Sad
Whitney Houston, dead at 48. I had no idea she was that young, which tells you how her life had been ravaged by drugs and who knows what else. Once a beautiful woman with a beautiful voice, she reportedly got … Continue reading →
Category Archives: Music
MP3 or CD?
I still buy CDs. But then, I’m a Leonard Cohen fan, and apparently that’s the sort of archaic thing we folks do. If I’m just buying a single song, though, I usually pay my 99 cents (or $1.29, because inflation … Continue reading →
Famous Blue Raincoat: the provenance of a familiar tune
My favorite YouTube activity these days seems to involve watching singer/songwriters morph from young to old almost instantaneously. There’s something both creepy and magical about getting into the YouTube time machine and seeing ten different live versions of a song … Continue reading →
The Cat (Stevens) came back
The singer formerly known as Cat Stevens is nothing if not controversial. It’s hard to write about him even now without generating a firestorm of hatred. But I’m going to try. Stevens (now Yusuf Islam) is hated by a lot … Continue reading →
Let’s all chill out…
…and dance. And it’s not even that cold in New England today, so let’s have a summer song:
Continue reading →Tears go by as time goes by
1965. It was a very good year. Let’s sit and watch “As Tears Go By” with Marianne Faithfull: A few more years (forty, to be exact) and a few more tears go by for Marianne. Had Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, … Continue reading →
Tempus fugit: when you’re a Jet you stay a Jet
Indulging in one of my favorite pastimes, surfing on YouTube, recently led me to a clip of a 2007 rehearsal of a new production of the musical “West Side Story.” The sequence begins with the cast of the 2007 revival, … Continue reading →
Singing a good song: from Empty Chairs to Killing to Grammys and back
Here’s the story of the life of a song that most of you know, or think you know: A minor fact: I met Lori Lieberman briefly around the time the song first became popular or even before that. She was … Continue reading →
Christmas greetings!
Merry Christmas! For those of you who thought this post from yesterday too long to wade through, I thought I’d just put up a portion of the last video in that post here so you can enjoy it for Christmas. … Continue reading →
Hansel and Gretel: losing their religion
I love the opera “Hansel and Gretel,” by Engelbert Humperdinck (no, not that Humperdinck or this one; this one). His name may be a yuk, but the music he composed is among the masterpieces of opera, soaring and sonorous, tuneful … Continue reading →
Love found…
…and lost, and… A great story-song from the late Harry Chapin:
Continue reading →The joys of amateur musicals
In the comments section of this thread from a while back, a number of people praised the old Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals, and especially the charms of amateur productions. I’m in complete agreement. The librettos may be outdated in many … Continue reading →