Leave bread soaked in milk for the piskies, those pesky little men in red hats, little women in green skirts, who pinch the cat and sign a treaty with the mouse king, who never help you clean, who leave the muddy prints of miniature shoes on your kitchen floor. But if you didn’t, wouldn’t it be worse? Keep slices of cake and wine for the pale lady who comes to your front door, sighing and reading poetry in Irish. Set out a dish of liver dumplings for the banshee, dog treats for the kelpie, that sopping mess of a water horse, even when he leaves trailing green weeds draped over the parlor sofa, or she uses you as an unpaid therapist.
For 30 years Joseph Stalin “the man of steel” ruthlessly dominated the Soviet Union. Born into poverty on the fringes of the Czarist Russian Empire, he became a gangster and then a revolutionary. He was part of the original Bolshevik leadership team, but when Vladimir Lenin died he took his chance to grab the top spot. His quest for absolute power transformed his nation, but at a brutal cost. (View video documentary here)
I wanted to give back some of the joy Christina’s music has brought me, so I thought ‘I would like to buy a sweater of her latest album’ – Lighter Shade of Blue‘ for each member of my family. It’s actually called a ‘Tie Dye Hoodie‘ (see inset) – Homies.
But they are sold -out! Man, I wanted that sweater. To quote Jim Carrey, ‘Can you believe it? It was right there. Can I do it one more time‘?
I’m not as smitten with this song now as I was back then, but it’s still pretty darn good. This is the second song to appear here from Elton John’s collaboration with Disney’s Lion King. In my first article Circle of Life you’ll forgive me for recalling, ‘Rice said he was amazed at the speed with which John composed: “I gave him the lyrics at the beginning of the session at about two in the afternoon. By half-past three, he’d finished writing and recording a stunning demo.‘
Can You Feel the Love Tonight is a song from Disney’s 1994 animated film The Lion King composed by English musician Elton John with lyrics by Tim Rice. At the 67th Academy Awards in March 1995 it won the Academy Award for Best Original Song. The same year the song also won Elton John the Grammy Award for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance.
There’s a calm surrender To the rush of day When the heat of a rolling wave Can be turned away An enchanted moment And it sees me through It’s enough for this restless warrior Just to be with you And can you feel the love tonight? It is where we are It’s enough for this wide-eyed wanderer That we’ve got this far And can you feel the love tonight? (Tonight) How it’s laid to rest? It’s enough to make kings and vagabonds Believe the very best
Within around one and a half months before the film was released in June 1994, John’s recording was released throughout radio stations as a commercial single and entered the US Billboard Hot 100. The music video (seen below) of John’s recording contains montages of John performing the song and scenes from the film.
I’m going to end this article with a WTF statistic from the wiki reference below: According to a 2020 survey by OnBuy found that couples that chose “Can You Feel The Love Tonight” as the song for the first dance at their wedding were more likely to stay together, with 77% of respondents who chose the song remaining in their marriage.
I added Broken Record to my collection after reading Jeff’s post on his web site at Eclectic Music Lover. Apart from Jeff’s post there is scant information available about this song, so I will let him do most of the talking today. Otherwise here is NAVE’s ‘about’ page description:
Nathan Evans (NAVE) is a British prolific songwriter and music producer based in South UK.
His dark and eerie style delivers an infectious stamp on his tracks creating a fresh and unique sound.
