An evening pause: From the youtube website:
The Atacama desert is home to the darkest and cleanest skies in the world. …The environment is harsh though. Filmed in freezing temperatures, altitudes up to 5000m/16000ft, salt lakes and icy slopes, the Atacama is not friendly to life and equipment.
Hat tip Willi Kusche.
An evening pause: Performed live on television in 1966. This was Haggard’s first #1 hit.
Hat tip Jim Mallamace.
An evening pause: Beautiful, and the sentiment is right. I do however wonder in this song whom she is referring to with the pronoun “they,” and if she thought about this with any depth.
Hat tip Danae.
An evening pause: Something a bit different, and very fascinating if you want to understand the sophistication of some classic rock.
Hat tip Dan Covert.
An evening pause: From the 1958 movie of the great Rodgers & Hammerstein musical, South Pacific.
I first saw this movie as a child when I was around five years old. I didn’t understand the story really, and was especially puzzled by some lyrics, especially because my young mind took them very literally. (Just consider “I’m going wash that man right out of my hair!”)
What I do remember was that this song became one of my favorites throughout my early childhood. In hearing it recently again, I was struck by something I clearly remember, from that childhood. The song is about the draw of love and desire, which is what Bali Ha’i partly represents. However, Hammerstein’s lyrics refer to more, to the greater magic hidden in life everywhere, the mystery that lies behind the black, you might say. It is a theme he repeated in many of the songs he wrote for Richard Rodgers..
What struck me now was how I clearly remember, as a child of five, being very aware of this second somewhat sophisticated meaning. At first I was a little surprised that a child of five could comprehend such concepts, but then as Wordsworth wrote,
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
and not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
As a child I knew nothing of the sexual draw of Bali Ha’i, but I understood its mystical nature quite naturally. I have since spent my life trying to hold onto those “clouds of glory,” because they help connect us better to the enigma that is existence.
This version uses Juanita Hall’s own voice, from an earlier recording. For the movie they dubbed her singing because Rodgers no longer thought her aging voice sounded right.
An evening pause: Halloween might have been yesterday, but it deserves a song as well as a short film.
Hat tip Danae.
An evening pause: As described on the website, this was an “individual ‘freestyle clogging’ exhibition by the Green Grass Cloggers with old time string band music by Strictly Strings from Boone, North Carolina.’
Hat tip Edward Thelen.
An evening pause: The closing song and credits from one of the greatest musicals every put on film, The Music Man (1962).
It reminds us that there is always magic in the air, if only we look for it.
Hat tip Edward Thelen.
An evening pause: I haven’t posted this band since 2011. Time to do it again. The sound is the from the studio recording, sync’d to this stage performance. I’d rather have seen the live version, but I suspect the sound quality was so poor this is a better choice.
Hat tip Jim Mallamace.
An evening pause: Make sure you stick around to hear her comments after the song.
Hat tip Wayne DeVette.
An evening pause: I find it interesting that almost all of the pop stars mentioned in this video have never been posted here as an evening pause. I want and like variety, and the main take-away from this video is the increasing sameness of modern music. Blah.
In sense, this video is an instruction manual for everyone who wants to send me a suggestion for an evening pause. It tells you the kind of music I will likely not be interested in, should you suggest it to me. To put it simply, if it sounds like everything else produced today, then it won’t get cast in the audition.
An evening pause: Hat tip Edward Thelen, who quite correctly notes, “Such an upbeat performance for such a downbeat title.”
An evening pause: Performed live in 1963 on the television show Hootenanny, at the very beginning of their career.
Hat tip Jim Mallamace.
