I Put A Spell On You

Sound Check

Miranda Lambert with a pink Stratocaster and a mike stand made from a double-barrel shotgun.

WaPo.

Daphne Oram

Interesting lady.

From Boing-Boing.

Post-Apocalyptic Pan Flute

Cool!

Neatorama.

Oscar Levant

One of my favorite "footnote people" of the 20th century. One of his movies (Humoresque, 1946) is on TCM right now, which started me on a Wiki-wander. It seems Levant had a live TV show in the late 1950's:

The show was highly controversial, eventually being taken from the air after a comment about Marilyn Monroe's conversion to Judaism: "Now that Marilyn Monroe is kosher, Arthur Miller can eat her". He later stated that he "hadn't meant it that way". Several months later, the show began to be broadcast in a slightly revised format—it was taped in order to provide a buffer for Levant's antics. This, however, failed to prevent Levant from making comments about Mae West's sex life that caused the show to be canceled for good.

He was also quoted:

"The only difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is that the Democrats allow the poor to be corrupt, too."

and

"Everyone in Hollywood is gay, except Gabby Hayes — and that's because he is a transvestite."

He titled his autobiography (one of three of them) Memoirs Of An Amnesiac.

I remember seeing him on the old Jack Paar Show. Quite a raconteur. He died in 1972.

Our Perpetual Copyright Laws

Back in the 1930's and 40's, a young audio engineer (and jazz fan) named William Savory recorded hundreds of live, over-the-air performances by some of the jazz world's leading performers. To overcome the 3-minute limitation of the 78-RPM record, he recorded at 33-1/3 RPM on acetate and sometimes aluminum disks.

His legendary collection consists of nearly one thousand disks, many of them absolutely unique recordings of live performances.

He was secretive about his collection, allowing only a few close friends to listen. When he died, in 2004, his collection found its way into a museum.

Conserving the Savory Collection

But you'll never be able to hear any of it. Due to our nearly perpetual copyright laws (which Congress has been extending for twenty years, every twenty years or so, in a desperate bid to keep Mickey Mouse from falling into the public domain) the recordings represent such a minefield of copyright claims by performers, composers, arrangers, radio networks, radio stations, music publishers and their heirs, partners, assignees, licensees and holders-in-due-course that nobody will ever be able to untangle them. And if Congress keeps extending the copyright protection of existing works, that will never change.

And the way that U.S. copyright law works, allowing lawsuits for amounts far in excess of the actual damages, the potential claims could be ruinous for anyone foolish enough to attempt to release these recordings.

The Volokh Conspiracy has the legal brief.

[It's interesting that Savory's photo resembles James Stewart. I can imagine him appearing in a mash-up of "It's A Wonderful Life" and "The Conversation" (sure!). Here's how I'd pitch it:

George Bailey and Clarence the Angel have bugged Mr. Potter's office. George takes off the headphones and says, "That miserly old bastard! He had Uncle Billy's money all along! C'mon, Clarence, let's go over to the bank and kill that sumbitch!"

Clarence: "Now, George, we can't do that!"

George: "Why not? He'd kill us if he got the chance!"

---Fade to black, Roll credits]

The Evolution Of The American Popular Song...

...can take you by surprise if you, like me, haven't been paying attention for awhile.

Take last night. I hosted a group of six college girls, rained out of a camping trip, and gave them a place to stay for the night. Wipe that disgusting leer off your face; one of them is the daughter of friends of long standing and I've known her since she was a baby. The others were perfectly nice young ladies.

They arrived about ten o'clock carrying several cases of beer. They settled in the living room upstairs, set up a laptop to play music, and seemed to be behaving themselves. So I went downstairs to watch a DVD of "No Country For Old Men". Every now and then I could hear them singing along with their music.

At 2:00 AM, just as the movie was ending, they began to sing, at the top of their lungs:

Boom! I f***ed your boyfriend!
I f***ed your man.
Boom! I f***ed your boyfriend!
I f***ed your man.
Boom! I f***ed your boyfriend!
I f***ed your man.
Boom! I f***ed your boyfriend!
He put it in!

You know, when I think of popular songs, I think of Lennon & McCartney, or even Burt Bacharach...

Anyway, my choice of a movie was an ironic comment to the evening.

Well, this morning they cleaned up all the trash and beer bottles and took it away with them and the house is spotless.

But if their mothers had heard them last night, those girls would be grounded 'til they were 25!

Now Playing: One-Hit Wonders

Bow Wow Wow, Flock Of Seagulls, Barry McGuire, Chantays, Chumba Wumba, OXO, Haddaway, Frankie Goes To Hollywood (saw them in concert!), AHA (ditto - no shit!), Mike And The Mechanics, Human League, Kajagoogoo, Billy J. Kramer, The Vapors, Unit 4+2, The Buggles, Pet Shop Boys, The Troggs, The Hues Corporation, Bent Fabric, Barbara Lewis, Walter Egan, Devo, Soft Cell, etc.

