The Music of Jacques Brel is an article by music journalist Amy Hanson about the career of pop music legend Jacques Brel and his effect on popular music in the English language. A lot of songs and covers are mentioned in the article, below the cut are links to the songs that I could find videos of online.
[more inside]
posted by Kattullus
on Aug 6, 2010 -
49 comments
In 1992, on a rainy night in Palm Springs, a drunk driver took the life of Jilly Rizzo, long-time pal of Frank Sinatra. Jeffrey Perotte (then 28) was an alcoholic "who had the papers for court-ordered alcohol rehabilitation sitting in the glove box of his car". He ran from the scene as Rizzo burned to death, and then attempted to convince officers that it was not him who had been driving, but his girlfriend.
Sentenced to life, Perotte (
website) 'turned his life around' in prison, earning three degrees along the way. He has come up for parole four times, with "a file full of testimonials from prison guards, counselors and even, twice, the judge who sentenced him," but has been denied each time.
"What we've been dealing with all along," [his father-in-law] said, "has been the hidden hand of the Sinatras."
posted by woodblock100
on Jul 17, 2010 -
104 comments
Ahmet Ertegun was profiled by George W. S. Trow in The New Yorker in a classic piece back in 1978. Ertegun was the son of the Turkish ambassador to the US and he remained behind in D.C. studying medieval philosophy at Georgetown. Instead of devoting himself to his studies he founded Atlantic Records with his friend Herb Abramson. Trow charted how Ertegun moved from tramping through muddy, Louisiana fields in search of hot new sounds to the whirl of Studio 54. Below the cut are links to the songs mentioned in the article, as best as I could find, in the order in which they appear.
[more inside]
posted by Kattullus
on Aug 17, 2009 -
25 comments
"The most brutal, ugly, degenerate, vicious form of expression it has been my displeasure to hear," Frank Sinatra wrote of rock 'n' roll during the time of Elvis Presley. But Frank wasn't stupid... he knew his relevance was fading and if you can't beat 'em, you have to join 'em. So in
1960, Elvis Presley was welcomed home from his two year
military tour by the
Frank Sinatra Timex Show "Welcome Home Elvis" special. Later Sinatra said,
"I'm just a singer. Elvis was the embodiment of the whole American culture."
posted by miss lynnster
on Feb 26, 2008 -
17 comments
On December 5th, a Croatian man named Nico awoke to find a map his girlfriend had left him featuring a specific path she wanted him to take to work; along the way he saw stencils, paint, aerosol, collage wheat pastes & other art she had laid out in the pre-dawn hours letting him know how much she loved him.
The sights Nico saw, in order, are collected here.
posted by jonson
on Dec 10, 2006 -
80 comments
Be careful how you sing "My Way" After being ridiculed for an off-key version of My Way, the irate singer kills one heckler and wounds another. Philippine karaoke bars have begun to remove the song from their playlists as this was the climax of several violent incidents when this song was played.
posted by Lanternjmk
on Feb 19, 2002 -
8 comments
