" Anything you can sing, I can sing louder I can sing anything louder than you No you can't, Yes I can, No you can't, Yes I can No you can't, Yes I can, yes I can!" Coyotes on Flickr by matt knoth.
Heard something like Track #3 right under the window up at the cabin this summer. Coyotes are loud. That scrawny chest hides a mighty amplifier. Track #6 and Track #20 sound like standard cabin serenades, the ones that wake me up at two or three in the morning happy to be warm and safe inside. Great vocalists, coyotes.
The time sink that is YouTube — hours of my life I'll never get back. What the hell, it's vacation.
Ray Charles and Buck Owens sing Buck's Crying Time [Thanks, Mexico Bob]:
Another classic:
Next should be one of YouTube's ten gazillion versions of La Llorona, but no — here is Lila Downs singing about a woman leaving her lover for another man. The lover protests, the woman cries, the end. A great little song, very well sung:
"Bob Dylan told an interviewer in 1984, "I never heard a singer as good as Liam ever. He was just the best ballad singer I’d ever heard in my life. Still is, probably."" Liam Clancy, 1935 - 2009.
If you ever get a chance to see this man in concert, go and take friends and family with you. He's awesome, and the jazz singers and musicians who perform with him are wonderful. No gush, just fact: Bobby McFerrin is a terrific singer [jazz, opera, you name it], a fantastic musician and a hella great performer.
The song Lincoln and Liberty was recorded by American folk singer and activist Ronnie Gilbert in 1991 for the TV special and compilation album Songs of the Civil War.
"Songs are dangerous, songs are subversive and can change your life." [Ronnie Gilbert, on the effects of hearing Paul Robeson sing when she was 10.]
Lincoln and Liberty was written by New Hampshire's famousHutchinson Family Singers, "ardent abolitionists," for the 1860 presidential election. Says Gilbert, "That song helped Lincoln win the presidency."
Hurrah for the choice of the nation! Our chieftain so brave and so true We'll go for the great reformation For Lincoln and Liberty too
We'll go for the son of Kentucky The hero of Hoosierdom through The pride of the Suckers so lucky For Lincoln and Liberty too
Then up with the banner so glorious The star-spangled red white and blue We'll fight till our banner's victorious For Lincoln and Liberty too
Come all you true friends of the nation Attend to humanity's call To aid in the slave's liberation And roll on the liberty ball
We’ll finish the temple of freedom And make it capacious within That all who seek shelter may find it Whatever the hue of their skin
Success to the old-fashioned doctrine That men are created all free And down with the power of the despot Wherever his stronghold may be!
Television news images showed large crowds gathering outside the UCLA Medical Center. “People are already showing up in costume, believe it or not,” said a Fox News correspondent, Trace Gallagher, comparing it to the circus he witnessed during a trial involving Mr. Jackson. [Source]
Lime green is my favorite color on earth. Actually, pretty much any type of green is my fave. The current blog background would be lime green, if not for those ugly threats is a sort-of green which I created myself, yay me.
Topic: it's Paddy's Day. President Obama, lucky man, got to listen to Liz Carroll [a super-nice person and a great musician] and John Doyle:
For recordings of the best Irish traditional music you can't do better than Green Linnet. There's Liz, of course, and I recommend anything by the brilliant Clare fiddler Martin Hayes with Dennis Cahill on guitar, anything by John Williams, and on and on. Martin Hayes was at the Plough and Stars last Thursday — lots of great musicians there, she said enviously.
Sentimental Oirish vid for the day: Into the West. I love it. Kids' book: The Selkie Girl, by Susan Cooper. Best retelling of a story that makes grown-ups weep. A film version - Secret of Roan Inish - lacks the magic of the book, if you ask me, but still worth your time.
Quote: "Gandhi used nonviolence and got rid of the British in forty years. The Brits have been in Ireland for what, 800 years now?" [Singer in an Irish trad band — as prelude to a song about fighting the Black and Tans.]
