Today Marks the Passage of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and JP "The Big Bopper" Richardson into The Infinite

We've written before about our appreciation of Buddy Holly, Texas native and pioneer of Rock n' Roll.  I know far less of the work of Ritchie Valens and JP "The Big Bopper" Richardson, but they're still household names in 2016, which is remarkable.

Even if you don't know their names, if you grew up in the U.S. outside of Amish country, you should know their music.

Today marks the day when Holly, Valens and Richardson died in a plane crash in the snowy fields of the Midwest, way back in 1959.

We Watch "Grease: Live!"

I'm not exactly what you'd call a "musical theater guy", but I don't turn my nose up at a good musical on screen nor stage.  And, frankly, I kind of think it's weird that we're at a point in history where people singing through a story is suddenly seen as "unrealistic" when the combo of song and story has been a major force in storytelling in almost every culture.  If you watch anything but documentaries, your argument that people don't just break out into song is an artificial construct and you don't like artificial constructs in your story, your argument is invalid.*

Ever since the debacle that was Carrie Underwood as Maria in NBC's live broadcast of The Sound of Music, I've been chasing that high where I could find it.  My GOD, how I like a good disaster.

NBC has now also done Peter Pan, which I missed, and The Wiz, which was basically pretty much a solid performance and free of glitches or shameful moments, and had some really good performances, Queen Latifah.

But we're here to talk about Grease: Live!, which aired tonight on Fox.

Saying Good-Bye to David Bowie - Starman Merges With The Infinite

I was up too late for a Sunday night, still Googling into Monday morning, when Cavendar's facebook prompted with the simple question "David Bowie?"

I don't know why, but I knew it was not a question about the album, and in a Google search I found "David Bowie Death Hoax" and a post from just two days prior.  But then, when I hit the same search again two minutes later, The Hollywood Reporter was in agreement.  Then someone linked to the twitter account of Duncan Jones, Bowie's son, confirming the rumors.  David Bowie was dead.

By now literally millions of people will have said something.  I don't know that there's any more to say, but that's never stopped me before, and I want to say good-bye to one of my favorite humans, someone whose work helped shape the universe not just for me, but for millions or billions.

The Alamo Drafthouse affiliated publication and website Birth.Movies.Death. had a post up this morning, and it's right on.

As with God, everybody’s relationship with Bowie is deeply personal. Everybody’s relationship with Bowie is one-on-one.

Born in '75, my early awareness of Bowie stems from the Mick Jagger "Dancing in the Streets" era, with "Blue Jean" and "China Girl" in tow.  I can't separate the three, all staples of early MTV.  At any rate, I was well aware of the existence if not cultural influence and legacy of Bowie by the time I caught Labyrinth at the Showplace 6.  

But I think the first time I was just stopped short by Bowie wasn't even when he was on screen or playing music. I couldn't tell you how old I was when I saw The Breakfast Club, but of course the movie ended with the lyrics from "Changes", and it was the first time I saw an adult acknowledge that I might have some self-awareness, that I was not a dumb beast in need of constant correction, to have what was patently obvious explained to me.

“... And these children
that you spit on
as they try to change their worlds
are immune to your consultations.
They're quite aware
of what they're going through...”

David Bowie has Merged with The Infinite

Edit:  The New York Times is confirming Bowie's passing.  

We are deeply, deeply sorry to say good-bye to this tremendous artist, especially as we had just purchased his latest album and had liked what we heard.  He seemed ready for yet another round.

We will miss you, sir, and we know the world is better for what you brought us.

I will be honest with you - I am not sure the passing of someone I didn't know has seemed this... sad and devastating in years and years, and I can tell from the comments online, I'm far from alone.



Original Post:

For the past 30 minutes I've been trying to sort through social media and now traditional media sources stating that David Bowie has passed.  It's on DavidBowie.com as news for January 10th and Bowie's son, Duncan Jones, has confirmed the passing.  If this is a hoax, it seems intensely elaborate and cruel to Bowie's family and friends.

