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AdamSmith Grand Master

AdamSmith

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:lol:

Lehrer’s songs and influence have survived his own indifference, and survived his place in the cultural cul de sac that was the anti-hippie, anti-folk music square left. If your parents went to a fancy college in the late 1950s, they probably played you “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park” when you were 7, and “New Math” when you were 11, and blushed trying to explain “I Got It from Agnes.” And if you have kids of your own now, you’re probably playing them the same songs on the radio as you drive them back from a soccer game or over to their grandparents’. “Wernher Von Braun,” implausibly, cracks them up every time.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/tom-lehrer

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lookin Grand Master

lookin

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On 7/28/2019 at 8:09 AM, AdamSmith said:
Lehrer was encouraged by the success of his performances, so he paid $15 for some studio time in 1953 to record Songs by Tom Lehrer. The initial pressing was 400 copies. Radio stations would not air his songs because of his controversial subjects, so he sold the album on campus at Harvard for $3 . . .

 

Loved him then, loved him now.  :thumbsup:

 

One of my favorite songs on that album is My Home Town.

 

 

Though I've heard minor variations of the fifth verse.  In the clip above, it's

 

That fellow was no fool

Who taught our Sunday School

And neither was our kindly Parson Brown

(We're recording tonight so I'll have to leave this line out)

In my home town

 

But, on the album, the fourth line changes:

 

That fellow was no fool

Who taught our Sunday School

And neither was our kindly Parson Brown

(I guess I better leave this line out just to be on the safe side)

In my home town

 

I guess it's possible that Lehrer never wrote a fourth line and left it up to the listener to imagine the kindly Parson's particular perversion.  But I've always wondered if he had described some distinct depravity in his original lyrics.

 

If I recall, AdamSmith, you yourself once hobnobbed with Lehrer and stood inches away while he sang.  Do you happen to know if there is indeed a fourth line, and recall what it is?

 

A long shot, I know, though it can't hurt to ask.  sport_012.gif

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AdamSmith Grand Master

AdamSmith

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6 hours ago, lookin said:

 

Loved him then, loved him now.  :thumbsup:

 

One of my favorite songs on that album is My Home Town.

 

 

Though I've heard minor variations of the fifth verse.  In the clip above, it's

 

That fellow was no fool

Who taught our Sunday School

And neither was our kindly Parson Brown

(We're recording tonight so I'll have to leave this line out)

In my home town

 

But, on the album, the fourth line changes:

 

That fellow was no fool

Who taught our Sunday School

And neither was our kindly Parson Brown

(I guess I better leave this line out just to be on the safe side)

In my home town

 

I guess it's possible that Lehrer never wrote a fourth line and left it up to the listener to imagine the kindly Parson's particular perversion.  But I've always wondered if he had described some distinct depravity in his original lyrics.

 

If I recall, AdamSmith, you yourself once hobnobbed with Lehrer and stood inches away while he sang.  Do you happen to know if there is indeed a fourth line, and recall what it is?

 

A long shot, I know, though it can't hurt to ask.  sport_012.gif

It was the greatest social infraction in Cantabrigia :) to make any note of an interlocutor’s public prominence, or inquire directly into any specific aspect of his work. As we were all almost to a T the world expert in whatever our professional thing was. And the last thing we wanted when out & about socially was to be dragged back to the office.

Instead, at the 2 or 3 of these dinner parties where he & I chatted (in the home of our host, herself most fascinating: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Zinberg ), I would raise topics I thought might be of mutual interest, like why does Mark Russell https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Russell put out on TV specials — of his OWN scheduling — such crappy unprofessional versions of his own political satire lyrics that could, with just a little more polishing, be very good?

Lehrer replied that this was exactly Russell’s fault — he went on air and performed first drafts.

We then went on to some interesting back-&-forth speculations on what makes a good revision/sharpening process.

That was greatly valuable, & how I used this access to genius to learn.

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AdamSmith Grand Master

AdamSmith

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Now this is how to live!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_May

May playing his Red Special in 2017
Background information
Birth name Brian Harold May
Born 19 July 1947 (age 72)
Hampton, London, England
Genres Rock
Occupation(s)
  • Musician
  •  
  • singer
  •  
  • songwriter
  •  
  • record producer
  •  
  • author
  •  
  • astrophysicist
Instruments
  • Guitar
  •  
  • vocals
Years active 1965–present
Labels
Associated acts
 
Education Hampton Grammar School
Alma mater Imperial College London (BSc, PhD)
Spouse(s)
Christine Mullen
(m. 1976; div. 1988)
 
Anita Dobson
(m. 2000)
Children 3
Awards Inductee, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (2001)
CBE (2005)
Scientific career
Thesis A survey of radial velocities in the zodiacal dust cloud (2008)
Doctoral advisor
Influences
Website brianmay.com
 

