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 […]
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.
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 […]
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 […]
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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“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 one in HOMER. So here it […]
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 […]
I remember living in slums (now expensive condos) in Boston while going to the New England Conservatory. My apartment building shared an alley with drug dealers and prostitutes, so we heard a LOT of noise in those days. The second day I lived there the abandoned place across the street where many of those people […]
From time to time organizations decide to have a “retreat” where members of the company or department get out of their usual surroundings and get out of town. Once out of town, and with usually long hours of discussion ahead of them, participants are able to open up and talk extensively with each other, brainstorm, […]
[I am sitting quietly doing my morning Sudoku puzzle, drinking coffee. It’s 5:30 in the morning. I look up and smell the air: tobacco? patchoulli? old scotch? And an ovoid figure hovers into the room and slowly comes into focus. It is Igor Stravinsky, with sun glasses in a kind of safari outfit with sunglasses, […]
One of the greatest tragedies for a composer is to not hear their music performed live. Charles Ives could have been even more formidable had he heard more of his music, especially the music he took chances with. In college, the biggest hole in my education was brass ensemble. I had written a wild five […]
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