It's all a bit odd.  He has tour dates on his site, and there's no mention of his illness prior to today.  And this is far from the first time Bowie has been reported dead on social media.

I don't need to tell any of you about Bowie's legacy.  You know.  You have your favorite songs and albums.

My first date with Jamie was taking her to see Bowie and Nine Inch Nails at a venue that's been plowed under and is now a sprawling strip shopping center a few miles from my current home.  That was October of 1995.  Needless to say, we've both long been fans of the man's work.

I'll assume the stories are true and I'll head off to bed.  I would like nothing better than to wake up and learn this was all a hoax or misunderstanding.

Lemmy Merges With The Infinite

I'm not going to pretend I'm a Motorhead fan, or that I could pick out any of their songs other than "Ace of Spades".  But like everyone else of a certain age-range, I knew who Lemmy was, and was sorry to hear today that he passed.

I read an article within the last year that Lemmy was raging against the dying of the light, still playing shows and pushing on.  The man had a spirit that caught the imagination of folks even like myself who never bought a proper metal album in our lives.

But, hell yes, I just got done listening to "Ace of Spades", because that's what you do.

Godspeed, Lemmy.  You'll be missed.

Some More Song Selections for Christmas Eve

Yesterday we put forth some songs for your melancholy Christmas Eve.  After scrolling my Google Play, I found a few more to consider.  Maybe with a little less to discuss.


The Walkmen: No Christmas While I'm Talking

No one is going to think this is a new Christmas standard, but it's a good way to get into the evening.

For Your Christmas Eve Listening

Tomorrow night is Christmas Eve.  As we head into the evening, when you've tucked the kids away (or the parents), and you've got the house lights turned low, with only the soft glow of the Christmas lights on the tree to carry you through (and maybe some Elijah Craig, neat) - and it's time for some music to take you through the evening.

I can't remember a Christmas Eve in the past 30 years when I wasn't the last one awake in the house, and so it comes that I think of the night as one of solitude and of waiting.  In the morning, we'll have breakfast and coffee, then gifts and talking.  In the afternoon, we'll head over to my folks for dinner.

But on Christmas Eve we watch our family and friends drift off to bed, one by one, and, as always, we know we'll never get any sleep.  There's no use in watching a movie or opening a book.  It's time for some music and quiet contemplation.

But what do you listen to in order to maintain the mood?


Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans: The Bells of St. Mary's

Originally written in 1917, most folks today know the song as a Bing Crosby crooned ballad from the 1945 movie of the same name.  The Bells of St. Mary's gets the Phil Spector treatment, and the world is better for it.

Still, catch the movie sometime.  It's a real tear-jerker and a fine Christmas film with Ingrid Bergman in angel mode.

Happy Belated 100, Frank

You're correct.  You will never be this cool.

December 12th marked the 100th birthday of singer, actor, Ava Gardner sexer, and true 20th Century man, Frank Sinatra.  Old Blue Eyes himself.

Sinatra was a complicated man, and he is beyond our judgment.  Like Thomas Jefferson, we can only try to understand such a wild contradiction in life as a product of his times and his nature.   For every nightmare story about the guy, there's a dozen about him as a humanitarian.

And now, the first Sinatra song I ever learned specifically because it was Sinatra: "Strangers in the Night".  All you need to know about why I learned the song: fifteen year old boys are weird.

Opera Watch! We take in some culture and see "Tosca" at the Houston Grand Opera

So, it's pretty hard to call me an opera fan.  I mean, the only opera I've seen live in the past 30 years has been Das Rheingold.  For reasons I don't even remember, I had to give up my tickets to see Der Walkurie this year, and if Jamie's enthusiasm to Das Rheingold was any indication, it's not really worth the weekend trip to Houston to go catch parts 3 and 4.

But, you know, I think its not imperative, but a good idea, to try to see famous works for yourself.  That's kind of the stage of life I'm in now I guess.  And among operas, Tosca is more or less a household word.  Fortunately, I'm culturally illiterate, so I wasn't actually sure what the word "Tosca" meant when I plunked my butt in the seat at the Wortham Center to see the Houston Grand Opera Saturday night.

