail in Three Minutes
An evening pause: I prefer to do it a bit slower, but this will give the couch potatoes here a sense of why I and others like to go hiking.
Hat tip Danae.
The Portland Cello Project – Denmark
Vine to Wine
An evening pause: Making wine, the modern way. It is interesting how many steps here are still done by hand when they clearly could be automated. I suspect that it doesn’t pay for this winery to upgrade to more sophisticated equipment because their overall output is relatively small and it is more efficient for these steps to still be done by hand.
Hat tip Phill Oltmann, who tells me he is thinking of planting his own grape vines this year.
John Rich – The Battle of New Orleans
on account of because
An evening pause: From the 1941 Howard Hawks classic, Ball of Fire, about eight professors who hire a burlesque dancer to explain slang to them. Hat tip to Phil Berardelli, author of Phil’s Favorite 500: Loves of a Moviegoing Lifetime, who notes, “Barbara Stanwyck demonstrates the art of seduction, complete with luminously backlit hair, opposite the uncharacteristically prim Gary Cooper.”
“I’m going to show you what yum-yum is!”
Mendes Harmónica Trio – Beethoven’s 5th Symphony
Copenhagen Phil – Ravel’s Bolero
An evening pause: You really can’t pick a better classical piece for a flash mob performance than Bolero. It builds bit by bit, allowing the performers to slowly gather as if by accident. I also noticed that they seemed to be really enjoying the casual dress nature of this performance, which occurred at Coperhagen Central Station on May 2, 2011..
Hat tip Danae.