What are you listening to right now?

[mistermack]

10 hours ago, TheVat said:

Seemed like it was time to listen to one of my country's greatest poets again - Bob Dylan:

I find Dylan very pretentious, but then I find most poetry pretentious. I do like Dylan for the music, but the words I don't bother with. Same goes for Leonard Cohen, I like the music but the words I can leave. Although they do add a bit of general atmosphere. 

This is from my country's greatest poet. It's one of his best. Again, I'm not bothered about the words, just the music and atmosphere of the piece. 

 

[geordief]

55 minutes ago, mistermack said:

I find Dylan very pretentious, but then I find most poetry pretentious. I do like Dylan for the music, but the words I don't bother with. Same goes for Leonard Cohen, I like the music but the words I can leave. Although they do add a bit of general atmosphere. 

This is from my country's greatest poet. It's one of his best. Again, I'm not bothered about the words, just the music and atmosphere of the piece. 

 

 

You must mean  best Irish poet?

Shakespeare is so obviously the most highly considered English poet  that it would make little sense to put Spike Milligan in his league.

Spike certainly was a wonderful man writing a wonderful epitaph for his tombstone but could never have written the Tombstone  Blues.

Edited March 4, 2023 by geordief

[mistermack]

11 minutes ago, geordief said:

Tombstone  Blues

Pretentious. (to me)  🙃

I rate Chuck Berry as America's greatest poet. Dylan could never have written Johnny B Goode, or Nadine.

[geordief]

25 minutes ago, mistermack said:

Pretentious. (to me)  🙃

I rate Chuck Berry as America's greatest poet. Dylan could never have written Johnny B Goode, or Nadine.

Or My Little Ding-a-Ling

(Not sure who was the best American dancer btw his Duck Walk and MJ's MoonWalk

[mistermack]

Actually, it's widely acknowledged  that Dylan was heavily influenced by the style of Chuck Berry's Nadine. It's even on the song's wiki page : 

"According to Allmusic, the song had a "profound influence" on the songwriting of Bob Dylan: "One need only listen to 'Nadine (Is It You?)', released in February 1964, and then to the 1965 Dylan album Bringing It All Back Home, with its surreal story-songs, to hear the similarities."^[3]nfluenc      

^{And this :}

The first single, "Subterranean Homesick Blues", owed much to Chuck Berry's "Too Much Monkey Business";^[86]

So Chuck was the daddy.

45 minutes ago, geordief said:

Not sure who was the best American dancer btw

Fred Astair or Jed Clampett for me. 

[Lee0110]

The whole album of Atomic Hearts

[TheVat]

Sort of a Russian battle of Capriccios.  First Tchaikovsky's Capriccio Italien, then Rimsky-Korsakov's Capriccio Espanol.  I'm calling it a draw.  The Tchaikovsky is maybe a little warmer, more romantic, but the RK is haunting and might make you ache for someplace you've never been.  What the Germans call fernweh.

 

[Airbrush]

 

[Airbrush]

 

[Airbrush]

 

[zapatos]

Gives me chills...

 

[mistermack]

This is just about as Irish as you can get. It's a song by Percy French, a fantastic and prolific song writer who died about 100 years ago. I can remember my mother singing this song years ago. 

 

I'd love to be in that pub drinking a guinness. 

[exchemist]

It's years since I listened to this CD. I was inspired by seeing Westminster Abbey at the coronation to play some of Purcell's music (he was the Abbey organist as one stage in his life), and was rather captivated by this song. It's in 6/4 time and in G major but with some flattened F#s, which give it some minor/modal bittersweet character. It's about the seduction of a maid:

When first Amintas sued for a kiss,
My innocent heart was tender,
That though I push'd him away from the bliss,
My eyes declar'd my heart was won.
I fain an artful coyness would use,
Before I the fort did surrender,
But love would suffer no more such abuse
And soon, alas! my cheat was known.
He'd sit all day, and laugh and play,
A thousand pretty things would say;
My hand he squeeze, and press my knees,
'Till further on he got by degrees.

My heart, just like a vessel at sea,
Would toss when Amintas came near me,
But ah! so cunning a pilot was he,
Through doubts and fears he'd still sail on.
I thought in him no danger could be,
So wisely he knew how to steer me,
And soon, alas! was brought to agree
To taste of joys before unknown.
Well might he boast his pain not lost,
For soon he found the golden coast,
Enjoyed the ore, and touched the shore
Where never merchant went before. 

Edited May 11, 2023 by exchemist

[TheVat]

Video unavailable in US.  I found (on our golden coast) this unblocked version.

(sighs)(wipes steam from spectacles)

[TammyK]

Currently listening to The Prayer by Celine Dion and Andrea Bocelli

[exchemist]

14 hours ago, TheVat said:

Video unavailable in US.  I found (on our golden coast) this unblocked version.

(sighs)(wipes steam from spectacles)

Yes it seems Emma Kirkby's version can't be seen in the US, for some arcane copyright reason I presume.

But the singer in your version has slightly screwed it up by failing to use the flattened note in the last line (when pitched in G, as Kirkby sings it, some of the F#s are flattened to natural) which gives it its sexy bittersweetness.

Here's another, more authentic version (transposed down to E♭ -  sung by someone who has chosen, in view of the subject matter, not to wear a bra, by the look of it.......

 

 

[TheVat]

7 hours ago, exchemist said:

Here's another, more authentic version (transposed down to E♭ -  sung by someone who has chosen, in view of the subject matter, not to wear a bra, by the look of it.......

Thanks.  That had completely escaped my attention.   😜

 

[geordief]

If I was a rich man

I was sitting down outside the supermarket with my bags and phone and waiting for the bus ,whistling this tune out loud in a very relaxed state.

 

A passer by heard my tune ,turned around and quipped "You wouldn't have to work hard"

 

I stared at him and gave a weak smile ,with no idea what he meant as I had no real idea what I was whistling.

 

Half a minute later I got the joke but he was on his way.

 

It is a good tune to whistle  ,fairly energetic .

Edited May 12, 2023 by geordief

[exchemist]

2 hours ago, TheVat said:

Thanks.  That had completely escaped my attention.   😜

 

The transposition, you mean?…..

[Moontanman]

 

[TheVat]

On 5/12/2023 at 10:15 AM, geordief said:

A passer by heard my tune ,turned around and quipped "You wouldn't have to work hard"

 

I've wondered if architect Robert Venturi was inspired by the line in that song about building a staircase going nowhere "just for show."  His famous house (built for his mother) in Philadelphia, had such a staircase.  Finishing touches on the house were done in 1964, the same year that Fiddler opened on Broadway.  

[Airbrush]

 

[Genady]

Learning to play (a simplified version of) it on my glockenspiel. 

 

[TheVat]

I've played it on pf.  Worked all day at it, just got deeper in debt.

Do you play marimba, xylophone or vibe, also?  I can imagine the "hammer" theme of the song would sound cool maybe on marimba, with its lower range and deeper timbre.  

[Genady]

5 minutes ago, TheVat said:

Do you play marimba, xylophone or vibe, also?  I can imagine the "hammer" theme of the song would sound cool maybe on marimba, with its lower range and deeper timbre.  

I wish. Maybe when I grow up... The glockenspiel is a good accompaniment to the song playing in my head.