NAVE is a multi-instrumentalist and both his live and electronic projects have been invited to play a BBC Introducing session receiving praise from the likes of Joshua Homme (QOTSA), Edwyn Collins and Tom Robinson (BBC6)
One of the most hauntingly beautiful songs I’ve heard this year is “Broken Record” by British artist NAVE, the solo music project of singer-songwriter, composer and producer Nathan Evans. The prolific and hyper-talented musician creates gorgeous and dramatic music incorporating a broad array of genres and styles, including alternative electronica, rock, ambient, trip-hop, orchestral and dark wave. He’s also front man for alternative rock band Native Tongue. He wrote “Broken Record” to address the powerfully addicting allure of social media and its impacts on our emotional and mental health. Nathan states “‘Broken Record’ focuses on the like, follow and share society we have transitioned into over the past decade. Likes release dopamine like a drug and we become addicted to the validation, attention and acknowledgment of our successes or happiness. We hide behind filters and fake smiles to show an inaccurate reality we wish was real.” The song is stunning, with mournful, contemplative piano keys overlain with arresting percussion, swelling strings and mysterious vocal effects. I love male singing voices in the higher ranges, and Nathan’s is especially captivating here. Not only is “Broken Record” a gorgeous song, it also resonates very strongly with me, and I’m thrilled to place it at the top of my list this week.
The music of Christina Perri has been my ‘Mendihuaca beach‘. This beach is located between Tayrona and Palomino on the Carribean Coast in Colombia. Mendihuaca felt like home to my family, and I can say the music of Perri feels homely to me as well. As I started uncovering Perri’s music, I felt like a 12-year-old all over again; ‘I know something which y‘all don’t yet‘.
Perri thundered onto the music scene after her first album in 2011 ‘Lovestrong‘, but her recent stuff from her 2022 album A Lighter Shade of Blue is as good as anything I have heard. It’s just such a humble record and chock-full of some of the best ballads I have had the privilege to hear. It’s unfortunate so few listen to it. Anyone that can write ‘Cause the blue of my mother has always been my color‘ is in the big leagues. I remain perplexed how people don’t identify with it. Mind you, people not identifying with my tastes is nothing new to me.
Christina Perri said in this video: As soon as we wrote Blue..oh I said the album will be called ‘A Lighter Shade of Blue‘….It’s so weirdly foreshadowing the experiences of my life. I feel like Blue is the beginning…. It is exactly what I wanted to say.
Edited (10th of June, 2025): Christina recently released a magnificent live version (which I think surpasses the original studio) and can be seen at the end of this post.
[Verse 1] I learned to swim all by myself Too young to never ask for help From then ’til forever It’s the cold that keeps me warm at night
[Chorus] ‘Cause the blue of my mother has always been my color The love that I offer is deep and out of tune But you hold me ’cause you know me All that I can do is turn a lighter shade of blue
The result is a body of work that encapsulates Perri’s artistry in a way that reflects her journey in both life and motherhood while also standing alone as a compelling reflection on grief. “It’s the cold that keeps me warm at night,” she sings. “All that I can do is turn a lighter shade of blue.” For Perri, she knows everything she needs is all around her.
Not to measure or compare grief in any way, but life’s just kinda hard for everybody is what I’m learning in my 30s. I’ll never stop having inspiration to write really emotional things regardless of how put together I look or how many things I tick off my list.
The track Blue, which is where the title of the album comes from, is the acceptance of the darker parts of yourself and that those darker pieces might actually be a conduit to the light. Reminiscent of Cohen’s famous line in Anthem ‘There is a crack a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.‘ Blue has the maturity and subtlety that Perri’s megahit Thousand Years doesn’t have.
When I heard Blue for the first time, I couldn’t help but wonder how she transfigured the song into a 70’s sound-space. It’s kind of Elton John-ish and transports me to his heyday. There are other songs by her where she even manages to transfigure the feel of a song into an entirely different genre of music. Take for example, her remarkable ‘The Lonely‘ – I come away from that song as if I had just heard a classical piece. I haven’t heard a bad song from her yet. Even today her song Bluebird arrived, and I heard it. It’s the same as always..OK, another one for the collection.
During and after the Pandemic I went into a movie appreciation hiatus. Then the flame was rekindled when I read fellow blogger Cindy Bruchman’s article of Tár. I wondered why I hadn’t seen this already since Cate Blanchett is my favourite actress of modern times. I lost count how many times I saw Blue Jasmine, so I have Cindy to thank for getting me back into the saddle especially after seeing Tár. What better film for the re-initiated could there be than seeing someone’s script written during a 12-week sprint in the lockdown stage of early COVID?
