Andy Ihnatko writes a charmingly enthusiastic post about listening to the same aria, from the same production, sung in two very different ways: by the star, and by the understudy: Rachele Gilmore’s 100 MPH Fastball [more inside]
posted by danny the boy on Mar 9, 2012 - 44 comments

How we made: Jah Wobble and Keith Levene on Public Image Ltd's Metal Box. [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry on Feb 15, 2012 - 11 comments

Cabaret's Don't Tell Momma performed by a young Judi Dench, or by Molly Ringwald, or Chris Moore, but what would she want with me?
posted by The Whelk on Jul 9, 2011 - 21 comments

Who is Joe Wall? Why he's an author and ambient electronic musician who works in a clock tower and loves to sing. But most Mefites know him as sonascope, author of many vast and beloved comments. His touching 2004 show, My Fairy Godmothers Smoke Too Much, is available free and complete online. [more inside]
posted by The Whelk on Oct 29, 2010 - 28 comments

Last night, BBC Radio 3 broadcast a semi-staged production of Shakespere's A Midsummer Night's Dream with Mendelsohn's incidental music. Now they've put a video of the performance up on their website. [more inside]
posted by feelinglistless on May 11, 2009 - 17 comments

No Bailout for the Arts? Many organizations could use the help.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero on Dec 30, 2008 - 21 comments

The Nickel Under The Foot is one of the most important songs in the history of the American theatre. The back story.
posted by tellurian on Aug 4, 2006 - 7 comments

Sometimes You Can't Fix You On Your Own. (Quicktime and Windows Media.) If there has ever been doubt about Coldplay's burning ambition to be U2, let it be put to rest.
posted by Saellys on Aug 5, 2005 - 85 comments

Buying Rare Race Records in the South. Music That Americans Loved 100 Years Ago. The Cheney Talking Machine. Just three among dozens of amazing articles about early recording machines and American popular music at the astonishingly detailed site of Tim Gracyk, author of Popular American Recording Pioneers: 1895-1925. Scroll down for bios of forgotten stars, including Nora Bayes - who performed in the Follies of 1907, before Flo Ziegfeld's name became part of the title, George W. Johnson - "the most important African-American recording artist of the 1890s," and piano player Zez Confrey, whose sheet music for the 1921 hit "Kitten on the Keys" sold over a million copies and became "the third most-frequently recorded rag in history."
posted by mediareport on May 17, 2005 - 39 comments