In the 1980s, if you wanted creativity and innovation in what's generically (and inaccurately) labeled as "pop music", it was probably the UK you were to find that. But I bet today you would have to look somewhere else.
Like Japan, for example, an astonishing country in so many areas. Check out Japanese band World Order and their spectacular world wide street choreographies. It is among the most clever and creative things I have seen in recent years.
Here's a cool acoustic version by George Michael of Wham!'s Everything She Wants (1984). With a live orquestra and a small crowd of some 300 people, he performed it along with tracks from his 1996 album Older and other works.
Recorded in London, in October 1996 (aired 1997), this was critically aclaimed as one of the best MTV Unplugged performances.
Someday soon we all will be together If the fates allow Until then we'll have to muddle through somehow So have yourself a merry little Christmas now
Here is Christmas again. This is a time which is loved by many, but feared by quite a few as well. It is a time (supposedly) of happiness, of family gathering and heavy dinners, of partying. Also of bitter loneliness and near depression. Perhaps nothing of what we wanted has been achieved, another year is passing by, and to many that alone is depressing.
Written in 1944 by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blame for Minnelli's Meet me in Saint Louis, Have yourself a Merry little Christmas is one of the most popular and most performed Christmas songs of all time. It has also been covered quite a few times by different artists. But I would say that James Taylor's version is possibly the one that's best captured the bittersweet taste of this period of the year: sparkling happiness mixed up with dark melancholy, the two sides of Christmas.
I have been a long time Suzanne Vega fan, yet I missed her 2011 homage to the ill-fated southern (US) writer Carson McCullers, or at least I wasn't fully aware of it. I actually remember having heard something back in 2011 when I still lived in London. Now I learn that it was a musical stage piece written and performed by Suzanne Vega: Carson McCullers Talks about Love. And now in 2016, Suzanne has released a new album with songs adapted from the musical: Lover, Beloved: songs from an Evening with Carson McCullers.
It was precisely just a few months ago that I discovered the literature of Carson McCullers, and I did so through the most frequent door into her world: her highly popular 1940 novel The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. And like so many others before me, I too was stunned by this 23 year old girl at the time who had managed to write such an incredible mature novel, her first. In 1940, when Lonely Hunter first appeared, McCullers was a shock for the reading public, by her obvious literary powers oddly combined with her fragile teen looks, even younger than her actual age.
It was McCullers herself who would later write that 1930's America, more specifically the "South", had become a great literary stage, to an extent that it could well be compared in literary potential to such spaces like czarist Russia. And along with William Faulkner -and later other new writers like Harper Lee, Capote or Tenesse Williams-, it was also McCullers who would become one of the key figures to settle the reality of such a daring comparison. Yes, the American South seemed to have become some sort of a tragic dostoievskian space. With a biblic air to it. A literary space that demands the unfolding of human passions, or simply the exposition of the maddening complexity of human relations.
From a very early age, Carson McCullers had to fight against illness. She had rheumatic fever at 15, and suffered from continuous strokes throughout her entire life, which eventually left her half paralyzed in her early 30s. Finally in 1967, at just 50, she died from one final cerebral stroke. Her life was really a troubled one, in a physical as in an emotional sense: illness came along with alcoholism, sexual repression and a tragic relationship with her husband, Reeves McCullers, from whom she took her literary name.
It was around 1977, that the subtle and insightful 18-year-old Suzanne Vega came across a picture of Carson MacCullers, who had already been gone for a decade. She suddenly felt sort of intrigued by the clear physical resemblance. Some kind of discreet spiritual connection was at that point set into motion between her and Carson.
Then in the early 1980s, Suzanne was studying English and drama at Barnard College, in New York. One day, her drama tutor came up with a funny project. He asked his students to disguise as an artistic or cultural figure from the past, and then respond to some questions as in a TV interview show, as if the students were actually the artistic figures. Of course, it was McCullers the past personality Suzanne inmediately picked to give life to.
Throughout the 1980s Suzanne established herself as a succesful iconic folk singer with such delightful works like Marlene on the Wall, Lukaor Solitude Standing. And it was back in those days that she had started work in a play that would intend to explore that spiritual connection she had felt with Carson a few years before. The completion of this work would last for 30 years, as it would not be till 2011 that she finally completed it and put it on stage.
