From the monthly archives:
An early Leonard Cohen song revisited in a live performance in San Sebastian in 1988. Cohen’s performance here hasn’t changed much from his original recording. A dark and galloping song. There is no dominant in the opening verse. His sexy flat-six chord has three notes of a French augmented-6th chord (F A B) with a [...]
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Down in the dumps?
Sing!
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What a find! An historically interesting lipsync performance of “Christine’s Tune” by Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman on the Flying Burrito Brothers first album. Gram is very silly (or drunk) in this video and Chris is having a great time. We see the infamous Sneaky Pete Kleinow on steel guitar, as well as Chris Ethridge [...]
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I have a long affection for ties even though I don’t wear them any longer. During high school and college, I hitch hiked a lot. My standard garb was jeans, a sport coat, and a tie loose around my neck. When I first got the job at UCLA in 1983 I wore ties. My students [...]
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Juliana Gondek made me bring this to your attention. She wants you to look at the comments on the YouTube original if you like the arrangment.
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I discussed the three options for musical drama these days a few weeks back, trying to decide what HOMER is — a musical, an opera, or a musical drama. The script calls it a musical drama, but when I asked Mel what he called it at our reading last week, “it’s a musical” — I [...]
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For those of us working in academia, as those of you not may remember, our years are divided up by the academic terms. At UCLA we are on the quarter system where we have three 10-week terms per year (wait, shouldn’t that be a tri-mester?), and the second quarter is about over. This week is [...]
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Here is a video of Stephen Stills on the Dick Cavett Show. Wow! What a circle of stars. Sitting next to him are Joni Mitchell and David Crosby, and I saw Grace Slick, Jorma Kaukonen and Marty Balin (?) from the Jefferson Airplane.
In my life as a folk singer I loved to sing this [...]
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[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
“Someday Soon” (first draft of accompaniment)
Music by Roger Bourland
Words by Mel Shapiro
from “Homer in Cyberspace
It is customary, at least on older operas, to have a passacaglia or ground bass at some point. OK, my piece is kind of opera kind of musical, but I couldn’t resist having [...]
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Last night Mark and I went to hear the UCLA Philharmonia perform. The first half was Webern’s 6 Pieces for Orchestra followed by the Mahler “Songs of a Wayfarer.” The second half was the Beethoven Eroica. I was thrilled Mark agreed to my usual plan of staying for half the concert. I know the eroica [...]
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