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Mitsuko Uchida
Three-time Gramophone Award winner, Dame of the Empire, and, by consensus, the world's greatest living performer of Mozart's keyboard works, Mitsuko Uchida also gives great piano face.
Ausgezeichnet!
Now's the time in the 1974 Bundesliga new uniform unveiling presentation where we dance. Happy Monday! :)
A website devoted to jazz and American civilization
Jerry Jazz Musician
is "a website devoted to jazz and American civilization." Individual pages have been linked a few times on MeFi, but it's high time this terrific site got its own post. Anyone interested in jazz (or blues, or any of the related topics they frequently cover, like Ralph Ellison or Romare Bearden) should bookmark it pronto. A sample, more or less at random: the life and photography of Milt Hinton. (Via The Daily Growler, itself an excellent source for informed and passionate discussion of music, NYC, and life in general; the linked post finishes with a tribute to that fine pianist Terry Pollard.)
Great Dad? Or Greatest Dad?
In 1940s New York, Harry Dubin and his teenage son went out every weekend to take color pictures of people doing different jobs in the city. Well, not people...Harry Dubin, switching places with people and pretending to do their jobs.
"White Death moving down the mountainside"
"It... picked up cars and equipment as though they were so many snow-draped toys, and swallowing them up, disappeared like a white, broad monster into the ravine below." Nearly 100 years ago, on March 1, 1910, the deadliest avalanche in United States history struck the small town of Wellington, Washington. Ninety-six people died as a massive wall of snow struck two Great Northern trains stopped at Wellington to wait for the tracks to be cleared, rolling them nearly 1000 feet into Tye Creek and burying the victims under huge piles of snow, trees, and debris.
In words of one syl-la-ble
Time was, folks wrote books with just small words, for kids, or for folks who could not read well.
Blanche Calloway, singer and bandleader, remembered
Though she didn't enjoy the same level of fame and fortune as her younger brother Cab, singer and bandleader (said to be the first African-American woman to lead an all-male orchestra) Blanche Calloway is a musician worth remembering and checking out if you're a fan of 1920s/30s jazz stylings. It's Right Here For You, It Looks Like Susie, I Gotta Swing, Last Dollar and I Got What It Takes.
put on your Christmas jacket
Here's a fun collection of Vintage Christmas Album Covers, and more here at the Strange Christmas Album Covers Flickr set.
The Old Believers
Riabina who come from near Augustow in NE Poland where established in 1988 are apparently the only musical group of "Old Believers."
A loving look back on Dixieland Jazz
"Men working on the river would move in time to the beat of the music. It was everywhere: on the street, in the church. In the tonks and barrelhouses where people went to be together. Like the beating of a big heart. It gave everyone a good feeling." The Cradle is Rocking is a delightful 12-minute film that, though somewhat damaged (Folkstreams has found what may be the only surviving print), is highly recommended viewing for anyone interested in American roots music: in this case, New Orleans jazz. The film's thoughtful and affable narrator is trumpeter George "Kid Sheik" Cola, who can be heard along with Captain John Handy serving up some fine old-school Dixieland jazz here and here.
Opera in Focus
La Gioconda, Tristan und Isolde, The Pearl Fishers, Il Trovatore, and Rigoletto — enacted with 16-inch rod puppets.
“Of course there will be more Sodinis—there will be many more”
Point:
At the end of October, National Domestic Violence Awareness Month, members of the men’s movement group RADAR (Respecting Accuracy in Domestic Abuse Reporting [2]) gathered on the steps of Congress to lobby against what they say are the suppressed truths about domestic violence: that false allegations are rampant, that a feminist-run court system fraudulently separates innocent fathers from children, that battered women’s shelters are running a racket that funnels federal dollars to feminists, that domestic-violence laws give cover to cagey mail-order brides seeking Green Cards, and finally, that men are victims of an unrecognized epidemic of violence at the hands of abusive wives."
Erogenous headlines**
For those of you, like me, who giggle uncontrollably at Jay Leno's "Headlines" schtick (but cannot stand him or the rest of his show) here's the screenshot version*. You can also get a daily dose of News Fail on the web via Probably Bad News. And the Media Relations blog has a "funny-headlines" tag that's worth a few extra gaffaws**.