In 1967, the year Carson died, Suzanne was a child of eight. From that 1977, when Suzanne felt for the first time touched by the presence of Carson, until now it has been nearly 40 years. That is decades of connection for these kindred spirits. The result in creative terms is quite a nice one: an intriguing musical play and an album with a handful of smart songs.
I love these two, Suzanne known to me for many years, and Carson, a recent discovery. And I feel delighted to know about this unexpected cultural link between them.
"Nostalgia is not a fatal disease" George Gershwin
An American in Paris is the ultimate traveller's hymn. Or the tourist's, if you like. A good traveller, who is worth the name, always lets him/herself be engulfed by the atmosphere of the place they are visiting. By the images and sounds, the objects, the people, the happenings. By what they see and what they imagine or re-create. Because the act of registering what's actually there is greatly enriched if there is also some knowledge of the site's past and the cultural process leading to its present. All this combined with a certain beam of blue, a small dose of "homesickness". A longing for your own home, discreetly added to the cocktail, as in the course of Gershwin's composition.
Today it is not possible to pronounce the words "George Gershwin" without invoking a splendid body of music pieces, dance songs, old recordings, classic movies, A rich universe, a rare combination of the popular and the sophisticated. in which An American in Paris stands out. If the New York composer was fascinated by what he saw in his visit to 1920s Paris, then Gustavo Dudamel is here, in this 2011 rendition, equally (and visibly) thrilled by his visit to Gershwin.
Dudamel's sparking enthusiasm conducting this legendary piece probably matches that of Gershwin himself creating it.
Having learnt of Deanna Durbin's death (yesterday, april 20th), something immediately comes to mind (to memory): this little movie Every Sunday. A legendary tiny musical piece released in 1936, in which Deanna (then 14) played alongside Judy Garland (13).
That year the two girls were under contract by MGM, arguably the classiest Hollywood studio at the time. But the studio executives thought it was perhaps not entirely reasonable having two little girl singers in stand by, that is, two possible or potential stars in the making, being of the same profile. So, in theory, only one of them should be kept. But which one? Not an easy decision to make, given the undeniable talent of both.
Every Sunday was to decide. This short movie, of little more than 10 minutes, was to serve as a kind of screen test to evaluate Judy and Deanna, sort of to establish which one was the "better", or rather the better for the studio's purposes. The two girls' quite different singing styles are on display on Every Sunday. Deanna's operatic voice (like that of a "miniature diva" so to speak) versus the more "natural"/"pop", more of the jazz baby type, of Judy's. Well, finally, perhaps surprisingly, Deanna was the one MGM decided to let go. They would be keeping Judy.
Deanna and Judy, Judy and Deanna
14 year-old Judy, already full as she was of complexes and insecurities (and in a way always would be), in spite of her enormous talent, could not help wondering why exactly she had been the one the studio decided to retain. Judy, "the ugly duckling" or the "little hunchback", as Meyer supposedly once called her. In theory Deanna was the "better looking" of the two, with more glamorous potential. At least it was so in 1936, a few years before Judy would receive. her too (in 1942-43), the glamour treatment, which would turn her into one of the most beautiful creatures to have ever appeared on a movie screen. At least for a handful of years. Before (prescription) drugs and alcohol started eating up her liver.
After leaving the MGM, Deanna started a very successful career with Universal, her new studio. This of course left the ever insecure Judy wondering even more obsessively why she had been chosen over Deanna. Also with Universal, Deanna was to have leading roles almost straight away, while Judy on her part would not get her first adult/leading role until 1942. Only after having been the supporting girl of big box office draw Mickey Rooney in no less than seven movies, between 1937 and 1941. So for a while it was Deanna who appeared to be the "successful" one after all, despite her dropping by MGM, Then Oz came along to Judy. And Vincente Minnelli. And a meteoric star was born: Judy Garland. (Later, in 1954, even re-born).
