What are you listening to?

[Harp]

Starbucks and Ella

The Fleischmann's Yeast Hour with Rudy Vallee, 12/13/1934. Tonight's guests -- Cole Porter, Buck and Bubbles, Beatrice Lillie, Henry Fonda, and William S. Hart.

Cole Porter.... Was in a Starbucks this morn featuring Ella Fitzgerald
singing a Cole Porter track; two class acts together over hot java.
Even the laptop-earplug-headset crowd were listening....:eusa_clap

 

[Zach R.]

I've got David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust on at the moment.

 

[Nathan Flowers]

.

Madeleine Peyroux's new album.

 

[Curt Chiarelli]

I've a few favourites in the CD changer now, a satisfying blend of soundtrack scores and classical:

- Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky;

- Divertimento, Four Roumanian Folk Songs and Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste by Bela Bartok;

- El Cid by Miklos Rozsa;

- Breakheart Pass by Jerry Goldsmith;

- Vertigo by Bernard Herrmann; and

- Das Wunder der Heliane by Erich Wolfgang Korngold

 

[Hemingway Jones]

Madeleine Peyroux's new album.

How is it? I loved her cover of the Leonard Cohen song, "Dance Me to the End of Love" on her last album.

 

[Mojave Jack]

If you have 'music of your choice' on as your reading this, what are you listening to?
Stating random radio or background music is no good.

I've got Grateful Dead / The Grateful Dead CD on.
Waiting in the wings is:
Disraeli Gears / Cream
Then & Now / The Who

The Jam right now. The Gift just finished, and In the City is just coming on.

You're making me want to throw in The Who, though. I have Thirty Years of Maximum R&B right here, and I haven't given that a listen in a while...

 

[Jay]

Blue Monk by Thelonius Monk.

 

[Samsa]

At the moment it is Weezer's "Blue Album."

 

[CharlieH.]

Right now it's Waring's Pennsylvanians. (More specifically, How About Me? by Irving Berlin)

 

[jazzbass]

I've a few favourites in the CD changer now, a satisfying blend of soundtrack scores and classical:

- Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky;

- Divertimento, Four Roumanian Folk Songs and Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste by Bela Bartok;

- El Cid by Miklos Rozsa;

- Breakheart Pass by Jerry Goldsmith;

- Vertigo by Bernard Herrmann; and

- Das Wunder der Heliane by Erich Wolfgang Korngold

Now THAT is an eclectic bunch. I'm not familiar with that particular Goldsmith score but I'm a big fan of his film work. He may not have had the power and majesty of your next on the list, Bernard Herrmann, but he was probably the most versatile of ALL the film composers. I don't think there was anything he couldn't do.


jazzbass

 

[Haversack]

Right now it is the late Peter Bellamy singing his settings for a variety of Rudyard Kipling's poems. Specifically _The Pilgrim_

Haversack.

 

[Mojave Jack]

Right now it is the late Peter Bellamy singing his settings for a variety of Rudyard Kipling's poems. Specifically _The Pilgrim_

Haversack.

Kipling?! Which album is that, Haversack? I'd like to hear more.

 

[Haversack]

Mojave Jack wrote: "Kipling?! Which album is that, Haversack? I'd like to hear more."

It is from a 2-CD set entitled _Mr Bellamy, Mr Kipling & The Tradition_, catalog number FECD162. This set includes Bellamy's 1982 album _Keep On Kipling_ and a recording of a live set he did at a folk club in 1991.

Peter Bellamy was a highly skilled traditionalist in the English folk music world. One of his areas of work was in setting Kipling's poetry to music, either traditional tunes or those of his own creation. He got started on this through an interest in English Music Hall songs. Bellamy discovered that when Kipling was writing many of his best known poems, Barracks Room Ballads, et. al., he was living near and frequented several music halls in London. Bellamy noted a simularity of structure between many of Kipling's poems and some music hall tunes and ran with it. Given that many of Kipling's poems are in the voice and dialect of soldiers and other ordinary sorts, putting them to tunes which that level of society would be familiar with really works. If you get a chance to, compare Bellamy's setting of Mandalay with the version popular over the past several decades and recorded by many people, (Frank Sinatra included). Bellamy's sounds like something that would be sung in a canteen or barracks-block by a veteran soldier who was longing to get shipped back "somewhere East of Suez". The other sounds like an art song.

Anyway, Bellamy recorded about four albums of Kipling's poetry set to music. I discovered his work when I was stationed in Germany in the early 1980s and was haunting record stores looking for folk music. I was lucky enough then to find two of these albums: The aforementioned _Keep On Kipling_ and the _Barrack Room Ballads_. Last year, a friend who knew my fondness for Kipling and Bellamy's work surprised me with the 2-CD set I've been listening to. I hadn't known it had been released.

Bellamy's work is hard to find. His Northern England style of singing grates on some people. His Kipling advocacy was/is anathama to much of the folk music community. (Much in the same way that the group Strawhead is persona non grata at folk clubs. - However popular they may have been, The Jingo Song and 18th C. Songs about Fox-Hunting are no longer canon with the Folk Orthodoxy). Still, Bellamy's work is worth seeking out. If you do, odds are you will have the tunes for Gunga Din, Minesweepers, and Ford O' Kabul River running through your head for days. The following site has some samples of Bellamy's Kipling work as well as further biographical details:

http://www.bens.connectfree.co.uk/pb/TRACKL.HTM

I hope you like his work,

Haversack.

 

[doghouse]

At the moment.. Reverend Horton Heat.

 

[Brooksie]

Right now I am listening to Portishead, "The Dummy CD".

Brooksie

 

[Steve]

I was just out on a bike ride, and the last tune I listened to via mp3 was "On a Slow Boat to China," by Kay Kyser.

 

[mikepara]

Big John Bates

Mystiki. I've got the Big John Bates Flamethrower CD waiting..

 

[olive bleu]

Alex Pangman...brilliant musician from toronto area here's alink, you can even hear:eusa_clap a couple clips
http://www.alexpangman.com/disc.html

 

[Harp]

Bears

WBBM Radio 79* AM, Chicago Bears vs Arizona Cardinals,
and it don't look good right now.

 

[rcinlv]

Opal Fly and the Swatters. Saw them performing on Bourbon Street, years ago, and can't get enough.

RC