Category Archives: Music

Rule 5: Anna Netrebko

Posted on August 6, 2013 | 3 comments

The Russian soprano in one of her thinner incarnations. The poor woman’s weight rises and falls (mostly rises) but her lungs, happily, stay glorious.

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Posted in Music, Obsessions, Rule 5

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Our thug culture

Posted on July 23, 2013 | 5 comments

Making a rock star out of the Islamic Boston bomber on the cover of Rolling Stone is the latest example of our thug culture. Hip hop “music” with its lyrics about whores and killing niggas is another example. White teenage boys like Mr. B. soak up the cynical lyrics alongside their favorite headbanger noise.

Look how the alphabet stations and the big newspapers knowingly stuck with a photo of a baby-faced Trayvon at 8 12 years old, instead of the sullen, gold-grill 17-year-old who sold and smoked marijuana and stole jewelry.

Then they ignored Zimmerman’s mixed-race heritage and by uniquely dubbing him a “white-Hispanic” turned him into “an honorary white male steeped in white privilege.” All to elevate a young black thug into a pitable victim of pretend racism and give the Revs. Al and Jesse a new lease on “leadership.”

And you could go back even farther. How about the musical Guys & Dolls, with its catchy, hummable songs (Luck Be A Lady) celebrating the blood-soaked gangsters of the New York underworld and their hooking-up floozies? It almost won a Pulitzer for drama.

And don’t forget Bonnie & Clyde. They got a hit movie thirty years after their deaths for their small store (not banks, as their publicists claimed) robberies and killing at least nine cops.

It all may seem more vulgar and dishonest today than ever before, and maybe it is, but the squalid nonsense is old, very old in a culture that has always been much less than it pretended to be.

Via Phase Line Birnam Wood and Instapundit.

5 Comments

Posted in Blogosphere, Mr. Boy, Music, Scribbles, The Drug War

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iPod meets washing machine, part 2

Posted on July 14, 2013 | 4 comments

This time it was Mrs Charm who sent it through the washing machine (and the dryer) without noticing that it was clipped to a shirt she’d scarfed up to wash.

Just like back in 2011, when it was me who done the deed, the iPod Shuffle worked intermittently, then skipped through tunes without warning before finally dying for good. Oddly, perhaps, the earbuds seem to be okay.

Mrs. C. mentioned trying the rice trick, to dry the iPod out, but I recalled it didn’t work last time. So, like before, I found another used one at Amazon for $16 and ordered it.

4 Comments

Posted in Blogosphere, Mrs. Charm, Music

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Rule 5: The braless look

Posted on July 5, 2013 | Comments Off on Rule 5: The braless look

I never cared much for Carley Simon’s music, but her perky little breasts looked pretty good without a bra. Nowadays, too many women who should know better go braless. I try not to notice.

Via Dustbury

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Posted in Blogosphere, Music, Obsessions, Rule 5

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The Violin

Posted on June 26, 2013 | Comments Off on The Violin

New, interesting book I’m reading on the fiddle has a very long title but its Amazon page has the most succinct (if almost equally long) summary of the instrument that I’ve seen:

“A 16-ounce package of polished wood, strings, and air, the violin is perhaps the most affordable, portable, and adaptable instrument ever created. As congenial to reels, ragas, Delta blues, and indie rock as it is to solo Bach and late Beethoven, it has been played standing or sitting, alone or in groups, in bars, churches, concert halls, lumber camps, even concentration camps, by pros and amateurs, adults and children, men and women, at virtually any latitude on any continent.”

It’s also been cursed, as “the devil’s box,” and, indeed, it’s origin remains unclear. In Texas, they used to say (might still do, for all I know) that the only people who played guitars were those who weren’t good enough to play the fiddle. Oh, and just as a warning: learning to play one is quite addictive.

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Posted in Music, Rancho Roly Poly, Texana

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Austin’s hardcore musicians

Posted on June 19, 2013 | Comments Off on Austin’s hardcore musicians

Sennacherib, not the Assyrian prince but an anonymouse commenter at Simply Jews, just happens to live up the road a ways from the rancho. He offers Austin singer Guy Clark as a refreshing break from the political.

I responded with crooner Robert Earl Keen, a sort of poor man’s Bob Dylan, whose song “The road goes on forever, and the party never ends” has become a Texas classic. Okay, that’s enough of a break. Back to Barry bashing.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Music, Rancho Roly Poly, Texana

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The Bodhran at LOCO

Posted on May 23, 2013 | Comments Off on The Bodhran at LOCO

Eleven folks showed up last night for our weekly pickup contra dance band, including a guy with a bodhran, a Celtic drum, which was a first since I started sitting in on backup fiddle in late February. (Last week there was a guy with a recorder but he didn’t return.)

Most of us, as usual, were fiddlers, though a guitar, a banjo and a mandolin were there to help keep the bodhran on tempo. One fiddler, a guy I like to call the banker because of the way he dresses—as if just coming from the executive suite—was really cutting loose as always, stomping both feet like a Breton fiddler, playing the melody on such pieces as The Hanged Man’s Reel.

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Posted in Music, Texana

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