I went into the movie knowing zero apart from Cindy’s article and that Blanchett was in it. I watched the whole movie believing the main story was a biopic such was the premise of the story and attention to detail.
Having achieved an enviable career few could even dream of, renowned conductor/composer Lydia Tár, the first female principal music director of the Berlin Philharmonic, is at the top of her game. As a conductor, Lydia not only orchestrates, she manipulates. As a trailblazer, the passionate virtuoso leads the way in the male-dominated classical music industry. Moreover, Lydia prepares for the release of her memoir while juggling work and family. She is also willing to take up one of her most significant challenges: a live recording of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 5. However, forces that even the imperious maestro can’t control slowly chip away at Lydia’s elaborate facade, revealing the genius’s dirty secrets and the insidious, corrosive nature of power. What if life knocks Lydia off her pedestal?
I recently described the Wheel of Fortune Christian symbolic meaning and how John Lennon in his song Watching the Wheels was just content to sit there in the centre and watch those wheels roll. To my mind Tár also sits in the centre, but of a triangular prism with movie spokes of ‘Kubrick, Tarkovsky and Bergman’ because there is a linear structure to the madness. As a movie aficionado I was enthralled watching this prism bend and warp in Tár.
As has been mentioned in other reviews, the technicality of discourses when watching a professional composer do her thing can feel a little dull and out of scope for those uninitiated with classical music. But we as flies on the wall witnessing something so distinct from our own little microcosm and insecurities aside can just sit there and witness art, if it so pleases you. Tár is an exemplar of ‘Art’ in the cinematic and musical form.
Some IMDB Trivia for y’all:
Scenes of the orchestra playing are completely, 100 percent real. Cate Blanchett was actually conducting the Dresden Orchestra.
Todd Field wrote the film specifically for Cate Blanchett and would not have made the film without her. They had previously planned to work on a different film that Field could not acquire financing for.
When Lydia’s tour guide tells her that she cannot swim in the river due to the presence of crocodiles, he mentions that “a Marlon Brando movie” brought them to the location and that they have been there ever since. He is referring to the film “Apocalypse Now,” which was shot in the Philippines.
Born down in a dead man’s town The first kick I took was when I hit the ground End up like a dog that’s been beat too much ‘Til you spend half your life just covering up now
Born in the U.S.A (born in the U.S.A) I was born in the U.S.A (born in the U.S.A) I was born in the U.S.A (born in the U.S.A) Born in the U.S.A (born)
Got in a little hometown jam So they put a rifle in my hand Sent me off to a foreign land (foreign land) To go and kill my fellow man
I video-taped the fantastic Amnesty International music concert (below) from TV when I was an adolescent. I watched it more times than what is considered healthy. I digress…. this article will venture down a garden path of my youth which I have strong memories about; so please forgive me for its verbosity and intention of therapeutic reciprocity.
My parents and brother had heard Springsteen and Dylan blaring from my room for a few years by then and I had got some flak for it. I remember my mother mocking me constantly singing Congratulations by accentuating Dylan’s nasal delivery and my father was insistent that Dylan wasn’t the consummate music artist with a voice like his.. ‘OK Dad‘.
Then a miracle happened. My mother actually watched the Amnesty concert with me one day and she was gobsmacked. She told me, and I’ll never forget it: ‘That Springsteen ran the show and was excellent‘. I could tell she was hooked from then on.
My father, many years later, contacted me when I was at the Officers Mess in a Naval institution in Sydney and he’d just seen Dylan live (On TV in Sydney) at his Oscar winning performance of Things of Changed. I had seen Dylan live at Centennial Park in Sydney just the day earlier. My father told me after seeing the ceremony or words to the effect, ‘Dylan’s eyes penetrated the screen like nothing I have ever seen‘. To me, my father seemed kind of awe-struck or perhaps I was left more awestruck by what he had just said. Either way his comment was in the ‘lock and load’ position awaiting this post two decades later.