Deanna and Judy. Of them, it was then Judy who would become a true movie legend, while Deanna would slip off into obscurity as the 1940s, her decade of brilliance, were moving away into the past. As early as 1948, after only a few years of stardom (and being only 27) Deanna would give up Hollywood for good. At the same time, Judy Garland was to become a huge, if tormented, star. She died in 1969 of an accidental overdose of pills (barbiturates), those she could never get rid of, and in a state of personal distress.
Deanna, that minor light next to the huge Garland myth, died peacefully (so we imagine) yesterday, april 20th, 2013. That is, being a year older, almost half a century later than the stunning little girl of Oz.
St. John of the Cross, born in Fontiveros (Ávila, near Madrid), in 1542, is perhaps, along with Quevedo, the best Spanish poet of the Golden Age (probably also of all ages), the poet who achieved the most sophisticated and elevated heights in the Spanish verse. St John of the Cross has been considered throughout the centuries the ultimate mystical and religious (catholic) poet, and this has perhaps led some to refrain from reading and enjoying his poetry. One of his most known poems, Dark Night of the Soul, is also among his best.It is a mystical poem telling us about one journey: that of the Soultowards her Beloved (God or Jesus); here the Lover (the Soul) and the Beloved (Jesus, God) consummate their union among the lilies. And that, to the author and his devout 16th century audience, is a burning moment of communion.
But as it has been noted more than once, Dark Night of the Soul could also be read not only in this traditional mystic sense, but also in a new torrid, erotic sense. Physical rather than Mystical. The Lover (not the "Soul" in this case, but, say, a female, any female, a young woman) leaves her home now at rest, to greet her Beloved, waiting for her outside. She will walk the night which guides her, a night more lovely than the dawn, and she will recline her face on him, abandoning herself and leaving her cares forgotten among the lilies. With such a suggestive re-framing, the poem opens up to new sensual dimensions, and a richer reality.
Canadian Celtic singer and composer Loreena McKennit in her 1994 album The Mask and The Mirror, recreated St John of the Cross´s poem and as she herself explained, this erotic retelling was precisely the basis of her version.
Con a dark night, Kindled un love with yearnings
--oh, happy chance!-- I went forth without being observed, My house being now at rest. (...) Oh, night that guided me, Oh, night more lovely than the dawn, Oh, night that joined Beloved with lover, Lover transformed in the Beloved! (...) I remained, lost in oblivion; My face I reclined on the Beloved. All ceased and I abandoned myself, Leaving my cares forgotten among the lilies."
Eleanor Powell, the queen of tap dancing in Broadway and Hollywood musicals during the 1930s and 1940s was born a hundred years ago today (Nov 21. 1912) . This Jukebox number is from Broadway Melody of 1940 (1940), where she's close to outdance Fred Astaire. Or, according to some, she actually does.
Fred Astaire is said to have felt intimidated only by her. "She put them down like a man. No ricky-ticky-sissy stuff with Ellie. She really knocked out a tap dancer in a class by herself"
A hundred years ago today, on February 2, 1912, composer Burton Lane was born in New York. He died in the same city nearly 85 years later, on Jan 5, 1997.
He created lots of songs for Broadway musicals and Hollywood movies. A personal favorite of mine is How About You. The song was specifically composed for the Garland-Rooney movie Babes in Broadway (1941), one of the so called backyard musicals of MGM
(Burton Lane is precisely credited with having discovered in 1935 a tiny 13-year old singer, with a voice of unheard-of quality and power. Her name was Frances Ethel Gumm, who in due time would become, yes, Judy Garland).
The How About You lyrics are uncomplicated yet irresistibly cute, beginning: I like New York in June, how about you? I like a Gershwin tune, how about you? I love a fireside when a storm is due
A little later into the song, the ear is caught by this funny patriotic line added by lyricist Ralph Freed, referring to the then US president and Commander in Chief.
I'm mad about good books, can't get my fill And Franklin Roosevelt´s looks give me a thrill
It was 1941, and WWII was beginning for the US. Roosevelt was the true star of the day.
Dorsey was nicknamed the "sentimental gentleman of swing" Here is his distinctive smooth trombone-playing, in this captivating piece first performed in 1932.
