Midlife Jazzband/Swiss Dixie Jazzer – Tiger Rag
An evening pause: I think the band is named Midlife Jazzband, and they are playing the named songs. The website is unclear however and I could have some of it backwards. No matter.
Hat tip Tom Biggar.
Tag: entertainment
Amin Toufani – Gratitude
An evening pause: From a time in the distant past when people could socialize and entertain each other as normal human beings. And according to the youtube website, the fire was real.
Hat tip lazarus long.
An evening pause: From a time in the distant past when people could socialize and entertain each other as normal human beings. And according to the youtube website, the fire was real.
Hat tip lazarus long.
Debussy plays Debussy – Clair de Lune
An evening pause: As the youtube webpage notes, “This is not an acoustic recording. This is a recording obtained by piano roll.”
Rolls for the reproducing piano were generally made from the recorded performances of famous musicians. Typically, a pianist would sit at a specially designed recording piano, and the pitch and duration of any notes played would be either marked or perforated on a blank roll, together with the duration of the sustaining and soft pedal. Reproducing pianos can also re-create the dynamics of a pianist’s performance by means of specially encoded control perforations placed towards the edges of a music roll, but this coding was never recorded automatically. Different companies had different ways of notating dynamics, some technically advanced (though not necessarily more effective), some secret, and some dependent entirely on a recording producer’s handwritten notes, but in all cases these dynamic hieroglyphics had to be skillfully converted into the specialized perforated codes needed by the different types of instrument.
Thus, we are listening now to a player piano, replaying the music as Debussy played it.
Hat tip Tom Biggar.
Justin Johnson – I’ve been everywhere
An evening pause: I normally don’t post two suggestions in a row from the same reader, but this particular collapsible (!) guitar contrasts too nicely with Friday’s theorbo. From the youtube webpage:
If the ability to break down and re-assemble wasn’t crazy enough, it actually STAYS IN TUNE when you put it back together, thanks to the air-tight construction techniques and locking tuners!
The song is by Johnny Cash.
Hat tip Jeff Poplin.
Brandon Acker – Canario
An evening pause: The music was written in the early 1600s by G.G. Kapsberger. The instrument is called a theorbo. I posted a different performance featuring this medieval instrument in 2019, in which the instrument’s origins is described. In both cases the quality of sound is hauntingly wonderful..
Hat tip Jeff Poplin.
Samara Ginsberg – Inspector Gadget for 8 cellos
John McDermott – The Green Fields of France
An evening pause: For Armistice Day. The song should remind us that the shadows cast by the first World War have been long and enduring, and even a hundred years after continue to influence us, for good and ill.
Hat tip Phill Oltmann
The Moon Loungers – Mr Bluesky
The Dzhanibekov effect
An evening pause: This very very strange and somewhat inexplicable rotation effect occurs for real in at least one place, on a very large scale, and could have a significant effect on the Earth at some point. I will elucidate on Monday.
Hat tip Chris McLaughlin.
An evening pause: This very very strange and somewhat inexplicable rotation effect occurs for real in at least one place, on a very large scale, and could have a significant effect on the Earth at some point. I will elucidate on Monday.
Hat tip Chris McLaughlin.
Die Twinnies – Bayernmädels
An evening pause: Hat tip Jim Mallamace, who writes,
Good friends, Astrid Paster and Franziska Pauli, are Die Twinnies. This was the girls’ debut TV performance for the popular Austrian entertainment show, “Musikantenstadl.”
This was recorded in 2009. It is said the career length of a child entertainer is about the same as the lifespan of a pet. That was pretty much true for Die Twinnies. We enjoy such performances while we can.
It might be lip-synched, but so what? Fun stuff.
Lyrebird sings Australia
Peter Gabriel – The Boy in the Bubble
A evening pause: Somehow, this seems very appropriate for today, this particualar but most important election day.
Hat tip Wayne DeVette.
Yes, Prime Minister – If the right people don’t have power…
Jay Proctor – Apples Peaches Pumpkin Pie
Bazooka Charlie – WW2s Strangest Tank Buster
An evening pause: Today this man would likely be forbidden from doing this, regardless of its practicality. Modern military rules would be horrified at his independent action.
Hat tip lazarus long.
The Dock
An evening pause: Some surfing action in Bali off of an artificial floating platform that sometimes “kicks like a snake.”
Hat tip Roland.
Luca Sestak – Swanee River Boogie Woogie
MadTV – Windstorm 97
An evening pause: We find this funny because it so accurately documents the inanity and stupidity of almost all television news. And yet, so many people who would laugh at this take with complete faith the reporting on COVID-19, all of which has been as absurd and as untrustworthy.
Hat tip lazarus long.
Jean Sibelius – Finlandia
An evening pause: Takes us also on a magnificent tour of Finland’s natural world, with some breath-taking film footage.
Hat tip Björn Larsson.
Penguin highway
An evening pause: Worth watching more than once, if only to escape the insanity of our time.
I can’t help wondering however why they all are walking on this route, and what is it they stop to look at to the right at one point? And why is one crawling on its belly?
Hat tip Jim Mallamace.
Mnozil Brass – lonley boy
Joshua Wong – The New Politics
An evening pause: Hat tip Jim Mallamace, who accurately describes this as “a mildly amusing short sci-fi film.”
My thought in watching this short film is that I have been watching and reading sci-fi movies and books about a oppressive future imposed by technology for almost sixty years. All were written as warnings of a future to avoid. Instead, it appears we have taken them all as instruction manuals.
Irene “Granny” Ryan – I’m a woman
An evening pause: For the younger audiences, Ryan played Granny Clampett on the silly 1960s TV show, The Beverly Hillbillies.
The song is fun, but I just can’t get that vision of her incompatibility with her boyfriend out of my head.
Hat tip Alton Blevins.
MetaBallStudios – Fictional spaceships by size
An evening pause: I think this video well illustrates the range of human imagination, as well as the real possibilities for the future, if we only have the courage to match.
I played this at 1.5 to increase the pace, but that’s not necessary.
Hat tip Jim Mallamace.
Eddie Van Halen – Eruption Guitar Solo
John Branyan – The Three Little Pigs
Yodeling!
An evening pause: Hat tip Jim Mallamace, who writes,
If I understood German, I think I would enjoy this performance even more. Angela Wiedl is Bavarian, Melanie Oesch is Swiss, and Herlinde Lindner is Austrian. From what I read in the comments, each singer sings the “Erzherzog Johann Jodler” in her own country’s version of German.
Henry Mancini – Pink Panther theme
André Rieu – Nearer, My God, to Thee
An evening pause: This pause seems most appropriate, following yesterday’s pause, since this is thought to be the last thing the Titanic’s band played just before the ship sank.
We can hope this also does not become the epitaph for America, following the election.
Hat tip Jim Mallamace.
Canvas – The Simpsons theme song
An evening pause: About two years ago I said to Diane that I’d never seen any of The Simpsons animated TV show. Neither had she. Since then we have watched all the available episodes on DVD, covering most of the first twenty seasons.
What first impressed us about the show was how actually normal and family-oriented it was, in the beginning. It was not the “edgy” ugly portrayal of America its reputation had implied.
Over time that theme was more and more lost, though whenever the writers went back to those roots the show shined. Even so, what was most impressive was how the show managed somehow to remain fresh, for most of that time period. Except for a period around season nine, the satire and jokes remained solid for almost all of the first twenty years.
Since the last ten years have not been put on DVD, we won’t likely see them. No matter. Twenty years of The Simpsons was great, but it was more than enough.
Hat tip Diane Zimmerman, who used numerous musical quotes from the series to find many great evening pauses.