Blossom Dearie, “Somebody New”
I have long admired the singing of the late Blossom Dearie, who effortlessly conjured up a world of rueful sophistication with immaculate phrasing. “Blossom Dearie” was he real name. This…
Category: music
Play That Funky Classical Music White Boy
Raiding the vast (and out of copyright) canon of classical music has been a recurrent theme in popular music, from Frank Sinatra to The Farm to Eric Carmen (though Carmen’s…
Let’s Get Sophisticated! #SophistiPop Old and New …. with Bryan Ferry, ABC, Michael Franks, Destroyer, Red Box, Aztec Camera, Marshall Crenshaw and the Style Council
“Sophisti-Pop” is a subgenre of pop that takes musical elements from jazz, MOR, synthpop and what could be best called easy listening, and mixes them with a more literary-than-visceral, slightly…
Scott Walker, “Little Things (That Keep Us Together)”
Every so often a song floats into your consciousness from somewhere or other. I am not sure why, but yesterday Scott Walker’s driving, rhythmic “Little Things (That Keep Us Together)”…
102 Years Ago today: A young composer cut down by World War I, George Butterworth, “Fantasia for Orchestra”
Amidst the massive toll of lives lost in the First World War were many many writers, artists and composers. The War Poets, Franz Marc, Apollonaire … and so many unknown…
Review of “Guys and Dolls” from StompTokyo.com 1999/2000-ish
While the website Stomp Tokyo still exists, this particular review is on it no more…and I am not sure how well it fitted with Stomp Tokyo’s overall aesthetic of “B-movies, Godzilla…
The Go Betweens : Cattle and Cane
Originally posted on The Immortal Jukebox:
What are we made of? Well, you could say we are mainly Oxygen, Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Calcium and Phosphorous. Add some pinches of Potassium,…
Séamus Sweeney 