Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, no strangers to performing live on stage, landed on Broadway in 1973-74 with their show called “Good Evening.” At its grittiest in the mid-70’s, New York was nevertheless receptive to the duo’s decidedly British comic antics.
Category: All Posts
Running Legacy
Medical student Roger Bannister broke the 4-minute mile in 1954. Dr. Bannister, who became Sir Bannister in 1975, has died of Parkinson’s Disease.
A BBC radio feature I catch every so often is called “Desert Island Discs.” In 1992 Bannister talked about his favorite music.
Leave it to the Public Domain
Is “Leave it to Beaver” in the public domain? Because every episode is on Archive.org. MeTV is still showing them, and if the series were in the public domain you’d think it would be on a lot of channels.
On Facebook, Jerry Mathers recently pointed out that he had worked with Hugh Beaumont before LITB. Watching this promotional film for a cemetery, you can see why Hugh was hired to play Ward Cleaver.
Keep on Truckin’
This post isn’t about the Grateful Dead, and it isn’t about Robert Crumb, but there is a cartooning connection. It was a surprise for me when it came up in this “Fresh Air With Terry Gross” podcast. I recommend listening to the entire interview, but if you don’t want to wait to find out, listen to enough of it to get the gist, then jump to about 24:00.
An Afternoon In 14 Minutes
When you don’t know if you’re coming or going…
https://youtu.be/3nzWZomOYmQ
Classical Music’s Gateway Drug
Until February 2 the logo picture in the upper left corner will be the cover of one of my all-time favorite records, a 1971 recording by the BSO of “The Planets” by the English composer Gustav Holst. I am surprised and pleased that Deutsche Grammophon is putting the LP back in print, and my pre-ordered copy will be here on Friday.
“The Planets” is categorized as a suite, and not a symphony, but for all practical purposes a symphony it is. I first heard the Steinberg BSO recording of “The Planets” at the start of my freshman year of college. My roommate Brad played his copy on my then-new Dynaco A25 speakers, and I was totally blown away, as the old saying goes.
I certainly wasn’t unfamiliar with Classical music, but I did not yet have any Classical records in my collection. The previous April I had been in Boston Symphony Hall for the first time — not for a BSO concert, but with my girlfriend to see Randy Newman, whose warm-up acts were Sandy Denny and Martin Mull!
The suite was only 60 years old when I first heard it, and it was unlike any other symphonic music I had ever heard. “The Planets” inspired me to buy Classical records — on budget labels — almost exclusively for a while, including Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos and some Mozart Symphonies. Deutsche Grammophon isn’t a budget label, and for Christmas that year I requested my own copy of the Holst album. My mother worked in Concord, Massachusetts, and she bought a copy at a small record shop in the center of town. I was very excited and appreciative on Christmas morning, and I played the LP many times during the semester break.
Thanks in part to my generation’s embracing of “The Planets,” as well as the popularity of John William’s “Star Wars” score, Holst found his way into the standard symphonic repertoire. I still play my Christmas present from Mom, but those grooves have a lot of mileage on them, and I’m looking forward to having a new pressing. As YouTube sound quality goes, this transfer of an original copy of the LP is about as good as it gets. The record is in excellent condition, and the guy who posted it used a $700 Nagaoka MP-500 phono cartridge.
https://youtu.be/4flEfDF5r30