In honor of Robert Keeshan and a childhood memory, I post this ancient TV clip. It’s from the opening of Captain Kangaroo, a children’s TV host that I watched faithfully as a boy. I LOVED this part with all the doors. The only part you don’t see here is that when he puts his keys [...]
In my opinion, this is one of Crosby Stills and Nash’s best songs, written by Stephen Stills and on their first album. Stephen Stills, fresh from the Buffalo Springfield, sings the melody on bottom, David Crosby, recently booted from the Byrds, sings the middle voice, and Graham Nash, formerly of the Hollies, sings high tenor.
The [...]
Frank Zappa wrote a song that said “Call any vegetable, call him by name…” The Vegetable Orchestra decided to play any vegetable and regularly bands together to show off the fruits of their labor. They were kind enough to share this video with us.
Certain composers’ oeuvre can be thought of as one large composition. Each piece is cut from that large fabric. Composers that come to mind in this category are Edgard Varése and George Crumb. Similarly, there are songwriters who, in addition to penning a popular song, compose song prototypes (for lack of a better word), and [...]
John Whitney (1917 – 1995) was the father of computer animation and was a UCLA professor as well. He was perhaps best known for the psychedlic galactic travelling scenes in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY.
Whitney was an important artist and deserves to be better known. I looked at a website that celebrates him, sponsored by [...]
Here is some silly person who has dressed up like a faux-Streisand drag queen to present for us a great little gem from the 60s, “Just in Time.” The story that I learned is that Lenny assembled this piece for Adolf Green and his wife for their wedding and sang it for them. For those [...]
Here is Rudolf Nureyev’s interpretation of “Moondrunk,” the opening movement of Arnold Schoenberg’s classic, PIERROT LUNAIRE. Nureyev is magical in his treatment of a moonstruck clown. (For my non-new music readers, the vocal technique heard here is called “sprechstimme” or “speaking voice” where a dramatic style of speaking/singing is emulated through notation. This technique comes [...]
I read with interest that Apple is now the number three top seller of music in the world, having just passed up Amazon and trailing Best Buy and the number 1 music store, Wal-Mart. I also read that Apple is one of the worst, or shall I say, most selfish corporations in terms of non-profit [...]
I’m just back from 5 days in Palm Springs for one of my periodic escapes from LA to recharge my batteries and to write music. . I know this sounds odd to many, but one of the benefits of a desert retreat is that it’s too damn hot to do anything else BUT to work [...]
Del Kolve just passed this video on to me — 500 Years of Female Portraits in Western Art. Keep watching her eyes (I watched her left eye) and experience the magical morphing that occurs. The music is from an inner movement of a Bach cello suite (not sure which). The director is not credited here [...]
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