Lytico-Bodig, the mysterious killer of Guam
Can an obscure disease from Guam explain the explain the appearance of neurological disorders near Marscoma Lake in New Hampshire?
The only people thought to contract Lytico-Bodig were Chamorros born before 1961 and related or married to particular familes living near the village of Umatac in Guam. It was theorised that it came from eating cycad seeds, but why were there no documented cases before the 1900s, and why are there no new cases on the island today?
The popular author and neurologist Oliver Sacks visited the island and has continued to study the disease. He suggests that the cause is biomagnification of a toxin produced by cyanobacteria and concentrated twice - first by the cycads, and a second time in the flesh of the fruit bats. There are no new cases, he says, because the fruit bats have been nearly hunted to extinction.
Military people in cute situations.
Soldiers return home after months abroad and are greeted by their very excited dogs. (A compilation of puppy-focused welcome-home videos for Veterans' Day.)
Prisencolinensinainciusol - Ol Raight!
Sung in incoherent pseudo-English, Adriano Celentano's Prisencolinensinainciusol (1973) could be thought of as an early example of rap.
Enrico Caruso, remastered for free
Enrico Caruso Remastered.
Aside from his musical skill and his tempestuous character, he was also known in the English-speaking world as a gentlemanly public figure, and patriot.
Happy 300th Birthday!
Samuel Johnson was born 300 years ago today
in Lichfield. Best known for his dictionary, he also edited a landmark edition of Shakespeare, wrote Lives of the Poets, and composed his Rambler and Idler essays. Among other things. Perhaps most of all, he’s remembered for being very quotable(previously). See a portrait here; or visit the house where he put together his dictionary. Want to learn more? Here's a good place to start.
Biblical GraphJam
Clarence Larkin's famous Biblical Wall Charts - previously on Metafilter, but with that link defunct and this one providing excellent scans, it seems worth re-posting. Quality of parent site not guaranteed.
Some highlights of Larkin's fanciful, technical illustrations of the ages of man and biblical prophecy: Rightly dividing the word of truth, The six days of re-creation, The world's seven great crises.
Bollywood Gastronomy
Kuchh Kook Hota Hai
is an all singing, dancing (and possibly epileptic fit inducing) Indian cookery show (without much cooking), featuring two sassy assistants 'salt' and 'pepper'. To whet your appetite – Mutton Burger and Carrot Roll.
The Gustavatory
Gustave Dore's engravings for the Old Testament.
High quality enough to print. New Testament is here, though it's not nearly as exciting. Much of the rest of his work can be found here (The Raven, Rime of the Ancient Mariner, The Divine Comedy and so on), albeit in varying resolutions.
O Black and Unknown Bards - Among Other Things, Regarding The White Invention of The Blues
...The narrative of the blues got hijacked by rock ’n’ roll, which rode a wave of youth consumers to global domination. Back behind the split, there was something else: a deeper, riper source. Many people who have written about this body of music have noticed it. Robert Palmer called it Deep Blues. We’re talking about strains within strains, sure, but listen to something like Ishman Bracey’s ''Woman Woman Blues,'' his tattered yet somehow impeccable falsetto when he sings, ''She got coal-black curly hair.'' Songs like that were not made for dancing. Not even for singing along. They were made for listening. For grown-ups. They were chamber compositions. Listen to Blind Willie Johnson’s "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground.'' It has no words. It’s hummed by a blind preacher incapable of playing an impure note on the guitar. We have to go against our training here and suspend anthropological thinking; it doesn’t serve at these strata. The noble ambition not to be the kind of people who unwittingly fetishize and exoticize black or poor-white folk poverty has allowed us to remain the kind of people who don’t stop to wonder whether the serious treatment of certain folk forms as essentially high- or higher-art forms might have originated with the folk themselves.From Unknown Bards: The blues becomes apparent to itself by one John Jeremiah Sullivan. I came across it while browsing Heavy Rotation: Twenty Writers On The Albums That Changed Their Lives. For Sullivan, that album was American Primitive, Vol. II: Pre-War Revenants (1897 - 1939), which is my favorite CD of the year. Which came out in 2005 while I just got around to buying it this year. Foolish me. It is a piece of art in itself in every respect--all CDs should have such production values.
