What are you listening to right now?

by **justdrew** » Sun Apr 24, 2011 2:20 am

Allegro wrote:Port of Amsterdam | Jacques Brel

[/list]

hey - you know McKuen?

by **Jeff** » Sun Apr 24, 2011 11:00 am

Happy Easter Uprising.

by **Maddy** » Sun Apr 24, 2011 11:37 am

by **Laodicean** » Sun Apr 24, 2011 6:44 pm

Yep...can't wait for Treme tonight!

by **American Dream** » Sun Apr 24, 2011 10:34 pm

by **Laodicean** » Sun Apr 24, 2011 11:03 pm

Ha!

by **Allegro** » Mon Apr 25, 2011 12:15 am

.
For the life of me, I just couldn’t let pass justdrew’s post another hour without responding. His post was just too good. Thanks, justdrew.

Here are some thoughts referencing four videos (justdrew posted), the first three of which show performances of pieces that are especially good exercises for the pianist’s left hand, and one last video that shows viewers how a piano player should not (and I mean not ever) technically approach performing on piano.

< deleted unnecessary stuff wrt études and piano performance >

As observed in the fourth of four videos, the young male performer is doing just about everything that leads to an eventual if not immediate cramping of the lower arms, hands and fingers. I cringed watching him play his “signature piece,” his own rendition of Chopin’s Revolutionary Étude, knowing that as the physical body ages, one’s aging youthful verve, in many cases, will not thusly sustain an undisciplined dexterity as young and naïve performers may have wished.*

WRT the left hand, I realize that that fourth video shows continuity with the first three pianists’ performances, but the following video, one example of several, shows André Watts performing with elegantly dexterous precision the Revolutionary Étude by Chopin as he performed the piece on a Mr. Rogers show.

REFER ORIGINAL POST

* Edited to clarify: a native capability for dexterity, well trained early on and maintained as the physical body ages, can serve a pianist during many years of performance, as is the case with Mr. Watts.

by **Allegro** » Mon Apr 25, 2011 12:16 am

justdrew wrote:hey - you know McKuen?

[REFER Jacques Brel, David Bowie.]

Hey, do you

know Scott Walker?
I didn't, but everyone :whisper:

probably already knew that.

Next |

Port of Amsterdam |

30 Century Man |

Scott Walker Interview

by **annie aronburg** » Mon Apr 25, 2011 11:15 am

Alice Donut - The Senator And The Cabin Boy

by **American Dream** » Mon Apr 25, 2011 11:45 am

by **streeb** » Mon Apr 25, 2011 1:41 pm

The Old Man's Back Again (Dedicated to the Neo-Stalinist Regime)

I see a soldier, He's standing in the rain
For him there's no old man to walk behind

Devoured by his pain
bewildered by the faces who pass him by

He'd like another name, the one he's got's a curse
These people cried
Why can't they understand?
His mother called him Ivan,
then she died

The old man's back again
The old man's back again
I can see him back again

From allmusic:

Scott Walker’s passionate leftist political beliefs had been no secret by the time “The Old Man’s Back Again” was written and recorded, but the event which prompted one of his most pointed songs found him tackling not a right-wing dictatorship (as he later would with “The Electrician”) but a left-wing one. The subtitle – “Dedicated to the Neo-Stalinist Regime”) specifically refers to the repressive Czech government that overthrew the Prague Spring era in 1968 with Soviet military help, the ‘old man’ himself being the ghost of Stalin returned to a horrific new life. “The Old Man’s Back Again” found Walker blending a symbolic lyric of destruction and death with a striking combination of rumbling, prominent funk bass and a post-Ennio Morricone western-orchestral arrangement, stabbing strings courtesy Peter Knight and mournful, almost Russian chorale-tinged wordless calls coming to the fore. As is often the case with Walker, his smooth singing power sugars the pill, exchanging open rage or a cynical snarl with a stance that’s uneasy listening, at once romantically evocative and bitterly condemnatory.

by **streeb** » Mon Apr 25, 2011 1:53 pm

We Came Through

(lyrics in this video are wrooong...)

We came through
Like the Gothic monsters perched on Notre Dame
We observe the naked souls of gutters pouring forth mankind
Smothered in an avalanche of time
And we're giants as we watch our kings and countries raise their
shields
And Guevara dies encased in his ideals
And as Luther King's predictions fade from view
We came through

Scott Walker Vs. Scott Walker

There are now two famous people with the name Scott Walker. One is an execrable lump of shit who is the Governor of Wisconsin, and one is a God-like genius. The two should never be confused.

I think those worthy souls who are demonstrating against the vile Wisconsin version of Scott Walker should adopt the other, God-like, Scott Walker’s stirring song “We Came Through” as their rallying call. Using a Scott Walker song to combat Scott Walker - I’m an absolute genius to have thought of that.

Glad to see others are taking up the important cause of distinguishing Scott Walker from Scott Walker. I’d been staying away from “We Came Through” since the lines about MLK and Guevara always sounded a little ironic/defeatist to me, but it’s a pretty terrific rallying cry, all things considered.

by **streeb** » Mon Apr 25, 2011 1:58 pm

Big Louise

She stands all alone
You can hear her hum softly
From her fire escape in the sky
She fills the bags 'neath her eyes
With the moonbeams
And cries 'cause the world's passed her by

Didn't time sound sweet yesterday?
In a world filled with friends
You lose your way

She's a haunted house
And her windows are broken
And the sad young man's gone away
Her bathrobe's torn
And tears smudge her lipstick
And the neighbors just whisper all day

Didn't time sounds sweet yesterday?
In a world filled with friends
You lose your way