Anyhow, back to basics;
I felt when watching Springsteen performing Born in the USA below, that this special (which Mama loved so much) should never be forgotten. It’s said (and they may be just urban myths) that when Springsteen released Born in the USA, politicians on the campaign trail wanted to use his song as a Patriotic anthem of sorts and the Boss dismissed it, stating it was a ‘protest’ song. Another one I told people is that Born in the USA was the second best-selling album of all time behind Michael Jackson’s Thriller, which I had read once or thought that I had read. Anyway, now that is all said and done—onto the grand finale:
Ankidroid additions related to Science, History and Philosophy. More information about Anki can be found in this article.
Vincent Van Gogh’s Fateful Night
Self-portrait with bandaged ear and pipe, 1889
Vincent Van Gogh was a Dutch post-impressionist painter (1853 – 1890). He took up painting in 1881 and created 860 oil paintings mostly painted in the last 2 years of his life. He was commercially unsuccessful during his lifetime.
On the night of the 23rd of December 1888 in Aries (South France), the following occurred:
Fellow artist (but very successful unlike Van Gogh) PaulGauguin left Van Gogh’s house and they feuded. Also, Van Gogh had just received a letter from his brother Theo (who had always financially supported him and his art) announced his engagement to a woman.
In response to these events, Van Gogh cut off his entire ear and handed it to a prostitute Rachel at a brothel. He said to her ‘take it in remembrance of me‘. He killed himself a year later by shooting himself in the stomach.
Eggs which are female sex cells evolved more than a billion years ago. Whereas Chickens have been around for 10000 years
The Joseph Overton Window
American policy analyst – Joseph Overton frames a range of policies that a politician can recommend without appearing too extreme given the climate of political opinion. He opined that it is the responsibility of think-tanks to propose policies outside the window and shift the window.
If I had to guess the first song I ever heard which I was in complete awe of; it would be today’s featured track – Blueberry Hill. It was first published in 1940 but is best remembered by Fats Domino’s version in the 1950s. I have heard some hip artist names before, but I think Fats Domino takes the cake and this song exudes that same coolness. The music was written by Vincent Rose and the lyrics by Larry Stock and Al Lewis. It was recorded six times in 1940. Even Louis Armstrong’s 1949 recording charted in the Billboard Top 40, reaching number 29 but it was an international hit in 1956 for Fats Domino and has become a rock and roll standard.
[Verse 1] I found my thrill on Blueberry Hill On Blueberry Hill, when I found you
[Verse 2] The moon stood still on Blueberry Hill And lingered until my dream came true
[Bridge 1] The wind in the willow played Love’s sweet melody But all of those vows you made Were never to be
[Verse 3] Though we’re apart, you’re part of me still For you were my thrill on Blueberry Hill
Blueberry Hill reached number two for three weeks on the Billboard Top 40 charts, becoming his biggest pop hit, and spent eight non-consecutive weeks at number one on the R&B Best Sellers chart. The version by Fats Domino was also ranked number 82 in Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. In terms of popular culture, on the American television show – Happy Days (which I watched incessantly growing up), this was Richie Cunningham’s favorite song. That’s most likely where I first heard it.
Fats Domino was an American pianist, singer and songwriter. Born in New Orleans to a French Creole family, Domino signed to Imperial Records in 1949. He is one of the pioneers of rock and roll music, selling more than 65 million records. His first single The Fat Man is cited by some historians as the first rock and roll single and the first to sell more than 1 million copies. Domino was shy and modest by nature but made a significant contribution to the rock and roll genre. Elvis Presley declared Domino a “huge influence on me when I started out” and when they first met in 1959, described him as “the real king of rock ‘n’ roll“.