I'll do it as long as someone will publish it for me
Greil Marcus writes Real Life Top Ten for the Believer Magazine, in which he lists "anything that remotely has to do with music, a dress Bette Midler wore at an awards show or a great guitar solo in the middle of a song that otherwise wasn't very interesting." But he's been writing this column online for just about 10 years.
Single Link Silent French Sureal Slapstick
Artheme Swallows his Clarinet
is a rather bizarre short film from 1912.
Anyone Who Ever Asks
The Musical Mystery of Connie Converse
"To survive at all, I expect I must drift back down through the other half of the twentieth twentieth, which I already know pretty well, the hundredth hundredth, which I have only read and heard about. I might survive there quite a few years - who knows?"
This was the cryptic note Connie Converse left her family in 1974, and no one heard from her again. She had spent the 1950's in New York City, trying to promote her music- haunting, melancholy folk tunes, but never made a go of it. Her songs very nearly disappeared into the ether, but thanks to Lau derrete Records, her first album is now available to the public, fifty years after the songs were recorded. (via Spinning On Air)
"To survive at all, I expect I must drift back down through the other half of the twentieth twentieth, which I already know pretty well, the hundredth hundredth, which I have only read and heard about. I might survive there quite a few years - who knows?"
This was the cryptic note Connie Converse left her family in 1974, and no one heard from her again. She had spent the 1950's in New York City, trying to promote her music- haunting, melancholy folk tunes, but never made a go of it. Her songs very nearly disappeared into the ether, but thanks to Lau derrete Records, her first album is now available to the public, fifty years after the songs were recorded. (via Spinning On Air)
100 Meters of Existence
Danish photographer Simon Høgsberg has made several updates since we last visited, including Faces of New York and The Low Fat Diaries. Digital Photography School interviews Høgsberg about his latest project We're All Gonna Die - 100 Meters of Existence.
Hot Lips
Exactly 101 years ago today, Oran Thadeus Page was born in Dallas. Hot Lips Page was one of the greatest jazz trumpet players to ever play, and a fine singer as well. That is all.
SumoPaint -- Photoshop in your browser
SumoPaint
is an impressive little flash applet that mimics Photoshop in your browser, complete with layers and filters. See it in action.
Give It The Ol' Goat Gland Job.
"Goat Gland"
referred to a completed silent film in which one or more talking sequences/musical numbers were added in an attempt to make the film more marketable to talkie-crazed filmgoers.
Oh shit, I just broke the Internet
"There is no saving the internet. There is only postponing the inevitable." Wired Magazine looks at the history of DNS and the Kaminsky attack.
"I don't know what safe is."
Culture Of Fear.
An interesting look at the security concerns National Football League players harbour in the wake of the death of Sean Taylor, who was robbed and shot within his own home. Previously.
That's Dum
Ed Rondthaler on english pronounciation.
(Quicktime Video)
The Tertullian Project
If the Tiber rises so high it floods the walls, or the Nile so low it doesn't flood the fields, if the earth opens, or the heavens don't, if there is famine, if there is plague, instantly the howl goes up, "The Christians to the lion!" What, all of them? To a single lion? So wrote Tertullian. In the huge intellectual project that was the foundation of the Christian Church he was the great wit, most powerful rhetor and finest writer. Starting out as a pagan delighting in adultery and gladiator combat he became a great champion of martyrdom, defender of Christianity against its malefactors and heretics. His most famous contribution to our culture is undoubtedly the doctrine of the trinity. Towards the end of his life he threw his lot with a small group of hardcore ascetics called Montanists and was denounced as a heretic. Ending his life among the defeated of ecclesiastical history he was forgotten for a millennium until rediscovered during the Renaissance. The Tertullian Project collects all his extant writing and information about his lost texts as well as biographical information, selected quotations and much more.
Art and poetry from the post-Enligthenment and pre-Modernist era
ArtMagick
is a collection of art and poetry that roughly dates from after the Enlightenment but before Modernism. While the poetry section is extensive the main draw is the sites extensive art collection, which can be browsed by artist, art movement, title, theme or albums created by the site's users. So, forget the summer heat with some chilly pictures of winter, check out famous objects of devotion or search the archive.