For Prue, on her birthday. Something Prue once said, that made me laugh out loud was, “I assure you, Douglas, not all men who are ballet dancers are gay!”
Armstrong-Jones had a distinctive approach to his casual photos of women, having them wear one of his shirts, it seems. Here is one he took of Prue…
… and one he took of another friend, who Prue says, “wasn’t Tony’s type.”
Somebody (you know who you are!) really liked my recent post with Simon & Garfunkel’s ‘Fakin’ It’. This one is another favorite of mine that I have featured previously. Here there be musical magic.
Hard to believe that’s been five-and-a-half years already since I happened to cross paths with Donovan, as recounted here.
Ian Whitcomb has died. I am heartbroken over the passing of such a treasure of a man. A great delight for me in recent years has been connecting with Ian and his pal Jim Dawson on their Wednesday night LuxuraMusic program. This is such a terrible loss.
Ian never fully recovered from surgery he had last year. He developed complications and returned to the hospital in early March. It’s rumored that he caught Covid-19 there, but that has yet to be confirmed. What has been confirmed is that he died this afternoon.
Follow-up: Definitely NOT Covid-19.
Correction: Although word of his passing did not appear until yesterday, Ian died on Sunday. Here is a remembrance from Jim Dawson: https://luxuriamusic.com/ian-whitcomb-1941-2020/
On March 7 I saw ‘The Invisible Man’. That was my last time in a theater before we were all locked down. The reviews of the movie were mixed, but I thought it was a clever updating of the H.G. Wells premise, and had a lot going for it, including the soundtrack. I was so impressed by it that I stayed through the end credits to listen to the music.
Some of what I heard reminded me of ‘Forbidden Planet’. Which made me appreciate, not for the first time, just how far ahead of its time the so-called electronic tonalities were, as created by Bebe and Louis Barron.
Robert Crumb has long praised the sound that is characteristic of records from the early 1930’s. The appeal of some of them is likely due to the RCA PB-31 ribbon microphone that, as its name implies, was introduced in 1931.
Expert audio engineer and producer Steve Hoffman cites these recordings on YouTube as examples of the excellent sound quality that was possible using a single RCA ribbon mic.
Let’s be ready for anything, including being heartbroken.
