An evening pause: The only member of Steely Dan playing here appears to be Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, playing lead guitar. The others include Kipp Lennon on vocals, Nathan East on bass, and CJ Vanston on keys.
Hat tip Joseph Griffin.
An evening pause: Though this song has nothing to do with it, the lyrics to me somehow fit with today’s eclipse.
Hat tip Edward Thelen.
An evening pause: From Peer Gynt, and a nice way to end the week, with a bang.
Hat tip Jim Mallamace.
An evening pause: I haven’t posted anything by this group since 2012. Time for another, this time about a war between the bees and the bees.
An evening pause: Performed live 1974. The center singer, Glodean James, was married to Barry White at the time.
Hat tip Edward Thelen.
An evening pause: Hat tip Jim Mallamace, who writes, “The tarantella is an uplifting folk dance music popular in many regions of Italy. Each region with its own version. This performance is of a tarantella from the Naples area. … Maestro Antonio Casolaro is on the mandolin. Francesco Polito on guitar.”
An evening pause: You need to watch all of The Sound of Music (1965) to understand the context that makes the song even better, and explains the way the clip ends.
Hat tip Edward Thelen.
An evening pause: I think this makes a nice contrast with yesterday’s evening pause. Both show talent, skill, musical ability, but which is actually more civilized?
From the 1934 Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musical, The Gay Divorcee.
Hat tip Edward Thelen.
An evening pause: The future, or as I like to say, the coming dark age.
Jane says
I’ve never been in love
I don’t know what it is
Only knows if someone wants her
I want them if they want me
I only know they want me
Hat tip Joseph Griffin.
An evening pause: In honor of what happened today, 48 years ago, when three American astronauts safely landed home on Earth, after walking on the Moon. From the chorus:
Only in America
Dreamin’ in red white and blue
Only in America
Where we dream as big as we want to
We all get a chance
Everybody gets to dance
It will be the American ideas of freedom, individual achievement, and capitalism that will make the settlement of the solar system possible. Other nations will participate, but it will still be these ideas that fuel the journey.
Hat tip Jim Mallamace.
An evening pause: We started the week with some fast piano playing. Let’s do it again.
Hat tip Edward Thelen.
An evening pause: A very simple song. But then, sometimes simplicity is the most beautiful.
Hat tip Kyle Kooy.
An evening pause: In this case the word “minute” does not refer to time. It is pronounced “my-nute,” and refers to the piece’s small-size, delicacy, and fast-paced shortness.
Hat tip Edward Thelen.
An evening pause: I think the chorus here describes our entire intellectual society today.
What are words for when no one listens anymore
What are words for when no one listens
What are words for when no one listens it’s no use talkin at all
Hat tip Jim Mallamace.
An evening pause: From one of the best films ever made, Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). As I wrote about it at the time for a comic book fan group, it recognizes that there is good and evil, and that there is something in the universe that casts judgement on each. Such concepts had and continue to be largely rejected by modern intellectualism, at our peril.
Hat tip Edward Thelen.
An evening pause: Hat tip Jim Mallamace, who noted that this is “a song about getting arrested for marijuana possession and being given a prison number in the late 60’s.” Jim also added, “The song is meaningful to me because at the end of 2011, I couldn’t imagine the country would re-elect a failed president with a legacy of disastrous economic, domestic, and foreign policies. I thought Mr. Obama would lose by 54 to 46. When he went on to win his second term, 54-46 felt like our prison number for the next 4 years.”
A evening pause: From the film Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988), and sung by Amy Irvine.
Hat tip Jim Mallamace.
An evening pause: This clip includes the scene that leads up to the song, and helps explain its dramatic context.
To be honest, this has never been one of my favorite Rodgers & Hammerstein songs. The musical, South Pacific, is magnificent, and has been featured before as an evening pause, but this song to me always seemed a bit preachy. It was written in the 1950s, however, and thus for its time was, as was the musical, important components of the civil rights movement that ended the bigoted discrimination against blacks in the United States.
I should add that as a child who loved this musical when I first heard and saw it in the early 1960s, I never understood what Nellie’s problem was. Why did it matter that the kids’ mother had been Polynesian?
Hat tip Edward Thelen.
An evening pause: I posted this last year for the Fourth of July. It is worth watching again, and again, and again. From the 1976 movie version of the 1972 musical, 1776. As I said last year, not only did the musical capture the essence of the men who made independency happen, it is also a rollicking and entertaining work of art.
An evening pause: From the Broadway musical Annie Get Your Gun. In January 2001, McEntire, a well known country singer, made her Broadway debut in the 2000 revival of the musical that was opened originally with Bernedette Peters in the role. McEntire was an instant sensation, performing the role on Broadway for eighteen months. In many ways this role made her, as it showed she could do far more than sing, and was in fact a very skilled comedic actor.
This clip, shot by an audience member, does a remarkable job of capturing part of one of those performances.
Hat tip Diane Zimmerman.