May was a co-founder of Queen with lead singer Freddie Mercury and drummer Roger Taylor, having previously performed with Taylor in the band Smile, which he had joined while he was at university. Within five years of their formation in 1970 and the recruitment of bass player John Deacon completing the lineup, Queen had become one of the biggest rock bands in the world with the success of the album A Night at the Opera and its single "Bohemian Rhapsody". From the mid-1970s until the early 1990s, Queen were an almost constant presence in the UK charts and played some of the biggest venues in the world, most notably giving an acclaimed performance at Live Aid in 1985. As a member of Queen, May became regarded as a virtuoso musician and he was identified with a distinctive sound created through his layered guitar work, often using a home-built electric guitar called the Red Special.[3]

Following the death of Mercury in 1991, Queen were put on hiatus for several years but were eventually reconvened by May and Taylor for further performances featuring other vocalists. In 2005, a Planet Rock poll saw May voted the seventh greatest guitarist of all time.[4] He was ranked at No. 26 on Rolling Stone's list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time".[5] In 2012, he was ranked the second greatest guitarist in a Guitar World magazine readers poll.[6] In 2001, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Queen and in 2018 the band received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.[7]

May was appointed a CBE by Queen Elizabeth II in 2005 for "services to the music industry and for charity work".[8] May earned a PhD in astrophysics from Imperial College London in 2007,[1][2] and was Chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University from 2008 to 2013.[9]He was a "science team collaborator" with NASA's New Horizons Pluto mission.[10][11] He is also a co-founder of the awareness campaign Asteroid Day.[12] Asteroid 52665 Brianmay was named after him. May is also an animal rights activist, campaigning against the hunting of foxes and the culling of badgers in the UK.[13]

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AdamSmith Grand Master

AdamSmith

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On 7/29/2019 at 3:17 PM, lookin said:

 

Loved him then, loved him now.  :thumbsup:

 

One of my favorite songs on that album is My Home Town.

 

 

Though I've heard minor variations of the fifth verse.  In the clip above, it's

 

That fellow was no fool

Who taught our Sunday School

And neither was our kindly Parson Brown

(We're recording tonight so I'll have to leave this line out)

In my home town

 

But, on the album, the fourth line changes:

 

That fellow was no fool

Who taught our Sunday School

And neither was our kindly Parson Brown

(I guess I better leave this line out just to be on the safe side)

In my home town

 

I guess it's possible that Lehrer never wrote a fourth line and left it up to the listener to imagine the kindly Parson's particular perversion.  But I've always wondered if he had described some distinct depravity in his original lyrics.

 

If I recall, AdamSmith, you yourself once hobnobbed with Lehrer and stood inches away while he sang.  Do you happen to know if there is indeed a fourth line, and recall what it is?

 

A long shot, I know, though it can't hurt to ask.  sport_012.gif

Chuck Berry riffed a similar variation: in different recordings, he would change the wording, just slightly, in ‘slant-rhyme’ (again) ways that might have no meaning, or might have much.

Contact direct & indirect with these verbal magicians has taught me much.

A new Bloom post...

https://charlierose.com/videos/30011

 

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AdamSmith Grand Master

AdamSmith

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Wallace Fowlie

One of my most brilliant mentors...

...By the 1980s he had alighted on his holy trinity of Dante, Proust and Rimbaud (with a frequent nod to Jim Morrison), writing critical studies on the first two. In 1990 he was consultant to Oliver Stone's film The Doors, and was commissioned to write the foreword to The Doors Complete. In his last two decades he became fascinated by the cross-currents he had established between the two poetes maudits. In 1995 his book Rimbaud and Jim Morrison: the rebel as poet was issued in Britain and was widely praised. This book compared the four years each poet's star had fried, and presented ideas Fowlie had been brooding over for 15 years. He said of the book: "Most of the readers knew Morrison, but many have discovered Rimbaud thanks to Morrison. This pleased me. Those two rebels make a fine couple."

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AdamSmith Grand Master

AdamSmith

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...In a letter of 1996, Fowlie wrote:

I attended one concert of Patti Smith. She showed a large picture of Rimbaud and his brother. A friend of mine threw on to the stage at her feet my translation of R. She picked it up, looked at it, and said, "I know this book by heart." So, the poet goddess truly appreciated the Fowlie translation of the god poet...

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AdamSmith Grand Master

AdamSmith

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On 7/29/2019 at 10:16 PM, AdamSmith said:

Not now believed to be an actual Bach piece, but still charming.

 

Note that when he transitions from one keyboard to another, he inserts a — very subtle — half-beat stop, to allow the performance space’s reverberance time to catch up.

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