https://500songs.com/podcast/ Continue reading “A Bastard Christmas”
Makerbot Making Art
In an effort to expose the lax standards for handling packages by Fed Ex, this artist had glass boxes shipped all over the world. He then displayed the damaged goods as art, and now they’re in a museum. Makerbot, I suggest that you bring this to management’s attention to address this serious
Forgotten Gem
Probably my favorite EJ song. It’s the second half of a medley that opens Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. It (along with the opening song, the instrumental Funeral For a Friend) got quite a bit of airplay on FM radio when the album was released. This was the glory days of FM, when stations played deep tracks. You never heard it on AM, which stuck to singles. It gets left out of “best of” compilations, and many EJ fans don’t know it. I don’t get why. This song has everything going for it, including a killer bass line. It’s one of the songs I used to teach myself bass when I got one in 10th grade.
One More Move
Prepare To Have Your Face Melted
I was just online talking about what a great live album Budokan is, when someone corrected me that this 2020 album (of a 1977 show at The Whisky) easily blows it away. He’s right!
Cults Cults Cults
I’ve posted twice on them. Here’s a third. They excel at hooks, often recycled 60’s girl group ones. Who cares? Not I. Two albums, Cults and Static, are worth playing all the way through. I think I was underwhelmed by the others, but I sampled them quickly so could have misjudged.
Decisions, Decisions
If you’ve ever wondered why there are a thousand different recordings of some music, here’s Leonard Bernstein showing why: there are a thousand different ways to play it. Printed music can only tell you so much. Of course, some of those thousand recordings are copying one another, but with these guys you always got something unique. They had their off days like anyone, but when they were on…
The Soprano
Samuel Mariño is a rarity in opera: a true male soprano.
Rather than relying on falsetto as a countertenor would, Mariño, 28, is able to comfortably sing high notes with his chest voice. Now he is branching out from Baroque parts originally written for castrati.
“The teachers were trying to treat me as a countertenor. I had to sing lower when I could sing much higher. Being a countertenor is an established thing, and they were trying to put me into that box. Then, in 2017, I met Barbara Bonney. A friend told me that I sing very much like her. I wrote to her and said: “Hi. I’m Samuel and I want to take lessons with you.” I went to Salzburg, Austria, and Barbara was like a fairy godmother. She told me to sing how I speak, to just put notes to my speaking voice. And that is what I do today.”
Your new album starts with a famous Mozart aria written for a woman who is playing a man. What do you bring to the role as a male singer?
“My voice is a light lyric soprano, with a bit of coloratura. In the score, Cherubino is a soprano role, but today it’s for mezzo-sopranos and their male-ish colors. If you talk to any mezzo, they will tell you it’s very hard to sing Cherubino, because it’s quite high — not super high notes, but sitting all the time in a high tessitura. Cherubino is a young teenager, and I do him as a boy who is innocent and confused. It’s a totally different vision of how the role can be sung.”
More Nazz
I’ve posted a Nazz song or two here and there. Was about to blargh more substantially about them, then I ran across this video, a decent overview. First I’ve heard of this YouTuber, but apparently he does a lot of these on various bands.
Not Wrong Long always reminds me of Hot Burrito #2. Both released the same year, ’68. Coincidence? Who knows? Who cares?
Pedantic correction: Nazz Nazz came out in ’69.
Rhino released a cool red vinyl Nazz Nazz some years ago (seen on the turntable in video). Not hard to find.
20 Years
Hard to believe, but Up The Bracket turns twenty this year. If a better album’s come out since, I haven’t heard it.