She’s probably the greatest vocalist of our generation…
And she’s 50 years old today….
Happy Birthday, KD!
Category Archives: Music
Happy Birthday, Grace Slick
It’s hard to believe the beautiful lead singer from Jefferson Airplane is 72 years old today.
And that such an icon of the psychedelic ’60’s made it this far…
It’s also fun to look at the pictures and see the young people from the Summer of Love in 1967.
Everything old is new again….
And before you accuse me of being an old hippie, remember: I went to Washington and Lee University and shop at Brooks Brothers.
Which says everything and proves nothing…
Filed under Music
Happy Birthday, Freddie Mercury
Queen’s Freddie Mercury would have been 65 years old today.
I was never a fanatic fan of Queen or of Freddie Mercury, but I did appreciate their music and thought he was one hell of an entertainer with one hell of a voice.
Unfortunately, he died of AIDS in 1991 and we lost that great entertainer. One can only imagine what he would be doing today.
Here’s Queen’s Official Birthday Video Tribute:
And Freddie live in performance with Queen on “Bohemian Rhapsody”
Luckenbach Texas
This is an interesting song…
I’ll shock some folks by saying I have always liked it. I have since college. I like the overall message of simplifying life.
The problem is the location.
I’m sorry, but Texas gave us Tom Delay, George Bush and Rick Perry. True, it also gave us Molly Ivins and Ann Richards. But I think Delay, Bush and Perry have done more to destroy the Texas Mystique than most Texans realize.
No matter how many times I watch “Giant”, all I can think is that the Benedicts have ultimately lost out to Jett Rink….
While I like the sentiment of the song, it seems to be saying, let’s shuck it all and move to the intellectual, cultural and artistic wastelands- which is what most of Texas is-excluding Austin, San Antonio and maybe a couple of other places.
Discuss among yourselves:
Remembering Eva Cassidy…
I promise to get off my soapbox after this post, but my previous post made me think of Eva Cassidy again.
She was a beautiful, talented vocalist who died from Melanoma at the age of 33 in 1996.
I can only think what she may have done if she had lived, but she did leave behind a few beautiful CD’s and taped performances….
And listening to Eva is always a good way to start the weekend….
And her last performance:
Filed under Music, Uncategorized
Happy Birthday, Eydie Gorme!
Let’s leave Rick Perry alone for few minutes and talk about someone truly important; Eydie Gorme is 80 today…
She’s such a part of the 20th Century Music scene, I couldn’t let this milestone go unnoticed. She’s one of the last of the great Broadway belters. I somehow think you could hear Eydie even without the microphone, no matter how big the house…
She also has one of the longest musical partnerships- and marriages- in Show Business with her husband, Steve Lawrence.
They are so “Vegas in the ’60’s” you can’t help but love them. They are iconic 20th Century entertainment figures.
I bet Rick Perry even listened to her back when he was a cheerleader at Texas A&M….
Happy Birthday, Eydie. I hope you have many more!
Here she is in 1966:
And a little Steve AND Eydie:
Filed under Broadway, Music, Television
Happy Birthday, Tony Bennett
Tony Bennett is 85 today. And has a new duets album coming out this fall…
He’s truly amazing….
Here he is singing his signature song on “The Judy Garland Show”….
And from a couple of years ago, with KD Lang:
Historic Chelsea Hotel Closes to Guests – NYTimes.com
This place is part of New York and music history. We’ll have to keep a close eye on this to see what happens….
The Ghosts of Sid and Nancy are probably really pissed off….
On Saturday, though, apart from crestfallen guests whose stays had been abruptly cut short, the goings-on at the Chelsea were, by its standards, relatively standard.
Wide-eyed tourists snapped photos of the lobby as residents swept past them without a glance. Steve Johnson, 29, visiting from North Carolina with his cousin, sat in the lobby gravely recounting the time he said he was approached in his room by a ghost. Gabriel Marchisio, a Uruguayan tarot card reader and hotel fixture, lingered by the front desk dispatching, for the heck of it, his signature “muah ha ha ha” monster laugh.
Shortly before dusk, police officers rushed in and up to the ninth floor. A guest had gotten into a fight with his girlfriend and called his mother to tell her he wanted to kill himself; his mother called the police, who in turn escorted the man to Bellevue Hospital’s psychiatric ward. “Never a dull moment,” a front-desk clerk said.
In the rooms above, people partied, prowled and slept. Hip-hop blared from Sid and Nancy’s old room. Hotel guests held earnest, drunken conversations from the balconies overlooking West 23rd Street. Ms. Ramona combed the halls with her camera. Tony Notarberardino, a photographer who has lived at the Chelsea for 17 years, hosted an “end of an era” party in an attempt to cheer everyone up. He scattered white rose petals near the entryway of his sixth-floor apartment, which is choked with chandeliers, beaded lamps, red walls and gilt-edged mirrors and feels like a speakeasy crossed with an opium den. “Let’s celebrate what we had,” he said, “and embrace change.”
Sometime before dawn, someone drove a fist through a swinging door on the first floor, leaving a wide penumbra of shattered glass. A worker discovered it in the morning.
“Already,” he said sadly, “they’re destroying the place.”
Musicians Are Probably Smarter Than The Rest Of Us
Well, I took piano lessons for years, dabbled at guitar and played the clarinet-poorly- in High School Band…
Sounds like I should have stuck with one of these…
I wonder if we can cram a piano somewhere in this house….
From HuffingtonPost.com:
Want to keep your mind healthy and sharp throughout your life? Pick up an instrument. A new study found that musicians might have brains that function better than their peers well into old age. Bet you wish you stuck with those piano lessons after all.
Researchers tested the mental abilities of senior citizens and discovered that musicians performed better at a number of tests. In particular, musicians excelled at visual memory tasks. While musicians had similar verbal capabilities to non-musicians, the musicians’ ability to memorize new words was markedly better, too. Perhaps most importantly, the musicians’ IQ scores were higher overall than those who spent their lives listening to music rather than performing it.
Amy Winehouse, RIP
Amy Winehouse is gone.
I hate that she had to join Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain and Jim Morrison in the “27 Club” of great musicians who all died at that far too young age.
It’s so sad that she couldn’t overcome her demons. She was so talented and had so much potential-as these songs show- for a long and varied career.
May she rest in peace while her legacy lives on in her music.
Filed under Music
Lost in the 21st Century 