It's raining and windy outside and warm and cozy inside, the tea is hot, the armchair is comfortable and all the dogs are asleep. Must play some Christmas music, or some opera.
Remember how Richard Gere takes Julia Roberts to the opera in Pretty Woman? He tells her, "People's reactions to opera the first time they see it is very dramatic; they either love it or they hate it. If they love it, they will always love it. If they don't, they may learn to appreciate it, but it will never become part of their soul."
That is such pure, steaming bullshit. ["The first time they see it"? See it?!]
Opera is all about the music. Should be self-evident, right? But people who have never been insanely in love with music don't get this, so they say things like the above, or "We went to the opera in Moscow and saw Madame Butterfly and it was so hilarious, because we were in Russia listening to people singing in Italian and pretending to be Japanese, ha ha ha!"
Imagine watching a great sheepdog win a difficult trial and then hearing someone say, "But his ears don't match and his coat isn't full enough and his head is simply a disaster!" Same. exact. thing.
It's nice if an opera's director is cutting-edge and the production values are terrific, and it's even better when the singers are reasonably attractive and age-appropriate and can act; but what really matters is, can they sing? Can they sing so well, with such insight and with such intelligence that it breaks your heart? Are the orchestra and the conductor terrific? Is the music great? That's all that matters. It's the reason people who love opera can be oblivious to everything from non-traditional casting and weird set design to sixty-ish baritones pretending to be young Gold Rush-era miners singing, "Whisky per tutti!" [I love Fanciulla like the air I breathe.] The music is all that matters. Opera lovers know the score [and keep a copy on the bedside table].
Give a listen to Victoria de los Ángeles from Spain, one of the best singers ever, if you ask me. This recording of an old familiar is from 1958.
Now here's a a chance to test your aficionado skillz and shrug off the odd set, the costumes, the camera work, a ridiculous plot and the fact that a woman, a mezzo-soprano, always sings the part of the young man Octavian. The opera is Der Rosenkavalier by Richard Strauss, first performed in 1911, and the music is beautiful beyond belief. Anne Sophie von Otter is Octavian; Barbara Bonney is Sophie.
Honestly, the things one finds on YouTube! Here's the last scene from Act I of La Bohème. La Scala, 1979... hey, that tenor looks kind of familiar:
Ileana Cotrubas was Mimì in that vid. And now I must bundle up and go feed the sheep. As a matter of fact, my truck does have a most excellent CD player. Off to the farm —
*"What a cold little hand." [Otherwise known as "Remember to check the water trough."] From Bohème, but you knew that.
[Ralph's the banjo player in that last vid. Dr. Ralph Stanley is God a member of the original pantheon of great bluegrass musicians [and did I mention that I once got a hug from Mr. Bill Monroe?]. Ralph Stanley: national treasure.]
On Jan. 31, Derrick Ashong, a 32-year-old musician, dropped off his pal, Shaunelle Curry, at the Democratic primary debate taking place at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood. After shrugging off her suggestion that he join her in carrying a sign for Barack Obama outside the theater — his band was leaving on tour the next day — he reconsidered and walked back to join her.
Carrying a sign saying “¡Sí, se puede!” (Yes, we can!), he joined a throng that was milling around in the background of the live CNN shot focused on the anchor Wolf Blitzer. Then a guy named Mike carrying a video camera came walking by and began peppering Mr. Ashong with a series of skeptical and very pointed questions.
“So why are you for Obama?” he asked. It was clear from his approach that he expected a dimwitted answer, an expectation that he was about to talk to another acolyte smitten by Senator Obama’s rock star persona.
The young man in the video is musician Derrick Ashong. Take a listen to his follow-up:
Here's Derrick and his band Soulfège [heh -- nice name]. The song is a remix of a West African classic, and the video was filmed in Ghana -- Derrick does the second verse in three languages. Enjoy.
" Anything you can sing, I can sing louder