Little background:  a fellow I was pals with in high school is now a, like, serious opera-performer-type-person, Weston Hurt (ask for him by name)!  Weston has performed all over the US and abroad, but he'd never wound up playing Houston Grand Opera until this recent run of Tosca at the HGO.  And while I've watched YouTube clips of him and whatnot, I hadn't seen him sing since high school where he kind of shamed everyone else during a musical revue where he led the chorus in "Do You Hear the People Sing?" from Les Mis and sounded like a grown-up-type singer among a herd of high school squawkers (I was working crew for that show, so I got to hear it over.  And over.  And over.)  He also did a little Country and Western at the talent show, which left me baffled, but the guy has pipes.

And now... Thriller

Franken-Watch: Frankenstein (1931) with the Univ. of Texas Wind Ensemble

I don't think it's a secret that Frankenstein (1931) is one of my favorite movies.  For the past 15 years or so, I've watched the movie about annually, and definitely for the last decade that's been true.

For a long time, The University of Texas music department has found Halloween-related activities to put on, and for years one of the faculty would play the organ along with the Chaney-starring Phantom of the Opera, but I never managed to see it.  About a month ago, I figured out that this year, Frankenstein was showing at the Bass Concert Hall, the big theater where travelling Broadway shows often set up camp in Austin.

You're free! No post from me tonight!

Here's Nat King Cole prepping you for the season

Happy Birthday Debbie Harry

Happy 70th Birthday to Debbie Harry, the ever-cutting-edge lead singer for Blondie, solo artist, actor, model, fashion icon, artist, former Playboy Club Bunny, CBGB overlord, pop goddess of the punk and new wave scenes, etc... et al...

James Horner Merges With The Infinite

I don't need to tell anyone who follows this site how important music is to a movie.  You guys know.  And I know I don't need to tell you how important James Horner was to movies of the last few decades.  The man's IMDB page reads like a list of movies we've all seen in the theater since we were kids.

Tragically, Horner seems to have died in a plane crash.  

Rather than talk about who James Horner was and what he worked on, I'm going to invite you to drop your favorite of his works in the comments.  If you want to add a why and wherefore, feel free to do so.

I will say the first score of his that I remember consciously really paying attention to and wondering "who did that?" was the score for the 1989 Civil War film, Glory.  Certainly the score wasn't the only thing Glory had going for it. but it set a new standard for the music in historical epics and I often feel like both documentaries and more recent movies have lifted from that score, or at least learned its lessons.



and, of course, I'm a fan of many more of his works.

Musical Watch: West Side Story (1961)

the plot in a nutshell

If you haven't seen the 1961 film, West Side Story, coming into it cold in 2015 will feel like you're watching a movie about an alien world, but it's a musical that comes from a time and a place, and I'd hope that at least the music, choreography and cinematography would work for you.  Maybe not.  The oh, so clever audiences of the modern era have cleverly deduced that people don't actually sing and dance spontaneously and have rejected the genre.

For those of us who kind of grew up with the play and/ or movie (I saw it the first time at a local theater in Austin when I was about 13, the movie at least twice in high school and have seen the movie now about five or six times by my reckoning), it can be easy to take a lot of the actual story for granted.  I know I was shown the movie in high school alongside Romeo and Juliet as we compared and contrasted the two stories as a class, and that's a good starting point.  But I can't help but notice that being 40 and watching a story about the passion of teen-aged romance is a whole other burrito from watching the movie when your hormones are firing a million miles an hour and wanting to talk to girls and punch things are the two driving factors in your teen-age brain.*

Musical Watch: On the Town (1949)

I've seen On the Town (1949) before, but it was years ago and I couldn't begin to guess the context other than that it was probably on cable and I had an evening to kill.