Theodora’s poems often pass this way. She wrote in her biography page:
If I were to teach an undergraduate class in poetry, I would not start with workshopping at all. No, I would say, first we’re going to start by doing exercises. You’re going to write poetry in different forms: ballads, sonnets, villanelles. Because when Picasso was your age, he was imitating Velasquez. That’s how he eventually became Picasso. And it’s going to be bad, because you’re all going to be terrible at writing formal poetry — most people are. But it’s going to make you better poets, whether you’re writing in forms or in free verse. And we’re going to study the history of poetry, particularly in English but also in translation because you need to look beyond your own literary tradition. In this class you’re going to work . . . That’s the class I wish I’d had, a class that would have taught me about poetry in a deep way. That’s the sort of class I think would have inspired me.
Now for her poem She Speaks Part of It (or part of it):
I am too old to fall in love for the first time, to scrape my knee on the slide or break my ankle roller skating, although I once did these things, too old to sit on the swings in the playground failing to properly smoke my first cigarette, or spend summer afternoons lying on the grass in the back yard, staring alternately at the sky and the veined insides of my eyelids, dreaming of things that haven’t happened yet.
I am too old to save my money for the popular brand of blue jeans or long for the actors on the movie screens of my childhood, for Peter Pan and Robin Hood and the Scarlet Pimpernel, for the heaven and hell of adolescence, too old for acne, for making cassette tapes of my favorite bands. Time slips like a slinky through my hands and I can count the years I have left like the rings in a tree core sample studied in biology class.
This was an excellent documentary; step by step historical insight into Lenin and what led to the implementation of communism in Russia. (View video documentary here)
Marxism is not a philosophy. Neither are its derivatives, like “Wokeness” (Woke Marxism). These are a strain within a broader category of cult religious movements that pose as economics, sociology, and politics. The broad name for these Esoteric cult religions is “Gnosticism,” but that’s a confusing label for a number of reasons. The first of these reasons is that “gnosticism” as a term, either as a descriptive or proper noun, means several things at once, which requires clarification. Another is that as economic, social, and political movements, they don’t look at all like the pre-modern spiritualist and mystical movements that go by those names. In this groundbreaking episode of the New Discourses Podcast, host James Lindsay clarifies the term “gnosticism” and unmasks what amounts to a huge “New Age” movement in the Middle Ages as the source of a thread of Gnostic cult belief that has shaped every facet of the West for at least the last three hundred years. He also explains how the shift from the Middle Ages to the Modern period included a shift in the Gnostic project, out of overt spiritualism and into exactly those society-building realms of economics, sociology, and politics. Join him to gain a completely new understanding of these dangerous movements and how they’re relevant to our lives today. (Listen to audio presentation here)
Beautiful Boy was written for Lennon’s son, Sean, his only child with Yoko Ono. Paul McCartney has stated this is one of his favourite songs composed by Lennon. It was used as the B-side of Happy Xmas (War Is Over) to promote the compilation album The John Lennon Collection in November 1982. I wrote about the impact of the Lennon Collection on my youth in the article – Jealous Guy.
I don’t know how many times I put the needle down on this record but it was a lot. We had one of those old wooden turntables which look like a dresser, and I remember sitting at the front of the fireplace and putting down the needle on this thing.
Beautiful Boy is another one of those songs from the collection I liked listening to. The song is devoid of any kind of ego – instead, it’s a heartfelt love letter to his son Sean, letting him know exactly how loved he was and how much joy he brought to John’s life. It’s quite a lot like a lullaby, and he’s really just a father comforting his son. I’m not sure how John’s first son Julian feels about the whole thing, but I hope he finds solace in it as well.
I also really liked the use of this song in Mr. Holland’s Opus (1995). In this movie, Beautiful Boy is sung and signed in American sign language by the title character (played by Richard Dreyfuss) to his deaf son, Cole.
[Bridge] Out on the ocean sailing away I can hardly wait To see you come of age But I guess we’ll both Just have to be patient ‘Cause it’s a long way to go A hard row to hoe Yes it’s a long way to go But in the meantime
[Verse 3] Before you cross the street Take my hand Life is what happens to you While you’re busy making other plans
[Chorus] Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful Beautiful boy Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful Beautiful boy
Observation Blogger 