Al Bowlly – Melancholy Baby

An evening pause: Even though it is more seven decades since this was recorded, it remains as fresh and as vibrant as anything sung today. Almost more so because of its simplicity. Bowlly was a big name singer in the 1930s, and he shows why here.

Hat tip Edward Thelen.

Steve Martin – The Great Flydini

An evening pause: The silliness couldn’t be greater.

Hat tip Peter Fenstermacher.

As always, I welcome suggestions from anyone for evening pauses. If you have made them before, please feel free to send me more. You know how to reach me. If you’ve never suggested any but want to, comment here (without including the suggestion-that would give it away) and I will contact you myself.

Cam – Can’t Help Falling In Love

An evening pause: I’ve posted the original version by Elvis Presley from the movie Blue Hawaii (1961) back in 2013, but this live version,live at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville on January 8, 2016, is definitely worth seeing. She dedicated the song to her fiancé, Adam Weaver, and during the performance it is obvious that she is singing directly to him in the audience.

I also dare you to watch it without singing along.

Hat tip Edward Thelen from reminding me that this song needs a revisit.

The first music video in zero gravity

Update: The music video itself has been pulled from youtube for copyright reasons that I don’t quite understand. However, the making of video is still available, and that will give you a pretty good feel for some of the stuff in the original piece.

I was going to make this an evening pause, but then decided it shouldn’t wait. This music video, by OK-Go, is unique and somewhat historic, as it I think is the first to have been done in zero gravity, using an airplane to fly parabolic arcs. It demonstrates clearly the fantastic and as present almost unimaginable possibilities of dance in weightlessness, as it also might be the first time that professional dancers, the two women, are given a chance to do moves in microgravity.

Be sure to also watch the making of video below the fold. And go here for the story behind the video.


» Read more

Marlene Dietrich – Lili Marleen

An evening pause: The song, aired initially during World War II by the Nazis for their troops, became a popular hit for soldiers on both sides of the war. Marlene Dietrich then recorded it as part of her effort to win the war for the Allies, in both English and German. She noted once that the German version is “darker”. Here is the English version.

Hat tip Engine Mike.

Howard Shore – The Shire (Concerning Hobbits)

An evening pause: I am not a big fan of the movie adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. I find them heavy and over-wrought, focused too much on special effects and what I call “cool adolescent stuff”, none of which has anything to do with the very real and human story that Tolkien created about the battle between good and evil.

This short piece from the music score, however, evokes everything about hobbits that Tolkien intended. As he has Gandalf say, in describing hobbits, “Soft as butter they can be, but sometimes as tough as old tree roots.”

And since hobbits and the Shire are nothing more than Tolkien’s metaphor for England and the British culture he knew from before World War II, this song also evokes the quiet majesty and humbleness of that now lost world, “a nation of shop-keepers” who, like the hobbits in the Lord of the Rings, were in the end able to stand firm and beat back the evil of the Third Reich despite overwhelming odds.

Hat tip Rocco.

1 66 67 68 69 70 111