It’s Rare Earth. Trump should switch from playing Y.M.C.A. to this.
Category: Music
There is a Table, Turn, Turn, Turn
There is a sneaking suspicion in audio circles that the vinyl resurgence has peaked. But those of us who know the enjoyment of listening to records are confident the format will endure.
Ballroom Blitz. Here’s Why.
Trump’s ballroom, that nobody else ever said they wanted, will ultimately be paid for with taxpayer money. He’ll keep the private donations for himself. As Trump likes to say, “You know it and I know it.”
A Beatles Cellarbration
Yesterday’s Jeopardy! made me wonder how much longer Beatlemania will continue to linger in the public’s collective consciousness. In the Double Jeopardy round, under the category of “In Da Club,” the $1600 answer was, “You went down eighteen stone steps to enter this club, the home of the Beatles, at 10 Mathew Street, in Liverpool.”
Kudos to yesterday’s winner Tom Devlin for his interesting, but incorrect, guess. “What is the Quarrymen’s Club?” With no glimmer of recognition from the other two contestants, host Ken Jennings explained, “They played a lot of early gigs in the Cavern Club.”
The Cavern was demolished only three years after the Beatles broke up, when I was graduating from high school. Today’s Cavern in Liverpool is, like Fort Ticonderoga and the Star Trek Tour, also in Ticonderoga, a recreation.
https://www.cavernclub.com/history/
Beatles bonus: Walter Cronkite remembers the Beatles.
It’s a Wonderful Soundtrack
It started with me sending Denro this picture of an album I saw on display at Newbury Comics. The late and very great Joe Sinnott, Bing’s #1 fan, would have been pleased to see a new Crosby record in 2025.
The topic quickly switched to something else from long ago, when Denro replied that he had just purchased a new record he spotted at a Barnes & Noble.
It’s a soundtrack of It’s a Wonderful Life that I heretofore didn’t know existed. Denro said the album was originally released as a CD that is no longer available.
https://www.kritzerland.com/wonderful_life.htm
The CD information at that link includes this warning…
Do not be fooled by any other CDs that purport to be the original soundtrack for this film – they are all bootlegs and contain dialogue, sound effects and music right off the film itself. This is the first release of the real deal.
… a warning that is easily confirmed.
The album Denro bought is also available as a new CD release.
https://lalalandrecords.com/its-a-wonderful-life-75th-anniversary-remastered-limited-edition/
The soundtrack is on Amazon as an MP3 for $9, so I bought that. I would have sprung for a CD copy, but the liner notes are available on the Kritzerland page.
This music cue is called “Love Sequence”. It reminds me of the music that Tiomkin composed for Capra’s Lost Horizon, produced ten years before It’s a Wonderful Life.
My favorite aspect of It’s a Wonderful Life is the contrast that’s drawn between Mary and Violet, who I see as the most interesting character in the movie. It’s easy to infer what Violet originally had in mind for her evening’s fun, before her attempt at seducing George, and it’s certainly intended for mature audiences. “We’ll wait for you, baby.”
Simonson Says
On Facebook, comic book artist Walt Simonson says he’s listening to Technicolor Web of Sound. There are other Internet stations featuring this music, and Web of Sound is on Live365, a streaming service with a shaky history, but I’ll give it a try.
https://live365.com/station/Technicolor-Web-of-Sound—60s-Psychedelic-Rock-a01650