Oh, the picture: remember Martha Quinn from MTV? Early Eighties. A friend of mine dated her in college (NYU). I forgave him, but it wasn't easy.

Beyond Eleven

My new home is on four acres in Warren County, Virginia. There are a few neighbors, but their houses are hundreds of yards away, hidden by large stands of poplar trees.

Today I hooked up my sound system to my computer for the first time since the move. It's an Altec-Lansing gadget given to me by my brother. There's a big floor unit with the power supply and subwoofer, plus two little computer-like loudspeakers. The volume control is a free-spinning digital shaft encoder, and today, for the first time, I spun it fully clockwise.

I kept spinning it until it stopped getting louder, and then I ran.

Wow.

The furniture is creeping across the room under the influence of the vibrations.

I gave the Rock 'n' Roll collection a couple of hours, now it's time for the 1812 Overture.

Wish me luck. I'm goin' in.

[Fifteen minutes later] Good lord, I'm soaking wet!

Boomer Touchstones

James Taylor and Carol King are touring together. Maybe you remember them like this:

The Vanishing Violinist

Interesting.

In the NYT.

NASA Launches David Bowie Concept Mission

The heroic, genre-defying crew (L-R): Maj. Tom Louis, Maj. Tom Greely, Maj. Tom Ohweiler, Maj. Thomas Sinclair, and Maj. Tom Keenan.

The Onion.

Also:
Terry Gilliam Barbecue Plagued By Production Delays

...And Some Pointy, Pointy Boots

I love this song. It's bad music for bad people.

That's What It's All About

Composer of "The Hokey Pokey" dies at age 104.

NYT.

Brief Encounter

This is probably the all-time champion romantic tear-jerker. It is absolutely peerless.

An Affair To Remember? Not even close.
Now, Voyager? Oh, please!
Sleepless In Seattle? Nice try!
The Bridges Of Madison County? Close, but no cigar!

And the musical score? Pianist Eileen Joyce played Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 with the National Symphony Orchestra. Also peerless.

The story begins in an English railway station and is told in flashback, narrated by the heroine, Laura. Telling the story in a flashback is always difficult to pull off in a movie because the audience has already seen the end of the story and they think they have a pretty good idea of what will follow. But in this case, they are very wrong, the real story is hidden from them and, at the end, they will see the first scene played out again with unexpected poignancy.

For example, when we see Laura enter the train station cafe at the beginning of the movie, it doesn't make much of an impression. But at the end of the movie we see the same shot again and we know that Laura has just tried to throw herself in front of a speeding train.

Directed by David Lean (Great Expectations, Laurence Of Arabia, Dr. Zhivago). A former film editor, his family were Quakers, and watching movies was forbidden.

Celia Johnson (1908-1990) played Laura. A fine actress, she also played Mrs. DeWynter in the stage production of Rebecca, the part played in the movie by Joan Fontaine.

Noel Coward wrote the play ("Still Life").

Another favorite of mine, Harold And Maude, was also directed by a former editor, Hal Ashby, and also written by a gay man, Colin Higgins.

Classical Breakfast

Oatmeal and coffee while listening to The Four Seasons (Vivaldi) and Der Rosenkavalier (one o' them Strausses, Ah fergit which one).

Shanktified! Ha! I'm still chuckling. Java-lanche!

Meanwhile, outside, the wind howls and the rain pours.

Who Are These People?

Let's spin the dial on the Way-Back Machine to 1969.

Recognize them now?

Daily News.

Last Train To Snarksville

Peter Tork has cancer. WaPo.

Marijuana In Interstate Commerce

Justice Clarence Thomas on interstate commerce:

Respondents Diane Monson and Angel Raich use marijuana that has never been bought or sold, that has never crossed state lines, and that has had no demonstrable effect on the national market for marijuana. If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything – and the Federal Government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers.

That guy can make a strong point in two sentences!

From The Volokh Conspiracy.

And check out One Toke Over The Line from the Lawrence Welk Show. Surely the First Amendment was not written to protect such things!

Old Records III

This record reached #5 on the Billboard charts in 1963. It was produced by Quincy Jones and was the sequel to "It's My Party", about which there is a famous showbiz story here and here.

And here is a live performance:

Lesley Gore played the character "Pink Pussycat" for two episodes on the old "Batman" series - "That Darn Catwoman" and "Scat! Darn Catwoman!". Apparently she was Julie Newmar's hench-woman:

Oh, come on! How much "camp" can you cram into a single episode? Why not cast Harvey Fierstein as Robin, and maybe Noel Coward as Alfred the butler? Puh-lease!

Lesley Gore is now 63 and still performs regularly:

She came out as a lesbian while at Sarah Lawrence College in the late 1960's. Many years ago I went to a dance there... but I digress!