Tag: music
Ella Roberts – Wild Mountain Thyme
An evening pause: I normally dislike music videos like this one, with their fake drama and stagey lip-synched performance, but this song is so beautiful and the visuals match so well that I gladly make an exception this time, especially because I have wanted to post this song as a pause for years, but never could find a version I liked.
Hat tip Alton Blevins.
REO Speedwagon – Roll With the Changes
An evening pause: A 1978 music video.
Hat tip Blair Ivey, who notes “The lyrics suggest a man asking a woman to leave her current relationship,
but the metaphor could be extended to the nascent ‘What the heck are you doing to my country?!!'”
Inside a Mellotron M400 and how it works
An evening pause: A very strange instrument from the 1970s whose keys play strips of magnetic audio tape for each note. You can listen to a performance of “Nights in White Satin” on a Mellotron here. This is definitely a sound from the 1970s, used in many songs of that time.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
Rosie Hodgson & Rowan Piggott – Dancing At Whitsun
An evening pause: I was listening to a different recording of this song by Gordon Bok, Ann Muir, and Ed Trickett from 1978 and thought it gives us a window into a gentle culture that is now dead. As the youtube webpage for the performance below states, the song was written as “a tribute to the women who took up morris dancing during the First World War, when the male mortality rate in some English towns and villages approached seventy percent.”
It is the gentle quality of this song, its words and its sound, that is generally dead in today’s culture. Almost all modern music must be loud — shouted more than sung — with a rock beat that while energetic and enthusiastic is also somewhat harsh. Curse words are normal. It is rare to hear new popular music dedicated to expressing gentle soft love.
I post this as a memorial to that lost civilization.
An evening pause: I was listening to a different recording of this song by Gordon Bok, Ann Muir, and Ed Trickett from 1978 and thought it gives us a window into a gentle culture that is now dead. As the youtube webpage for the performance below states, the song was written as “a tribute to the women who took up morris dancing during the First World War, when the male mortality rate in some English towns and villages approached seventy percent.”
It is the gentle quality of this song, its words and its sound, that is generally dead in today’s culture. Almost all modern music must be loud — shouted more than sung — with a rock beat that while energetic and enthusiastic is also somewhat harsh. Curse words are normal. It is rare to hear new popular music dedicated to expressing gentle soft love.
I post this as a memorial to that lost civilization.
Phil Collins – Two hearts
Busby Berkeley – By a Waterfall
An evening pause: From the 1933 Hollywood musical, Footlight Parade, one of Berkeley’s most spectacular overhead dance numbers. Remember, no CGI. These are real women performing this number.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
James Brown & Luciano Pavarotti – It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s World
Justin Johnson – Ghost of the Mountain
Steve Ibsen – The Kitty Cat Dance
An evening pause: I posted this as an evening pause a dozen years ago. Diane found it again and said it must be posted again. I agree. It is absurdly silly but I guarantee that once you watch you will never forget it. It also appears, from the comments on the youtube page, that young children — who understand the importance of silly — like it especially.
Tina Turner – Proud Mary
An evening pause: Performed live during her 1996-1997 Wildest Dreams tour. May she rest in peace.
Hat tip Rex Ridenoure.
Jethro Tull – For Michael Collins Jeffrey and Me
A evening pause: This song seems fitting on this, the anniversary of the day Neil Armstrong took the first human step on the Moon. The song however honors Mike Collins, who remained in orbit on Columbia, never to touch the surface of the Moon itself.
Hat tip Wayne DeVette.
Priscilla Ahn – The Boobs Song
Graham Mackenzie – Josh’s Jigs
Fatoumata Diawara – Nterini
An evening pause: Diawara grew up in Mali but at eighteen went to France to become an actor and performer.
Hat tip to Tom Donohue, who correctly adds, “Interesting mix of music cultures.”
The Turtles – Happy Together
Elaine Paige – Memory
An evening pause: From Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Broadway musical Cats, based on poems by T.S. Eliot.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
Top Secret Corp Band vs Royal Marines Corp Band
An evening pause: This is called a battle of the drum bands, but in truth this particular performance demonstrates their ability to merge their talents into one grand show.
Hat tip Phil Berardelli.
Otta orchestra – Shades of Red
An evening pause: Performed live 2022 during an all-Russian musical ethnic festival.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
Isabel Martínez – Capricho árabe
Duane Eddy – Rebel Rouser
An evening pause: As the first comment on the youtube page notes, “Before there was Duelin’ Banjos, there were Duane Eddy and his great sax player going back and forth.”
Hat tip Dave McCooey.
UPDATE: The first version I had embedded was removed by Youtube between the time I scheduled it and tonight. The version below is just as good.
The Cactus Cuties – The National Anthem
An evening pause: Performed live, 2008. Their singing makes you listen to the words.
Hat tip Doug Johnson.
TheDailyWoo -The Day The Music Died
An evening pause: Retracing the moments leading to the airplane crash that killed Buddy Holly , the Big Bopper and Richie Valens. For pictures of the memorial items left by others at the crash site, go here.
Hat tip Wayne DeVette.
Another layered mesa in the Cydonia region of Mars
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on March 22, 2023, and shows a 100-foot-high many-layered mesa in the Cydonia region of Mars.
The shadows in this picture are deceptive. The mesa’s high point is not the narrow ridge-line, but at the green dot just beyond that ridge’s northern terminus. In fact, if you were walking south from that dot and then along the crest of that ridge you would be walking downhill the entire length.
Cydonia is in the Martian northern lowland plains, in the mid-latitudes. Thus, there are many features in this picture suggesting near surface ice, such as the mounds with craters at their peak. All could be mud volcanoes as seen in many places in the northern lowland plains.
» Read more
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on March 22, 2023, and shows a 100-foot-high many-layered mesa in the Cydonia region of Mars.
The shadows in this picture are deceptive. The mesa’s high point is not the narrow ridge-line, but at the green dot just beyond that ridge’s northern terminus. In fact, if you were walking south from that dot and then along the crest of that ridge you would be walking downhill the entire length.
Cydonia is in the Martian northern lowland plains, in the mid-latitudes. Thus, there are many features in this picture suggesting near surface ice, such as the mounds with craters at their peak. All could be mud volcanoes as seen in many places in the northern lowland plains.
» Read more
Voices of Music: Andante from Bach’s Flute Sonata in E Minor
The Highwaymen – Ghost Riders In the Sky
Barcelona Gipsy balKan Orchestra – Amarisi
An evening pause: It is interesting to me how similar gypsy music is to Jewish kelzmer music from Eastern Europe.
Hat tip Judd Clark, who adds “She’s got that glow.”
Remember Monday – Fat Bottomed Girls
Tiny Tim’s first appearance on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson
An evening pause: Aired live April 4, 1968. This important moment in time not only illustrates the incredible tolerant and eccentric nature of 1960s culture, it shows us Johnny Carson at his best. He recognizes the eccentricity of his guest, uses it for humor, but then is also sincerely willing to interview Tim and let him express himself. As always, Carson is kind to his guest, which is one of the reasons his audience loved him so much.
Carson also recognized that Tiny Tim’s eccentricity was great entertainment (something Tim recognized himself quite clearly), which is why Carson allowed the appearance to go so long. It was good show business.
Hat tip Judd Clark.