Ronnie Drew died earlier this afternoon, in Dublin (where else?). The BBC, over here.
Lennon-McCartney may have been only the second most significant musical collaboration in the 1960s, after that between Ronnie Drew and Luke Kelly at the heart of The Dubliners.
I keep thinking I should buy another recording of Carmen to sit on the shelf alongside my old 1978 Abbado / Berganza / Domingo / LSO recording. Any thoughts? Preferences? Anti-recommendations?
According to the website, the Latvian pirate song “is a story about the historical endeavours of our ancestors, and tells of their backbreaking lives, rebellious spirit, freedom, masculinity and tenderness while showing their patriotism and love for the planet earth, and an unquenchable thirst for adventure.”
We have the first ever Eurovision entries from San Marino and Azerbaijan this time round.
Here’s San Marino, with “Complice” by Miodio:
Here’s Azerbaijan, with “Day after day” by Elnur Hüseynov:
Be aware that it’s possible that neither of these songs will get beyond this week’s semi-final stage.
I asked my friend Dan, who is an expert on (i) political philosophy concerning the rectification of historic injustice and (ii) pop music, and he reckons that Cliff Richard is the victim of historic injustice, having been cheated by Spanish fascists out of the 1968 Eurovision title that was rightfully his. I’m still not altogether clear who owes what, if anything, to whom. I was rather hoping we might blame Ruth Kelly, owing to her Opus Dei connections, but some people around me seem to think that’s a bit too tangential, all things considered.
Norm points out that Willie Nelson has recently turned 75…
Another opera in lego has been posted on YouTube. This time it’s Philip Glass’s La belle et la bête, written to accompany Jean Cocteau’s 1946 film.
Preview.
Act One.
Act Two.
Act Three.
[from, thanks NB]
Alan Connor, over here.
Tosca also exists in a Lego version.
Act One, part one:
Act One, part two:
Act Two:
Act Three [a particularly fine firing squad]:
One of the best things about living in Oxford is that the Welsh National Opera pass through twice a year. Their productions are usually great fun, and Friday’s performance of Il Trovatore was no exception. For those who missed the show, however, here’s Verdi’s masterpiece abridged and performed in Lego:
Act One:
Act Two:
Act Three:
Act Four:
I’ve known about the pop song “Now I Want A Man Like Putin” for a while, but hadn’t heard it until yesterday. Here it is:
A pop-up Graceland at Christmas:
Over here.
Sample: “I must admit translating Elvis into Sumerian was not easy.”
[From the man who brought us Elvis in Latin]
“Although I argue vehemently against modern pop music, on grounds of its musical incompetence, verbal impoverishment and general morbidity, narcissism and salaciousness; although I fiercely object to disco dancing as a sacrilege against the human form and a collective rejection of civilised courtship; although I defend reels, minuets, galliards, sarabands and (as limiting cases) waltzes and polkas as the only ways in which ordinary humanity should dare to put its sexual nature on festive display, and although I regard the 12-bar blues and the flattened subdominant seventh as the lowest forms of vulgarity in music, I find rock’n'roll in general, and Elvis in particular, irresistible, and would happily dance away the night to it. I cannot explain the thrill of delight with which I hear the first bars of Jailhouse Rock or the eagerness with which I at once search the vicinity for a partner: but there it is, appalling proof that, despite all my efforts, I am human.”
[tehgraun]
Elvis Presley, died thirty years ago today, 16 August 1977.
Five excellent Elvis tracks (no particular order):
Please list your favourite tracks / records / films (!!) / etc. in the comments.
From the end of what may be the greatest scene in the greatest film ever made: Rouget de Lisle teaches the Marseillaise to the people of Paris, in Abel Gance’s Napoleon:
Was this year the first time the French have entered a song with Anglo lyrics in the Eurovision song contest?
(You can tell that I’m brooding over the issues that matter.)