This one is years after the heyday of the Busby Berkeley spectaculars (42nd Street was 1933) and tilts much more toward what was coming in by 1952 with Singing in the Rain or even Oklahoma! (1955).  But the bright lights of New York itself are still the attraction as in so many of those musicals of the 1930's, and as a former Broadway show - produced at the tail-end of the second World War, the original show sits at a curious precipice between eras.  And, of course, they must have rewritten plenty of the show to accommodate the fact WWII was actually over by the time the movie went into production.

The plot:  three sailors disembark at Navy Yard in New York, New York for a 24 hour shore leave.  They intend to see the sites, maybe get some dates with some girls, etc... when Gabey (Gene Kelley) falls for the girl in a poster for "Miss Turnstiles", a dubious honorific bestowed upon girls looking for publicity for their career as a performer in NYC and a bit of shoddy publicity for the NY transit system.  And, of course, he meets Miss Turnstiles (Vera-Ellen) quite by accident, convincing his pals Chip (Frank Sinatra) and Ozzie (Jules Munshin) to help in pursuit after they lose track of her.

They meet an amorous cab driver (Betty Garrett) and a tap-dancing anthropologist (Ann Miller), and hi-jinks ensue.

Happy Birthday, Siouxsie Sioux

Happy birthday to my high school rock'n'roll crush and one of my favorite performers from back in the day, Siouxsie Sioux.

At 57, she's still out there being Siouxsie.

Spellbound



Peek-a-Boo

BB King Merges with The Infinite

Blues maestro BB King has passed beyond the veil.

On the Event of my 40th

This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)
Talking Heads

Home is where I want to be

Pick me up and turn me round

I feel numb - born with a weak heart

I guess I must be having fun

The less we say about it the better

Make it up as we go along

Feet on the ground

Head in the sky

It's ok I know nothing's wrong... nothing

Hi yo I got plenty of time

Hi yo you got light in your eyes

And you're standing here beside me

I love the passing of time

Never for money

Always for love

Cover up and say goodnight... say good night

Home - is where I want to be

But I guess I'm already there

I come home - she lifted up her wings

I guess that this must be the place

I can't tell one from another

Did I find you, or you find me?

There was a time

Before we were born

If someone asks, this where I'll be... where I'll be

Hi yo

We drift in and out

Hi yo

Sing into my mouth

Out of all those kinds of people

You got a face with a view

I'm just an animal looking for a home and,

Share the same space for a minute or two

And you love me till my heart stops

Love me till I'm dead

Eyes that light up, eyes look through you

Cover up the blank spots

Hit me on the head

Ah ooh

Billie Holiday hits the Century Mark

It's tough to top Billie Holiday.  She's undoubtedly one of the most important vocal performers of the 20th Century, and certainly one of the most recognizable voices since recorded and broadcast music sprung into existence.

Today marks the birthday of Ms. Eleanora Fagan, born April 7th, 1915 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Holiday's biography also reads like the blueprint for a terribly depressing biopic, but it's also a remarkable American story.

This weekend I tried to watch Annie Lennox, who I have admired since I was a kid, perform her new concert, Nostalgia, on PBS, recorded in front of an upper-crust audience at LA's Orpheum Theater.  And, while I understand that many performers sooner or later hit a point where they explore The Great American Songbook - Lennox performed a few of Holiday's standards, and I found the thing puzzling enough I turned it off.  But, taking apart what was happening and for what audience could take a few hundred pages and a deconstruction of cultural appropriation that would leave nobody happy.

Strange Fruit and God Bless the Child aren't owned by Billie Holiday, but they're certainly part of her catalog, and I don't blame Lennox for wanting to emulate Lady Day, but...  context.   Billie Holiday's voice, song choice and expression were formed by what amounts to an extremely troubled youth (broken home - to put it mildly - and as a kid, she ran errands in a brothel) and young womanhood (prostitute by age 15).  Holiday was part of the colorful jazz scene of Harlem from the early 1930's and onward (she was performing by age 17), and was playing with Count Basie and Artie Shaw within a few years.  Even after some very public problems, she did manage to play shows at Carnegie Hall that were very well received.