Ninety-three. A hell of a life, a hell of a legacy. I hope he’s finding out now just what was in that cornfield, just beyond the left field line…. Share This PostDown the rabbit hole….
This was sad news to see when I got home from work today: Joe Bonsall of the Oak Ridge Boys died the other day, after a battle with Lou Gehrig’s Disease. The Oak Ridge Boys weren’t huge in my household, but I do remember that my father liked their sound and some of their songs a great deal. The Oak Ridge Boys really did vocal harmony incredibly well, and with Bonsall’s tenor voice rising above the rest, you always knew that’s who you were listening to. (Well, his tenor rising above and Richard Sterban’s bass diving below.) I can’t say thatDown the rabbit hole….
Two selections in honor of actor Donald Sutherland, a combination of distinctive look and voice, who has sadly died this day. Share This PostDown the rabbit hole….
Filmmaker Roger Corman died the other day. It was always easy to poke fun at Corman’s films, but he strove to make them as good as he could, and on his own terms. Corman’s studio was not only prolific but also a starting point for many filmmakers who later went on to great careers of their own. Below is the text of a post I wrote a number of years ago, praising my favorite Corman film, the 1980 obviously-STAR WARS-inspired “Magnificent Seven In Space” flick, Battle Beyond the Stars. I stand by every word of this. Is the movie good? Yes,Down the rabbit hole….
First of all, a bit of administrativia: the post immediately below this one was supposed to run yesterday and I screwed up the publishing. Oops. Now: not music, but a scene from a teevee show today: the closing scene from “The Unnatural” from The X-Files, an episode David Duchovny wrote and directed, in which his Agent Fox Mulder visits an elderly former FBI agent named Arthur Dales about a curious incident in Agent Dales’s past. It turns out that this Arthur Dales was actually the brother of the former FBI agent Arthur Dales, though both were named Arthur. Anyway, this DalesDown the rabbit hole….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9zYbwDqZUs Maestro Seiji Ozawa died last week, aged 88. Ozawa was best known for his long tenure as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, all twenty-nine years of that tenure–the longest of any of that great orchestra’s many amazing conductors. In addition to his direct music-making, Ozawa was always deeply invested in teaching young musicians and young conductors. Here is a clip in which he steps in to correct a young conducting student on a matter of technique: “I try to understand you. I don’t do this…[conducts with a vague circular motion of the hand]…that’s like, ‘eighteen minutes, cookDown the rabbit hole….
Peter Schickele died on January 16 of this year. He was a composer and a comedian who was best known as the self-styled musicologist responsible for “unearthing” the music of “P.D.Q. Bach”, the “21st of J.S. Bach’s 20 children”. Over the years, Schickele crafted an entire life history of his fictional composer, and used “PDQ Bach”‘s work as a springboard to lampoon much of classical music. I have to admit that I have heard very little of Schickele/Bach, but what I have heard has always amused me. It takes a very good musician to do pastiche at this level, afterDown the rabbit hole….
At one point Mom was talking about taking us to London to celebrate her 85th birthday. Alas…. I don’t know what I believe about death, but I hope there’s something of Mom that can now go wherever she damned well wants. Share This PostDown the rabbit hole….
This is what I posted to Facebook a bit ago: A memory of my mother: I was 8 years old when we lived in Elkins, WV. That’s when I saw teevee ads for a new movie coming out called “Moonraker”. The voiceover guy said “Bond is Back!” I had no idea who this “Bond” was, but this movie apparently had spaceships and pew-pew ray guns, which was all I needed. It was 1979, after all, and I was an 8-year-old kid in a STAR WARS world. One night I’m getting home from a friend’s house or something and I seeDown the rabbit hole….
This is one of my favorite little scenes from Friends. I’ve always loved this little exchange, and in tribute to it, I have ever since referred to all spiders as “Phil”. (In this case I now assume that Phil can be a genderless name: Philip, Philomena, Philopina, you get the drift.) Actor Matthew Perry died yesterday–that’s him in the clip–after apparently having drowned in his own hot tub. I expect that there will eventually be more sordid details about his passing, considering his long struggles with addiction and other medical issues. But that doesn’t matter now. Perry did a lot ofDown the rabbit hole….