A bunch of my friends went off to Helsinki last week. They said they were going to attend the Joint Sessions of the European Consortium of Political Research. But were they just too embarrassed to say that that they had tickets to Eurovision 2007? It’d be nice to think there were several analytical political theorists in the audience. Perhaps one of them was holding the much-filmed “Where Is Andorra?” placard?
Just as the separation of Montenegro and Serbia came suspiciously close to last year’s Eurovision Song Contest, Tony Blair’s resignation was clearly timed to try to increase the chances of the Eurovision electorate casting any votes at all for the UK entry, but in the end only Ireland (7) and Malta (douze points!) co-operated. (Perhaps we should hand out the George Cross to foreign countries more liberally than we do.) Still, I was glad Scooch got something. 2003’s Jemini deserved nothing, and Flying the Flag For You was far better than that. Ukraine was robbed, though.
Is all of Eurovision ever on Youtube? There seems to quite a lot of it, anyway, as searching for things like “Eurovision 1957” is generating quite a lot of clips. But I won’t plough through them just yet.
And if we are stuck in the era of Eastern domination and shameless regional bloc-voting, please can all the North African countries in Eurovision get over their hang-ups about Israel, at least to the extent of sending in their official entries, in the interests of living in a more multi-polar Eurovision large geographical area? And the Italians should return to the fray. Just because they’ve got their very own San Remo festival doesn’t mean the rest of us think it’s OK to opt out of Eurovision.
(I was surprised Sweden didn’t do better.)
Tribune reminds me that it’s the seventieth anniversary of the Battle of Jarama. Lots of different versions of the song; these are the words sung by Woody Guthrie. You know how it goes; sing along:
There’s a valley in Spain called Jarama
It’s a place that we all know so well
It was there that we fought against the Fascists
We saw a peacful valley turn to hellFrom this valley they say we are going
But don’t hasten to bid us adieu
Even though we lost the battle at Jarama
We’ll set this valley free before we’re throughWe were men of the Lincoln Battalion
We’re proud of the fight that we made
We know that you people of the valley
We’re remember our Lincoln BrigadeYou will never find peace with these Fascists
You’ll never find friends such as we
So remember that valley of Jarama
And the people that’ll set that valley freeAll this world is like this valley called Jarama
So green and so bright and so fair
No fascists can dwell in our valley
Nor breathe in our new freedom’s air
Apparently Pete Seeger is still alive. Who knew?
How did the old song go?
“They gave him his orders at Party headquarters,
Sayin’, “Pete, you’re way behind time –
It is not ‘38 but 1957,
and there’s been a change in the Party line.”
Something like that, anyway.
I don’t really think of myself as someone who goes to many live performances of the so-called popular so-called music, but of the very few I’ve been to, it seems that one of them was almost one of the “twenty five best gigs ever“, according to the Observer (though there don’t seem to be 25 on the linked page; perhaps you’re supposed to buy the magazine or something to get them all. I don’t know.)
Anyway, there on the list: Mano Negra at the Town and Country Club, in 1989. I say “almost” as I don’t think I was there then; memory tells me I saw them there in 1990 or 1991, so maybe that’s because they were quite good in 1989, and got invited back or something. So perhaps it doesn’t count. Anyway: they were very good on that occasion, and great fun.
If I were to make a list of the 25 best concerts that I’ve been to, that one would certainly make the cut, though it would end up being quite a lot lower down than, say, Anne Evans singing Isolde at Covent Garden around 1993. That was really good. Splendid, even.
Oh, I’m very pleased to see this again:
From tehgraun’s OBO, as the England 2d innings begins:
If Freddie pulls this off, it will be his greatest feat as a captain so far, but then the only competition for that title is his use of Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” to motivate the team into coming back to win the final Test in India earlier this year. I wonder what Johnny Cash tune he’ll be playing now? “How high is the water mamma? three feet high and rising” that is the best the man in black has to say about this sorry business.
